Wellness Productivity with Jeff Siegel, plus ChromeOS 88 Brings Smart Display Features

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:02
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to anything but idle, the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by productivity voice. And I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:11
And I’m a goof to burnout.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:13
And we’re your hosts for anything but idle. This is Episode 42. And we’re going to be talking about wellness productivity, along with all of the week’s news, and we’re recording this on February 2 2021. Each week, we cover and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And today we have a special guest for the first part of our show, to talk about wellness, productivity, it is National Heart Month, as well as National Black History Month. And so happy National Black History Month but for National Heart Month, we thought we would have a a person who is an expert in wellness, to come on the show and talk to us about all those things related to wellness productivity, Jeff Siegel, as a health coach, dynamic eating psychologist and an meditation teacher, he helps men take control of their health and well being by training in movement, mindfulness and mindset. If you want an approach that is scientifically grounded, spiritually informed, and always super practical, Jeff’s your teacher, welcome to anything but idle Jeff.

Jeff Siegel 1:16
Hello, right. Hello, goose though.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:18
Welcome, welcome, welcome. So today’s theme is all about this idea that is centered on wellness productivity. And I thought we would talk about the things that are really areas where we can actually be more productive by being more fit in all categories. And of course, being more fit means that we’re biologically capable of being more productive. You can’t You can’t be more productive if you are somehow biologically unfit, whether that be mentally or physically. And so I’m really curious, what are the things for you, Jeff, that people struggle with the most when it comes to, to being fit. And I don’t mean, like, buff like you are, but like, you know, just like generally, you know, feeling good about themselves health wise, such that they’re capable of doing what they need to do without struggling physically.

Jeff Siegel 2:07
Right. And I like how you say, you know, feeling good about who they are. And ultimately, I think that is the most important thing is like, when you wake up in the morning, you feel good when you look at the mirror, right? And it’s all about getting your biology to work for you rather than against you. Because you know, when it comes to productivity when it comes to getting things done, right, and we’ve all had this experience of being sick, right? It’s like, You’re, you’re pretty helpless, you’re pretty worthless, like, not a whole lot is happening. Right? So on one end, it’s like preventing disease and illness. But on the other end, it’s like how can we move from this place of sort of like normal, everyday life and really supercharged turbocharge your productivity by optimizing your bio rhythms by optimizing your diet, your sleep, your nutrition, and all these other things that are going on to your body, I see a lot of people really struggle to find a way to take care of themselves, because they haven’t either a like updated their patterns, either. Maybe that’s the way they eat or how they sleep. Because they did it one way before the pandemic. And now their life, it looks very different. And they haven’t had a chance to kind of figure out what a new better routine is for themselves. Or sometimes it’s people that just, you know, haven’t spent the time or had the resources to really educate themselves about like, hey, like, Oh, I didn’t recognize that eating this, like highly processed junk food thing is actually interfering with my blood sugar, which then impacts my mood, which then destroys my ability to stay focused and do productive work. So there’s all these little pieces that I think are really essential on the education front, on the being really honest with yourself about what’s working, and what’s not working. And then being willing to do some of that nitty gritty work and go in and start tinkering with your routines and tinkering with your lifestyle.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:03
I’m always curious about the fact that for most people, it’s difficult to find time to prioritize your mind. It’s not finding time, right? It’s making time to prioritize your fitness, whether that be nutrition, mental health, physical health, and otherwise, what are some of the things that you try to engage people in doing when it comes to? Okay, yes, we know you need to be fit. I know I need to be fit. And I happen to be a bit of a fitness geek myself, right. I’ve always been a runner, I’m very fitness minded. But there are folks out there who are struggling to make that time. What are some tips that you might have for folks who are struggling to prioritize their fitness journey through life?

Jeff Siegel 4:50
Yeah, I like that distinction, first of all, between the you know, finding the time and making the time, but you know, and I think that shows a certain level of initiative and commitment. What is so hard is that so many people just have really terrible relationships to exercise. And, and as a result, really terrible relations with their bodies. And they’re not necessarily to blame, I think, you know, as kids, a lot of times, it’s like you grow up, and maybe there’s an activity you love, maybe you play a sport, but then at some point, it gets really competitive, it becomes less fun, there’s too much pressure. You know, and like, a lot of times people start to foreclose on all sorts of activities, because, you know, you feel like you’re not good enough, you’re like, well, I’m never gonna be really good at this activity. So I might as well not try it, or I did it that one time, and it wasn’t very good, it was really kind of painful, actually, it totally stopped, like, I don’t want to ever do it again. And so it’s like, we start shutting all these doors. And then, you know, over time, we kind of just resign ourselves to a life that’s very limited, when it comes to physical activity and exercise. And to me, that’s such a shame. It’s like, I want to help people rediscover the joys of movement. And I think the key there is joy, like it has to be somewhat inherently joyful, right. And that doesn’t mean that every moment of every exercise, or every workout is going to be like this, like ecstatic bliss. But there is something both positive and rewarding about it. And I think it takes time to discover that in the beginning, you might have to kind of mock through it a little bit. But with the right guidance, and then also the right exploration, I believe different bodies, and different people just need to find the right thing. You know, for some people that might be dance for some people that might be weightlifting, for other people that might be running or swimming, you know, the beauty of right now is that it’s very easy to access a lot of different movement modalities, you know, on demand online. And so it’s like, you can try a lot of things out and kind of see what fits and see what sticks for you, and then start there. And then from there, I think it’s really having the commitment and the structure. You know, a lot of people say like, yeah, okay, I want to work out, I’m gonna do this thing, and then never follow through. And that’s because they’re lacking mutual accountability, right? Because at the end of the day, if they don’t, if you don’t do your workout, nobody’s gonna come and bang down your door, right and wave their finger at you and be like, Oh, you didn’t do your workout today. And this is the value of working together with a coach, because you have that built in accountability, you have that partnership, you have that check in. All right, that, you know, somebody is gonna be there watching you. All right, not in this, you know, super, you know, like, you know, coaching like I, you know, I’m trying to guess, what’s the right word? You know, yeah, I don’t want to like make you feel like like you punished or wrong for not doing what you said you were gonna do, right. But from this encouraging positive stance, you know, that you have somebody in your corner to help you take those steps that deep down inside you want to take anyway, but maybe you need that extra little bit of support to get going.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:02
I always say that coaches are about tough love. They are showing care and concern when they’re when they’re holding you accountable to the things you need to get done. Right. And it’s like having the little angel and the devil on your shoulder. The coach is the one who is the angel but it’s capable of is capable of nudging you, nudging you in the right ways to be able to make those right choices. And so it’s a it’s not a judgment out of out of malice. It’s a judgment out of concern and care. And I think we all use that mechanism. I mean, we talked about this in productivity all the time, about how how important accountability is. And that’s really important when it comes to those kinds of things. Art is noting in the chat, welcome art, that he talks about the the joy of movement, he really liked your note there, he likes the sound of that and it kind of goes along with mindfulness. And that makes a lot of sense since a lot of your work is in that space of helping people through mindfulness. Okay, so

Augusto Pinaud 8:56
so I’m obviously agreeing with with Jeff. I think also and I’m and I’m going to talk to from my experience in particular. It is also about understanding that you did not get to where you were in a day. You are not going to get to the other place in a day. It’s probably going to take you a lot of time and on happened to be just January 30. happened to be on January 3 2008 was the day that I quit smoking. And I tell story, it was a pack a day smoker and a year after that. I 2009 I go to the doctor. Sit in the doctor’s office came the first nurse came to secondary gain the third nurse to take my blood pressure and the next thing I hear is the doctor saying is ridiculous that you guys cannot take blood pressure. He took the blood pressure and told me Please don’t move, okay, your heart attack waiting to happen. At that time, my blood pressure sitting in there was 240 over 120. And I was 400 pounds 13 years later going to 2021. Okay, I have lost more than 220 pounds. But what helped me lose those 220 pounds was how wise that doctor was first. He explained to me the issue, and, but then told me, You need to understand that 97% of the people with your conditions failed. So if you want to have any hope to make it happen, you need to go into micro things, forget about stopping eating, forget about doing exercise, what is going to be the next micro thing you can do. Okay, from them has been, you know, the pounds and, and learn to deal with the new and the old paints and the old things, you know, I’m I’ve been really lucky to to, to get in here and being able to find different ways, but has always been under that assumption, I did not go to 400 pounds in a day, I did not get out of there, you know, in a day, and every little movement has been, you know, not with the idea of let me get one session, and it’s going to be out. Actually, I work with Jeff. That’s how I know Jeff. And he, he is my coach. And when I started working with him, I started working with him because I have had chronic back pain. Why would you pick us based on the previous story, okay, that was maybe a little heavy Plus, I don’t move a lot, okay. And the difference, when I start working with him, I have the good luck to already have experienced some success and understood it was going to take time. So I wasn’t expecting that he was going to work with me in two days and get me fixed man, I probably took four to six months, to me not being aware that I have paid, okay. And it’s been fantastic. But that part needs to be taken into consideration as we look into this wellness and productivity and understand how this effect. Because where you are, if you will have asked me well how your wellness at 400 pounds is on it’s affecting your productivity, I will have looked at you and say I don’t know, this is the only productivity I know. So that was my normal. That was my baseline. The improvements has come after that. They even when I began working to eliminate my back pain, that was my baseline Okay, having back pain was normal every day and doesn’t matter what you do. Not having back pain was a new baseline that came later on that allows me to increase my productivity. So when we talk about wellness and productivity in many cases, we need to understand where is the baseline we are and what is what we are trying to get because the gains in productivity to many of this, we may not see. But months ahead of time, we will not see it immediately takes time for specifically in wellness to see some of those results. That with other things in productivity you don’t you can see results, productivity easy, relatively quick, with the wellness component, at least in my experience, every benefit you will get will take time to show up.

Jeff Siegel 13:49
The the piece that that really stuck out to me there and again, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a gousto. And I know how committed he is right. It’s like the importance of these every day, little behaviors that add up over time, right to either undermine your health or to boost it. And I think the you know, you were talking about baselines, like getting a baseline. And then the sad part that I see is, you know, so many of us have been living for so long with bodies that just kind of hurt, that hurt, that ache that are in pain that are moody that are hungry, right? And then we actually forget what it’s like to have a body that’s not like that, to have a body that feels energized to have a body that feels capable, and strong and resilient. So it’s like when you work on these fundamentals of health. It’s like somebody coming and lifting this glass ceiling, right we all live under a glass ceiling that limits our potentials in some of this is limiting beliefs that we have about, you know, our own value and our own worth and our own greatness and some of this is limited by our biases. ology, and our physiology actually limits the amount that we can get done in a certain day because we either don’t have the focus or we don’t have the energy or we don’t have the drives, right. So when we can work with our biology, right to help lift that glass ceiling, all of a sudden, what we can do, right skyrockets astronomically. And this is the important thing, when you’re talking about exercise, you know, I always tell people, you should never really exercise to lose something, right? If you’re exercising just to lose weight, or to burn calories, it’s that is a mindset that usually doesn’t lead anywhere helpful, right, you should exercise to gain something, right. And in some sense, that might be physical strength, but I think of it more in terms of just gaining physical autonomy, right? The ability to go out and do things in the world, that require your body, and to feel the confidence and the trust that your body will be there with the strength and resilience that it needs. So you can do that. Like that, to me, is the ultimate reason why you shouldn’t take care of your body on a daily basis.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:08
Yeah, I can’t, I can’t want to underscore that statement, more than anything else said so far, today, I love that, that you should want to gain something through fitness, you know, you should want to, you know, be able to not remove something like losing, losing weight sounds negative, it sounds like, kind of victim oriented, versus, you know, becoming physically fit. And I think of the fitnesses as being a broader category of all of those things that are that are mental and physical combined. So, you know, I think about those things, I even I consider financial fitness to be an emotional fitness, because we tend to apply emotion to money so much that, you know, those are all things that we can do to make us more productive, but we just don’t elevate it to that level of importance in our world, you know, when it really should be. And so I really, really appreciate that that’s such a great, I’m just, I’m loving that I love the idea that you should be physically fit to gain something. So

Augusto Pinaud 17:11
yeah, I have never, I have never thought as you said that I have never thought about gaining in even in 13 years in this process. I have never thought about gaining everything that was that was that I agreed to come in of the of the segment. Because, yes, that’s exactly what it is, I have gained so much over the years, you know, I I going back to those to that guy at 400 pounds. You know, I remember that the first thing I gained, I remember it clearly because it was the ability to kneel or go down on my knees and play with my daughter. And at 400 pounds. No, you can’t do that. Okay, it took me a while to get there. But that was the first thing I gained. And he’s something that I have kept alive, you know, for all these years. But I have never put it into what are you gaining? What can you gain out of this? Are you always think on loosing the weight but not on the game? So thank you for that, because that was amazing.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:16
And I’ve always been in the in the category of you know, people would make fun of me because I was always talking about how do I gain more weight, I was always the small skinny kid, right? So I was always trying to gain weight. And I mean, even in in collegial settings today, when I when people talk about oh, I want to lose weight, I want to lose weight after the holidays and bla bla bla and I always say, I’m just trying to maintain the the weight that I that I have on my body, I have a high metabolic rate. And, you know, I still get a little bit of cultural pushback from that perspective. But you know, I, I don’t, I don’t fault anyone for that perspective. Because again, society and culture applies this, this sense of loss constantly on us. And I and I and I understand that the the kind of as we wrap up the segment, I wanted to talk about anything, any little practical tips or tricks that we might want to offer viewers and listeners as it relates to wellness, especially heart health. And so I’ll start us off with with kind of something that I’ve been doing recently. And that is I wear art is going to laugh in the in the chat here. But I wear I use an Android Wear iOS watch. And I’m in the Android ecosystem. So I have all of the Android devices in my world, and I use Google Fit. And something that Google Fit has done is it’s given these heart points that are connected to your ability to to elevate your heart rate for a period of time, you can kind of set these goals. And in that vein, I have been trying to make sure that all of my physical fitness activity helps to kind of close that. You know, that number of heart points. And it’s like a partnership between Google and the American Heart Association. And so it’s not the it’s not a perfect number, but at least gives me something to aim for. And so you can Do these small kinds of gamification, you know, techniques in order to be able to do just a little bit of fitness each week, that really is going to help your heart. And so I think that’s, you know, just one little tip I can give not being a fitness trainer not being a fitness expert. But you know, that’ll be that’ll be how it goes. Art is noting here that I’ll be upgrading soon enough. Well, if, if Google puts out that pixel watch, you better believe I’ll be upgrading. But I do I actually do like the galaxy live. Watch. The the new Galaxy watch is really quite nice. And I’m, I’m like that close to it. I’m that close. But we’ll see. Anyway, moving right along, Jeff, what what’s one small tip that you can offer to folks as we close out? Okay, so

Augusto Pinaud 20:44
I’m going to I’m going to jump before Jeff. So we live the expert left. So I can say my Bharath is before the expert comes Perfect. Okay. So as you recommend that I will obviously talk about the Apple Watch, because that’s where the ecosystem that I leave, and this has been, you know, one of those additions to all this process of health that has been incredible. I got the I don’t know, whenever that the Apple Watch came out, I got mine. And it has been incredible to be able to track More importantly, to be able to go back, you know, and see all the data and analyze that data and even send it in PDF to the doctor, a doctor looking at you like how you got all the data here. But the the tip that I will give people I learned from from Jeff, I have an alarm every hour in my watch. Okay. And every hour, it just says a stretch. That’s all that it says nothing. Major. Okay. And do I stretch every hour? No, I’m going to get in trouble here. But okay, do I get stretch every hour? No. But what that has produced is that I stretch a lot more hours than what I have done ever before. More importantly, has teach me to learn about my body and painting my body on ways that I didn’t even know were possible. So I may be in the middle of the meeting, and I cannot stretch and I decide to skip it or I will be feeling fine. But I have now been able to say okay, I’m not doing that great today. So let’s make sure if I cannot let us know stand up for as soon as this meeting is over, you know, go in to do that. So

Jeff Siegel 22:38
I know this is all about productivity. And I love technology. And I’m happy to talk about different wearable devices is a huge, huge area. There’s a lot of really cool gadgets out there. Personally, I use the aura ring, which is an awesome little wearable that is really good for tracking things like sleep, heart rate, body temperature. But I think that the bigger nudge that I want to put out there is really setting up your environment to be conducive to taking care of your body. Right. And because when it comes to a battle between you know willpower, and the environment, the environment almost always wins. And so, you know, you can probably see here in the background, like I have a pull up bar on the door, I have a foam roller that just sits by my bed. So every night before I get into bed, I just pop down on it and roll a little bit, right, I have little stretchy bands and balls and things for massaging just sort of laying around the house. So when I see them, I just kind of grab it and use it leisurely. And in this sense, it starts to get baked into your day. And I think this is the other key piece is a goose that was talking about it like making things in small, simple manageable steps. Because we often turn exercise and self care into this big thing. You’re like, I need this big chunk of time I need an hour and then I gotta get sweaty and change, you know, versus saying like, I’m just gonna take five minutes and just do a little bit of stretching. Right? And I think about this using the analogy of food, right, and I talked about your movement and diet, right, just as you wouldn’t want to eat, you know, just one type of food day in, day out. And yet, when you look at what we’re doing with our bodies, we basically wake up and then we sit, maybe we walk a little bit and then we sit some more, right? And it’s like it’s not a very diverse diet of movement. So we’re thinking about how can you get more movement into your day and I talked about movement snacks, right movement snacking is this idea that in the middle of your day, you just set a timer for five minutes, right and you just pick one movement or one stretch or one piece of fitness equipment and you just play around with it. And just just gives your body and your brain a really valuable opportunity to disengage from whatever it was that you were doing to come back to get centered and grounded in your body and this really helps for productivity. standpoint so that when you’re done with that, I can almost guarantee you that when you re enter into the work that you are doing, you’re going to be coming from a place of a little bit more energy, a little bit more focus than if you hadn’t taken them movement snap.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:14
Fantastic. I love the idea of movement snacking. That’s great. Well, this has been a lot of fun. And I’ve enjoyed talking to you both about wellness, productivity. And again, it’s National Heart Month. So everybody just think about your heart and do something to help it. You don’t, you don’t get a pat on the back for the heart attack you don’t have, right. And so it’s very difficult to really think about this from the perspective that you’re somehow benefiting yourself by doing this work that you don’t see the outcomes necessarily for. But doing this movement snacking by doing a little bit of tracking and gamification, you are going to benefit yourself in this way. Even if you don’t see your heart getting stronger on the outside, right. It’s not about biceps and pecs and whatever else or slimming your body down, it’s really about this organ inside of you, that is your life force. In essence, if it stops, so to you. So why not give it a little bit of love is kind of my thought. And and so art is noting here in in the chat that you could take, you could add little tasks to your to do for movement and activity, kind of adding it to your task list. I think that’s that’s a great idea, as well as baking it in, as Jeff noted, is a really important piece. And so with that, Jeff, how can folks keep up to date with you and all that you have going on with your business and your work?

Jeff Siegel 26:36
Yeah, the best place to find out more is just visit my website, Jeff Siegel, wellness calm, and that has all sorts of free resources. I’ve got a ebook on diet, I’ve got guided meditations, I’ve got things about behavior change and forming healthy habits, all sorts of great things that you can access. So go check that out there. It also links to my Instagram and other social profiles. So you can follow me because I’m always putting up different videos and media and things. Because ultimately, you know, I want to help create a world where there are happy and healthy people because I believe happy and healthy people are also helpful people. And we need a world where we can come together and communities that are helping each other.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:20
Well, I love it. And I think your Instagram profile is really worth following, you’re always putting out interesting things on it. And while I don’t spend a lot of time consuming social media, I always enjoy you know, logging in and seeing the various things that people have going on. And you’re always putting out really high quality content and getting people to think beyond just the you know, doing bicep curls and push ups and whatnot, you’re actually providing No You know, a lot of people go out there and do that, you know, there are a lot of these guys who end and women and otherwise who put out a lot of fitness content but not a lot of people who make you think beyond just the the surface stuff and I really got exactly

Augusto Pinaud 27:55
what that’s exactly what my in my opinion make Jeff something fantastic is not he’s not going to make me ever get a bit sick but but or sweating, that’s not going to happen. But he has get me to help into the stretching and the movement and, and even some exercises on bands and some staff to to to gain. I like that. What are you gaining? Thank you.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:19
Well, thank you so much, Jeff, for for joining us here on anything but idle. And we’ll have you back the next time we talk about wellness productivity. Okay, thanks

Jeff Siegel 28:27
so much, guys. Thank you both take care of your bodies. Take care of your hearts. See you soon. Thank you.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:34
Bye, Jeff. All right, sir, we are now going to go into our first set of headlines this week. And so let’s get into our headlines this week. Oh,

Augusto Pinaud 28:49
the first one we’re going to be talking is Apple is launching black unity collection. And they’re trying to do a couple of things celebrating Black History Month. And they are putting a couple of things for they’re putting a special batch for your Apple Watch. They’re also doing a special edition, limited Special Edition watch or bands for them. And they are highlighting black artists, authors and developers on their app. So I think this is something really exciting that Apple is is doing. Our next. Our next I think it’s for our productivity people at something really excited. And here’s how you set up Google Calendar offline mode. So now Google Calendar like Gmail will keep the offline you will be able to move modify, work with it. And as soon as you connect, it will do the update. And it is a big deal. I think for people who is in productivity that will be a game changer being able to use the calendar on the browser on that office. mode,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:01
I am super excited about it. I mean, this is just akin to having Google Drive in offline mode, having Google Docs, having Gmail in offline mode, now you can actually manifest your calendar, you know, say you’re on a plane train, you know, underground and you’re disconnected from, you know, the the internet, you’re gonna still be able to be productive by having Google Calendar offline in offline mode. So cool stuff. Next up.

Augusto Pinaud 30:26
Next up is the Microsoft gift, the surface tool, an update, and I may be the only Apple fan excited about this the form of this device anyways, they add, you know, the ability to do color to confer called certain conditions improve the quality, I think that was a big deal. But more importantly, improve the touch stability, there have been some issues about that. So it’s going to see whether this product is going to take Microsoft or not, I still think it is something that can be really exciting if you are in the Android world, but we will see. So our next announcement is Microsoft announced some fantastic features for edge 2021. For if you are looking into a chromium base, and you don’t want to use Google Chrome, you can now install edge. And then you can see what they have come they have finally is starting to bring it to pay to par to what Google Chrome has been doing. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:38
yeah, the coolest piece, the coolest thing I think is that you’ll be able to on the homepage now in Microsoft Edge, see your Outlook email. So you’ll be able to actually check your Outlook email directly from that homepage, which is kind of cool. There’s they’re up leveling it up to bring all of these interesting productivity features into the edge experience when you are, you know, kind of baked into your Microsoft 365 environment. So looking forward to seeing what that looks like how it how it feels. And yeah, they’ve got a bunch of other, you know, interesting pieces that are coming into the into the for being able to sleep tabs, akin to how some of these other Chrome extensions allow you to be able to to rest, you know, a tab, now you’re capable of doing these things upcoming in edge.

Augusto Pinaud 32:30
Yeah. So the next thing we have is Apple has enhanced with the recently released iOS 14.4, iPad, os 14.4, the handoff between the iPhone and the home pod, it’s making better, more stronger, and using really the full capability of the one chip. So if you have had one of these hotspots, make sure to upgrade so you can get that handoff working much better.

Unknown Speaker 33:06
What’s next?

Augusto Pinaud 33:08
Our next is Omni focus, and Omni is been there been working really, really well. There is an article from Korea, talking about how they is x access to OmniFocus automation and how really, they have worked, the only focus group has worked into get you to integrate inside of iOS as well as Mac with other applications. And the example on iOS is out to play the piano. So he now has a link that takes them to a perspective that now show them all the things in it to practice but like that you can open URLs, you can create PDFs, you can do so many things, we really an easy process, you don’t need to be a programmer anymore, you don’t need to know code. So you can really get the benefits of OmniFocus in this. So this is really, really, really, really exciting. The next one is

Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:10
hold on hold on a second, I just wanted to comment on the fact that this is showing a greater trend that I think everybody should be aware of is that all of these platforms, whether that be OmniFocus, Asana, Trello, you name it, they are baking into their systems now your capability of in essence, doing these kinds of automation functions. And so once upon a time you needed ifft or Zapier or another automation tool to do some of these things. And now they’re being you know, built directly into the interfaces so that you’re capable of automating what is and should be activities that the computer can do. You don’t need to do this stuff. And so I think it’s important to kind of to to approach your task management and project management software today with what are the things that you should be doing And what are the things that really can be automated, and start to think about how to get those things invested in your systems before you start using them. Not that you won’t modify over time, you’re gonna, you’re gonna learn as you go. But I think it’s really important to actually think about that beforehand. Now, as we go into more and more tools that have this stuff out the gate, they have it in, in the crate ready for you to unwrap.

Augusto Pinaud 35:24
And, and that, you know, in the iOS ecosystem, you have the shortcuts to also you can do a significant amount of, of automation, really, in an easy way, you don’t need to know, code, you don’t need to be a programmer to do it, that that’s what make it in my opinion, you know, really, really powerful. You can do it on the Mac many, many years back, but you need to understand code, this is fine note Connect note, I mean, really, you can use it, you know, one of those examples is Rosemary orchard, create shortcut on that goes through the getting things done the David Allen checklist for the higher level, you know, for all those projects, and it is a long shortcut. But instead of going through the list and trying to capture it, you can get into this shortcut, do all that and it will populate it into your inbox. In OmniFocus. I modified so you can do it in to do it, too. Now that I have moved platforms, but it is really, really powerful, even when you don’t know how to code or program.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:38
Yeah, so Episode 573 of Mac power users. Resume orchard just came back to the show. So if you’re interested in any of those things in the automation space, they literally call her the queen of automation, she is back on the show for Mac power users. So go ahead and check out Episode 571 573 of Mac power users for that. onward. Okay, so

Augusto Pinaud 37:03
the next thing is the E ink. Kelly do two and light Oh,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:09
it’s like kaleido.

Augusto Pinaud 37:12
And this is the first thing at least I have seen of ink in color. And actually, it was interesting, because we were having a discussion in ProductivityCast, about inks and colors. And we were discussing with our girl works about, well, is this useful or not. And it came the comics, you know how powerful will be to have this comics in colors in ink that I can read it everywhere. And since we have that discussion is funny because we have seen more and more of these inks come in the picture that they have is a magazine cosmopolitan cover. But would you can see more and more these devices come in, and now the ink is allowing them to go full color. So I am really excited for the future of ink in in. In the next month. I’m curious who is going to be the first one who come with a semi functional ink tablet, just as we have mentioned here in the show, you can use at least on the iPad world, you can use the colors filters to make it look black and white or at least in in a gray tones. So that way you get an effect similar to the ink help with your eyes and everything else. But I’m really curious who is going to be the first one to bring that ink, fully functional tablet sadly, probably will not be on iOS.

Unknown Speaker 38:40
No, no, not at all.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:43
But I will have to say this is this is really amazing. The E ink kaleido. Two is bringing up pixel by pixel color options, which is just a great innovation. And so we’ll see more and more of em technology coming out there. And I think this is really important for all of us to remember because the more advancement in eating technology, the greater capability for us to have a low power consumption, which is better for the environment. But it’s also better for us in terms of the devices longevity, then you don’t have to plug it in every you know day to charge you can go several days, maybe a week, between charges, and you have this really powerful, highly color accurate device that you can have available to you. I’m very excited and quite kind of bullish about the E ink market. And I think that seeing these color displays come on board with greater levels of technology. I mean that the innovations here in the color ink here is just really phenomenal. And I’m looking forward to seeing how other companies build on top of this, you know now there’s a kind of a race to get to high quality color eating display and high refresh rate with that color accuracy so that you can have a low power consumption device that is giving you the same you know experience that LCD does. And other you know, other you know, OLED and and other screens are giving us. So onward to our next door you Cousteau

Augusto Pinaud 40:12
books allow hackers to hijack Kindle account with malicious ebooks and they have been discovering bugs, Amazon has confirmed the security breach, and you can go in and access some of the information. They don’t know exactly how much these bugs were fixed on December 10 of last year, the report was on October 17, even that is really now starting to come to the news. It’s not so but go if you have a Kindle, go updated, make sure you have the last version. So you are not vulnerable to these kind of things. Next is something that I’m going to let you talk about this because I know this is a news that particularly excited you last week. Oh yes, I

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:00
am super, super excited about this. And so if you all don’t know what a progressive web application is, really all it means is that you’re taking an application that you would otherwise experience in the web, browser, desktop, or mobile, and you’re making it a kind of experience, the experience around it is just like a normal application. But instead of installing an application, it’s it’s a web app. So it’s just loading from the from the internet, downloading all of the innards, so that you can run the application, but you’re not actually installing it anywhere. And so you’re getting around all of those, all of those pieces. There are several websites out there that give you access to these web progressive web applications. And Google specifically has been slowly but surely, creating progressive web applications for all of its properties. And now they have brought YouTube forward in that I don’t actually know how long they’ve been doing this. But now we have YouTube as a progressive web app. So if you’re using YouTube, YouTube Music, there’s Google Chat, if you’re using the Google Chat tool, I know that they have several others of those actually, if you’re using Google messages, and you’re using the Android operating system, and you’re using Google messages, you can actually install that as a progressive web application. So in essence, now, it just acts like a desktop application, but you haven’t installed and anything on your system, it’s just running as its own separate instance, outside of the browser, and you can move it around, put it on a different desktop and interact with it just the same way. It is very powerful. It’s very capable, because it’s the same application you would otherwise be using in the web browser. And it just gives you so much flexibility. The other powerful part is that when you’re in the mobile web, you can install these progressive progressive web applications pw A’s on your on your mobile device. So instead of having to install the big bloated application, you can just install the pw a. And that lightens the load on your operating system. This is so great for so many reasons. And so just go check it out, you can install YouTube. And now you can have YouTube running and its own little Taskbar icon. And it’s no more no increased load on your system. It’s no increased anything, it’s just a way for you to be able to now move it around and manipulate the window so that it’s not, you know, held inside of that either Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge Firefox instance, or Apple Safari instance. Okay, I’m done. I’m done jumping up and down.

Augusto Pinaud 43:33
Well, the next one, I’m going to be the one jumping up and down chromeboxes report that what Kim has introduced one time is the first fully compatible graphics tablet for Chromebooks. I’m not a particular drawer, but I have clients and friends who are. But what is exciting about this for me is when Chromebook came out in the market, my impression was okay, we’re going to get to the bottom of the market, we are going to get to the low power of the mark we’re going to get we’re not going to go really and compete with the high end on the rest of the thing. And what we have seen little by little is the increase of all this the increase of the power of the machine the increase of the capabilities of the machine. So it is awesome to see little by little how this is happening and how we’re, this Chromebooks are getting more and more and more powerful.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:37
Yeah, it’s one I will state I was wrong because I’ve been going around calling them way calm for years. And it is wack calm, and so are welcome. But yeah, they are. That’s one I learned something about that too, is I think this is brilliant and the ability to expand the Chrome OS environment to artists. And creatives who want to be able to utilize their Chromebooks in this way, I’m just I’m elated to see the capability here for having these devices. Now extending the capabilities of Chrome OS. It was inevitable. But it’s also just really great to see it here. Now, finally. All right, we are one story away from our first break.

Augusto Pinaud 45:23
And Coca Cola now will come preloaded with coffee. So you don’t have to mix it yourself. I don’t drink coke anymore. Okay, I drink coke many years ago, then I went to that Coke, and I quit. But I never mix my diet coke or my coke with coffee. So I don’t know who makes them yourself. But whoever it is, that is mixing it. You don’t need to worry anymore. Coca Cola have it done for you.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:49
Yeah, so my understanding is that this was something that culturally was available in other countries already. And, and Coca Cola finally brought it to the United States. So there are other cultures around the world. Maybe you’re one of them watching where you mix your coffee and Coca Cola, no judgement, but it’s not something that I’m particularly interested in doing. And but now we can get our coke with our coffee and not cocaine but Coca Cola with, with our coffee mix together. I’m, I’m probably going to try it. I mean, I’m not gonna lie, I’m probably going to try it just to see what it’s all about. I recently moved over to this, like, on I don’t know, what a healthier version of cola. And I’ve been testing out this this particular brand of healthy koalas, because I do a like, I do like an occasional cola of some kind. I’m a more of a root beer, birch beer, you know, ginger beer person. But, you know, it’d be nice to have a little, you know, treat on occasion. And I don’t know if this really fits into that category. I mean, obviously, it has. I’m guessing it has double the caffeine. I’m not quite sure. But it’s got probably high caffeine count, because it has this mixture of those two products. I’m not particularly interested in it, but I will try it. I mean, just for you know, for science, I’ll try it

Augusto Pinaud 47:05
for sighs may try it, if I can find it. If we if we you know, when we go out and stuff in a gas station and see it, I may try it just for curiosity. But But again, it could be something cultural that it doesn’t necessarily it doesn’t necessarily understand.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:20
And with that, we are going to take a break. When we get back from the break. We have more productivity news. We have our tools of the week, our new tools of the week. And we are going to be closing out the show with a little bit of fun around Chrome OS again, because we have some new fun pieces coming to Chrome OS. And so with that, we’re going to take a break and hear from our sponsor this week. Productivity voice see after the break.

Sponsor Voice Over 47:43
Are you feeling that you need help implementing a personal productivity system a goal or a habit like the weekly review? Do you need help making your current system more robust? Do you want a quick checkup of your current systems to ensure they are the best solutions for you? With more than 20 years of experience in technology, personal productivity and GTD productivity voice can help you review renew create or fine tune your system and your personal productivity visit productivity voice.com forward slash anything but idle for a free 30 minute consultation. Let’s achieve more enjoy more and feel more wins in the game of being productive. Head over to productivity voice comm forward slash anything but idle today. And now back to the show.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 48:35
Welcome back everybody to anything but idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith with a good stepping out and we are talking about the second half of our stories this week. And so we’ve got a few more stories before we get to our new tools of the week. And so gousto What is our next story this week.

Augusto Pinaud 48:52
Our next story came from the Trello blog and talks about leveling up your tools you know your guide to pick up tools that can grow with you and I really enjoy this article because a lot of times when we pick tools we pick tools for the current reality in this case he’s talking about enterprise but but that is not really different on the personal side and we think on our current reality or current needs and don’t think about what’s going to happen when other things get added you know get new get and although things you know can or should be as the article said should be part of Dec considerations, okay can this tool grow with me? You know, and as I read the article, I thought about the first iPhone and on the to do an iPhone okay and I’m guilty of charge. I did not I will One out of excitement and a deal at God and everything else. I went and bought the new iPhone, but I did not consider when I did that what was going to happen with my productivity? Okay. And I had a trio that I knew up and down where my system leave. And the first thing I remember was notes on the first iPhone, you could not sort you could not do categories. Yes, you were limited on the tree. But there was none. Okay, there was a category, okay. All right. And there was no to do list. So all these things, really, if I look at that, with some retrospective, I should not have got the device. Okay, because the device was not jet ready for the place I was going to go. And yes, software developers came with a web apps that you could do, and but it took really until the second generation or third to really be robust. And I should have weighed from, again, from a perspective, your tools where you’re growing, should have weighed from that perspective. And it was really interesting as reading this, as I’m looking a couple of my clients, changing some things and growing some things and adding more demands to their things, and being able to forward this article and say, Hey, don’t solve today. Solve tomorrow, to see if this tool really will allows you to grow, as you add these new employees as you add all these new responsibilities.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 51:36
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I mean, most of my work is in helping business owners choose their technology. And this is why this story kind of jumped out at me, because Trello did a really great job of not covering all of the pieces, but really helping to get people aware of the fact that when you choose technology, it is like marrying a person, you don’t just jump in, you know, on the first day and offer an engagement ring, you should really be doing some, you know, not just back to the envelope understanding of of the tool, but you really need to do some some heavy lifting, to understand whether or not this tool this technology is worth investing time in. Remember, it’s not just the cost of the tool, it’s not just the time needed to type in your email address and a password to access it, it comes to are you going to have the right culture that will, you know, in essence, embrace the technology. And that means having either internal advocates, even if you’re a five person team, that means it’s even more important, because if you have two people who are against the technology, that is a substantial, that’s 40% of your workforce against the tool, and it’s going to be tough to to then both change. And, and and overcome that kind of objection. Also, you need to think about how people are going to switch gears, is this solving for an existing problem? Or is this in essence, rewriting over something that is currently being used, and many times what business owners misunderstand is that they have technology in place that is doing the job, and they have people who are doing that job, and they know how to do it, and they’re trying to invest in something that’s going to increase productivity. But what they what they fail to recognize is that somebody internally now is being shaded, they’re feeling made to feel less competent, because you’re telling them that the way in which they are doing it is somehow less than, and so you have to be very mindful of the fact that there there is, there is emotion involved when you decide to invest in new technologies, which is why I always like to invest in technology upfront, and then have new hires come on board, I never want new hires to come on board after we are, you know, before we’ve made decisions on on technology, obviously, it needs to be done on occasion. But I would rather have that technology in place and say this is what we were what we’ve been using. Now come come use it. And it’s much easier for people to kind of accept that. But when you invest in new technology, that means there’s this whole human dynamic that needs to be dealt with. And then of course, what you talked about Cousteau, which is thinking not just the next three months, but what about the next 24 and 48 months? What does the technology look like? Then? How is it going to look like then, which means talking to the company about the roadmap, talking to the company about their their financial stability? Are they going to be around in 48 months? Now that’s a long time in technology, and especially in productivity technology, where we have lots of companies that go away very quickly. And we want to make sure that we are invested in technology that’s going to stick around? And that’s one of the reasons why Unfortunately, not unfortunately. But just one of the reasons why Google workspace and Microsoft 365 are the dominant productivity suites in the market. They’re not going anywhere, you know, and people can trust that they’re not going anywhere. People don’t have certainly CTOs and CEOs and CEOs don’t want to deal with that change, and they don’t want their people to deal with that change. So we need to really keep that in mind when we’re Thinking about investing in new tools. And I just thought this Trello article helped kind of put that up at the fore.

Augusto Pinaud 55:06
Yeah, I completely agree with you. And as I said, not only look, read the article and think on the enterprise that without a doubt, you know, we’re just talking about major, I’m a huge number of people. But think on your personal side, too. You know, I recently made the change from, after many years from OmniFocus, to do it. But it was a really long process to get there. And because it is a company that’s going to survive, going to grow going to allow me to grow or is going to, what are the things that are going to do better and worse than this, then the solution there was in place so, so really fun article to, to have and to read.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 55:52
All right, next up a little news out of Microsoft.

Augusto Pinaud 55:56
So Microsoft, Microsoft, and everybody’s really looking into how the last 12 months of COVID-19 has changed, or starting to change the way we work and how that’s going to be and how this is going to affect organizations, teams, and the use of technology to collaborate, innovate, solve problems, everything else. And I want to say not being a Microsoft fan, that I believe they were one of the Golden child’s of the 2020 day really a step up with their team platform was their things at 365. And with all the problems we have, they really had an amazing thing. So but their article then talks about work lab, that is a destination that they want for sharing science base insight on thoughtful, compelling stories on how work is changing, not only they are trying to be the leader, too, but they’re also trying to show others what is the information or some of the information that they are using to make these decisions? What are the conclusions of years of research that they have done as a corporation? So it was it go check, you know, microsoft.com slash work labs, it was really, really interesting.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:21
And I typed that wrong. Take off the s, it’s microsoft.com, forward slash work lab. For those of you who are in the live show, I mistyped that but yeah, so that so the editor, who is Jared Spataro, he’s the leader of the Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Teams. And he is he is they’ve launched this work lab, digital publication, and I’m really interested in seeing what they have to offer. I’ve already read through several of their articles, they had an article on social capital, that was that was written by Jared lennier, who was Microsoft Research Scientist. And he really, he has really been a champion champion, I guess, he was he’s very anti social media, so to speak. And so he’s been a notable social media critic. And as a Microsoft scientist, he wrote this article talking about social capital, and how Microsoft has built a new way to meet online utilizing these different technologies. So just like there’s some really interesting stuff going on inside of work lab, and even if you’re not a big Microsoft fan, these are really important things to be thinking about as it relates to productivity in your own world, but also in how you’re thinking about productivity and organizational perspective. And so I will definitely be paying attention to the to the work lab publication, and what it’s publishing over the next few quarters. All right, next up.

Augusto Pinaud 58:45
Our next is an article from Professor Newport, quoting a lawyer from LA David melon, cough and, and his productive lack of productivity, and he quote, a paragraph on his Vittorio 1999. Where says, After work, David developed a successful law practice in Beverly Hills. He early discover, however, in his words, that the law thrive on gobbledygook. He wanted to learn how this has happened. And his solution was moved to a cabin. And right and what he ended up writing was a book pretty famous in in the law world called the language of the law.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 59:30
Oh, yeah, I read it.

Augusto Pinaud 59:32
But what is interesting is he left his left sold his house move to this property, Kevin, to be able to do it in 1956. And with that, he made the decision to trade you know, the business, the business, the urgency, that, you know, hey, the money, okay to being a law firm in Beverly Hills. You know, all that for this cabin. For this work for this meaningful thing, and this article before COVID-19 may have passed for many people, okay? Because they were into that business into that urgency into that, you know, running. But now a lot of people has come to realize, okay, what I do, okay? What? What I want more I don’t want, you know, as people go in, and yes, we want to go out and we want to go back. Also, there is a lot of people asking themselves with Where is more, so without telling everybody to please sell all your properties, quit your job and move to a cabin? Okay, that’s not the goal. But think about it, you know, as we are going into the second year, okay. And we are now going to start listening to discussions of possibilities of opening, I believe this is going to be June 2022. But that’s a different story. That’s my prediction. Okay. And we are going to see openings before but but we are not going to see I don’t think big things until June 2022. But start thinking, what did you What are you going to grab back? What are you going to re add to that? What are the things that belong in your calendar, again, that will earn that place in your calendar? And what are the stuff that you’re not going to do? Again? You know, what are those things that simply you are not going to continue doing that you did? and fine, not? Not anymore? Because I think having that purpose will? And I believe it makes a difference for everybody?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:02:01
Yeah, I fully agree, I think that this is really important for people to recognize that there has been a kind of a reset button pressed on the global society in terms of what’s important, versus what’s just urgent, and we are now making that assessment. And so take this time, you know, we just take a deep breath, and figure out what really is important in your world, and, and decide to do that. And I think you’re gonna have a better life. You know, I’m not, I’m not a fortune teller, fortune teller, I’m not a, I’m not a future seer. But when we do the things that we think are important in life, the likelihood is that we’re going to feel more fulfilled at the end of it. And life is really more about the, the journey than the end. But it’s still important to enjoy the way there. And so why not do the things that are important to you? And I think that so many people have been caught in this rat race, you know, how do we get to the next thing and keeping up with the Joneses, and all of that stuff. And this, clearly, the story, you know, shows that the age of distraction is upon us, and the age of interruption, the age of distraction, whatever you want to call it. And while I don’t agree with everything that Professor Newport talks about, I do recognize the importance of us being able to step back from it all and reassert some of that stuff, which is most important, I think minimalism is kind of a dangerous philosophy. But the whether that be physical minimalism, or digital minimalism, I think the, the idea here is not to go to extremes. The idea is to find balance, to find balance, both in work and life, but find balance in terms of how much interruption and distraction is necessary and good for us versus that which is, you know, negative and unhealthy for us. And well, there’s always going to be some level of that, I mean, if you if you want to remove all distraction and all interruptions, then maybe moving to the middle of the woods, Allah melon cough is going to work for you, but it’s not going to work for most of us, and it would be potentially detrimental to some of us. So I think it’s important to find balance among those things, and not trying to hold to any extremist ideologies. And so yeah, the article was was interesting in peeking My my, my remembrance of that fact and helping to kind of promote the reality that we should have some kind of a reset, so to speak in that in that vein. All right, moving right along to our final story this week, a gousto

Augusto Pinaud 1:04:38
Well, then if you can leave the place and you know you can go into life hack and and read about what to do when you’re getting exhausted at work. And you know, it is it is interesting because our our topic today was about Health and what’s about nutrition and wellness, productivity and tips and heart healthy and and this article for me, it’s all about self care, it’s all about understanding. Not only that we get exhausted, but what can you do when you get exhausted? You know, when can you do when everything seems study’s falling apart? And what tools do you have in the toolbox to be able to pull them out? And they already think, in my opinion, as a productivity coach, two things, one is what are the tools that you have that you can do yourself? Okay, I can meditate, I can journal, I can nap I, there are so many things, I can walk around the block. Okay. But also, what are the tools that you have on that same toolbox that are going to allow you to bring the awareness that you need recalibration, and I believe you need both. You need the tools that you can do, but you also need that person group of people, what is externally that can write you back or can look at you and snap you back and say, Hey, perspective. Okay, let’s recalibrate you, let’s get you back into center and continue pushing. And I believe those two elements are key. For this. The article, again goes into the many things you can do what happened when you are exhausted? What happened with your productivity? What are the signals for this, and how if this is related to nutrition to nutritional deficiencies, and, and many things a great article, but I leave that last because I thought it was so way sort of way too close with, where are we open. And I’m really, to leave a little bit of attention on that self care for people.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:06:58
And I think that the article offers some lightweight tactics, obviously thinking about food, thinking about getting away from work, taking a walk, that kind of thing. Even taking a catnap it talks about. And so these are all things that we can do, when in the face of feeling that level of exhaustion, I will lead people to the reality of our metabolism each day, we run through our circadian rhythm, and we should be matching up our energy are work to that circadian rhythm and even more importantly, to what is called the ultradian rhythm. And if you don’t know what the ultradian rhythm is, just Google it, and it’s ultra di n. But the ultradian rhythm is something that Tony Schwartz and his work at the energy project has really helped to uncover for people, which is our ability to really engage and disengage from mental activity and physical activity in the right amounts, so that we can stay really well optimized throughout the course of our day, we can stay productive through the course of our day, if we know our own rhythms, our own bio rhythms. And this is just really important, and it’s really easy to burn out, especially in, in what we’re dealing with here. I mean, I feel somewhat buffered from the effects of the pandemic, in many ways, but we’re all still experiencing varying levels of stress and anxiety, notwithstanding the distress of increased workloads for some of us, and or worrying about work, our lack of work in other levels. So we need to be, we need to be understanding of all of the various ways in which we can be stressed and do more in the categories, you were talking about a gousto of self care, but also making sure that we understand how our rhythms, our routines, structure, our productivity throughout the day. And if we could just provide a little bit more understanding for ourselves of that structure, have compassion, but also invest in that environment that Jeff talked about at the at the start, right, he said, he said that, you know, environment is what traditionally dictates whether or not we’re going to do that thing that’s going to make us more fit or not. And we need to basically make sure that our environments are set up for us to be productive throughout the course of our day, which means placing things in it, it’s one of the reasons I put my my the few vitamins that I keep out because I have some vitamin deficiencies, I keep some vitamins out on the counter. And I put them out every morning. And the reason I put them out is because I can’t miss them. When I go to have lunch, because they’re there, they’re in line of sight. And I know that if I put them out in the morning that I’m going to come across them in the afternoon when I sit down for lunch. And so this these little tiny interventions allow my routine to have the capability of saying, well path of least resistance. If I put it out in the morning, then it’s available to me when I want to take them and this small element allows me to with great high accuracy, you know, high, you know, adoption. Take make sure that I’m taking those particular things right. I just want to make sure that I’m taking those vitamins so that I can satisfy those deficiencies. And that way when I talk to my doctor, my PCP and he and he asks or she He asks, Hey, have you been taking your vitamins? I could say, Yes, I have. And there’s some satisfaction with knowing that that accountability is being met with the right structure, the right systems to make sure that I’m making those good, healthy decisions for myself. And so you can do all of these things, it just requires a little bit more bringing to awareness of what’s good for you along the way. All right. So with that, we are going to move along to our next segment, which is new tools of the week. And so as you know, each week gousto, and I call the interwebs, for all the various articles and news around productivity and technology that we want to share with you. And of course, we come across a lot of tools along the way tools and services. And so we try to share those with you here in the segment, which is new tools of the week. And so let’s get into it. Let’s talk about the new tools this week. And so good. So I normally go first. So I’m going to

Jeff Siegel 1:11:00
just push on.

Augusto Pinaud 1:11:04
So I want to talk Actually, I’m going to cheat and I’m going to talk about two things. The first thing I’m going to talk another some kind of related is the fitness on the Apple Watch. And the fitness app on Apple Watch, you will find it obviously, on your iPhone tracks basically, or used to track move, exercise, and it’s 10 to 12 hours of a stand for at least a minute, you know the 30 minutes of exercise, you can adjust it an X amount of calories. Now they have you know different trends you they let you know what you know what are your move trend your exercise, there’s 10 minutes you’re standing the distance you are working. And if you have newer Apple Watch, you know your cardio fitness, your walking pace, or running pace. That said, it is a fantastic tool, you know, in the theme of nutrition of wellness, to know that information to set those goals for health to be better doesn’t matter if you set it at the lowest possible level, even if it doesn’t matter if you close the ring. But it matters that you check how you are doing. Because if you are doing 500 steps every day, and you can start being bring that to your awareness and it started doing 550 or 600. Now you are winning, and you are doing this much better. So the second app I want to talk is called streaks and streaks allows you to create your own trackers. Okay, that’s the application if you guys are watching the podcast, if not, you can go to the Apple Stores check the link on on the note but basically you can they do two strikes is basic on that comment of or that article from Seinfeld of the keep the chain you know, don’t put the clips Don’t break the chain. And the difference was this is you can create your own. You can mark them you can decide if it’s one time multiple times about exercise, about health, about other things about writing about whatever. Okay, but it’s going to keep for you all that is statistics, all that data that is going to allow you to get closer to your goals.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:13:29
This is very interesting. Very cool.

Augusto Pinaud 1:13:31
It is an amazing application. If I may say

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:13:34
I’m looking forward to seeing and checking more out about it. so wonderful. All right. Thank you Cousteau. Next up is a new application that I have been so I’ve been trying to solve for this problem. So this is beeper. And I’ve been trying to solve for the problem that now there are so many different chat applications, messaging applications. There’s iMessage and WhatsApp and signal and telegram. telegram is my preferred app, but it’s not the app that everybody in my life uses. I have a family chat that uses GroupMe, and which is a company owned by Skype, which is owned by Microsoft, I don’t know why. But the idea is that they’re all these chat applications and just having some centralization of them would be nice, well, beeper is a is trying to solve that. And so they currently handle 15 different chat applications or networks and they are trying to bring those all together in a single interface. Now, it is a very difficult process. And so I am really interested to see whether or not they can actually do this in in this project. And so as you can see right now they currently are covering signal, Instagram direct messages, WhatsApp, Twitter, slack WhatsApp. I do Oh no, I’m sorry. What was I message that was iMessage than WhatsApp matrix. Never heard of that. Skype messages Hangouts, Google messages. IRC. IRC is still alive and well. discord, by the way, right? But it actually is a really great still platform for a lot of people discord, telegram, and Facebook Messenger. And so they are currently handling quite a number of, of chat networks, including their own, which is their beeper network. And so you can really see these, this, this centralization and how you can actually be more productive. And by not having to one jump back and forth between different tools. And one of the things that I’m really interested in seeing is whether or not there’s a Business Edition here at some point. So for example, in my own company, we have online chat, where where customers can come onto our website and ask questions and handle things in the support area. And so I’m thinking this would be really great if we could just bring this technology into beeper. And therefore, there would be one less place staff and everybody else needs to log in, in order to be able to interact with customers. So I’m really kind of interested excited to see what happens here. If you click on the Get Started function, you will come to a page. I’m wondering if it’s loading here. Yeah. So to sign up and let them know what the various networks are that you use and sign up, and so on and so forth. And they are onboarding people as they are able to, you know, obviously, there’s a lot of interest in this. And so people are coming on board as they are they’re bringing people on board as they are able to do so. And so that is my new tool this week. All right. That brings us to, I think, our story of the week. Correct. All right. What’s our story this week?

Augusto Pinaud 1:16:38
Our study of the week was Chrome OS 88 is turning your Chromebook into an impromptu smart display. And when I read this story, you know, I I don’t have I must say I don’t have an impromptu smart display at home. Not at Google not have not on an Alexa or anything. Why? Well, there are one or two iPads are one too many. That’s it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:17:08
You said that she heard you.

Augusto Pinaud 1:17:14
And of course, I released the device for me and everyone who was listening like you’re welcome. I’m sorry. But it is really interesting, because as all these screens has been available is something that I have not seen before. But it but as soon as I said, I say you know what, this is really powerful. Because we have all these devices all around, there is no reason why they cannot turn into this impromptu smart display. So I got really, really excited. I don’t have a Chromebook I the Chromebook I have a really, it’s a surface we have talked about in the show that was turned what was never we’re into right now is a version 87. So I hope they upgraded to 88. Or I may need to go to a store. I’m getting a Chromebook to be able to play with this.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:18:03
Well, I just updated all of my Chromebooks to 88. For this purpose, just to test it out. And I actually, when I first thought about it, I thought, there’s no way that I’m going to I’m going to like this. And then as I gave it more consideration, I realized that it’s actually probably a really great addition to the platform in the sense that there are a lot of times when your Chromebook is going to go into screensaver mode. And at that lock screen, you’re gonna be able to see the weather, you’re going to be able to see photos of your family and friends and things of that nature that it’s just nice i i do have Google Home hub displays throughout my office and home. And so I like the ability to be able to see like, my grandmother is someone who is near and dear to my heart before she passed. And so I have a whole group of photographs that are consistently scrolling on my desk with pictures of her and there is something very gratifying about about being able to see her just on a regular basis you know, what I in years past I would not have done I wouldn’t have opened up my phone and gone into Google Photos and looked at old photos I’m not a I’m not a sentimental I guess enough to go do that. Right. But I definitely feel the loss of her even these many years later. And being able to see photographs of her laughing and her interacting with her great grandchild and things of that nature in the photographs, I have to admit has been really really fulfilling and rewarding for me. It’s brought me wonderful little moments of joy in in in amongst the stress of daily life. And so just like that idea of implementing that in the smart display inside of the Chromebook now the Chromebooks you know I’ve got at least one or two Chromebooks always open around me and working in them. When it goes to the to the, you know, lock screen. I just see a little bit of data. I know what the weather’s like outside. I can see photographs of family and friends and There’s just that level of personalization and customization that I think is really nice. So I’m really why like, I started off thinking one thing, I really found it to be another in terms of the benefit it can provide, by having this smart display baked into the device Plus, you can trigger the, you know, hey, big GE, and other things of that nature in your Chrome OS. Now. So in a way, it’s providing that level of, of multi use in that in that one device that I think is really quite nice. And I think it’s a it’s the right direction for Chromebook to go in. Because there should be no reason why across any of your things, your smartphone, your home assistance, whether they be display or non display items, as well as your Chrome OS devices that you shouldn’t see that seamless experience. I would like to see more of that in Chrome proper. I mean, you can you can go to Chrome and actually ask questions. If you have, you know, if you’re in your laptop, and you go to Chrome, open up a new window, or new tab, and you’re at the at the Google Home screen, you can engage the google assistant in that space, and you have for quite some time, but people are not really used to it or know that it exists. And I’d like to see chrome actually surface some of that stuff. In the Chrome browser, I would like the new tab functionality, you open up a new tab and you get the smart display that you would otherwise get on the home hub. So you get that kind of same experience. And it can show you reminders, you know, upcoming appointments, things of that nature, right there in the new tab. So I’d love to see that kind of kicked into the Chrome browser experience. And I think that could be really useful as well.

Augusto Pinaud 1:21:36
Yeah, I am. I am honestly excited about this. I think it is going to be something it is. Again, I’m looking to play with it on my other thing I have or to maybe go and get me a Chromebook so I can actually play with that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:21:52
Fantastic. And so with that, that closes out our featured story this week, and we just have a single announcement about our nose B, do you want to tell us about nosb?

Augusto Pinaud 1:22:05
Yes, we want to take a moment to celebrate Michael solinsky, who has been here in the shows a friend of the show, and his team knows me today. February 2 is celebrating 14 years. So it’s a teenager, and he’s acting like it. So but really, congratulations to Michael’s winsky and his team for 14 years of success.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:22:30
Yes, so this is in probably the middle of the night for for them. It’s pretty late for the nosb team overseas. But certainly congratulations to them. 14 years is no small feat for running a successful productivity technology. And nobody has been doing a great job. And they have many, many more years to come. So here’s to another 14 years, for knows B and the nosb teams team. And so congratulations to Michael, and everybody that knows me. I really do congratulate you all Alright, Cousteau. It was just us today. So there’s just us today. But this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for joining me here on anything but idle as always. Thank you. All right. That was the productivity and technology news this week. If we missed a story, we couldn’t cover something and you want us to know about it, feel free to head over to anything but idle.com click on contact and or go to our Twitter at anything but idle, you can tweet at us, you can dm us, we will see those messages. And we’re happy to you know, read and or respond to those questions and comments. While you’re on anything but idle. On any given show, you can click on it. And you will find that you can listen to it there. Obviously, if it’s not in your podcast feed for some reason, you can listen to it there. But on each episode page, we actually have our show notes. That includes links to all the stories we’ve discussed. And additional items that we discussed as well tools of the week, the extra stories that we couldn’t cover in any given week, we also generate tech text transcripts, basically machine generated transcripts for the shows. So those are available, they’re both on the page, just click that Read More link, and it’ll expand to show you the the entire text transcript, I frequently gets gastos name wrong, but you know, you know who still is. But otherwise, it transcripts it for you. So you can read along as you are listening to the to the show or watching the show, we actually embed the video on the Show page as well. And you can also download it as a PDF. So you can you know, if you need to, you can read along with the PDF while the show is happening. All of that is there on each episode page. So we do all that work to help you be more productive and keeping up to date with all of these pieces. So hopefully that’s useful for you all. If this is your first time watching the live stream, feel free to click the subscribe button and you will then go ahead and get notified when we do go live. We typically go live at this time each week but you know if we go live for other special events and other things like that, you’ll be able to be notified of those happening, feel free to click the thumbs up icon. Also, if you’re watching live, that helps us bring new productivity listeners into the fold. And so thank you for doing that. If you are listening to the podcast after the fact, obviously, you can subscribe to the podcast. If you’re not already subscribed to the podcast, you can learn how to do so at anything but idol.com and click on subscribe, it gives all the instructions for being able to do that. And so you’ll have that option to be able to do so. And you know, then it’ll just show up in your podcast app of choice each week when a new episode comes out. And you can also actually review anything but idle and those reviews help us to grow our personal productivity listening audience. And so if you head over to Apple podcasts and Stitcher those are really the primary two that lets you review those are really helpful to us in bringing more people into the fold. And so thank you to those who have done it and thank you to you if you decide to do it. And so with that, until next time on anything but idle here’s to your productive life.