How Productive is Joining Instagram Threads

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to Anything But Idle the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. I’m Augusto Pinaud. And we’re hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 122, How productive is joining Instagram threads. And we’re recording this on July 10 2023. Each week Augusto and I cover the productivity news headlines of the week so you know what’s going on in the world of personal productivity and its related technologies. And so with that, Augusto, let’s get into our productivity headlines. What’s our first productivity headline this week?

Augusto Pinaud 0:39
Well, our first article is 49 life lessons in 14 years of living. So happy birthday, Mike guardi. And it is it is a short list. short list of 4090 minutes depending apparently as you get older 49 doesn’t seem that long. But it is up 49 themes dad, Mike Vardy has learned over like and was very interesting to hear read and to remember, and to Luke, one of the notes, some or some of the clubs, regardless if you agree or disagree. And you remember to put some of these things into perspective, you know, Joe’s going to read a couple, you know, always keep a book next to your TV remembered. And I in my case was good. And I always had a Kindle for four years. And now that I have kids, one of the best investments I have done as a parent is a Kindle, because they have it there. And is the only device that they are allowed to take too bad. Not only that I make this deal, that any book that they finish, I buy a new book without question, they don’t even need to have to go anywhere, they don’t need to need to do anything, they just need to go and get. So that make that be read really a lot, and a lot more than what they will read otherwise. So that’s one of them, you know, don’t forget to step back into nature. And that is one buddy applies to me. And that I need to remember because I like what I do. And I don’t mind a stain in the office. So I kind of stay indoors forever. You know, it’s one of those things that Don criticized her parents for what they do, she will do the same guilty of charge. And the only one I’m going to mention is the number 30. Take ownership of your devices for day one, be the master, not the other way around. And this is something that I love to do with people and I love to work with people with into, I understand not everybody has the time the patient, the inclination to learn all the different intricacies of the devices that they use, even that I believe they should. But if you don’t then hire somebody who can sit with you and do that process, and help you figure it out how to do those things, how to get those things really that work for you or not for others. And finally, verse 34. Journaling is an underappreciated productivity practice. And I cannot agree with even more, I’ve been using day one for the longest time as my journal app. And I’m very grateful to all the insight that is in there that I have never read. And the ones that I have marked, to revisit again.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:03
I’ll say that for me, number 18 really struck a chord, which is about having a day when you don’t have meetings on your schedule. So you can use that for flow work for deep generative, creative problem solving type work. And I know that when when I did that, it really opened up the floodgates for me in terms of my ability to get more done in a week, when I just recognized that there was there were days of my week when I should just not have meetings because I need to get actual work done. And it depends on how and what your manifested world looks like. But mine is one in which people can schedule directly into my calendar, which are clients and and then of course, I have colleagues who also can schedule into my calendar. And so I need to basically basically block out the time ahead of schedule so that they don’t get filled with time for me to be able to do that kind of flow work. That of course for me is generative, creative problem solving type work, and I want to be able to have that A time, you know, kind of cordoned off from others. And, and I just, you know, that one definitely struck a chord for me. And I think that it would help a lot of people to just know that that time is set aside for the work that needs to be done. All right, onward to our again, happy birthday, Mike, and so, on to our next article this week.

Augusto Pinaud 5:21
Our next article is from The Art of Nonconformity. And it’s called Winning doubt, change everything. I thought article radius chord for me, because I believe into this, Hey, it’s good to like your location. Whoo. In general, like your office would decorate, if you don’t, like, fill in the blanks do and he talks about his travel and he said, You know what, I went to the city medulla. Okay. So I went to Croatia, but unlike most of the Ghana, right, and I understand this, UK’s for people, like an auction, but I remember two things early, early in life, that Mark muesli that one was teaching again, from lavender, who said, If you don’t like a book, and one of his rules in life is if you don’t like a book passed, I don’t remember his percentage, it may have been 20%. Stop reading, there’s so many good books to waste time when a bad one. But that’s really, you know, stay with me. And the second one was actually David Allen, when in an interview, god knows how long with Eric back, where Eric Max said, you know, one of the things that always impressed me of David Allen is that he could buy a gadget or a piece of technology. And as soon as he identified that, it doesn’t work. Dumping regardless how much it goes. And those are two things that I have take as part of my life, if I buy more gear, and junk than I’m willing to recognize and buy a counter to appreciate bullet is that if it doesn’t work, I don’t, I don’t have if we go someplace, and we don’t like it, we go, walk away, make sure that whatever you do, whatever you all are, is where you want to be. And as he said in the article, this skill is so important, the ledger job, change it, you can change it from the inside, you can move to a different company doesn’t matter. But change it. You know, one of the things that I love, when I do coaching sometimes is help that help uncover that intrapreneur as I called it is not necessarily that people say you know what, no, I have 10 years, 20 years in this company at a one point if the company, but I’m done, I’m done with this job and help them really work into reinventing that. And that, again, I believe, I love the article, and was a very fun week.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:00
antastic. All right on to our next article this week.

Augusto Pinaud 8:06
So the next article is for me to read the review. It’s vital, change the way you see yourself. And very important to understand what is on your world and how you see yourself. And because we don’t notice it, we don’t we think that’s normal. And one of the things I recommend people is sometimes have those self conversations loudly. Don’t do it on your mind. That’s how you’re used to start talking loud. That’s how you understand you people seem flattered by yourself. They will think you’re crazy. But it’s really worth it to do because you will discover how they really talk to yourself and how you see yourself on some install.

So this, this was a very, very interesting, very interesting article. I don’t know what what what have you done to change the way you see because you see yourself because over the years, we’ve seen ourselves in certain things very high and uncertain things very low. And obviously we don’t change the high change the low. But what have you done to change though thing?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:35
Yeah, for me, I think much of what I have done is using journaling, as you were talking about earlier with regard to one of Mike’s suggestions. You know, using journaling as a as a mechanism for identifying patterns of places where I don’t feel fulfilled, seeing places where I feel like I am not living up to my own standards of excellence. So not necessarily every day, you know, in the in the kind of Hellenistic, you know, Greco Roman, you know, Greco, Greek philosopher, Greek philosophical perspective, you know, which is more virtue or excellence in the moralistic perspective, but I do have my own standards of excellence. And so I’ve, I’ve enumerated those, or I’ve listed those for myself, and they fit in each of my life domains in life categories. And that’s been incredibly helpful. And the article talks about this concept of, you know, hiring, basically, external accountability, right, and so I’ve peer support. So you know, we talked about accountability in a self accountability steps up a level to individual one to one accountability and then to group and then to say, you know, larger group or you know, kind of public accountability, you want to call it that, and, and so at that, at that one to one accountability, you can hire a coach, life coach, you know, you can hire an executive coach, you can hire any number of coaches to help you through particular things, and digital coach, you know, all kinds of coaches, obviously, having a therapist or a counselor or mental health professional, who can go ahead and help you and provide you that kind of guidance is also really helpful. I’ve done that and been I’ve, I’ve benefited greatly from having a therapist, just kind of walking through like, Okay, this is something I want to I want to tackle in my life, how do I how do I approach those things. And then, of course, having a wide variety, a number of coaches, but also having having that peer accountability, you know, you, for example, you know, just being able to talk with you as a friend, and as a colleague, that, you know, that’s really helpful to me to be able to understand where I’m, I’m having deficits and where I can grow. And just talking those things out for me, as you are well aware, really helps me kind of understand where I am and where I need to go in the future. And that really helps with all of those kinds of self self perception issues. So very, very useful practice. And I enjoyed the article for that, for that reason, as well. All right, on to our next article about a positive attitude and success.

Augusto Pinaud 12:04
You know, the article, the article was a good article, it covers why understanding the power of that positive attitude, understanding, you know, the connection and the possibility of success. How that positive attitude help you overcomes obstacles. But more importantly, it’s unimportant. It wasn’t very good with an article, but what I want to share is my own experience on this, I did not grow up as a person with a positive attitude, I needed a very negative one, you know, I grew up in an environment where, you know, the glass was empty, liter matter how much what slump and how many things like that. So, having the learn to change the rate, or change my reticular system to look for these positive things, to change that attitude, to have a positive attitude, has really make a difference in in my life, and has really allowed me to attract things that it will have been impossible, not for other reason that nobody wants to be with their black cloud guy and you know, work with a black cloud around all the time, people prefer to be with a guy who has a sunny outcoming life when I didn’t understood that early in my life. Again, it the normal thing was a black cloud. So it was a pattern that needed to be broken. For me to change and start paying attention to the good things and to the positive things. And it was, you know, now it’s normal, but it was not. So I want to invite anyone who is listening to us to have you know, feels that they’re adding to this not always this positive to encourage that you can retrain yourself in to change that radar from that negativity to a more positive attitude.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:13
Now, that’s, that’s great experiential learning that you’re sharing, which is that, you know, if you keep a growth mindset, and you know, you and I both have an affinity for Dr. Carol Dweck and her work around growth mindset, the the the hope for you is to be able to understand that it’s the journey, not the destination. And so if you find yourself at a point where you feel like you are a particular way and need to move in a positive direction, all your attitude, you’re you’re not fixed in that place, you can change and if you if you believe it, then you can then you can do it in a lot of ways. That’s not always the case in a lot of other categories of life. But in this particular one It very much is if you can think positively The and continue to think positively you’re retraining your brain, in essence, to do that. And so I just highly recommend that folks kind of consider that as they move their life forward is to think, okay, if I’m, if I’m stuck in a rut, if I am, if I’m in a place where I’m thinking a lot of negative thoughts, it’s like, when you’re driving and you hit a patch of ice, your car will go where you are looking, you know, your hands and your feet, all of those things that engage the vehicle will guide the car are paying at the oncome your hands are going to turn you that way, and everything’s going to happen in that wrong direction. But you’re much much likelier to steer out of the way of oncoming traffic, and to get yourself onto the side of the side of the road and safe and so on so forth, if you are looking in the direction in which you want to go. And so if you’re looking down, you got to look up and start thinking I remember, this is sort of funny, just this is a memory that comes back and I was I’m tall. And so I’ve always just kind of looked down, it’s just the been the nature of my world. You know, I think my mom’s about five, three. So, you know, from the moment I hit here not not metaphorically, like literally draw I found was, was that it actually made me feel bad because I would walk around then like around town. And you know, this, I grew up in New York City. And so I would walk around the city and I would always have my head down. Mostly because I was worried I would trip on people and hit people or what you coming gangly, tall guy. And so I realized one day that I should just like hold my head up, I would feel better if I held my head up and kind of put my chest up a little bit. And, you know, remarkably, it changed my entire outlook on life, how just one little thing like that really changed the way in which I thought about myself thought about how I carried myself in the world. And it brought a level of confidence that I think is really important. And so that that positive attitude, really had a lot to do with my ability to stand at a room and say something confidently, you know, I ultimately became a professional trainer, you know, and I’m in this world, where I’m capable of standing in front of large audiences. And I’m never really feel, you know, any sense of of fear or anxiety. I think has a lot to do with just that little thing like don’t love debt. And any think I think it goes to show how powerful something like that can be. All right. So we have reached the, not the midpoint, but we have reached the end of our productivity articles. For this week, we’re going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and then we’ll come back and G articles articles for the week and then

Sponsor Voice Over 17:48
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:59
Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. Who’s been outed myself, Ray Sidney-Smith. We’re gonna get into our technology articles this week. With that Augusto, what is our first tech article this week?

Augusto Pinaud 19:13
Oh, the first articles dedicated to you good Mykonian are in the earlier last week asking for do some of your apps been offloaded and why you had some space on your iPad that was on claim and is part of the cost of loading. So for our listeners in iOS, what they did was they offload or uninstall the application to reduce the space when you get to a certain dress or the app is not used. When I started on time. What their system does is uninstall the app, but leave all the contents of the app so that way you can install it and be exactly where you were. That is great. It’s great allowed you to save some space, but at the same time you don’t need to read couldn’t figure it out, you need to download it. That said, it will be all seven is what this article is a wish list from Jason Snell than Marlin for six colors is I really wish I could mark certain apps as this app should not be of load no matter what. And this was one of those cases for you. But I saw the article. And, you know, I just wanted to not the only one who have this on your wish list.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:32
Yeah, and there’s an important piece about this, which is that, for example, I had decided to offload my password manager, because my password manager was not, I wasn’t opening it, I was using it, right. But I was using it in other applications. And so since I hadn’t opened it in a long time, it just decided that it was going to go ahead and offload it. And then I couldn’t get any intensive applications. And I was like, What’s going on here? This is this is not right. So it would be nice to be able to kind of whitelist some applications and say, these are off limits. Don’t offload them that way. So I appreciate that. That wish list. All right, onto our next article this week.

Augusto Pinaud 21:12
You know, this is a question that I get, I have get multiple times Hey, how can I not? Because the morning law. We are we’re basically use the automation to create an alarm when you turn off your alarm. So basically, you can go give you the instruction built in shortcuts on iOS, the gate, tap accommodation, and you can say, hey, let’s create an alarm. And this time, every time I shut off the alarm, so that way, if you turn it off and say, Okay, I’m ready to wake up in two minutes. And in you know, 45 know that that has happened to any of us ever, then this is a way as the article said, they can go through the ration that even if you wake up, it will create this backup alarm. You know, there are other ways to do it. That is to have already, wherever the backup alarm created. That’s another way to do it and create multiple alarms. But this is a fantastic way in you want to have that backup plan. And again, it’s something that people have asked multiple times, I thought it was good to have it here on there.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:26
Yeah, and there are other applications out there in things like sleep cycle and others that allow you to basically have an alarm that forces you to do say a math puzzle or requires you to do other things. So that you’re you can’t just easily say that your opposite really requires you to stay up for a little while. So by the time you’ve finished whatever the puzzle is, you’re like, Okay, well, I just basically did Sudoku, I might as well as well get up. And you know, I have I’ve taken at one point in my life, I don’t do this now. But at one point, I set the phone across the room, so I have to get up in order to be able to turn off the alarm. Unfortunately, on the latest version of Android, this is my iOS, but the latest version of Android, you can say the word stop out loud, and it will stop the alarm. And I do not like that. Because now you can just say stop, and then it stops the alarm. And you know, like, I could do that. And I could do that half awake, you know what I mean? Like I could potentially and accidentally

Augusto Pinaud 23:27
let completely sleep when you need to wait.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:33
Right? Right. It’s dangerous, it’s dangerous. So I’m sure there’s gotta be a way to turn that off, though you really shouldn’t be a feature there. But yeah, so there are so many different applications that are out there that give you some of those additional capabilities. So maybe look around the app store and look at some of those, I’m pretty sure sleep cycle does this. And it also will choose the right time to wake up so that you don’t wake up in the middle of one of your, you know, phases of sleep that will cause you to be groggy and that kind of thing. That’s really helpful when you’re taking naps, or just when you’re waking up in the morning because it’s going to wake you up in the right in the right period so that you’re waking up and you’re not going to go back to sleep very easily. All right on to what’s the best to do list app. Oh my gosh fisticuffs.

Augusto Pinaud 24:16
This is the Pleexy team. And obviously they compare the three apps that they connected. Okay, that is Microsoft to do Google Cast and Todoist and they went and did a comparison. You know, it was reasonably fair. At the end of the article before the completion they have a comparison table and you could see you know up to wills what level you know they do the same and then Microsoft to do is still can do comments and attachment where Google task cannot and then labels until Percy something that only to do is do. I think you need premium. But I know that’s not true. You can do filters and even on the free version. So Yeah, that was a great comparison. You know, I, I add to that comparison. Now Springwell, because I am, you know, part of their expert, church fi expert group, and you could do also was a premium version, you know, everything that it’s mentioned. And to do it. The reason lex giggsy, you know, put the streets because they are the treating that they want Plexi will do fantastically well is will integrate these three Santa’s with Trello with many others. So it will allow you to integrate the inputs. So in my case are certain projects that I worked with external company that are living in Trello, or asana and I can now pull them out and integrate them into my own platform, make the changes and everything gets reflected everywhere, without me needing to necessarily go and work into the other platforms. So it’s an interesting article, if you have been curious, we have to do is use a group in personal productivity club. And so if you’re interested in learn more, come leave us a question and a comment and interact with your Todoist. I don’t, there is currently not a Google task for Microsoft to do user group. But if you are a user of those two, and you’re interested, please contact us because we will help set you up. So there is others that can benefit from your knowledge.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:42
Yeah, and just like to give context for folks, the reason you would want to do this is say that you’re like Gousto. And we work with a number of different people in a number of different environments. And so they may be in Asana or Trello, or another tool, but you still want to track and maintain your tasks in your own system. This is why Plexi would be of use to you, right. So if you have a client who’s using Asana, and they’re gonna assign you things in Asana, but you’re not going to check into Asana every day, then Plexi can grab those and keep them synchronized in your Todoist system. And therefore you’re not losing or dropping the ball on these kinds of things. So I just think it’s a remarkable tool. I think that and I wish that more tools integrated. Our had integrations like this, I hope that Pixi and their competitor Unito, continues to expand the tools that they integrate with, because it’s very different than say, Zapier or ft, or others, I’ve said this before, but you know, that’s a step based, you know, tool, right? It’s a workflow. So it’s moving in one direction, only, it’s not synchronizing, and the beauty of, of Plexi and Unito, is that as a synchronization, the data is flowing back and forth, in near real time, so that you’re not losing that kind of fluidity in the application. But to get to this point, absolutely. If you if we’re if you’re looking for a Microsoft, you know, group or something like that in in personal productivity club, let us know, we can, we can probably figure out a way to support that, that group in the system, and I definitely have plans to to create a Google group. So we will we will ultimately have a Google user group where we could talk about all the workspace productivity things in there, so not yet there. But we can certainly create that we will certainly be creating that in the future. Alright Augusto, next up

Augusto Pinaud 28:33
on chirinos is video you know from motor, Laura Arabist and she’s talking about how she create one note book, Georgia she said that she reads a lot of books six to 15 books a month and she wants to keep track of that, you know what read what you know, and that’s happened you know, I don’t read as many but I read you know, also a significant number I’m sometimes you know, you want to go back and you remember it Okay, where is wood that I read this thing? And one of the things I tend to do is to take screenshots and send them to Evernote. Okay, because then in Evernote because of the indexing, I can type on Productivity Book Group, it will bring me all the books I liked nice avant that has the word productivity. So she her approach to this is using one note and she raised one note for this and she Do you know the books what was her qualification and then she go and make a little abstract of what her reading was. So she can refer to that later and having those kinds of rustlings are very, very, very powerful. It doesn’t matter get a need to get there. I’ve said this many times. You don’t need to get every detail from the book, but it’s important that you’re a We’ll do recall and find those that were very critical because you may not apply it today. But he will come on time and you say, Okay, I’ve heard this in a book where, and there is nothing more frustrating than he made when I’m able to get that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:18
I have definitely been there. And so a few Evernote certified experts, including inclusive of myself at one point created a template for book summaries within Evernote. And so if it’s not in the Evernote templates, gallery, feel free to reach out and I can send you a link to it. But it basically is a structured template that walks you through putting in notes into it. I also use clippings.io, which is a connection between Amazon Kindle, and in my case, Evernote, I think it works with other tools as well. And so when I highlight and make annotations of things on my Kindle, it automatically grabs those annotations and grabs those, those, you know, highlights and plops them into a pre formatted note in Evernote, which is super helpful for me. So it’s doing that on automated automated basis. And then what I do is I go, you know, once a month, I go through and everything that I’ve read, I basically copied into my own book, summary note, so that it’s in line with all of my other notes that I’ve taken in that in that space, because I like Hugo. So I will typically like you know, to take a screenshot or use my phone and take a photograph. And then I might mark it up on by hand, throw it into good notes, probably, you know, write some things on it on all of that ultimately, in the same note in Evernote. Now, if I’ve read the complete book in the Kindle, and I’ve done all my highlighting and annotations on the Kindle, then all I need to do is grab the, the clippings note and copied into my book summary. And I’m pretty much good to go. So, you know, there, there are different ways in which you can manifest that. But it’s, it’s helpful for me to have that all centralized in my own reading notebook. So that I can go back and reference like you, you know, man, it really frustrates me when I can remember where I read something and trying to share it with someone or though you know, especially it’s like really good quotations that I’ve I’ve counted how epilogue over time. I’m like, Ah, this is this is the perfect quotation for this article and writing or whatever it might be, and wanting to find that. So definitely worth doing if you’re if you’re doing a lot of that work. Okay, on which my next article?

Augusto Pinaud 32:30
Well, our next Galaxy unpack July 26, apparently, it’s going to be very focused on going and you’re coming again, with more devices. I’m surprised that by now they have not leak more, more of them. But but but they at least leak they haven’t. So if you’re a Samsung are looking into a flip phone, or that technology percent July 26, we will be and we will cover the news on the show, you know, after the event.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:07
Fantastic. Okay, onward to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 33:10
Our next two articles are about Google Calendar. Google Calendar is getting big Oh, great. That will for for tablets for Google Calendar. So I don’t use Google Calendar. On my tablets, I use just a regular calendar app, but you use Google Calendar quite often. So maybe you can share more of the advantages of this too. I didn’t see anything, you know, I mean, the fact that I can share each year in events was one of them. But again, I don’t use it very much. So I, I didn’t see any any major things other than that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:51
And major upgrade in terms of features is that you’re going to be able to take an individual event link and share that, which is I mean, it’s very powerful, right, if you think about it. To date, if you wanted to share an event, you had to invite the person via an email address. And and sometimes you’re in a chat, like you’re in a whatsapp chat with the person or your telegram. Now, you can just literally copy the link, share it via Telegram, and now they are opening up a calendar event. And now they have the ability to download the ICS you know, add themselves to the event, see the details of the event. This happens many times when people are like, I’m supposed to be going to this event, but I don’t know where I’m supposed to be going because he didn’t send me the address. And so you can just like literally copy your own event link and now text it to them, they can open it up and they see the address and kind of go from there. So that’s that’s the thing that I think is probably the most powerful piece that allows you to be able to go ahead and utilize the tool. Some of the other pieces are just kind of like dealing with the process of sharing within calendar events is being upgraded. That will be really nice. And we’re gonna see more of the material. You know, you perspective You’ve bought into the application over time as well. So we’ll see, we’ll see how that all kind of plays out as they as they make it more available. But I think just the inviting people part, to events not being as clunky at all. And, folks, I mean, how they’re inviting people and whether they’ve invited people. So that’s going to be cleaned up in the new version, plus, we’re going to see a whole new redesign of the tablets and Chromebooks apps. So everything seen in Google Calendar, you’re gonna see basically, it updated, and you know, where you’re on the mobile apps today. And so it’s, it’s gonna be it’s gonna definitely be an I think, interview, where you’re actually capable of seeing a little bit more data. And, and just seeing it in a two panel prospective, cleaner, I think the panel’s view is going to be cleaner, and you’re going to have the options with being scheduled day, week and month, so that you can just open up those sidebars and see those things without having too much of an issue. So I think it’s gonna be a nice refresh of the app, and soaps are gonna like it. Okay, on to our next article, this.

Augusto Pinaud 36:16
So our next article this week is not another how to it’s how to convert editable text using Microsoft Word, if you get an image, okay, let’s say a book, you can put it into Microsoft Word, you will follow the instructions converted into a PDF, and then open that PDF into directly from PDF into Word and the Word sorry, and that will make them an editable image and the text and everything else you will be able to grab. So it is an interesting workaround to convert images with the tools that you have on hand. So it is very easy to do and very interesting. So if you are looking to lose some of those, that’s, you know, a good way to, to do it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:08
Yeah, I think it’s fantastic that the features are available. And I didn’t actually even know that this was available. And so I’m really glad to know that it is. Alright, well, we’re gonna start where I

Augusto Pinaud 37:20
don’t use, I don’t use Microsoft Word that much. But yes, so our next release, again, another indestructible, okay, make their own printable calendar using candle. And there is people who would like that, so that they did you know, the calendars, the printable calendar color into, especially for big rocks, you know, you don’t need to have the detail. But you know, those big things. Hey, I mean, I remember when I used to travel a lot, I wanted to know, you know, when I was in Los Angeles, and when I was not in Los Angeles. And that was very important. And I needed to know that and I, since my life happened, basically, on four cities, it was very easy to have four colors, I could look at the wall and see that I know the colors that I knew were where I was, but it was very useful to have that and just refresh the page and print it again. So you can use Canva to print that, follow the instructions. And you will be able to, to get that very, very easily.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:24
And just so folks know, there’s an additional facility that you can actually have things pushed to print on demand by Canva. So it’s another opportunity for you to be able to give them money, in essence. But the idea here is that if you don’t want to deal with the printing of the calendar yourself, you want it to be printed and bound and whatever else, they have a whole printing service. So if you have like an annual report you put together and you want to have it printed, you know, well and shipped to you, they can do that for you, which is pretty brilliant, that it’s just kind of built into the platform. And so if you need printed materials, you can kind of have it printed on demand through the system.

Augusto Pinaud 39:03
Yeah, there is a bunch of services that do that, and I’m going to sidetrack in here, but they want to do the same thing. You know, as we’re talking about journaling much earlier, would you consider a print my 2022 journal, and then he will bounce it for you and send you now, a paper copy of all your journal entries of 2020 tubes.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:24
Does it does the the does it include the images as well that you might embed inside adults? Oh, that’s nice.

Augusto Pinaud 39:32
So I know people who put the images in there with the notes and stuff that they want to remember. And because you can depending on the plan you have, you can create different journals, then they have you know, journals for those purposes, and they bring those journals instead of every

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:51
now that’s fantastic. I know Google Photos, has the ability for you to print on demand photo books like that as well. And I’ve done that for a couple of vacations where I wanted to just have a photo book to give, to to mount that time the in laws. And, and so it was nice to just be able to say, Okay, this, this album charted into a into a photo book and that it’s a printed nicely, you know bound item that you can just give away as a gift. So easy, easy gifts, when you have the photographs in in one space. Okay, on to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 40:24
So our next is how to like great, I will say, say, post your Facebook posts and media to Google Docs and Google Photo. And you know, it’s interesting, because there is this is, with a lot of things that are happening with Facebook and Mara, there is a lot of people looking, wondering solely to the polls, but to the pictures, because there was a time where people upload pictures, you know, and there is a lot of memories in Facebook that now are only in Facebook. So this instructable will give you are showing you how to strike those media into Google Photos. So you can save them for the posterity.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:06
Yes, and so folks have an awareness, you can transfer photos to just several major platforms, Google Photos is one of them, drop boxes and other and they have a couple of other platforms where you can export your your photos and videos to those specific platforms. And so I’ve already done that I’ve taken all of my Google Photos and just exported them to Facebook, just so that I have a backup because you know, whatever happens to meta happens to meta, I want to make sure that I still have those memories saved to my system. Now, most of them are duplicated. Because, you know, I saw when I took the photograph in Facebook, I took the photograph, usually on my phone or in a camera and then I’ve uploaded it to Facebook, but it was still nice having the backup there as an as an additional backup in that sense. But you can do it, which is really nice. All right onto our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 41:57
So our next one is talking about early prime days or prime days is coming. You know, obviously the Kindles will come the Kindle eight now, the Kindle Fire HD A is going to be discontinued and our son is going to try to build whatever inventory they have. It doesn’t making a decent Kindle tablet. For I think it was $59. I mean that is is I think it’s your it is so cheap, really on the hook for what the download is, I understand it’s not a powerful download, I get it, okay. But for a color Kindle, where you can watch prime and Netflix and all that you’re not going to buy a cheaper TV. So what they also have some offers into the paper, the Kindle Paperwhite kits, editions and other stuff. So if you are looking, you know, to excuse to get out other gear, new Kindle, this may be a great time toward that. Yeah, so

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:58
just for folks who are unaware of Prime Day runs from July 11 to July 12. So if you’re listening to the podcast after this today, for example, if your once the podcast goes out in the field, it’ll it’ll be July 11. So Prime Day will be in full swing. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have early deals. And if you’re listening to this in real time here on July 10 Target has already put out circle week, you know sales to get ahead of the game, I’m sure that Walmart and the others are trying to do their own thing as well to kind of get ahead of it. But there are some early prime deals across the board. So I would highly recommend going to the New York Times to wire cutter and look at the URL Prime Day deals. Because if you’re if you’re going to buy something anyway not don’t buy it because it’s a deal. Right that’s that’s not a deal. That’s that’s a waste of money. But if you are going to buy something anyway, and it’s and it’s here on the on the list, a lot of the Amazon and Amazon owned companies are going to have Amazon products, product lines are going to have really good deals. But there’s some really interesting deals outside of that. Now there are a couple of air purifier deals on here. So if you wanted to get an air purifier, there’s some mattresses, all kinds of fun things that are that are out there. If you love Legos, there are some Lego deals. So there’s some really good deals out there if you’re if you’re going to buy these things in the first place. But you know, Prime Day is a pretty good sales day, if you were already going to buy those things. Okay, on to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 44:24
I need you need a temptation to buy a Kindle describe this next article may be that the rotation that you were needed say there is a new update for it. Now you can do pen style sticky note on page writing, lasso contrast slider and subfolder. So that will allow you to do folder inside of the folder. And, you know, again, I said this was Amazon analysis described, I thought it was going to be a very, very interesting device because he’s going to make notes into the hands or digital notes into the hands of them. Everybody, and so far, Amazon has not disappoint. He has they have made this device, Amazon style, it doesn’t do everything. But whatever he’s doing, and they’ve been adding little by little and making this thing more and more powerful. And it’s a matter of time that I don’t need to be into my arsenal of the license,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:22
I have to say I own an Kindle scribe, and I use it every day. Now, it has become definitely a daily driver for reading, for being able to just take quick notes, I keep it here on the side of my table side of my desk. And it’s there for just taking a quick jot of, of capture items that I can’t do. Because I’m in a meeting with a client and you know, whatever’s going on, I want to still just be able to capture it. It’s a single click button. And with a stylus, I could just quickly jot it down, you know, I leave that page open. So that I could do that I just click a single button screen comes on, I take down what is the open loop, and I capture it into the system. And I know after the meeting to go ahead and process those items, sometimes I’ll sit down and I’ll actually take notes in the scribe and and then after the meeting, I’ll look at the the notes that I’ve taken and then type them into Evernote so that they’re in the final note as well. But the ability to go ahead and just open up any book and write on the on the actual Kindle book is incredibly helpful for being able to do that kind of annotation live, I just find to be just incredible. Like this is so helpful. I really like it. And so Amazon has really I think knocked it out of the park with a Kindle scribe, because it’s not super powerful, right? It’s not something that I want to start doing computing on. But it is all the things that I want a tablet to do in that very dumb sense, right? Like, I don’t want it to be good notes, right? I don’t want it to be converting text into an, you know, handwritten text into typewritten text. I’m not trying to do anything sophisticated with it, I just want it to be kind of like one of those boogie boards, but a little smarter, right? It’s like, it just got just enough feature. So it’s like, it’s just feature rich enough that it’s going to remember what I just wrote in it and not delete it like the boogie board would. So it’s got it’s got just that little extra oomph that I really like and enjoy. Okay, on to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 47:20
And this is our older article. So now we’re going to tool something

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:25
else. Okay, fantastic. So, as you all know, in new tools of the week of Busan, I come across many personal productivity apps and tools and services. We each bring you, you might wait till you bringing a competitor to the a prior tool that I talked about back in June. But I’ve been playing around with all of these various browsers. So this particular browser, and I hope I haven’t talked about it before, but if I have all well, it’ll, it’s just as good. So the browser is called sidekick. And you can go to meet sidekick.com. And sidekick is a it’s a, it’s a web browser. And that’s, that’s its core functionality, except that it’s provided this additional overlay, just like wave these productivity. So in, you have a left hand sidebar.

Or back then. So you have the left hand sidebar, and you have all of your apps, and whether it’s notion and Gmail, and you know, all of the other various tools, you’re capable of having all of those in there. Now, the, the idea is that you can open up your own sidebar, or a set of a full size weapon. Now, there’s two killer features that I really liked here. One is that Kenji wait box, you can use Chrome extensions. So because it’s chromium based in its chrome base, you’re capable of adding extensions in there. So you’re utilizing those applications, kind of in a web browser, but you’re also extending the applications that you can’t do if you installed notion on the desktop or slack on your desktop, you’re not gonna be able to utilize those Chrome extensions on those on those applications. So you can extend the power of slack directly there inside, it’s fine. The other piece is that those the sidebar gives you quick access to so you have to do as well, you can have your to do side panel, and now you have your tasks right there in next tear your Gmail. And now you’re capable of seeing both of those things. So as you’re reading an email, you can capture an action that needs to be taken care of right there in the sidebar. So it gives you a pretty powerful ability to kind of toggle between those items. But the thing that I like most about five six so far and I’ve been playing around with a lot of these tools recently is the ability to go into focus mode. And so focus mode basically allows you to go in and say hey, I don’t want to deal with Have these things right now. And you can just go into focus mode and whatever, whatever tool or app, you’re in, kind of Gray’s out everything else, and limits the notifications being sent to you around all of the other apps that you’re in. So you’re, you’re kind of drawn in to laser focused on the thing that you’re working on, as opposed to all the other things that can bring ending and distract you from what you’ve been working on. So I, I like sidekick. So far, there is a free version, as you can use that free version forever. And, and it’s, you know, that you can upgrade to pro and whatever else. But it’s available cross platform, so you can get them on all the various platforms. And you can go ahead and create recalled sessions. So sessions kind of grouped together all of the things oh, one of the other features that I really love about it is, it has a universal search. So you can go ahead and just, you know, whatever it is Command or Control F. And it’ll open up kind of like spotlight on the Mac OS operating system, or iOS operating system to have you kind of open up spotlight, and you can search across all of your apps. So you can search, you know, across those that all. So it gives you that kind of centralized search capability that is really, really helpful, which I really like. So you can search across LinkedIn, and telegram and you know, all of the all of the different applications that are that are connected inside of phytic. So it’s pretty strong and powerful way to search across your apps as documents or workspaces. So, something you might want to check out in terms of if you’re looking for a productivity browser, specifically for work. This can be really useful, at least what is your

Augusto Pinaud 51:41
so I will start with a story before I go to my to my tool. And the story is a client of mine who getting old, okay has happened to many, and his main device is the phone and is starting to get to the point where typing on the phone. You know, he cannot do it as fast as you wish. So that was part of the reason of the consultation with me. And we found ways to get dictation get to him to work. But the dictation works great, you know, musical keyboard or Siri, if you’re doing something short, and you are doing a ray called me by date, those things were great. When you now want to go and do a much longer dictation when you want to write on a document. Those not necessarily are the best tool. And this was the issue here was you know, that’s the main device that made the right cell phone. And he would need it to be again, that productive, he is losing that productivity. So we play do many other things with new ones Dragon Anywhere new ones. It’s been doing transcription software for years of years of years. And they’re up there, their version for the iOS, they’re powerful, you can do it on device and go and basically dictate will do the translation right there. And it works great. Another option is otter, you record the audio or date an otter will do it for you. But in this case, no one’s Dragon Anywhere was the choice that this client picked. And it was fantastic to see him go back to that productivity on the phone. The issue was again, he cannot I used to be able to type for hours on this phone, I cannot I cannot see properly. Instead, he can put the phone in there, get his urban dictate the rest of his life and be very, very happy. So that’s the tool of the week. No one’s really going anywhere for iOS works on the phone. And they are

Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:52
fantastic. And moving on from new tools of the week. We are now going to head into our featured story this week, which is that Instagram has launched a competitor to Twitter called threads. And so what do you think about threads of Gousto?

Augusto Pinaud 54:10
Well, if you don’t care about privacy, and you don’t care, you don’t care about privacy is a great tool. I haven’t played with it because I like my privacy. And when an application starts saying we will need you know the privacy laws in Europe are way more strict than the United States. We know that and when man on threat said oh well. It’s going to be some months for us to get to UAE because of the privacy issues. That was another red flag for me to say. Not tested. So but but it’s still it is the application I get there is so many people still living on Facebook that are okay. Was their private See them the way Facebook handle itself. It’s an alternative to Twitter. You know, sadly, Twitter was a great platform. And lately, it’s been imploding, and by their own management, so we don’t know what’s going to happen with Twitter, you know, one of the articles we have in their Twitter warms, that they’re going to sue them no matter how great do it on, I don’t, I don’t know what it’s going to be out of that. That concept of that kind of communication, as threads as Twitter is something that really gets my attention. But I also want to make sure that if we are doing microblogging, we do it in a way that is, okay. It’s there is some privacy issues there that I want to ask, you know, microblogging to just give more content to Mr. Zuckerberg. It’s not something that is on my interest. And that’s all that I’m going to say on my soapbox.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 56:05
Yeah, so So I just want to talk through a couple of things here. One, threads is, is embedded with Instagram. So folks who are not on Instagram, you’re going to be forced onto Instagram in order to be able to create a threads account, it is bound to your threads account. This may be kind of hidden, but you can have multiple accounts in the same threads app. And there’s a link in the articles I’m pretty sure we put in there, that leads you to how to set up multiple accounts, if you have multiple Instagram accounts that you want to have in threads, you can do that. And, and so there are some privacy issues with regard to threads, it is trying to collect more data than before. But that’s a reality factor. And, and so I have joined threads just to see what it’s all about. And, and I think that it’s still nascent. But I will also say there’s two things that are really important here. And then we’ll talk about the productivity implications, which is really where we should be focusing. But one is that threads is the fastest growing social network in history. It’s at 100 million users after five days. That is remarkable. And it’s it’s a testament to obviously meta and its power of attracting people. And, you know, Twitter would love it have that kind of growth in their on their platform. And I hope that I hope it is sending a message, I don’t care one way or another about Elon Musk. But I hope it’s sending a message to the Twitter leadership team, including musk, that the way in which Twitter is going is not the right way that obviously, so many people are flocking to threads in this way to is that they are embracing the open source activity pub protocol, which means that you don’t need to join threads, as soon as threads is actively integrating with activity pub, you can join any part of the fediverse that also is activity pub, and you will be able to have an account that interacts with those threads. So that is just you know, you may not capture the scope of it, but it’s very, very powerful that it is integrating with an open source platform. And I give great credit. I can’t believe I’m saying this, I give great credit to Mehta for for choosing to do this it may be Instagram specifically right, you know, because Instagram does run, you know, somewhat independently in terms of its decisions. And this is an Instagram app, it’s not a solid Facebook app, it’s and so on so forth. Right? This is an Instagram app that the idea to but but tying to an open source platform, like activity pub, the protocol really does extend its abilities in a lot of ways. And that’s what gives me solace in some way shape or form to the privacy issues. Because once we’re kind of available on the activity pub protocol, I don’t see myself really using threads as much as I see myself using my existing Mastodon as well as I’m on multiple other, you know, Mastodon servers, I’m probably gonna go to those, and then I can interact with threads, threads there, you know, and without the concerns about what threads is collecting about me in some way, shape or form. So flipping forward then to the social network issue, right, which is that you want to be utilizing social networking for productive purposes in your life that could be entertainment, there’s an entertainment value, right? That’s, that’s a productive use of your time. There is connecting with family and friends in a particular way. You might be promoting yourself through your business or otherwise, utilizing social networks and putting out social media. So utilizing a microblogging platform like threads is akin to using Twitter and quite honestly, I continue to use Twitter in a lot of ways now Uh, you know, even though it’s a dumpster fire for other folks, you know, I’ve curated over the last, I’ve been on Twitter for probably, you know, since 2009, something like that. So I’ve been on there a long time, I’ve curated a group of people that I enjoy interacting with, most of that happens behind the scenes, you know, I’m sending messages back and for the folks behind the public sphere, and, and so I appreciate Twitter on that, on that level. And until Twitter dies, I will probably still be involved on in on Twitter on some level in some way, shape or form. I’ve been playing with threads, it still lacks some features. But the more features it gets, the more appealing it looks to me. In terms of things, I think the interface is clunky, the fact that I can’t, you know, use the the threads environment on the desktop is just out the gate unproductive for me, I like to be basically have a full keyboard, and the ability to be able to do work on my desktop, and for it to flow onto mobile. So there’s that limitation as well. But back to the point, which is like,

Augusto Pinaud 1:01:02
Instagram playing Instagram has been like that forever, too.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:01:06
Yeah, but they’ve now I mean, you can do almost everything on the desktop now that you could do on Instagram, either through the meta business suite or directly on instagram.com. So you’ve very, there are very few limitations. Now to being able to post to Instagram on the desktop, I felt like they should have had threads, embrace that with a PWA or something else like that, from the start. And I feel like they will get there, especially considering the activity pub, and the fediverse connection. So I’m hoping I’m very hopeful that they’ll go in that direction, especially if they plan to overtake meta, I’m sorry, if they plan to overtake Twitter, in that, in that sense. And in that space and place. That being the case, you use a social network for purpose, don’t just jump on the bandwagon and start using threads. without a purpose, think about why you’re going to be using threads. If you didn’t use Twitter, why would you use threads, you know, stay where you’re at currently on your social network. That’s where I come at this from a productivity perspective, you really don’t get any true benefit from joining threads. Unless you’re looking for a new community of people to interact and engage with. I don’t quite yet understand how you do that. Because they’re there, I hashtag things, they’re not really hashtags. And you can tag people but you can’t hashtag things, it doesn’t seem like you can look for patterns of things other than by searching. And the search seems fairly, like just very broad, right? You’re like, you want to be able to have kind of like an Instagram or Facebook or anyplace else like that you kind of have an Explorer tab and Twitter, where you can kind of see different topics, different communities of people coming together. don’t quite have that in threads yet. I’m pretty sure they’ll get there. But right now, it seems just a little bit whatever i i created a few quote unquote threads, you know, one message after another after another trying to create a thread and it didn’t look like a thread may look like I had written two messages, and then a reply to another. And I was like, No, it was supposed to be three messages in a row. Come on, get it right Instagram, right. So there’s some some limitations in terms of how the platform is really operating. And I think that it’ll take a while for them to get those pieces up and running in that in that in that way. So anyway, that’s my thoughts on threads. Any additional thoughts good, too. And then I have just one announcement before we get on to our the rest of our items.

Augusto Pinaud 1:03:24
No, that’s okay. So yeah, I

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:03:27
do want to just make a quick note that and I’ll put a link to the to the article in in the announcements for everybody. But Evernote did lay off the rest of their American staff that’s inclusive of most of their developers, that didn’t move to Italy. But in essence, bending spoons which purchased Evernote earlier this year, has decided to, you know, centralize all of their operations in Europe. And and so they decided to just get rid of the folks who were left, you know, the probably just about 100 folks who are who are developers and otherwise in the States, and so this is just part of the consolidation. I am never an uncertified expert. I am saddened to see those people go. But this happens in you know, in business, it’s just business. Nothing is happening to Evernote, the product, right Evernote is going and as a software is going to continue to grow, continue to be developed, all of those things are going to be fine. pushing for, you know, updates and all of those kinds of things to all the things that we want Evernote to do. But I just wanted to make a note there that I’m sure many of you have heard perhaps through the grapevine through the Reddit vine that Evernote had this round of layoffs, but but I would say don’t fear jumping ship from Evernote or anything like that. For that reason, you could leave Evernote for any other reason, but I wouldn’t leave it just because they’ve consolidated their staff in Europe that has that’s a business decision and not a bad business decision. It’s a good business decision for bending spoons. It just happens to be a bad decision for the employees who are working in the States. And then launches over the over the years, but it is what it is. They can’t fire me because I’m a volunteer. As far as part of the deal there, so, but I just wanted to let everybody know about that onto what you’ve been reading and enjoying a usto. So there’s

Augusto Pinaud 1:05:31
a couple of things. One is Canadian judge and rolls rules that thumbs up emoji count as a contract agreement. And there is a farmer in Canada, who in Spain really bid over $6,000, Canadian, for agreed on a contract with emoji. And it is interesting, because it is the signs of time going up digital signature on this thing are going to come. So it is an interesting, interesting reading. Especially if you, you know, when you can see there how currently, sometimes we respond to things on the digital world. And the last thing is an article I just want to share.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:06:19
Now one thing he here, it states, President Clinton signed the global ESign Act. And so just be very, very mindful of the fact that just because this is a Canadian judge here in the States, I don’t know about anywhere else, but at least here in the States. It is well understood that if you agree to something via any digital means text, message, email, ie, you know, sign, you can sign by email, in essence, and that doesn’t mean you have to put a signature on paper, you can say I agree to something via an email response. And that will count, you know, as a contractual agreement of some kind, talk to your will, or your own legal counsel. But what will ESign Act, piece of ledge just gives you the ability to accept contracts. So just be very, very mindful of that reality. Okay, onto your other articles now.

Augusto Pinaud 1:07:17
So our next article is from Google Arts and Culture they have on built inside the genius mind of Leonardo da Vinci with, you know, participation or collaboration of 28 institutions. If you have time, and you really want to be fascinated this is it’s not a quick view, it is not going to take you a couple of minutes, it takes the article read, I think what they do rabbit holes takes a little bit longer, very fast.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:07:50
Fantastic. All right. And with that, we have reached the end of our time together, we’ve covered the productivity and related technology news this week. Thank you, Augusto, for curating our list of articles every week, and putting it together for us to be able to do the show. All right, on anything but idle.com, you’ll find our show notes. Those include the links to all our stories, the tools of the week, the new equity, the extra stories that we didn’t have time to cover, it also includes a text transcript for you to read and download offline if you need to. So you can click on the read more, it’ll expand right there on the page, or you can click on the PDF, it’ll download it. And you can of course, read along. As you listen, watch the replay. If you look at the show notes, and you want to contribute in some way, shape, or form, give feedback or otherwise, you can head over to anything but idle.com You know, go to the episode page. And you can go ahead and leave a comment right there on the page. If you want to interact with us and you know, talk to us about things. Or you can go ahead and join personal productivity club by going to www dot personal productivity dot club, go ahead and join the community and there isn’t Anything But Idle community in the system. And go ahead there is actually if you go to anything but idle.com forward slash community. It’ll take you directly to the signup page to join Anything But Idle group. So in there, you can go ahead and interact with us share stories, talk about all those things together with us in the community. And that’s the primary place for a goose stone I can integrate with you and interact with you. Feel free to if this is your first time listening to the podcast feel free to subscribe so you get the notification and automatic downloads of the new podcasts that subscribe or follow us on your favorite podcast app. But otherwise, with that we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle. Here’s to your productive life.