Keeping Mentally Healthy to Stay Productive

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:03

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

Augusto Pinaud 0:15

I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:16

And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is Episode 59. Keeping mentally healthy to stay productive, and we’re recording this on May 10 2021. Welcome to you live audience members, how’s it going, feel free to chat along with us, let us know your thoughts as we make our way through the show. But each week, we review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And before we do that, we always have a short segment where we kind of warm up with a little theme of the week. And this is actually Mental Health Awareness Month. And I thought what we would do today is a good one, I would have a conversation about keeping mentally healthy, to stay productive. And I know that it’s kind of odd to think about this, but we have this stigma associated with mental health issues that we don’t when it comes to physical health. If you want to think about it from this perspective, if you were in an office environment, say we all go back to the office and we’re all hanging around, and you went ahead and tripped over a chair and say broke your arm in the office. No one would not feel pity and sad for you and immediately come to your aid, your health insurance would cover those costs, your company would completely understand your time away from the office, all of those things. Now, take that situation and reverse it and just walk into your conference room and think to yourself, hey, I have depression, or I have debilitating anxiety, or I have bipolar disorder or something like that. Think about the way in which your employer and the company and your and your colleagues would act differently as it relates to you breaking your arm versus you being diagnosed and expressing that you have a mental health issue. That’s the stigma that we have to constantly deal with, with as relates to being productive, and working to be mentally healthy. And so with that in mind, I I just want to make sure that we’re all kind of just aware of the fact that there is this mental health stigma, that you may not suffer from a mental health issue. But there’s somebody next to you who probably does, you know, everybody deals with some level of low mood disorder throughout their lifetime. And it’s just one of those things where I find it to be just remarkable that we still have this issue in the 21st century. Augusto, what are some things you think about when it comes to approaching mental health? Not in necessarily the, you know, disordered space, but in the healthy space? What do you think about doing well for yourself? How do you do self care, so to speak, so that you can stay mentally healthy, to stay productive?

Augusto Pinaud 2:53

You know, self care was something that I learned later, I, I didn’t come from, from an environment Well, you know, we talk about mental health being a stigma, I grew up in an environment where sales healthcare was a stigma, you didn’t do that, and we forget about the other extreme. So things like taking care of yourself, like reading, like meditation, like exercise, were things that you didn’t do for to get that mental health space. So that was something I learned as an adult actually, and, and the importance of air and the importance of them, for me to be able to keep my productivity and my levels of productivity, but it was something that when I grow up, you didn’t talk about that. It’s not that you were seen poorly, because doing any of that, well maybe some of them, but you know, I but you did not talk about them, you didn’t mean self care, you I grow up in Venezuela and you know, as a male, you don’t need self care. Okay, you are invisible, invincible. So self care is just for the weak people. And that is not the case. And it is important to know what it is. And it’s important to know what are the things that you need for that self care you know, I wake up early every day because I need that quiet time before my day start running because my days are much better. When I can get quiet before things start getting crazy. You know I read every night before I go to bed because I discovered that that reading even from tired, it really helped with my mind it really helped with my sharpness is really helped with how well I sleep later on. So like that i have many other things I do throughout the day to make sure that my productivity and my self care goes and stay in a good place.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:11

I have to say that I, I try to do almost everything possible to benefit myself from a mental health perspective, because I know that my mind is my, my heaven. You know, if I am capable of being just generally calm and content, in my mind, that I’m capable of doing so much more productively, it’s when I put myself into any level of anxiousness or despair, there’s a certain level of anxiety that is useful to me, that gets me going, right. You know, I frequently say, you know, I’m the type of person that feels like, I’ve always running out of time, so I’m always trying to take best advantage of it. And that’s my anxiety. And it actually benefits me, I don’t feel that sense of anxiousness that other people do, that ends up, being disordered, and really hurts them in their ability to get locked up and frozen and petrified. And that way, mine actually ends up being mostly healthy for me, and I appreciate that part of my life. And so there are different ways in which we manage our own issues, our own mental health issues. And what I’ve learned is that, first and foremost, my nutrition, and my sleep hygiene, both of those things really impact my mental health so much, and then structuring my day, so that I’m capable of having the natural ebb and flow of my day, you know, as you know, gousto my days can be fairly hectic, it could be hyperactive, as I like to call them. And so that hyperactivity can certainly be a stressor and can cause both anxiety and other kinds of distress. And so I try as much as possible to order my day in such a way that naturally gives me breaks so that I can just stop taking a deep breath, and move on. And the other part that I would probably offer to folks before we move on, is that meditation has been a core component of my life. for the better part, I would say probably almost 30 years now. And the the impact and power of my ability to meditate, and my meditation practice cannot be understated in my own life’s benefits. I think learning to meditate was one of the best things that I ever did. And I think it’s one of the best things that anyone on the planet can do. And for the people who always say, Well, I can’t meditate, meditate, or I’ve tried and I failed, and I couldn’t quite learn how to meditate. Those are the people who need it the most. So if you for some reason, feel like you have struggled to meditate, push through, really, just like the Harriet Tubman quotation that talks about when you feel like you can’t go any farther. That’s the moment when you don’t give up. And that’s meditation, it’s really about letting go so that you can just focus on the present. And that skill set hands down will be the best thing you ever did for yourself. So just for a mental health perspective, I cannot not advocate the idea of learning to meditate to everyone

Augusto Pinaud 8:10

I know. And I will add to that I’m in agreement. And I mean, praise to the meditation, I was one of those who struggle to create a meditation practice for so many years. And I try and I quit, and I couldn’t figure it out how people could sit still for 15 minutes. And, and I try many things and find out Finally I I try the resort program of Jeff Segal, and he’s been here in the show, I go commit to sit. And it was really nice, because it brought was a 30 day commitment. And you sit in some of the stories, a really short thing, three minutes, four minutes, five minutes to start growing. And that in combination with a more larger meditation, allow me to start getting into it. And I now crave you know, in some, not every weekend, but some weekends, I love to be able to get, you know, really, really long time and I have two little kids and my kids were was the god parent of one of my kids. And so I had a quiet morning and I was able to sit for a really long time or at least long for me into meditation and really change. It’s something that you begin to savor in a different way and it really helps. At the beginning it took me a really long time to get to that quiet place or quiet space. But now I really crave that space. So it took me a long time to get there but it’s possible

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:56

antastic so for everybody, I just wish you a happy mental health. Awareness Month, no pun intended. And I hope that everybody can find whatever emotion they’re trying to find, whether that be contentment or joy, or whatever it might be throughout your weeks as you’re trying to be productive, but really seek out whatever you need in order to be productive in the mental health space. With that, let’s get into our stories of the week, we are doing stories of the week, this week, we are then doing new tools, and we’re actually introducing a new segment, it’s actually reintroducing a segment, where we’ll be rotating between different contributors throughout each week. And so we’re really excited to add that and then we’ll come back for our feature story this week, which we’re gonna be talking about Microsoft Edge office and opening up files in the cloud. And that’ll be a fun discussion. And then we’ll do announcements before we close out. Because what is our first story this week?

Augusto Pinaud 10:53

Well, the first story of the week is about a software that I particularly love. And it’s good notes. And I really, they introduced a new feature called elements that allows you to save and reuse things that you have draw or text I cross your notes. So I tend to do certain graphs that I I like to to try and whenever I’m talking, I like to share my screen and throwing the screen on the iPad. Now, there are certain things now that I will be able to do, instead of that ugly draft that sometimes come in, do it really pretty, save it and then just bring it up and then right on top of that. So if you are if you do those kinds of things, it is fantastic. If you want to show equations you want to so calculate, you want to switch quotes, you can save them there and then bring them instead of that in a hurry. Awful handwriting into pretty organized way. So they show examples on how to build the calendars on how to build anything. In my case, I use it for graphical things when I want to show people how their actions in the coaching influence other things. So now I will be able to bring my templates and draw on top of them. But they will look much better than the mess that I created normally.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:19

Fantastic. So that’s in good notes in the latest version. Correct. Fantastic. All right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 12:26

The next story is 38 advanced Mac keyboard shortcut for productivity. And it was really interesting to see I’ve been using the Mac on an offer since 2007. It’s been alive. And there were some of them that I was particularly not familiar familiar with. I wish that they were some of them work on the iPad. They didn’t. But But I still wish they work in the iPad, since I’ve really spent more time on the iPad my I mean mean iPad only since 2008 910 1212. And I will love more of them. But still, if you use that or you don’t use them at all, and you want to see what you can do with shortcuts, your productivity will increase significantly with that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:18

Yes, the number one thing you can do for your productivity on a desktop computer is to learn the keyboard shortcuts. It’s so powerful. So Alright, moving right along, we have some more Apple news,

Augusto Pinaud 13:30

or some somebody who is been looking into the possibility of a new iPhone, a sorry, a new Apple Watch is checking out the news. So I’m not saying who but somebody may be really excited that there’s the rumors at least and we tend not to report and rumor. So this one is slides through the cracks. Because I have I want one a new one. But most likely will gain blood pressure blood glucose and blood alcohol. That was really interesting that I was suspecting the blue, the blood pressure I got a mic on my son’s birthday in February, one of my sisters got him a watch and it can measure the blood pressure and it was pretty accurate. I was surprised I’m disappointed that my more expensive Apple Watch cannot do it while he’s that he was not even close to a custom mind could do it. But but they have been talking or rumery about blood glucose. And that really will be a game changer for people you know, my my parents that he measured his glucose and his gets tired of pinching himself. So if they can really bring this technology that will be incredible news for a lot of people.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:51

I think they’re more they can bring this kind of mobile technology to the things like an everyday wear object like a watch I think the more likely people are to pay attention to these kinds of health metrics. And that means they’re going to be able to not only be alerted when there is a problem, but they’ll also then be able to be more proactive about taking care of themselves as they make their way forward in life. All right, switching gears to a little bit of Google News, we’ve got a few Google stories. What’s our first Google story? Good day,

Augusto Pinaud 15:25

and Chad will now come pre-install on Chrome OS. I’m not a chrome guy. I didn’t know they were not coming. Free install. I did not thought about that. I bet. I think that’s exciting. I mean, Google meet is trying to catch up with zoom. I don’t know even that I use Google mean, I don’t know if that will happen ever. But but the fact that they come install, hopefully will make more people to use it. So I think that’s great news.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:56

Yeah, I think I think the moment they start pre installing this on Chrome devices, the number of Google meat users is going to skyrocket. Not necessarily, I’m not sure about Google Chat, I mean, it’s going to take some time for people to start utilizing Google Chat. And they’ve kicked it into Gmail, they’ve kicked it into other parts of Android in terms of connectivity, among the other Google applications, it makes a lot of sense, I really wish that Google would stop messing around with the different messaging apps, and so on, so forth. And that would really help save us, this yo yo effect of people, you know, loving an application, then it going away. Google Allo, anybody. And so, you know, we’ll just see what happens here. I think it was time for Google Hangouts to go away. But I’m hoping that the replacement of Google meet Google Chat and duo and then we’ll messages all ends up being solid for at least the next decade, because so much change so quickly is obviously not good for Google’s brand.

Augusto Pinaud 16:59

I cannot agree with you more.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:01

All right, moving along to some Google and money management.

Augusto Pinaud 17:05

So Google pay now, or has new ways to save commute, you know, so you can save at the grocery store, it will give you your groceries like Safeway, and target. If you pay with Google lab, you will get extra discounts. You can use it in more cities, now San Francisco, New York, to pay for your public transit. But what was interesting about that article was see your monthly spending in just a few taps. And this is something that I see so many people not having really an idea and taking wrong ideas that if they set a budget, they’re going to constrain themselves, instead of understanding now the budget is just so you can see trends and know where things are happening. Knowing where your monthly spending, what they should be irregular should be, is just going to help you to be more effective at it to get better results and to be able to manage that better. So that was really interesting to me as now coming baking into the Google pay, and really a reason to use it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:17

I’m really upset with Google, they canceled the ability for you to use paid up google.com in order to send money back and forth between friends and family. It was the primary way in which we, you know, paid and repaid each other for birthday gifts and holiday gifts and so on so forth between family members. Of course, they’re still the application. And that’s fine. It works. But it was just kind of nice to be able to do that from the desktop. Now you cannot I do like the new cashback options, you have all these cash back rewards inside the application, you can apply them to your account and then go get the cash back. So you know, I think, a few weeks ago, they had one for Etsy that was like 20% off of anything on Etsy, which was a pretty phenomenal deal. They currently have one on Warby Parker 20% cashback. So some really good deals to incentivize people to use Google pay. And so we’ll see what happens. I hope that they eventually rollout that they’re working with, I think Citibank to be able to build accounts. So people can actually create an account directly inside the Google pay application, and then have more features built into it. But bringing money management and the ability to save money on purchases, you’re going to make any way. And being able to send money back and forth between friends and family, I think is a great feature set. Now if they could just execute it well, and stick with the application longer than say, a year and a half, then we’ll be good. But you know, who am I? I’m just a little bit. Yeah, I’m just a little bit distraught over the idea that they’re going to. I mean, it’s in Google’s best interest to continue Google pay. That’s the thing so I’m not actually nervous about Google pay going away. I am nervous about Then playing with the features too much that people don’t feel secure in being able to utilize it well enough. And things like paying online man, Google pay is great. You know, if I’m on a mobile, you know, app, and I’m trying to make a purchase on a mobile website, the Google pay components, if the website supports, it is fantastic. It makes the purchase process so much easier. But they really need to stick with it and not meddle with too many things too quickly, so that we can all become comfortable utilizing the tool and moving forward. Alright, moving right along from money to keyboards.

Augusto Pinaud 20:35

So code wise, once the articles title type wise one to revolutionize the smartphone keyboards, but it’s actually better than Google board. I’m going to keyboard keyboard, I’m going to say that g board was a surprise for me on iOS, because it was the first time that I test their voice to text conversion, and is the only reason is installed on my phones. Because I have discovered that depending how tired I am English, I knew that my English gets worse as I get tired. But it’s interesting how, depending the moment of the day, Big S or big G, listen and translate better for me. So I have them both for that reason. That said, I installed type wise after I saw the article, and I liked the larger side, I don’t know jet if I like the repositioning of the keyboards. I need to play more on that. But I have to come back and report on that because it was really interesting. I spent enough time between the iPad and the phone, that if I can type longer comfortable in the phone, that will be really an asset for me. But sadly, I didn’t have enough time to play with it before the show.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:02

Yeah, I’m pretty skeptical about this. I think that the type wise seems very interesting. I appreciate what they’re trying to do. The ability, the gesture swiping for being able to delete a particular word or deleting a particular letter. Those seem really, like really interesting to me to kind of try out. But g board has provided for me everything that I needed in a keyboard to be able to type very, very quickly, the ability to swipe words, the ability to type, just as I would on a normal Qwerty or courts keyboard and the ability to voice type, quick access to emoji, and the ability to switch between multiple languages and typing natively, just right there on in the same keyboard. And then being able to you can switch to another keyboard, another language if you needed to, from that space. g port just really hasn’t done well. And so I used to swipe until g board came along and really liked the swipe keyboard, I think that I will be probably playing with type wise actually ever heard of type plays before this article. And I didn’t know who they were, which is remarkable that they’ve been around so long. But I will try it out just for the fun of it and see how it goes. But I see that my I can almost predetermine how I’m going to think about it, you have to use a keyboard like that a long time to be able to really gain the productive benefits of it. But I’m I’m going to I’m going to say that g board really has it locked down in terms of capabilities. And I’m very, I’m very pleased with keyboard on both Android and iOS. And on Chrome OS for that matter, also because I have installed across my Chromebooks, my iOS and Android devices. So Alright, closing up our news for the first half of the show.

Augusto Pinaud 23:56

Well, close in the news is the Chromebook sales continue to search q1 2021. They were up 275%. That’s a lot. But I’ve been saying for a long time that Google will take this with the Chrome OS at any time because the homeschooling and even when people think homeschooling is gone. No, no, I think we are going to see a different thing starting next school year, but Chromebooks in the school. That’s the machine. That’s the machine that makes sense. We have seen Google making more and more steps to bring even more with that position of Neverwhere and the integration of Neverwhere much, much faster than what I have at least expect that was going to happen. And the reality is that for a person who has two two little kids in in school That’s, you know, their school system. It’s Google, or at least on the school, my kids go, they understand Google Classroom. And the only reason they don’t leave into Google meet is because it do not have incredible the security is for the teacher to be the, the, the administrator or the teacher. So what happened is, whoever is the jump, the first one will jump in the class has the ability to kick other students out of the classroom. So guess what teachers needed to win this zoom. So they could be and prevent that to happen. That’s a big, big oversight from Google. But ever on except that everything happens in Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides. So Google Classroom, the fact that you have all that what makes sense is a true can they use it on any device? Yes. But why try to have other devices inside of the school when you can manage all that? And at least as my understanding comes, it’s really big and easy for the admin at the school to manage all that world of computers, and so far, so on.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:19

Yeah, I think Chromebooks are just going to continue to outpace all the other computers on the market. I mean, they’re going to become the dominant operating system on most machines. And as those kids grow up and have used Chrome OS, they’re going to be much more comfortable using Chrome OS in the workforce once they graduate from school. So it just goes to show that that’s going to be the direction as we have more and more devices, Chrome OS,

Augusto Pinaud 26:45

that is correct. And as people may or may not know, I think I mentioned here in the show, I record this show in a Chromebook. And before even before the current machine, we we would go we call Frankenstein, okay, we wrestle state, that Surface Pro to that with an SD card was able to run Neverwhere and was able to run into all the recordings and everything. So it is a really powerful iOS. And it is it brings allows you to bring back old hardware to life and to give them extended life of that device. For long Yes, I replace the device for a new Chromebook. But that device passed to other person and who is using it right now. Because they are not recording. They don’t care about the memory. So for Sheets, and Slides and all that that device continuing. Perfect. So yeah, I’m excited to see this, I still will leave on iOS. But I really excited to see this happening.

Unknown 27:55

Wonderful. And with that, we are going to take a break midway point for our stories of the week. And we will have a word from our sponsor this week, co working space by personal productivity club and we will see you after the break. Well working in person may be normal for you. It’s unlikely your co workers are as interested in being productive as you are, or working remotely or from home can be isolating and there’s something powerful about being with productive people, even virtually that helps you be more engaged. If a flavor of these sounds familiar, co working space by personal productivity club is for you. co working space is a virtual work community designed to help members be more effective and efficient in their work and personal lives. At its core. We provide goal tracking and host focused action sessions throughout the week for accountability and camaraderie. Visit Anything But Idle comm forward slash co working to learn more CO working space lives inside personal productivity club, a digital community for personal productivity enthusiasts. So you can find people who use methods and tools you do too. Again, head over to Anything But Idle comm forward slash co working to see how co working space can help you be more productive. And now back to our show.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:19

Welcome back everybody to productivity I’m sorry, Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith and I’m here with Augusto Pinaud for the second half of our headlines. I’m we have ProductivityCast the podcast also and I for some reason thought I was on ProductivityCast for a moment there. So Augusto, let’s kick in and do our second half of our stories this week. What’s our first story this week?

Augusto Pinaud 29:41

first story we have is a best friend of advice you will ever receive 29 ideas to make your life better. And I’m not going to talk about the 2009 but um it was a really nice to see and reflect on this because I read them, and thought about if I apply that advice, and one and it was interesting to see an evolution of some of them and say, Oh, yeah, I remember when they start implementing this and, and where you know, this make this make a difference or not in my life. So I think they were really to go read, enjoy as you read them. And yeah, the

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:27

reason the reason I even picked this article was that it had five different criteria that I thought were really interesting for the types of advice, the qualities of the types of advice we should be taking. And the five criteria it discussed were that the piece of advice is proven to work or, or to have positive results. It’s timely and timeless. It’s doable and cost effective. And then wrapping in some Guy Kawasaki advice here is that it’s true that it’s not based on assumptions, wishful thinking, or fads. And that it’s concrete, that it has practical steps you can follow. And so I thought that was really interesting set of criteria for being able to filter through advice that you’re receiving in your in your life. And so I think, just for that, that set of criteria, I thought it was interesting to add into it. All right, next up,

Augusto Pinaud 31:20

Stephen guys talk about manage your entire life in one whiteboard. And he talks about putting there your projects, kind of a combat in where you can have your finances, your health, your career and your dream, your home life, and the miscellaneous project and manage that and kind of on a cabin. And I agree, we need to learn to manage the different aspects I talk about connecting invisible dots, I talk about Delta pillar, and I talk about 13 of them. But But I think, you know, you need to consider, Hey, where is your education? Where is the quality of life that you want? Where is your career? Where are your finances are different things, you know, what are your if you have kids, what are your kids, you know, what is your love life and, and all that. So I don’t know if I could manage my life in a cabin. But, but the idea of looking into those categories, I believe, is important. And I believe, as a person who do a weekly review, every Friday I go. And when I check, I ask is there anything else that I need to add in any of these categories is anything that I’m missing the mark. And that has been incredibly useful for me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:38

Great. Moving right along to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 32:42

four levels of personal productivity from carpooling. And I love the article and agree with some of what he said, you know, you have four levels, level zero gait, you don’t have no system for managing everything. And I know, enough people in that level, then you have the beginners and the beginner, start collecting everything into a task management and start having this massive list. Then he talks about the intermediate, that is the people who are testing and testing and testing different things, and they have a new flavor of the week. And then he has what he called it enlightenment ones. And this is the people who finally discovered a personal productivity is about eliminating the unimportant, and only focusing on the work that achieve their goals. I agree with the four levels. I think it needs the other side to be it’s it’s more than that, you know, I I think it’s another simplification between the level see around the beginner and and what the transition even that I found interesting that he said that that intermediate level takes three years I’ve been writing, talking coaching people in productivities, since around 2004. And I don’t know if I have that many people moving from intermediate to enlightenment. So I don’t know if I agree with that data. That said, I agree with him, that there is a moment and there is this enlightening people if he called him that really stick with their system, doesn’t matter what you know, and he quotes David Allen, who hasn’t changed their system I particularly is staying only focus on Paul last year, but I was in OmniFocus for over 10 years before I move platforms to do is then and there are reasons he was not let me move to see how how is the dualist it was a really thought process. I do have research and everything else. So it’s not that you change or not change. You can change an ad but you These enlightening people have he called him really, they are spending more time on making sure that that system is solid. And it’s invisible than really blame to see if a feature will make a difference in their life.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:16

Yeah, I appreciate the article, I think I would, I would like to see a little bit more data to support all of these notions here, none of it really seems to be, you know, in any way, shape or form. substantiated other than by anecdotal, you know, experiential stuff in his own coaching and training. And, you know, I like Carl, he’s a great guy, and he puts out some really great YouTube content. And but the but the reality is, is that I see people who immediately have an uptake in terms of productive systems very, very quickly and easily they go from zero to 100. Very quickly, and there are others who don’t. And I’m curious, what are the determinants from an empirical perspective that lead people up that pathway? And that’s the those are the things that I study, as opposed to kind of Oh, well, you know, you know, people fall into buckets, and so on and so forth. People change if the right elements of change are involved. And I think that’s more important than the tearing of people. And like noting that the the intermediate, give up on the weekly review. For three years, they just don’t do a weekly review. That’s probably not, that’s probably a bit of hyperbole. So, you know, again, I think that in the case of personal productivity, we need to do as much as we can to substantiate and to be empirically minded when we talk about these things. And, and so, again, I appreciate the effort. But it just doesn’t seem to pass for me in terms of what actually happens as people try to change from one productive system, or methodology to another. That being the case. On to our next story this week.

Augusto Pinaud 37:02

No, the next story. online for productivity talks, the title is the best description service cost is $25 a month. And what I agree on the article is how much you need to limit slash eliminate, if possible, online use, at least not curate as low as online use. And what do you propose from the articles to change from online news to the local newspaper, and that’s a reason of the $25 a month.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:33

That is this, he’s talking about subscribing to a local paper based delivery of news, as opposed to a digital of anything.

Augusto Pinaud 37:46

You know, I think it’s about curating what you’re going to read on. And I don’t want to go back to read a paper or anything, I love the fact that it can be delivered into my phone. What it needs to be is a do, you need to be aware of who you’re reading, what you’re reading, doesn’t matter to topic. I mean, we, for this show, read an incredible amount of RSS feed of things. So we can pick the news. So we can pick the article. So we can pick all this. That doesn’t mean everything comes into. And we report everything, there are things that are really, really good or things that are not, that doesn’t mean the medium that means many, many things, even coming from favorite parties to so a writer. So the only part that I may agree is that, hey, you can now slow down and read the newspaper this way. But then do it as a self care issue, not as a way of improve the content.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:53

Yeah, I come from a history of having read newspapers, from my early days. And there was a point in my life where I was reading at least two daily newspapers every morning. And then on the weekends, I would get my New York Times Sunday edition. And I would go I would I would go to a place that I had brunch at literally every Sunday, for the better part of I guess a decade and a half. And, and I would sit there and if anyone wanted to murder me, they would know exactly where to find me. On Sunday having brunch, it was like clockwork. And it’s funny because the the bartenders server there, she she knew my meal, the drink. I had everything every every every Sunday, and I would I would just power through the New York Times, Sunday edition, and it was just this really nice part of my world. And I appreciated that I really enjoyed that. I don’t have it today in the same way because now it’s on the iPad or on my Kindle. And it’s a little bit different. It’s not as tactile but at the same time, I’m reading a much wider variety of news and getting different perspectives that I don’t think other would otherwise would get from a local newspaper. I also recognize that local news is under assault. And so we need to support both public radio and local news and investigative journalism, because those are the things that actually help found and undergird our democracy and the democracies around the world that are unfortunately under assault right now. And, and no, like couch to terms, democracy is absolutely under under assault. And so the the message behind Bailey’s article I think, is is well founded, I understand the message, I just think that technology is the way that technology is, and paper based newspapers are going the way of the dinosaurs. And so we’re not going to see many of them left, certainly, paper based delivery of those newspapers, some places don’t even have that anymore. So but I get the I get the sentiment, and I like the idea of it, I just don’t know how practical it would be for most people to go ahead and do it. But we’ll see. But check it out. I mean, if it’s something that’s good for you go ahead and do if it helps you slow down, have a little bit of mindfulness throughout the course of your day. I’m all for it. So Alright, our last story in the headlines,

Augusto Pinaud 41:23

the last story is titled The new understanding of effort. And it was a good reading for me. And, you know, it talks about the failure theory talks about the ego depletion theory that we have talked in the show before, and we have talked about decision fatigue. And another thing, so I’m looking at effort as an opportunity cost. I sadly, didn’t have a chance there, the quote, a paper an opportunity cost model for subjective effort and task performance that is on my Kindle, but it did not go through. And there is only so much we can do in the week. But, but but I really want to, again, it was a really good reading. And that’s all that I have in there.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:24

Yeah, so So those of you who know Angela Duckworth, she was actually one of the co authors of the paper that Augusto just mentioned. And so highly recommend checking it out checking out the article and finding the link to the abstract of it. Angela Duckworth is the author of grit, among other work at UPN. And the notion behind what he’s really talking about is still I mean, there’s still limited amounts of data here, we need more research. But I can appreciate the concept of thinking about effort as an opportunity cost. And using that model for determining more about task performance than about effort. But I, I see where he’s going with regard to the material. So I think we need a lot more research. This study, I think, dates back almost a decade. I mean, it’s it’s an older piece of work. So I’m not sure what other material is kind of in the pipeline in terms of research. But I’d like to see more of this kind of work done and being done generally, so that we’re better able to understand, you know, does performing certain tasks really create a version to doing more task based work. And that’s something that we just don’t necessarily know, we’re still trying to figure those pieces out. And so I’m curious, I think it was a good article worth a read, to kind of get your brain juices flowing, and something interesting to kind of pay attention to. And so with that, we have reached the end of our headlines. And we are going to go into new tools of the week, then our new contributor segment, and then featured STORY OF THE WEEK announcements, and then closing out. So let’s kick into new tools of the week. As you know, Augusto and I come across many personal productivity tools and services each week. In this segment, new tools of the week, we each bring you a tool we think you might like and so this week, we have two tools that are in the kind of mental health space since this is Mental Health Awareness Month. And so the first one up is called woebot. And I wanted to bring it to everyone’s attention because woebot is an application. There’s one for iOS and Android. And what woebot allows you to do is in essence, I open up this little chat application. And when you open up the little chat application, you are in essence having a conversation with a bot, and you know that it’s a bot, it’s not trying to trick you into thinking that it’s anything else. But it’s just a little bit of machine learning AI that allows you to have a conversation with just a few times a day, and talk about stressors. And it then walks you through various behavioral interventions that can be useful for helping to elevate your elevate your mood, or at least to stabilize an existing situation. It does some tracking and patterns. And it’s just really, really helpful to be able to understand reframing and to be able to stop negative thought patterns. And just, it’s a really fun little application that you can check out. Like I said, it’s free. It’s available on both Android and iOS. And so head over to the Google Play Store to the App Store and download it and try it out and see if it’s something that will help you be more mentally healthy. So that’s my tool this week. How about you Augusto?

Augusto Pinaud 46:01

Well, it’s really interesting to note, the application I bring is called point fitness inside. My wife in particular, this is this is how I came to this application. This is not the category I’m usually working around, but my wife does and she got a peloton bike some time ago. And then with that she wanting to start doing the peloton but didn’t know how to get better how to get more things out or how to get insights onto this application. It takes a little bit to canoe connected, it takes a little bit to analyze, but it’s now starting to get really insight into why she’s not getting certain games why she’s getting once you need to to get rest or more rest. So it’s been really a game changer for her particular use on the exercise and all that so

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:02

fantastic. So point fitness insights. And it connects to peloton and other correct tools like Apple Health kit.

Augusto Pinaud 47:10

I help kids and everything else. Yes.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:13

Fantastic. Wonderful. Something to check out. All right, everybody. Beyond new tools of the week is now our contributor segment. We have a rotating cast of contributors who are doing segments now in the show. And our first one is we’re cheekily coining it priority report being brought to you by Penny’s anchor, she is a focus ologists International speaker, business strategy coach and best selling author. And she’s going to be providing us with some decision making tools and studies in this segment called priority report. So with that, Penny, take it away.

Penny Zenker 47:49

Hi, welcome to today’s priority report. Today, I want to share with you a decision making strategy from Colin Powell. So colin powell has come up with a way to approach complex decisions without compromising speed and quality. And what he does is he calls it the 4070 rule. And that means that he never makes a decision with less than 40% of the information that he needs and never more than 70% of what he needs. And that means he’s going to find that delicate balance to help him to avoid overthinking things and sacrificing action for certainty. And at the same time, he’s still going to be able to make a relatively quick decision. And that’s something that Malcolm Gladwell talks about that separates the great leaders from other leaders as they’re able to make decisions quickly. So that’s what I wanted to share with you today. And have you think about where can you put the 4070 rule into practice in your life? And who could you share it with? My name is Penny’s anchor. And I’ll see you in the next report.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 49:00

Thanks, Penny. And so Penny Can you can learn more about pennies anchor by going to www dot pennies, keynote, p e n n y s keynote calm. And so thank you, Penny zenker for the priority reports. onward to our featured STORY OF THE WEEK gousto. This week, we decided to put together several different articles for our featured story. What are we talking about?

Augusto Pinaud 49:24

Well, there was three things last week that were so close together that really we thought it was important to keep them together. The first one is Microsoft Edge. Now I can show documents or Microsoft Office documents directly into Microsoft Edge. And I think that’s a big deal. And you know, as Microsoft Edge is based on chromium, and I think it is fantastic that you can go into the edge and really open them directly there. The second news was, Google Docs will now I’ll show you edit history and contributors when you highlight text. And, again, coming back to, to wonderful we were talking earlier about, for some people, that is the word processor of the day, as for me was you make a document in Microsoft Word, gate for many people. Now it’s a Google Doc. And honestly, for collaboration, nothing better, at least as of right now. And finally, the Libra offers that technology. And there is a white paper about how it’s the only software platform for personal productivity index the mobile cloud down by the document foundation blog. So this week, we want to talk about documents, sheets, Excel, on the web.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 50:47

Yeah, I think that we’ve seen a remarkable advancement in technology that now once upon a time solely relegated to desktop software is now mostly being done in the cloud, there are certain things that office files office software can do that the cloud software yet cannot. But the reality is, is that Google Docs has been able to edit the primary Microsoft Office files for quite some time, it’s wonderful for Microsoft Edge to catch up, and to be able to edit its own files in the browser. But I think that’s really phenomenal. I’m very glad to see it come. And Google Docs is continuing to just churn out new and innovative features. Google Sheets, for example, most people don’t know this, but there’s an entire machine learning algorithm underpinning Google Sheets, you can actually throw a bunch of data into Google Sheets, and then ask it natural language questions. So say, for example, you could throw all of your customer data into Google Sheets, and then you can say, who’s my best customer who’s my most profitable customer, and looking at the data, it can actually start to give you those answers if it has that data in the data set. This is the kind of thing that I think that in the cloud space, we tend to miss, misunderstand how powerful it is for us to be able to do that computing, not locally, but from anywhere through cloud computing. Then we come to Libra office, the document foundation is the nonprofit organization that runs the Libre Office product. If you don’t know what Libre Office is, it’s basically Microsoft Office, but open source free open source software, or what they call free Libra open source software, or floss. And Libra office is underpinning a bunch of other technologies, including the next cloud office collaboration pieces to it collabora online, which is an open platform for being able to do cloud document, you know, file management, up word processor, sheets, you name it. And so we have these amazing technologies, both in the proprietary private sector, as well as now in the nonprofit, Oak free open source, software space, all moving toward having a cloud environment and mobile environment where we’re able to manage documents. And I just really feel like we should go to a document standard outside of the docx or XLS x or PPT x, we should really be moving toward using the open standards for those documents so that we’re all really on the same page. So you know, Libre Office uses the ODF ODS, and otherwise those files, and I’m really an advocate for using those floss open source options, as opposed to the proprietary options. But you know, that will just be Time Time will tell whether or not people kind of go in that direction. Do you have any other thoughts or Augusto?

Augusto Pinaud 53:34

No, I agree with you. It’s been, it’s been a long progress from the moment that you could not open Word documents in other devices other than a Windows machine or a Microsoft Office. And it’s it’s time that we go to a universal where it doesn’t matter which platform you’re on. We’re really close. We’re not there. 100%. But we’re really close. And it will be really awesome to finally make it there.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:04

Absolutely. All right. So we’ve got at least one announcement, and then we’re gonna close out. So I’ll do it since I know the most about this. So inside a personal productivity club, we actually have an upcoming event, it is free to join, but you must be a member of personal productivity club in order to attend it. It’s been called curated calm. And this really comes about from my thoughts here that we need to start thinking about physical fitness and productivity as not to disparate concepts, but really an interdisciplinary, you know, process. And so not that we want to at all replace anybody’s exercise regimen or anything else like that, but just really introducing people to some principles for being able to be more helpful, and especially, you know, here in mental health awareness month, Matthew Glynn, who’s one of the members inside of personal productivity club, he also happens to be Yoga practitioner and yoga teacher. And he’s going to be showing us some breathing exercises and some mindfulness practices that we can utilize in in with some yoga. And so he’s going to be doing this practice, it’s for all ages and all abilities. So you can all attend, it’s virtual. If you go to [email protected], forward slash curated calm, you will find more details. And then you’ll be able to click on the link to join personal productivity club. If you’re not already a member. It’s free to join, like I said, and then you can find the event and RSVP for it there. And so that’s curated calm, it’s may 19 2021. It’ll be some time in our evening and Eastern Standard Time. I think it’s, I don’t want to say the time if I’ll get wrong, but just look at the event page. And you’ll find out at focus at work co forward slash curated calm already gousto anything else?

Augusto Pinaud 55:54

No, that’s all.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 55:55

Alright. And with that, we’ve covered the productivity news for this week. Thank you to Augusto Pinaud, for being with me this and every week. Alright, if there’s a story we missed, but you can head over to our contact page on Anything But Idle COMM And you can complete the contact form on the page there. You can also tweet or direct message us using our Twitter handle at Anything But Idle. If you know either of our Twitter handles, you can also message us there. If you have a question or comment about anything we discussed on the show, you can go ahead and leave a comment on Anything But Idle comm on the episode page. So all of our shows have show notes. And in those show notes, they include links to all the stories that we covered, and the tools of the week. It’ll include now our contributor segments inside the video and the audio portions of it. And links to those folks will have extra stories we didn’t cover as well as the text transcripts in both a read format directly in the page, just click on that Read More link and it’ll expand it and you can watch listen and read along with the show. And or you can click on that PDF download link that is below the Read More link so you can just click that link it’ll go ahead and download this PDF and you can go to town with it. This is your first time watching the live stream Feel free to click the thumbs up icon or the subscribe button and the bell icon thereafter. That will give you a notification of when we go live weekly. And if you’re listening to the podcast show Feel free to subscribe by going to Anything But Idle comm and clicking on the subscribe or follow button and in one of those buttons that show you how to subscribe on the page and you’ll see instructions to be able to do that and get episodes downloaded for free every week. And with that, see you all next time on Anything But Idle here’s to your productive life.