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Get Some Google Cloud Training, and Other Productivity News
Episode 002 | May 15, 2020
This week on Anything But Idle, we discuss all the best personal productivity news headlines we’ve come across, including our featured story this week about Google providing some free training opportunities if you’re looking to learn about its cloud infrastructure platform, Google Cloud. There’s so much more to Google Cloud than meets the eye!
(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://anythingbutidle.com for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)
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In this Cast | Get Some Google Cloud Training
Headlines & Show Notes | Get Some Google Cloud Training
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
Our NEW Website and the Next Chapter of Learn OmniFocus – Learn OmniFocus
Amazon Launches All-New Fire Tablets to Keep You Entertained
A simpler, more organized Slack on your phone | The Official Slack Blog
Lowdown – Auto-generate newsletters from Slack community content | Product Hunt
The Keyboardio Atreus by Keyboardio — Kickstarter
WayTools TextBlade – Magnetic Keyboard for iPhone, iPad, Android
Surface Go 2 review: Microsoft’s tiny PC is only a tiny bit better | Engadget
Microsoft Word and PowerPoint for iPad Now Support Split View – MacRumors
Google’s Read Along App Helps Teach Kids How to Read
Facebook app for iPadOS updated with Split View and Slide Over multitasking support – 9to5Mac
The Dell UltraSharp 49 review begins – first impressions – 9to5Mac
Introducing Status for remote work – The Asana Blog
The Work+Life Report 2020 – Care.com.pdf
Facebook officially releases its 50-person ‘Messenger Rooms’ alternative to Zoom – 9to5Mac
Box Launches All-New Box Experience to Simplify Work | Business Wire
How to Enable Group Tabs on Google Chrome
Productivity Is Not Working | WIRED
Apple details COVID-19 adjustments in latest Supplier Responsibility Report – 9to5Mac
How coronavirus is changing the way we use digital devices, apps & tools
Raw Text Transcript
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).
[read]
Unknown Speaker 0:01
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to anything but idle the productivity news podcast. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith
I’m Augusto Pinaud
and we’re your hosts for anything but idle. This is Episode Two and we’re recording this on May 15 2020. How is your quarantine Friday going? Cousteau it is going well, it is going well we have not. We have been staying in quarantine and trying the best to get into a new kind of routine with all this. I hear you I hear you. So each week we cover the productivity news headlines of the week. Then we have our science of productivity segment brought to you by Zavala, Matt Plummer brings us the science of productivity. And then we go into our featured story of the week before we close out where we provide a little bit more commentary and context for our featured story. With that, let’s get into our headlines. First up, we have a new learn OmniFocus website. What is the context on that Augusto? No Tim stringer has done
Unknown Speaker 1:00
An amazing job creating, learn OmniFocus. And he’s been doing this now for six years. And he went into a big redesign of the website so you could find better the resources he has, you know, in six years, he has accumulated an incredible amount of resources. And now,
Unknown Speaker 1:23
with this redesigned, you can even search much, much easier and more in a more powerful way. All the things that that have gone in there. Next up, we have notion notion is kind of the productivity software darling of the day. And this is a product that has recently gotten quite a bit of new funding during the lockdown. And so it is going full steam ahead with some new updates to its interface. So what they did was they actually were able to bring the mobile startup time to
Unknown Speaker 2:00
To x faster than it was before, which is just phenomenal. I mean, they’re really working to bring the speed of the mobile application up. They’ve got dark mode now, working again, and so on Android, and the mobile loading screen now supports dark mode as well. So for those of you who are fans of dark mode, that’s going to be really work, that’s going to be really great. They’ve got some markdown items that they fixed as well. So now, code blocks are now quote unquote, fenced in markdown exports, so that they’re not indented. They also fixed a couple of bugs and made a couple of improvements to it. But otherwise, it looks like the system is coming right along in terms of speed and simpler design, and some updates to the iPad and Android tablet experience for multi column support and so on so forth. So some good stuff coming, coming out of notion from that team. Next up, we have
Unknown Speaker 3:00
Have Amazon with some news around tablets. You know, Amazon has done a really really good job with their low cost Android tablets. You know, they fire bland the firebrand and they just released a set of new eight inch tablets.
Unknown Speaker 3:19
This start on the $89 are they going to be a workhorse powerful device? No, they’re not designed to be that, but they are really a super affordable solution, you know, and you can set a little bit of tinkering even turn it into the equivalent to your kids to into these days of
Unknown Speaker 3:44
you know, kids going home and learning at home and homeschooling and all this, you know, maybe that’s a solution if you can don’t want to get a whole device or don’t have access to another device, you know, dad or a Chromebook, you know, both are will be starting on the handle.
Unknown Speaker 4:00
dollar range or you can find them on the hundred dollar range. And we’ll be able to help you with that. But in the case of Emerson, they came with
Unknown Speaker 4:09
the new HD eight is has a USB C port for charging on a really interesting set of new features. One note here is that the Fire HD eight kids edition is the one that comes with the kind of, I’m not sure what type of material but it’s some kind of durable casing. And it comes also with a warranty that can be used in case your child goes ahead and, you know, destroys the tablet anyway, even with the bumper on it. The really interesting part about that though, is that of course it has the fire for kids interface, but you can actually turn that off and go to the adult interface. So if you want to buy the a, a tablet with a warranty, you could get that kid’s version. With the bumper you know that they
Unknown Speaker 5:00
You’re getting as a part of the bundle. But it has that warranty, which is actually really, yeah. And I and I know people who has get this specific one the kids edition. And on Amazon fashion, they really is a no question ask it works as they advertise. Exactly, exactly. So last week, we talked about Slack, updating the interface and the design for the Android experience, as well as some desktop experience. And now slack has recently put out a notice about rolling out their new design for iPhone, as well as Android. So now we get the iPhone updates that they’ve been kind of talking about behind the scenes. But now they’ve officially announced that the latest versions of both apps are in the App Store, both in the Apple App Store in the Google Play Store. And so people should be seeing now the update across their whole ecosystem desktop and both mobile platforms on the internet.
Unknown Speaker 6:00
Face side, the the the mobile applications on iOS are pretty much getting the same features for parody with Android, you’re going to see the swipe functionality, the home
Unknown Speaker 6:12
button to check in on conversations. And then you’ll see the other little tabs at the bottom for you to be able to go back and forth. So the biggest change is going to be the tab bar. So there at the bottom of your screen, you’re going to be able to see the the home button, your DMS for direct messages, private messaging, your mentions, and then you which is going to take you to your basically your profile and account settings and so on and so forth for accessing your your status and updating your Do Not Disturb and, and so on and so forth. So that’s really nice. Then you of course have the quick gestures just like we talked about last week of swiping left and right on the screen at the edges which will navigate you between
Unknown Speaker 7:00
Your left hand side navigation drawer as well as your workspaces. You’ll see your threaded conversations and then you’ll be able to swipe right to get to the deeper threaded conversations. So I think it’s a really good update to the design, again, still getting used to the swiping functionality to get back and forth between places. But I think that it’s overall going to be a positive. So, you know, I’m not a big slack person, as I said, but the lowdown it’s coming to grab all that communication and all that engagement that is happening on slack and then give you the ability to turn that into a newsletter for your community. So the cool thing was that as you will, your community will be able to continue using the slack as the you know, hack, but then it will be able to grab all that and help you really speed up the process of turning. All that interaction, all that communication, all that things into
Unknown Speaker 8:00
A newsletter for that community. So I think that if you leave on the slack world, it is a really, really cool thing. Yeah, I know a lot of people who manage paid membership communities. And this is one way to add an additional benefit to those who maybe you’re not logging into the community every day or every week. And that gives them the newsletter to kind of separate the goings on the happenings of that particular community. But this could also be really great for a company where you want to be able to kind of have a report, you know, the state of the company, you know, to be sent out once a week, and that keeps you on top of projects and actions that need to be taken, or that have happened so you can celebrate successes, understand how to correct course, and stay on top of what’s happening in the upcoming week. So I like the idea of it and so people who are in Slack, have a new integration at their fingertips. So the next item
Unknown Speaker 9:00
We have in the air, it’s a Kickstarter.
Unknown Speaker 9:03
And it’s an ultra portable mechanical keyboard keyboards is one of those things that can make or break a machine. In my in my opinion, there is people who really swear by the mechanical keyboards, but traditionally mechanical keyboards tend to be bulky. So, the reason we bring this one is because is designed to be super compacted. And they are trying to to do so they already did the pilot run and they are working or they will do the pilot run at the end of the month, and they will begin mass production in June. Yeah. So one side note about this is that way tools has produced something called the text blade, which is a magnetic keyboard for your mobile devices. And I have ordered one and I’m expecting one very, very soon. And so this is akin to that except this is a wireless, you know, a version of it, but it’s the same thing. It’s a portable keyboard.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
that you can use to and I’ll put a link to this underneath this article in the in the show notes so you can access it but i think you know the the ability to be able to type on a keyboard, even a smaller keyboard is really really fundamental to being productive on the road. So really cool stuff there. So Microsoft Surface go to is out. Microsoft came with it with a surface go and they are now refreshing the device come in with the version number two, they are even aiming to one of them the entry level to be really a one on one competition with with the iPad price wise as well as features and I will save in a speed I don’t know these days. If those settings on the entry level will be enough or will be a really slow machine. You know, I tend to believe that is you machine is on a budget you are better using a Chromebook than you are doing an entry level windows
Unknown Speaker 11:00
But I have always believed something like that. I’m not particularly bullish on the idea of a lower end tier to surface products or even to the pixel product line. I think that, you know, there are more than enough third party manufacturers that can you know, there’s a, there’s a huge OEM market for building on top of these platforms, Microsoft and Google and Apple should be building the flagships you know, with the best quality that we can see their software shine. And so I’m not particularly excited about these lower end tier market solutions. I think they potentially muddy the brand and don’t really give us a good sense of what they’re going after. I know that they’re all under pressure to be able to create lower end models that are more affordable, but there are lots of other OEMs out there who can be doing that work. I want to see the best of what they can produce, and this just doesn’t seem to cut that.
Unknown Speaker 12:00
For me, next up is an iPad related update for Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. What’s that all about? Because, finally, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint will support the split view, Apple release iOS split view over a year ago and Microsoft took some sweet time to make sure that their applications work as they intended. With the split view, split view is really a fantastic thing on iOS, in my opinion, and really make you more productive. So it’s well received. And it’s good that finally you can do that is split view and even put two instance of the same document you know. And then of course, that brings us along to some Google News about Google’s read along app. In essence, Google has launched a new app designed to help teach kids to read. So the app is called read along and it gives both visual and audible cues to
Unknown Speaker 13:00
To the child as they read the stories aloud. And so what happens is, is the child’s reading, if they make an error, they mispronounce or say something, you know, that doesn’t match up with the words on the screen, and then is able to correct them and give them feedback visually on the screen of what is right in what’s incorrect about the reading as they’re going along. And this really is great for being able to teach literacy to children on their own. They’re capable of sitting sitting there and or standing, walking, whatever they’re doing, but they’re able to learn to read as they go along. I think this is actually really great for potentially the adult illiterate population. So there are quite a lot of people out there. I know because I actually volunteered for many years to adult literacy programs in Washington DC, and there’s actually a very large, illiterate population in the adult world. And so, they are either low literate or they are completely illiterate. And they they are among them.
Unknown Speaker 14:00
You they are among us. And, and it’s not something that’s shameful. It’s not a moral, you know, failing. It’s a societal failing, that we’re not teaching people to be literate. And so I think this is actually a really great opportunity to be able to get this in the hands of anyone that you know, that might be low literate, and has the technology has, you know, a smartphone, to be able to install this and actually learn to read, there’s nothing more powerful than the power of literacy. And so I’m really excited that they’re doing this for both children, but also now potentially for adults as well. Last up is an iPad story. I’m going to turn that one over to you Augusto. Facebook also started supporting split view and slide over the multitask ports of finally you can multitask on Facebook. Why is important? Well because it’s interesting to see how finally some of this software monsters are coming to integrate things like this plate view. Now you can have
Unknown Speaker 15:00
have multiple versions of Facebook on the same screen and even bring the slide over. So that’s going to bring a change on how you can do more Facebook. And so we’re going to take a break in our headlines for a word from our sponsor this week, Tsar Ivana which you can [email protected] ZARVAN a.com. As a young analyst at a leading strategy and management consulting firm, I experienced what ambitious professionals experienced every week, I had a strong desire to get promoted as quickly as I could. And I wanted to take on exciting side projects. And I wanted to do all that while spending less time at work. So my life outside of work wasn’t limited to exhaustion and recovery. My observations of my co workers told me this wasn’t possible, but I knew there had to be a way I began to research and experiment and in two to three months, I had reduced the hours I was working by over 15% or placing myself on the path to a fast
Unknown Speaker 16:00
than average promotion. My success led to the creation of Nirvana, a tool designed to give you the edge at work and in life. It combines a diagnostic abbreviated courses and a habit tracker into a single application to enable you to get the most out of your time in just minutes per week. You can start by taking the time finder diagnostic to find out how many of our hundred and 50 time saving behaviors you’re currently doing. All right, before the break, we were discussing Facebook’s new split view on iPad OS. And what’s the next headline in our headlines, rundown Cousteau. You know, the next headline is a nice review on the new Dell ultra sharp 49 inches and they’ve they started doing the review on really what is a massive, massive, massive screen.
Unknown Speaker 16:53
So they said they will come back in a future week to give us the result of that but
Unknown Speaker 17:00
They come into this weekend to show us this setup and how really how big this this is following that Asana on their blog recently announced a new feature that they’re calling status. And it’s all designed around remote work. Of course, we’re all dealing with lockdown and being in this, you know, quote unquote, quarantine world. And so for working from home and working remotely, the status function is a way to be able to give premium and business users within Asana, the ability to see literally the status of projects. So clicking on the progress tab, users can now see the status of their current projects. And that is really, really useful. So it basically uses the highlights feature to show off.
Unknown Speaker 17:54
It uses the highlights feature to surface what the team has currently accomplished.
Unknown Speaker 18:00
It helps you to see which actions milestones and or approvals need the team’s attention. And you can, of course, see that from a week by week perspective, this is this, I think is going to be a very useful story.
Unknown Speaker 18:15
This is going to be a very useful feature for those who are steeped in Asana, and are capable of seeing that they are hoping to actually add status to the portfolio level for business and enterprise users as well. So that should be coming out soon. And they’re also going to be adding some charting features so you can see it graphically and visualize that data for project. So they’re really making inroads to make that happen. Again, they’re talking about this remote, remote collaboration perspective, but I think status is good just for any team working, whether or not they’re working in the same space or apart. And so I’m really excited to see us on adding this. We use Asana in one of the divisions of our company and I’m always excited to see new features like this company.
Unknown Speaker 19:00
To Asana Yeah, I think I think this will allow the during the remote working but even when, when that ends to see much, much faster how this status i think is a really a fantastic implementation that Asana is doing in here. Next up, we have a new report out called working life now more than ever why care benefits are a must have produced by care calm in, in which they talk about the importance of for both employees and consumers. Why family friendly benefits are more important and in essence less costly than other types of benefits that are given to employees. And so this is really important for us to understand that the balance between caring for children and sometimes other family members, it can not just be elderly family members, but family members with different abilities. We need to understand that when we go to
Unknown Speaker 20:00
working from home environment or remote work environment, and we don’t have the ability to send our kids off to, to school or to daycare or to what what have you or to friends homes. That means that working from home is also taking care of our children. At the same time, as we move into what will hopefully be a post pandemic perspective. Soon enough, we need to then also take into account that American and you know, global employers will need to start to think about the loss of productivity that will happen if we don’t take care of those components. We need to make sure that families have respite from the other family members in their household. And so this care comm report is really interesting at fleshing out some of the interesting components of care benefits. They make basically note here, it’s no longer a nice to have, they are a must
Unknown Speaker 21:00
Have. And so they they walk us through the core, the cost of poor work life balance, the benefits of care benefits for families and some of the inequities that occur from employers not providing these items. So if you want to be a progressive organization that is good at employee retention, you need to make sure that you’re paying attention to care benefits post pandemic, because it’s going to be really important for you to both retain, but also, as we should be talking about increasing and maintaining the level of productivity of your, of your workforce. And so if you are an employee within an organization, you need to be talking to your HR department and advocating for these kinds of care benefits. Because if you don’t, then you’re going to have caregiving challenges. You’re probably feeling them already. Now. If you if you have been in lockdown
Unknown Speaker 22:00
Like the rest of us, and it’s going to be more and more difficult as we make our way forward. And we need to make sure that we get those kinds of conversations happening. This is not necessarily a conflict, but more just a recognition of the challenges that we’re going to face. You know, it’s not just dealing with a spouse, it’s potentially dealing with children or other family members that are being cared for in the primary household. Okay, next up, Facebook officially released his 50% messenger rooms as an alternative to too soon. One of the interesting things is people is getting more and more used to interact in camera. We don’t know how long this stay at home will, will be. So Facebook responds to some in given inside of their Facebook where you can go and do these more social maybe that work. I’m sure people will use it for business but a lot more social interaction to come and have fun. I think it’s
Unknown Speaker 23:00
It’s a good thing, you know, especially with everything that zoom has been founded with their security. And they’re working diligently into solve those issues. But there has been issues significant issues with that. And it’s nice to actually have a differentiation between meeting for work in one place and meeting for social reasons in another place. And so, you know, I recently hosted a zoom birthday party. And it was very difficult to get some of our more mature family members to join zoom, you know, and you know, they have to install an application on their mobile device or on their computer, they had to figure out how to use the settings and so on and so forth. And because they’re already
Unknown Speaker 23:45
used to Facebook, there’s just a little bit lower of a barrier to entry for them to be able to use messenger rooms. I think, even though I’m not particularly a fan of Facebook for these kinds of things. I see the value in
Unknown Speaker 24:00
If you’re already there, and you have family members who are already there, why go to some great lengths to change for those purposes. But again, I’m a big fan of context and understanding that, okay, Facebook is for socializing, that’s where you can do that work that, you know, that kind of, of activity. And you have other tools and other digital environments for context. And if you don’t want to bleed over those two, so that you’re looking at your resume, you know, list of meetings and seeing personal things in interlaced or interleaved in there, you can then take it out of there and put it into another platform and messenger rooms. Now that it fits 50 people that’s giving you that that capability. Yeah. Also, it’s important to notice that that 50 number seems to be getting into the standard. That’s the same number that Google meets offer
Unknown Speaker 24:54
up to 50. So it is, it seems to to take a step
Unknown Speaker 25:00
in the right direction for this virtual meets for Google, Facebook.
Unknown Speaker 25:07
All right, next up, we have box launches an all new experience. And the box is a competitor to Dropbox for the most part. And what they’ve done now is they’ve provided just some new features. One they’re calling collections. So if you’ve used Vimeo or some other tools that use that term for collections, they’re basically a form of folder, so that you could just organize your content in a way that you want. So in essence, you’re allowed to create and name these, these spaces for projects and their related content. So in essence, they can hold other forms of containers that they call folders. So collections hold folders, they can also hold files and other bookmarked documents, in essence shortcuts to other documents. And so it just gives you a really nice way to
Unknown Speaker 26:00
To simplify the the organization of your content inside of box, they also give you a new feature called annotations. So in essence, you can now just like with Dropbox paper, you can now do some level of text commentary
Unknown Speaker 26:16
on on what they say are 100 different file types. The other part is you can actually do freeform markup, which is kind of nice. So you can actually do freeform markup, which is which is an interesting new feature. So you know, if you want to be able to add content into a timestamp from a video, put a line in a PDF, you can now do those kinds of things. I’m curious to see how that will work. And, and whether that will be useful to me in the box world. They also have some enhanced zoom integrations, of course, because they want to stay in line with the the growing popularity of zoom. And so now you’re able to go ahead and integrate more tightly with zooms so you can
Unknown Speaker 27:00
Create or join a meeting directly from within the box interface. So that should be interesting to see once that all comes out there. They’re going to be doing that later in May, and bringing that to general availability at that time. So very cool stuff there. Yeah. One other feature that I thought it was really interesting was called file requests, where is trying to make for people who don’t have a Box account or they’re not part of your organization, being able to drop files into your box. And that will be interesting as is trying to bring old FTP technology into the masses. So it will be really interesting to see how that feature works for box. Next up we have Google Chrome is providing some new features. The next rollout will actually happen in Chrome 81. But the feature is now currently available and the feature features are grouped tabs with their calling
Unknown Speaker 28:00
Group tabs. But in essence, you’re now able to group tabs together, you can turn this on by going to Chrome, colon forward slash forward slash flags. And in there, you’ll just type in group. And you can see the tab groups, there are actually two sets of options you’ll need to turn on in order to have the full set of features. But the first one allows you to be able to group tabs. And when you group those tabs, you’re then able to name a tab. That means you can take a series of tabs that you have open in Chrome and add those to those particular groups, which then creates a new group, a new tab in your Chrome interface, and then all of the open tabs that you had the open websites you have now fit inside of that space, you’re also able to color that tab, which means that you can now color and create context for the various things that you’re working on. So I really, really love that feature. Now the great part is that if you turn on the second feature, which is expanding and collapsing,
Unknown Speaker 29:00
Group tabs, you can now take your group tabs and collapse them and expand them with the other option within the chrome flags. So very, very cool tool, I know that I will be making great use of this as being someone who has many, many tabs open at any given time, because they, in essence act as desktops now, for me, so akin to how windows 10 has virtual desktops, and Mac has the desktops or the spaces. I use those to create context for the various open applications that I’m using, with Chrome being in essence, where most of my applications are living now they’re living in the in the browser, this is going to be really great for being able to have that set of open applications and what I’m working on with them and putting them into a group and now I can change context to some other project or thing and do that and some of them will be fixed like the anything but I will podcast will
Unknown Speaker 30:00
They’ll have its own group tab. But then some of them will be ephemeral, you know, where I say, Oh, I’m working on this particular project a. And now I can put all of those pieces that I’m working on for project a, into that tab. And then I can come back to it later when I’m ready to pick up work off where I left it. So the next is an article from wired, called productivity is not working. It is a really interesting article from Laurie Penny, where it’s talking about what is the definition that has been pushed into us about productivity and how this definition need to change now that we have need to find a way to cope with the crisis where the crisis we’re living, so and how we need to look at this differently. It is a really, really interesting look into how the definition has been into work to this relentless self optimization versus where he’s going
Unknown Speaker 31:00
To go now, what we’re going to change on how we’re going to evolve our definition of productivity, I definitely see the argument for some people who are anxious than you are going to be feeling that in a concentrated perspective during this COVID-19 pandemic, and we need to step away from that a little bit, and understand that we don’t have to be as productive or self optimizing as we as we tend to want to be when we are dealing with a crisis that creates great distress, and economic hardship and familial stress and all these other things at the same time. So we need to be really mindful that our health is more important than our output. And that should be our concentration right now. And I think that’s a really good message for folks. I don’t particularly like this, this sense of of coining productivity as a cult. You know, I think
Unknown Speaker 32:00
there’s a there’s a misunderstanding about what it means to be a productivity enthusiast versus what it means for an entire society to be focused on being more productive, and many societal ills will be solved through greater productivity focus, and we’re just not there yet. You know, a very small portion of our society really focuses on being productive. And when we have a society that actually does, we’ll all be better off, but maybe during a pandemic is not the time to be focused on that.
Unknown Speaker 32:33
With that, Apple just released their adjustments to their supplier responsibility report. What is Apple doing a good sale, no, under this recent supplier responsibility report, they when and modify some of the procedures that they asked their suppliers to do online ads of the COVID-19 you know, Apple
Unknown Speaker 32:59
is trying
Unknown Speaker 33:00
To get themselves ahead of trying to be ahead of what is happening. So a few of the actions has been health screening, you know, limiting and trying to create and enforce the social distancing require the use of PBE, both and regarding the use of booth for the people to work on implementing cleaning protocols or deeper cleaning protocols, as well as employing mask and sanitizers for the employees on the floor. So Apple is trying really, to keep themselves ahead on this responsibility report. They have been famous for years for trying to do better. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but at least do better than a lot of the industry do. That’s our last article in the headlines is actually a
Unknown Speaker 33:55
data report that came out of rescue time rescue time is the software that does data tracking.
Unknown Speaker 34:00
And so it does this passive data tracking of what you’re doing on your digital devices. And the before March, there was some, some market change from what is happening now after March 11. So they have like a before March 11, and then an after March 11 comparison of how people are interacting and engaging from this new remote work environment. And so some of the pieces of information that come out of this is that of course, communications has increased. And, of course, we see more and more people
Unknown Speaker 34:37
changing and adapting to the way in which we work. Since we’re working from home, there’s one thing I it’s really throw me off of this article, not in a good way. And it is the the graphics they use, you know, because they make this before March 11 this guy into this computer and then after March
Unknown Speaker 35:00
11 this guy, you know, eating popcorn and working on the laptop, I think that’s a bad comparison image for the working from home and to working remotely. You know, that’s, that said the data is interesting, obviously communication, but what was interesting for me was seeing how software development, you know, decrease 4%. The other thing that is interesting is they show obviously a significant increase of the hours that people is under dekstop devices and the average time in China and you know, the United States has come up 16%, China, over 10%, Italy over 21%. What I would love to know is if it’s on a particular dekstop is next gen, or really, that means we’re working 16% more or we’re now working 16% more on the next step device versus other devices because we are not mobile anymore. So
Unknown Speaker 36:00
As much as I enjoy a lot of the data on the article, I think it requires to look a little bit more data to really bring good conclusions out of it. I think with any particular looking at statistics, you have to remember what the base of the data is, and then understand kind of, from a gut perspective, what you expect to see in the data. And so for example, you know, you’re obviously going to see, or you should see more people using desktops and mobile devices if they are in affluent countries that have access to desktop computers. So you’re going to see that in those countries versus other countries. We’re just going to see more mobile usage, if they have lockdowns and they are working from home and and they only have mobile devices to use. The other part to this is that the data they’re pulling are from obviously people who are
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working with rescuetime installed on their computer, which
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For the most part is a paid tool, and is a group of people who are predominantly focused on quantified self type stuff, right? They’re paying attention to what they’re doing. So this is a self selecting crowd of people. So the data that you’re seeing is of those of us, I’ll say, you know, kind of a royal we, who are highly interested in self improvement and personal development and performance. So, you know, the the data here is actually just the sliver of us who are paying attention. And that’s not everyone. So I think this is a subset of people that aren’t we’re seeing here. And so that’s why some of the data seems like I, you know, I’m actually rather shocked that we only increased communication by 49%. Maybe it’s because most of the people using rescuetime are probably software developers or knowledge workers who work from home to begin with. So you know, there’s only going to be a small increase because when the rest of your team now
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works from home, they are now meeting with you more than they normally would by video or audio or other types of communication. So we have to be kind of a little bit skeptical about how we’re looking at the data. But I think still an interesting insight into some of the changes that are happening because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So with that, that brings us to the end of our headlines for this week. And that takes us to the science of productivity with Matt Plummer observe Anna. Take it away, Matt. Hi, this is Matt Plummer with the science of productivity segment, which brings you scientific insights you can trust into how to maximize the impact of your life and get an edge at work. In this week’s segment, I want to unpack whether you should prioritize increasing time or money in your life. Harvard Business School Professor Ashley Williams and her colleagues asked 1000 college students which individual they most resemble Tina, who is willing to sacrifice
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money to have more time, or Maggie who would prefer to work more and make more money. Then they went back to them two years later and asked them how happy they were. The Tina’s who valued time over money were significantly happier than those who prioritize money.
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Williams and her colleagues have also linked high satisfaction levels and countries that have lower gdps like Colombia, whose Becca, Stan, Puerto Rico, to the fact that people in those countries value leisure that is time overwork. Warren Buffett famously said that he could buy pretty much anything in the world, but he couldn’t buy time. Fortunately, that’s not quite true. You can invest your money to buy more time, for example, by hiring someone to do your household chores, and you can also forego additional money in order to preserve time. For example, by skipping that demanding job opening that pays more
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But you won’t love to create a ripple effect that will generate many positive outcomes in your life, including overall well being, and job satisfaction. Take the advice of this growing body of research and make decisions and investments that will maximize the time you have to do what you love. So thanks to Matt Plummer of Zavala for the science of productivity segment. Now let’s get into our featured story of the week of Cousteau. Our featured story of the week is all about Google. And
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they’re they’re providing us with some training for free through May 30, where you’ll get 30 days of free access to one of three different platforms, all free of cost. That includes the training and the certifications that come along with them. So quick labs Pluralsight, and Coursera. All three have independent Google Cloud focused training and they are
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Providing that free of cost. If you redeem the offer before May 30. I think this is fantastic, because most people don’t actually know all that Google Cloud offers in. If you already don’t know this, I am the Google.
Unknown Speaker 41:17
If you already don’t know this, I am the Google Small Business advisor for productivity. And so I do a lot of training surrounding G Suite for small business owners. And G Suite actually lives within Google Cloud within the Google Cloud Platform. And so Google Cloud is so much bigger than most people think about. And that was one of the things that that we’re interested in and we are sharing on our notes, an image of everything that is included into Google Cloud, I, I was not aware that it includes so many things from so you know, that I was actually impressed how fast it is really. So I think
Unknown Speaker 42:00
If it’s just just go and look into that graphic is worth it in our notes and see how many things are, that are part of this Google Cloud picks, you will be surprised that you use more than the ones you think. Exactly. I mean, just within the G Suite platform, there are a dozen or more different parts to it. But then we think about the general platform with machine learning and artificial intelligence, and the data networking and database solutions. And just so many different pieces of Google Cloud that if you are interested in learning about those things, the the person who develops it, you can see in the developer’s cheat sheet, and you can actually check out his whole world at four words, Dev, the number four words, Devin, again, these are all in the show notes, but you can see all of the various parts of Google Cloud and just understand that there is much more to it than that.
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meets the eye. And if you work in an enterprise environment, and you’re interested in learning more about Google Cloud, you have some training that you can go access there. You know, it’s free for the for the 30 days, but of course, you can always access those trainings afterward. And the fees are rather nominal. So you can go ahead and get updated in terms of what Google Cloud is. And, honestly, you know, with the advent of an economic downturn, and wanting to make yourself more appealing to your employers to keep on the payroll, as opposed to getting rid of someone else, maybe highlighting the fact that you are bringing yourself up to speed and doing some personal and that you’re doing some professional development, maybe can put a little notch in your cap against your other co workers, unfortunately, which are now your competition for keeping your job.
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And so, with that, that brings us to the end of our featured story of the week. And that brings us to the end of our featured story of the week, but also
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Our our episode, so feel free to follow us on social media at anything but idle. And also leave a rating or review in your favorite podcast app if you’re capable of doing that. Let us know if there’s a story we missed by using our contact page on anything but idle calm. You could also tweet we have our DMS open on Twitter as well at anything but idle. Thanks for joining us here for anything but idle, the productivity news podcast until next time, here’s to your productive life.
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Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.