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Apple Is Building a Search Engine to Rival Google Search – Anything But Idle – November 2, 2020
This week we cover a bunch of Apple news, including our featured story this week, that secretly (but not so much now) Apple is building a search engine to rival Google Search. Listen in our panel discusses logical fallacies that impact your productivity, a few new tools this week, and more productivity and technology news you can use on this episode of Anything But Idle.
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In this Cast
Frank Buck, EdD
Most people are overwhelmed by the amount of paper and digital information in their lives. Frank Buck makes organization easy so you can increase productivity, decrease stress, and enjoy life. Global Gurus ranked Frank #1 in the world in the “Time Management” category for 2019 and 2020. His career path took him from band director to principal to central office administrator and now to productivity coach and speaker.
Chris Keller, Appigo
Chris Keller is a long-time productivity enthusiast as an individual worker and also as a manager of the Todo Cloud productivity application which is one of the earliest in the market. He leads product, and strategy for the company in addition to marketing, strategy and independent software project management under the AppDevv company. Needless to say, Chris wears multiple hats to get stuff done.
Headlines & Show Notes
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
Stories of the Week
Apple Releases Safari Technology Preview 115 With Bug Fixes and Performance Improvements
Apple References Unreleased 2020 16-Inch MacBook Pro in Boot Camp Update
Apple Invites Developers to Get One-on-One Guidance From Engineers Ahead of Apple Silicon Mac Launch
Apple Pay With Express Transit Mode Now Available in Chicago
Apple Bear update: wiki export feature
Microsoft will force Internet Explorer users to open some websites in Edge
Microsoft now rolling out full iPadOS trackpad support to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel apps
Windows 10 update removes Adobe Flash Player for good – CNET
Luna Display for Windows by Astro HQ — Kickstarter
Lee Kun-hee, Who Built Samsung Into a Global Giant, Dies At 78
7 Cognitive Biases That Make Us Suck at Time Management
Creating a Productivity Dashboard in Ulysses for Weekly and Daily Planning
OmniFocus for the Web Adds Support for Custom Perspectives
Introducing dark mode for Newton Mail | by Maitrik Kataria | Oct, 2020 | Paper Planes
Just Your Type—Keyboard Shortcuts To Help You Accomplish More
Ari Meisel is shutting down operations…?
Apple develops alternative to Google search | Financial Times
New Tools of the Week
Augusto and I come across many personal productivity tools and services each week. In this segment, New Tools of the Week, we each bring you a tool we think you might like.
Raw Text Transcript | Apple Is Building a Search Engine to Rival Google Search
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community. Welcome to anything but idle, the productivity productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by WCC web services. And let’s see here. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. I’m a ghost node. And we’re your hosts for anything but idle. This is Episode 27. And we’re recording this on November 2 2020. Each week, we cover and discuss the productivity news headlines of the week. And to do that we have two panelists with us today to talk about all things in the personal productivity and technology space. First and foremost, we have Dr. Frank buck, most people are overwhelmed by the amount of paper and digital information in their lives. Frank, Buck makes organization easy, so you can increase productivity, decrease, decrease stress, and enjoy life. He’s one of the global gurus, number one rated time management gurus in the world for 2019 and 2020. And his career path took him from band director, from band to director to principal to Central Office administrator, and now to a productivity coach, and speaker. Welcome to anything but idle Frank, be with you, Ray. Fantastic. And next up, we have Chris Keller from app ego. And let me find his introduction. Here we go. Chris Keller is a longtime productivity enthusiast as an individual worker, and also as a manager of the to do cloud productivity application, which is one of the earliest in the market. He leads product and strategy for the company in addition to marketing strategy, and independent software project management under the app dev company. Needless to say he wears multiple hats to get stuff done. And so with that, welcome to anything but idle, Chris. Thank you. Nice to be with you today. Fantastic, great to have you all. We have a full panel today. And we have a full show. So welcome to our audience watching live. And of course, thank you to our listeners of the podcast. Today, we are going to be celebrating a couple of things. One is just a couple of days ago, we we had checklist day, which is a day dedicated to checklist. There’s a holiday for everything, as well as author’s day. And actually November happens to be nano Remo, which is the National Novel Writing Month. And so just to start off conversation, I wanted to talk a little bit about checklists. And then a little bit about some writing productivity topics. So first and foremost, what’s your favorite checklist? How do you like using checklists? what’s the what’s the, what’s the goal of the checklist that you use? Um, I’ll jump in my favorite checklist is writing a blog post. It’s also a podcast. It’s also a YouTube video. That’s also a newspaper column. There are so many little steps along the way. And none of them are hard, hard thing is just remembering all of so just having that little checklist to go through. And this one’s done. This one’s done. This one’s done. It makes all the difference. I like that. I’ll also contribute. So Reina gusto to come to mind. What is my honey do checklist that’s probably the most important checklist. And my wife has a whiteboard. And every Saturday, she’s got the checklist for her honey and her kids. And so we pretty much do that checklist. And if we don’t do it, we don’t get to do fun things for that Saturday. So that’s pretty important for us. It you know covers the basic things. So every week, it tends to repeat, my kids have a checklist, which is their work checklist. On Saturday mornings, they check each one of their responsibilities over the course of the of the of that week. The second checklist that comes to mind is a webinar checklist. And in a previous role, we managed several hundred webinars. And it was really complicated to do those webinars well. And we actually put together a six month checklist. Now six months is a long time. But you know, the first couple months of that checklist were identified topics, identify speakers invite those speakers. And then we have a very detailed six week checklist on the back end of that six months. And we would say at six weeks, we want to know who our partners are, who we’re going to advertise with, because we were always funding to get new people listening. And then we have a four week checklist was was very specific to content. So who was the speaker? What are they prepared? How we review their content, and then promote it? And so I’d say it was probably 150 step checklist that was very helpful to just nail those webinars. That’s awesome for for me, my favorite checklist is my do not do list. That thing has been with me for, I don’t know, over 10 years probably or more. And it is incredible to review it often. And remember Oh yeah, this is why I stopped doing this. And I need to remember not to do whatever. So that’s probably my favorite list but do not do fantastic you know, I do like to think about checklists and task lists as separate entities. So those of you who are
Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:00
Thinking about what a checklist for me really does is it’s something that’s repeatable, right? So I want it to manifest. It’s kind of like a template of things that I want to go to be done on any given time sequence or frequency. And so I try to make sure that I’m doing those kinds of checklist development items as kind of a form of template. And that way, it sounds like everybody else here on the panel kind of does it in that same way. It’s the things that you want to do in a repeatable fashion consistently, with some kind of standard mine, I consider a standard of excellence, as I call it. And I want to make sure that the things on the checklist will help me at least achieve that standard, and which is really quite useful in so many ways. And Stacy Harmon from Harmon enterprises, saying that she loves her packing checklists, makes travel so much easier. And that is absolutely true, Stacey, I love a good travel checklist. And maybe someday I will go back to traveling like I was before. And, and then we’ll be able to actually use that travel checklist again. But yes, absolutely. Travel checklists. And packing checklists are really, really useful. Okay, so any interesting or useful writing checklists for those authors listening since we are celebrating a little bit of authors day in NaNoWriMo? Any any quick tips before we get into the headlines of the week
Augusto Pinaud 6:17
progress?
Unknown Speaker 6:18
Okay, my comment. So, I aspire to be writer, I’m not an active writer today writing a book, but I am trying to dedicate time to the idea. And so my checklist is a series of things to read. And a series of things to write in my journal is the place where I’m spending most of that time. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a daily and a weekly thing for me, I’m most successful on a weekly basis. And I essentially go through mentally professional, personal, and then a couple of other areas of my life as I’m writing in my journal,
Augusto Pinaud 6:54
yes, a person who has done NaNoWriMo a couple of times, and who has published a couple of novels a for the people who are there, I will set consistency, you know, you can go 1200 words every day, or you can try to do the crazy 20,000 the last night before, most of the people who tried had never finished NaNoWriMo. So it is writing, writing is not different. You know, they said that there is nothing better than have written, but nothing worse than writing. And I may need to agree with that as a person who has published some books and but it’s still take it fun and make it consistently every day.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:34
And this is where checklists can be come into play. You know, one of the things I have in terms of my own book writing checklist, as well as actually any any written material. So say blog writing, otherwise, I have a checklist of all the items that I want to cover in any particular production process. And that allows me to basically go from, you know, whatever I’m writing to completion as quickly as possible. And when I follow it, I do a much better job than when I don’t follow it. So with that, let’s get into our stories of the week. Augusto. What’s our first story the week you’re muted. I do
Augusto Pinaud 8:08
that all the time. It’s just to make sure that you’re paying attention. The first story of the week is Apple releasing technology preview 115. You know, it’s not on the news today, but there is a new event coming next week. And they are releasing 115 we are hoping or guessing that is coming to be related to that. So Apple released this performance improvement reviews of what is coming so people can test or developers can test what’s coming with that. So the next news I talking about this event that was announced this morning.
Augusto Pinaud 8:48
Apple reference an unreleased when in 2016 inch MacBook Pro in the boot camp of great for people who don’t know boot camp is a piece of software that allows to run Windows net natively in a MacBook. So you can run them at the same time or you can run one or the other. And it’s an incredible piece of software. So
Augusto Pinaud 9:12
on the last version there is a mention for a 16 inch and we are assuming is going to come with a new arm chipset that is going to be officially announced next week.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:24
Ah Apple silicon.
Augusto Pinaud 9:29
Was Apple silicon based on the arm technology.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:32
Absolutely. There you go. Apple would be very upset with you. If they heard you say
Augusto Pinaud 9:37
I deserved for them to be upset with me.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:41
Okay, moving right along. What’s our next Apple story?
Augusto Pinaud 9:43
The next Apple story is Apple one launches so Apple finally bring all their subscriptions and services under one umbrella so iCloud, ai music and arcade. Finally under one umbrella they changed The prices so the price are really really attractive, you have more than one if you have music and something else, Apple TV, for example, it’s really, really attractive now, to jump to the family, instead of keeping them for separate so you can now go, even if you have already planned you, they are prorating. So you can get or jump into the apple one bandwagon right away.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:25
So so so that we’re clear, there are six products within Apple one, Apple Music, Apple TV plus Apple arcade, which is their game platform, iCloud, Apple news plus an apple fitness plus, which they say is coming in late 2020. So all six products get bundled into one flat monthly rate, there’s an individual plan, which is currently 1495 US per month, the family plan which ends up being 1995 per month for up to five people six, I guess with yourself so yourself plus other five other people, and then premiere, which is $30 a month 2995 per month us and and that gives you up to five other people as well, but includes and that I guess the others stop at iCloud but the others have Apple news plus and fitness plus attached on to that beyond the family plan. So if you go to apple.com, forward slash Apple hyphen, one, you can see all the details there for Apple one, but cool subscription concept. They’re trying to make money off of services.
Augusto Pinaud 11:29
Well, actually, if you had any of those subscriptions, before, you know you were having music and Apple TV and cloud, it’s now cheaper for the first time, you can save money with Apple. That’s that Apple fan and person who has many of their services, this is the first time that you can actually subscribe to all of them and make it cheaper.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 11:49
That’s fantastic.
Unknown Speaker 11:51
My quick comment, I have four kids and a wife. And so we’re a family of six. And we’re all scattered about with the Pandora subscription, Disney plus, Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify. So my family’s really interesting to try and consolidate into this apple subscription. And their pricing is really aggressive. I do wonder if it’s an early mover pricing that’s going to raise at some point or how long that aggressive pricing the last
Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:21
Yeah, it’s definitely a play for volume to capture those customers who don’t want to pay for something to to pay for something and consolidate. Certainly with a lower price point. And then at some point, though, it’s not bait and switch, but they will go up to a higher price point at some point they have to Yeah, but that’s the same thing with happens with Amazon Prime, right. Amazon Prime was really low and inexpensive for a while. And they had to creep up the price at some point because they had to keep up with the licensing fees for all of that content. So it makes a lot of sense, already. So next up.
Augusto Pinaud 12:51
So the next news we have, again, continuing with the apple bandwagon. Apple invites developers to get a one on one guidance for their engineer before their Apple silicon Mike lounge. So we all know it’s coming the announcement in July. And now we know there is an event on Tuesday. But before that Apple had announced around October 28 that that event was going to come especially for developers to talk about the difference in all that. So it is great to see Apple not only embracing their Apple silicon, but really bringing the developers before the game so that way they can. Developers can be ready.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:36
Our art is providing us with what the chuckles he said Apple will bundle the package with only the left earbud they’ll charge a premium for the right one.
Augusto Pinaud 13:45
Yeah, there is a premium for the right one. You don’t need the right one who wants stereo music but continue on the apple news. The next one is Apple Pay is now available in Chicago to use with Apple Express and apple. He’s been making significant progress into public trans portation in the United States with the Apple Pay. It is really convenient. You can do it. I mean, New Jersey, you can do it in New York. You put your watch, no touch, no nothing. And it works like a charm. So I think it’s great that he’s now extended to defaults in Chicago.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:19
Fantastic. Next up on Apple. Our next news
Augusto Pinaud 14:23
is Apple bear Apple bear release version 1.7 point two one and includes a weak link export for iOS an update on their import tool for Evernote files and a couple more improvements but it is it is big that they are finally making this link and especially the import the import tool for Evernote and Evernote files.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:48
Yeah, so this is bears fourth anniversary. And so they have they have been out for four years now. Can you believe that? And so yeah, so they they’re celebrating the their fourth anniversary. their fourth birthday with a new wallpaper and a new look. So yeah, you guys can go over there and check out Apple bear if you are using Apple bear. So very cool. Okay, next up, Microsoft has some news out. In essence, they are going to be forcing Internet Explorer users to open some websites explicitly and only in Microsoft Edge, which is their new chromium based browser. So Microsoft Edge went through a redesign a redevelopment that is and they they left their old architecture behind, and now they are chromium based. And with that, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram will not be any longer accessible on Internet Explorer. And with that, I say, Good riddance, who, on earth is still using Internet Explorer, folks, please get rid of Internet Explorer. And
Augusto Pinaud 15:50
I will mode voluntarily in this case, I don’t need to answer that question.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:56
Now, I know that there are some enterprise environments that still require IE for some very, very legacy applications. But they are they are security risks. And and unless you have them very much behind the strongest firewall in the world, and even then, you’re opening yourself up to greater risk. So for
Frank Buck, EdD 16:17
brands don’t let us explore
Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:19
exactly exactly. So good on Microsoft for pushing us into that space. And kind of while we’re at it, I’m going to make a note that Windows 10 is now removing Adobe Flash along with all of the major browsers that are committed to doing that going forward. So Adobe has has deprecated and ended their support for flash, apple, Facebook, Google and Mozilla, which produces the Firefox browser, all by the end of December, are basically killing off Apple Adobe Flash and the Flash Player application, Windows 10 will actually preemptively uninstalling flash player from the systems before they end of life their support. So basically, by the end of December, we can put up the gravestone we can put up the tombstone for Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Flash as a whole. And again, big security risk, big hole in security. So just glad to see that come to a close. Okay, so you want to talk a little bit about Microsoft’s
Augusto Pinaud 17:20
Yes, as as the person who coach people in the transition to make iPad, their main machine and the iPad only movement. You know, one of the complaints I always hear with people who isn’t corporate and have the use mic as a product is okay, but it doesn’t work as well as in my Mac. And it’s true. It’s been subpar for many year. But finally, Microsoft is rolling, full iPad OS trackpad support for Word, PowerPoint and Excel. And I think especially in Excel, that is going to be a game changer for the people who use on their iPad prosom. And an else being able to really use the second button really use the mouse as is required really on Excel. I mean,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:05
this just goes to show how much Microsoft hasn’t embraced and more of the ecosystem, more of the mobile ecosystem. But really, they’ve turned into a cloud services company, really, they’re trying to get the Azure architecture in a place where windows and any other software that they’re developing is both amenable to other tools, you know, bringing Samsung onto the windows 10 platform. So you can use Android applications directly on your your windows 10, desktop, making, you know, Microsoft Word and Excel and many of these applications work seamlessly across the Apple and Android ecosystems. They’re really doing a great job of, of really opening themselves up in this way and showing themselves to be a cloud services company. And to Art’s point here are just noting here that money grows above the trees and in the clouds. And it’s absolutely true. I think I think Microsoft knows where the money lies, and that’s in in the cloud. And they’re doing a good job there.
Unknown Speaker 19:06
Oh, comment just for a brief moment. They’ve seen AWS and Amazon who surged in the cloud, right? They they’ve made huge strides. As an as a, it’s a very profitable business and, and Microsoft Azure is a very formidable competitor to the AWS cloud services. But Microsoft spent a bit slow even though technically a couple of my insider friends say that Azure is better performing than the AWS cloud. So Microsoft spent a little slow. They’re a real product feed feature function company, and haven’t been as visionaries as some of these other companies. So it’s interesting to see them doing a little bit of ketchup. I must admit I’m not using edge right now. I’ve used Chrome and Firefox for so long. I’ve forgotten about Internet Explorer. And so I’m a bit out of the weeds, but I’ve seen that Chrome and Firefox have really advanced the ball and capabilities. And then it’s interesting as well to comment on
Chris Keller 20:00
Adobe Flash back in 2000, I was working with flash and it was amazing how it would create these interactive experiences, but the JavaScript language and the technologies around JavaScript have really evolved so that so much of that user experience can be built out without some of the static animation tools like Adobe Flash. So it’s interesting to see all these things happening. Yeah, I mean, I mean, html5 really put the put the nail in the coffin for, for Adobe Flash. And, of course, you know, with with the advent advances of all of the various frameworks around JavaScript, and some of these other languages and frameworks, you know, it makes makes a whole lot of sense. Artist noting here, that edge on mobile is a nice browser option. So didn’t it didn’t even consider Microsoft Edge on mobile.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:50
But an arc knows why. But I will, I will definitely now install and at least give it a check. So thank you for that art. And so our final article before we hit the Midway, midway point,
Augusto Pinaud 21:05
yes, the final before our mid point is Luna display. It’s on Kickstarter right now for Windows Luna display was a device coming initially for the Mac before even Apple announced sidecar that connect in the USB three or DisplayPort and connect them from there to the iPad. And you give you the ability to use the iPad as a second as three screen with really minimal if any lag, but they have always been a Mac solution. Now they are bringing that to Windows. So there is right now it started in Kickstarter, I have a couple of clients who have used it. Because that when you put the Luna display on a Mac and the iPad, you can even use the iPad with the Apple Pencil with their software as a tablet for drawing. So it’s also really, really cool to both things to use it as a second display with no lag. If you’re traveling anyways, grab now your iPad, grabbed your laptop PC, put the Luna display and you will be able to have two monitors wherever you go.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:14
This is phenomenal. I can’t wait. I mean, seriously, this is this is really, really amazing. And I’m looking forward to seeing this. Again, I’m cross platform all day long. And the ability to use the Luna display to be able to extend to an iPad, I’m even thinking then, you know, whatever comes out in terms of the next iPad Pro, that would be a really nice extension monitor to be used when I’m at my desk and then I can walk away and use it as a normal iPad on the go. When I’m when I’m away from my desk, but I really liked that idea. And good on astropad for putting together a display for Windows. Yeah,
Augusto Pinaud 22:49
no, not only that, I don’t know jet about the windows I I don’t know if that will be possible in Windows. But in the Mac. If you have a Mac Mini you can connect it to make basically a headless Mac Mini. So you connect it and then you make their iPad, your main monitor for that. Meaning instead of having connected a monitor or anything else, if that is possible on the PC World, that will be pretty fantastic. You now can get a cheap headless PC, put that in the back. And now your monitor is mobile. And he’s touchscreen and everything else.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:23
Interesting. That’s an that’s an interesting use case. I never even thought about having kind of like a little mini box, you know, kind of sitting there because I guess you could do that with the Mac Mini as well. You basically have the Mac Mini sitting there, no screen when you want to use the Luna display for your iPad using the iPad and then walking away with it. Correct. Fascinating. Fascinating. All right, any comments before we end our first set of headlines? Okay, wonderful. So with that, we’re going to take a break for our sponsor this week. And then we’ll be back after the break with more headlines. Did you know half of small businesses don’t have websites and half don’t make it past one year in business? Are these stats correlated? We’re not sure but we think you should have a website w three see Web Services provides affordable manage WordPress website hosting, along with VPS domain name registration, and other small business focused services. For listeners of this podcast. You can book a free 30 minute Digital Marketing Strategy Session when you purchase a new hosting plan $150 value once you purchase your new hosting plan forward the receipt to support at W three c inc.com. With the podcast title in the subject line of the email message and we’ll get you scheduled for your digital marketing strategy session. Head over to anything but idle.com slash web hosting and get started with your small business website today. And now back to your show. Welcome back everybody to anything but idle. Before the break, we recovering our headlines of the week and so we’re going to continue our headlines. With some more stories, and so one of those first stories is that Li Kun Hee, which is who was the kind of the person who built Samsung, kind of from the ground up? He passed away in Seoul this week. He was 78. And, yeah, that’s kind of, it’s kind of crazy. You know, he’s the he’s the father of Samsung. And oh, no, his father was the founder of Samsung. He was the son of the founder of Samsung. My apologies. So, but yeah, just wanted to let everybody know that kind of that global giant has passed away. any thing else about that before we move on? Nope. Wonderful. Okay. Next up, I had come across a newest article. And I thought this was really interesting, and wanted to kind of have everyone’s opinion on this. In essence, dewas came up with an article they called the seven cognitive biases that make us suck at time management, our brains are hardwired to sabotage our productivity, can we do anything about it? And what they did was they listed seven different cognitive biases. And I’ll just list them for everybody. And we can kind of point out any ones that we have come across and our thoughts on it. So one is the mere urgency effect, to the zeigarnik effect. Three, the planning fallacy for the sunk cost fallacy, five, present bias, complexity, bias, and then seven, the hedonic adaptation. And so does anybody have any experience with any any of these fallacies? Because these cognitive biases and your thoughts in terms of the article,
Augusto Pinaud 26:39
can I call my lawyer? The only way I’m willing to admit any of this one
Frank Buck, EdD 26:45
is a Garnica. fact, that’s the one where when you’re in the middle of something you, you want to finish it. And David Allen talks a lot about that. And I think it It goes back to waiters, who waiters seem to be able to remember what people had ordered, until the cheque had been closed out. As soon as the check was closed, added sort of erase from their memory bank, so that you know that your mind is hanging on to those things that are unfinished. And as soon as they’re finished them, it clears it out.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:20
Yeah, it’s kind of the reason why when someone sings a song, and you don’t hear the rest of that song, then the song is kind of stuck in your head. And it’s that little part is on loop, that’s really the zeigarnik effect, it’s that our brain doesn’t have the ability to let go of something until they feel like it’s complete. And that’s, that’s the idea, once it’s complete, then your mind can of course, reduce the stress related to it,
Augusto Pinaud 27:43
you know, the there, the seven of them are really important, but the mirror urgent bias, I think it’s really well represented by the so called Eisenhower matrix, you know, where you tend to pay attention to what is urgent, what is urgent, what is important or not important. And really, how though things that are urgent and non important tend to take, you know, precedence over the things that may be less urgent, but really more important and and how that tend to affect people, you know, and, and how we miss things like that.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:18
Yeah, so so so the folks have kind of an idea, the mere urgency effect, or the bias is, is as jewess notes here, our tendency to prioritize urgent tasks over non urgent tasks, even when the non urgent tasks provide us with a greater reward. And so we tend to basically bias toward the latest and loudest this David Allen would call, call it going back to David Allen again. But the idea here is that just because something is urgent, we should not lean into that urgent thing all the time, right? The The idea here that I always use his clients who call me and expect me to deal with something right this moment, because it’s urgent to them. And I say, call 911 if it’s that important, but otherwise, everything else can be planned. And, and, and that is the training that I I walk my clients through, because they have to remember that urgency is not always the most important thing. Those are two different things. Once you can bifurcate those in your mind, you can actually truly be more productive, because you don’t get stuck in this mindset that just because something lands on your on your lap, that it’s hot potato and you have to deal with it right now, lest you get burned. So we need to remember that as we go through and the mere urgency bias, just learning that fact is really important. A couple of other
Frank Buck, EdD 29:33
and I think already along that line, if you do jump into whatever is urging somebody else, drop something on you drop everything you do that. You teach them that they can treat you that way that in the future, they can wait to the last minute, drop it on you and you’ll somehow get it done.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:51
Yes. Next up was the planning fallacy. And again, quoting do is tear they said our tendency to underestimate the time it will take to complete Lead a future task, despite knowledge that previous tasks have generally taken longer. And what I usually do is I say, Okay, how long do I think this is going to take and then triple. And that’s usually a good way for me to figure out how long something is truly going to take not just double it, but triple it. And that gives you enough lead room enough space to look at that project and say, Okay, if it is going to take, I think it’s going to be a month, okay, let me expand that to three months. And and then say, okay, is that three months acceptable to me? And then I can decide whether or not I’m going to take on that project. And so many times we, we look at the planning fallacy, and we presume, okay, this is going to take three hours, when in reality, it’s going to take seven hours, or it’s going to take eight hours. And that by its very nature, can either motivate or demotivate us from taking on that project. And that’s, that’s good to know. I mean, it’s, it’s good to know. So you can be aware of what projects are willing to take on which ones you aren’t.
Augusto Pinaud 30:57
You know, it is important in this planning fallacy. When I do coaching, I always tell people that when one of the things we need to break on this planning fallacy is the idea that we are going to have more time tomorrow, you know, people come and say, Oh, yeah, let’s plan in three months, because I will have more time. No, no, no, you cannot see all the time you’re not going to have in three months. But it’s something that I see regularly, and often with people thinking, Okay, if we put it in two weeks, I will have more time, then when no, it’s part of this planning fallacy. No, you are you think you have this illusion that you are going to have more time, when in reality, you will have the same or less
Frank Buck, EdD 31:38
Yeah. And you’re just mortgaging the future. You know, you’re just sticking that stuff, two weeks, and then all the other stuff that’s going to come up and then it’s just a mess. Two weeks from now. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 31:52
it’s a real thing, what we’re talking about here, it plays into procrastination, where the planning fallacy allows our procrastination to kick in and we say hell, I’ll do that tomorrow, next week, so forth, I have a fairly controversial idea to this. And that is simply climbing to the next visible visual node, or the next turning point. And delaying giving specifics beyond that, where possible, right? It depends on the situation. And whether it’s, it’s as a manager that’s expecting this forecast or this prediction, they’ll need to get something. But in my own life, I try and play in hours of time and effort. And I planned short, Sprint’s if you will, without knowing exactly how long the entire project is going to take when I have that flexibility, because it allows me to then box in my time and say, okay, 60 minutes, I’m going to do this. The next 12 hours, I’m going to do this, the next seven days, I’m going to do this and I can I can start to use time to my advantage to accelerate my career
Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:55
trajectory, it makes a lot of sense, I think that we all need to approach projects and ways in which motivate us, and also show us real progress. Going back to the article and present bias, as well as complexity bias, both of those things come into mind, right. One is, we have a tendency to look at the planning fallacy, and and presume that things won’t take as long and therefore, we can just do that, do it all. Now, when in reality, if we just chunked it down into smaller individual parts, even if we don’t plan out further in the future, like you, Chris, you can still be more productive by basically planning that project out in chunks that you’re going to work out, say sprints or otherwise. The other side to that is, I see this all the time, people presume that what they are going to get now is more important than what they’re going to get in the future. And many times the short term reward of doing that little bit of work here is not necessarily the ultimate reward, which is why we procrastinate so often. And it’s probably also why we think complexity over simplicity, we think that the more complex solution is going to solve the very gnarly problem in front of us. And I try to help people understand that complexity to simplicity, and ease to difficulty is a very different set of of x and y axes. Right? We have to think about these things from the perspective of is it simple or hard. And just because simple and difficult or different doesn’t mean that easy? That that something that’s easy to difficult is is the same thing right? simple to complex that is too easy and difficult. We have to keep those things in mind as we make our way forward in terms of projects.
Unknown Speaker 34:30
And other adages are like Ray is, perfection is the enemy of good enough. And perfection is complex for me. So the simpler solution is often good enough, which gets you value and you can move on.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:44
Yeah, I call that the progress imperative, right progress over perfection. And as a as a recovering an ongoing recovering perfectionist. I know that I get hung up all the time on wanting to have my standard of excellence be perfection and this is why I talk about my standard of excellence which is for me, excellence is not perfection. It’s take perfection and nudge it back a little right? lest I would never go online, live every week, anything but idle, right? It’s just not worth it to me if if I want perfection. But if I can set it as a standard of excellence for me, the standard of excellence is that we’re going live at this time every week for the show, and what has to happen, progress has to happen. That’s the progress imperative. And if we can keep that in line, then man, we can get things done. Because mistakes will happen, stuff will come up, but you know what, we’ll make it work. And that’s really the most important part of it.
Augusto Pinaud 35:37
America’s mentioned mentioning, you know, can the planning or is asking can the planning fallacy be mitigated? True, better time tracking and projection? And, you know, maybe most people I don’t think can’t, because the problem is, we tend to always underestimate how long things are going to take. And as you were saying, we tend to consider that things that are going to come in the future are not going to be more important than what the things we have right now. So I think those two things in general, are not going to allow us to Medicaid, do you know this planning fallacy? By better trying time tracking and projection? in general?
Frank Buck, EdD 36:18
Yeah. And we also don’t take into account what other little monkey wrench may be thrown in there. Maybe a job takes about two hours, we think it’s going to take two hours, under normal circumstances, it would take two hours, but the power goes out, the scanner stops working, the printer ran out of ink. You got an emergency phone call, you never know what gets thrown in there. That sort of stops the whole process.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:48
Absolutely. All right. Any final thoughts on the article, otherwise, I will recommend to watchers and listeners to really check out the article will be in the show notes. But it’s worth checking out all seven of the fallacies there are actually hundreds of logical fallacies that we all have to face as humans. And it’s really important, I think of it in terms of software, I always say this about software, which is to be a great Craftsman of the software, you have to know all of its limitations. And to be a great human is for us to greater know, our limitations. Because we can work better as ourselves, once we know what we’re capable of doing and pushing against those barriers, right? There are certain barriers that we have, for example, we have various visual barriers, every human has them, you know, we see things that don’t don’t exist, we blend together. envision, right, you’re seeing two different images, our brain matches those two images together. And so there are actual blind parts of our vision. We have limitations, that’s just part of our biology. But the better and more you know those things, the actual better you can be in terms of both potential and of course, here productivity. So I will check out I will put that link in there for you all to check out the other. The next article is for you Ulysses users out there, Ulysses is a productivity app that allows you to kind of structure all kinds of things in a like a weekly and daily planning environment. Are there any Ulysses users?
Augusto Pinaud 38:19
Fantastic writing, I use it for writing notebooks but articles and short things. You Lisa says my my call my my application for that.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:29
Yeah, so there’s, there’s just a really great article that I had come across. And if you want to check it out, it’s by Sean blank. It’s on the sweet setup. And he shows you how to create a productivity dashboard for weekly and daily planning using Ulysses. So if you are a writer, and you want to use that, for that purpose, go for it. Okay, next up, I want to talk about Francesca Alessio, our colleague and friend over at keep productive the YouTube channel and podcast and newsletter and and the media company that Francesco has developed. He put out an article on medium recently that he called the war of note taking apps. And he says he’s, he wanted to look into the Battle of 2021. And his personal predictions related to note taking apps and what he’s calling the war of note taking apps. In essence, he says that Rome and obsidian are basically, you know, have kind of risen in the ranks. And then he’s talking about the growth and kind of mainstream approach of notion. So talking about notion, the reemergence of Evernote, and full disclosure I suppose. I’m the Evernote regionally different with America, one of the Evernote certified consultants and actually Dr. Buckley you are as well and Evernote certified consultants. So obviously we have some fans of Evernote on on the panel. But but it doesn’t make me Not a fan actually of some of these other tools. And I’ve seen use cases for these where I just wouldn’t use Evernote to do these things. And so it’s really nice to see these other tools. out there to do so. So any any big ticket thoughts about the article, I’ll continue to note here, I’ll just put this out here, which is to say that Francesco noted here, the winners are notion three. He wrote here E to E tools. And it says it feels like tools will get this by default. And he’s saying end to end encryption. So he so there’s another either so end to end encryption tools, standard notes and bear. He’s seeing tools like standard notes and bear will be the encryption options. And basically, those are the options people will be gravitating toward for privacy. Then he says that Evernote 11 he says he has a feeling Evernote might be on the rise again, I would agree with him. It says so something to the effect of Evernote, focusing on end to end encryption and stability. And I’ll come back to that because I have some thoughts there. So we’re in Evernote version 10, not 11. So I’m not sure why he wrote Evernote 11 there, but that’s okay. He wrote losers are Dinah list and workflowy. I know that art, I think you’re workflowy fan out there. So you can you can comment on whether you think that workflow is going to be on the decline. And then of course, he’s guessing that Google This is completely conjecture, but he’s guessing that Google will buy Kota and that notion is going to be a buyout option for perhaps Apple as well. I’m reading here, I’m going to start from there. But initial comments, initial thoughts related to kind of the the development of note taking apps and where you think various note taking apps are today.
Frank Buck, EdD 41:49
You know, I’ve always been one from the you know, the tried and true that if it you know if it works, and course again, I’m an Evernote certified consultant. I’ve been using Evernote for years. It, it makes sense, it just works. It’s getting better. Of course, we all like something that’s bright and shiny and new. And then we jump into it. And then we’re dissatisfied because it doesn’t do this, this this. And then this this, this are added in saying we say well, it’s bloated. Sure like it when it was simpler. And the circle goes round and round the ground. I think Evernote is in a very good place. You know, as I’ve watched YouTube videos and others have done like home notion and roam and that sort of thing. I don’t really see leaving Evernote for anything else right now.
Augusto Pinaud 42:43
There’s no there. There is one thing on that article that I think it is interesting. When you think on the initial, this is before Evernote, okay, before really having power on your pocket, those were note taking apps, okay, they work to really keep you know, that phone number, that really piece of information, instead of having a piece of note and loose. That was the goal of that. But as he said, he said, Now I should say personal knowledge apps. And I think, in part, he’s right on that, you know, those that we call note taking apps, they don’t contain really no notes anymore, they are more knowledge databases, maybe on the form of notes, maybe on the form of you know, I remember one day, when the iPhone, go to release, okay, their notes didn’t have folders didn’t have ways to classify or put images or any of that, or search even he was massive. A pain, but I’ll be go that, you know, Chris is famous or no for an application called notebook. And it was the first app on the iPhone, at least that I remember who could do notes in the proper way, with folders with search with organization and all that. And that was so important for me because that was not notetaking that was more a knowledge database that I had. So it doesn’t matter if you have it on OneNote or Evernote, a few percentage of people will change most people will not change because the cost hidden cost of go and learn the new app discover the things that are invisible for you. Okay, none of them. You know, one note on Evernote, and apple. Now there are certain things that you are simply not aware of how much you use that going now and change it really going to have a cost and a learning curve. So I don’t know, I think it’s not that people will not change but the things to change need to really, really be massive for you to move all that information from one place to another, at least on the productivity circles where data You know, more knowledge database than then it’s got her note,
Unknown Speaker 45:04
I like that gusto. And I would chime in there and say, This is a mature market. These digital notes solutions have been around for a while, I do remember a time when I couldn’t quite understand the the architecture of Evernote when I was an early user. And so I stumbled through it. But it also points out one note, which was highlighted here, you’ve got the big players, Microsoft, Google, who have no solutions, you’ve got the note, hive, specifics, best of breed solutions, like Evernote in motion, those are the two I know very well. And then you have all these task management apps. And so Francisco’s biggest prediction is perhaps the most interesting thing to me. And that is, what are we going to see a tight integration between your task applications and your note taking applications. And when we see that that’s when people will become very productive, being able to take raw notes, and then track actions and follow up and assignment to others? Because that doesn’t happen. Well, today, I know there are some integration solutions. The second thing I would call out, is there still a large group of people who just use pen and paper, or use whiteboards? How do we get people to become more productive by going from the analog system to a digital system hasn’t happened yet? In large part, those Like us on this call where we like preparation. That’s right, we’re there. So there’s no convincing of us? How are we going to sway to a new application? I don’t think so. But how do these vendors win over individual people still using whiteboards and pen and paper, I think it’s going to be some sort of technology that makes it really quick with text recognition, to be able to take a picture, move that into a digital format that I can then quickly take action on.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:58
Yeah, so I’ve got a couple thoughts here. And I don’t want to take too much time, because then we’ll be here for another three hours about me talking about personal knowledge management, but PKM different than, say, the 90s, when we talked about pin pins, personal information managers, we have these terms that tend to kind of crop up and we want to call applications, what we think they are. And in the wild, they are very different creatures. So I challenge the the idea here, I always want to say notion. And then I think people think I’m talking about the project the product. So I challenge the idea here that applications like Evernote or OneNote, or notion or otherwise obsidian Rome research, you know, you name it, that they can be pigeonholed into any specific one category of tool, I think that we missed the point when we try to think about them as what we want them to be versus what happens in the hands of the average user. And I think of like the average daily user, right? Think of the average daily user, they’re using it for ways you absolutely have no idea people should or would or could or want to use the tools. And and that’s something only the developers see things like with Evernote, I’m marveled watching Evernote make changes and why they make changes that they make public and tell us why they make those changes. Because at 200 and 50 million users, they see a scale of users that we can’t possibly imagine the data that they can collect and understand their users is just is just irrational to us, and not rationally capable of understanding on that level. And so I think about this from Apple notes, from the level of Microsoft OneNote, from the level of Evernote, they have enough users, when you have a quarter billion users, we have nearly half a billion users. That’s the kind of scale where you start to see kind of the the intricacies of humanity. And so I think Evernote can be used for personal knowledge management so can OneNote. So can notions oak and obsidian, so can coda. And otherwise, that’s not particularly the point though, which is that we need to have a tool that’s versatile enough, kind of to Chris’s point, that we can actually integrate these components so that they become seamless. You know, one of the reasons why I’ve always gravitated toward Evernote and remember the milk is because those two tools work together seamlessly for me. And I don’t, I have no friction between the two of them. I just use them. And they just integrate work and work well together. So the idea that we need to have an omni platform, or we need to have obsidian with the subtle cast and concepts and you know, all of these kinds of things kind of sound like nonsense to me. Because we’re not actually thinking about the average user, what average users out there thinking, I need to set up a zettelkasten system.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 49:43
Better yet, not even knowing that subtle caston exists. We in the productivity space are very myopically viewed on those things. And I always tried to just broaden the view out to the average person using this system for and do they even have a system. So if I take a person who has no system whatsoever, and they’re just trying to get have things done, what should the tool do? And for me, that means having features that are easily accessible, but doesn’t clutter the interface, and is basically an adaptable space. And we can see lots of programs starting to make that inroads. And so that’s my prediction is that more tools are going to become multi purpose. And they’re going to just kind of settle into the background, so that they can do the things we need to when we need them to do them. Okay. I, as I said, I can talk about this for hours, because I find it fascinating. But we’ve got to move on. Okay, so what’s our next story, this week, you’re muted, I said, is to keep you on track OmniFocus for the web of OmniFocus. Finally, add support for custom perspective on the web, only focus, make a big move from being only Mac and iPad to add the web component to be able to use on any platform. And finally, you can use perspectives on the web, or custom perspective on the web, that is a really, really massive improvement. So for the only focus users, especially those who are in that environment where they use, you know, certain only focus on the house on the Mac, and now can use it at work in the PC. It’s a really, really big deal. Fantastic. Next up is, is tough for me, because I I’ve had a bad experience with this tool, which is Newton mail. So for those of you who don’t know the story in the history, cloud magic was this wonderful email application that ultimately became Newton. Unfortunately, it went through this period where, you know, cloud magic changed his name, no problem. But basically, they shut down the product, then someone purchased it or something like that. And then they relaunched the product. And then they said, Hey, here goes the product at this particular rate, you can, you could buy the product, and then all of a sudden, they change their rate and became a much higher subscription cost. And it really just, you know, there were too many changes too soon. All of that said, the mail application, it’s an email application, it is phenomenal, it is actually a really, really great applet application. The problem is actually all management, the fact that the management of the company was so poor, that really led me off of it. So I kind of warn you upfront with that fact. But that being the case, they have recently released a new set of features on Newton, they now have dark mode. And they have brought multi swipe to the platform so that you can go ahead, and, you know, swipe on mobile and tablet devices. So you can go ahead and process through the system, they also know that they have a better privacy policy. That’s pretty good. But you know, they’ve got a bunch of new features that they have coming and planned. I myself, and I’ve been looking for a new email application. And so I’ve been looking at Newton again, I’m just really nervous about the fact, the last time I got sold on Newton, I really got frustrated and left them. So I really want to I want to love the application. Because it is it’s it’s fast, it’s responsive, it handles all of my email accounts easily. But I’m just hoping that if I do sync my, my credit card down for Newton again, that they don’t put me in another position where I have to all of a sudden drop everything and switch applications because that’s the definition of lack of productivity, when you have to switch applications without, you know, enough notice. Okay, next up a good, so you want to talk about Trello you want me to, you’re gonna
Augusto Pinaud 53:26
go about Trello. But what I love this article, so go for it. So
Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:30
So Trello just announced a new set of Trello keyboard shortcuts. So now you can. In essence, if you didn’t know, if you hold down the shift key and tap the forward slash, that’s the question mark on your keyboard in any trouble environment. So whether that’s in the browser or in the desktop applications, not on mobile, because you can’t, but you you will get a series of screen which will show your keyboard shortcuts. Now, you can tap certain keys and immediately capture those keyboard shortcuts without having to use the system wide ones. So for example, if you’d have z that will now undo the last action that you did and retrieve the work. So for example, if you accidentally over typed something, you can just tap z, and it will go ahead and reverse that it will reverse that item altogether. You can use shift z to go ahead and redo in essence, if you corrected something and then you accidentally undid it, you can hit Shift z and it will just redo that action and correct it again. And then finally, you can use our our will now repeat a previous action. There are so many times when you want to like move something to someplace else, or you want to you know move it down to the bottom of the list or you move a card over to another location. Well now you can just literally hover your your cursor over that particular list of cards and whatever list you say dragged it to now you can just keep clicking R and it will repeat the action of what you did. So you can really power through some really interesting features here, card templates have come to mobile. Fantastic. And they’ve also updated some the map power up. So if you have been using the map power up, they’ve made some updates to the map power up, I don’t use it. So I don’t know much about it. But that has also been done.
Augusto Pinaud 55:20
I am a big, big fan of keyboard shortcuts. And I’ve been there. And the same way I said that the bigger obstacle for many people to be iPad only is their addiction to the mouse. I think part of that is because people use the mouse instead of keyboard shortcuts. You know, when you learn to really use keyboard shortcuts, just stop using the mouse, the mouse comes to second thought. So the fact that Trello is adding this is really making Trello more and more powerful. So I’m excited about
Unknown Speaker 55:50
Yeah, that keyboard shortcut right there, at the very end re repeating actions is probably the most exciting one, because I had big hopes long time ago for Automator, that I’d be able to set up these workflows in my desktop environment. And it’s been difficult. So to be able to simplify that in the Trello board and to be able to get things repeat is exciting.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 56:09
Yeah, I mean, anyone who doesn’t know Butler, inside of Trello, absolutely learn Butler and learn the keyboard shortcuts. My only current gripe is that if you are in Trello, in the browser, and Trello, in the desktop applications, those do have different keyboard shortcuts. So that’s a little bit of a challenge for me, because if I’m in the browser, and I’m, you know, powering through a Trello board, then I go to the desktop application, I now have to re jigger my brain around which keyboard shortcuts still working the desktop application, which runs on electron j. s. framework. And so it’s it’s one of those things where I’m like, oh, gosh, these are different shortcuts. And now I have to, you know, remap my brain for thinking in that regard. So that is something we should all be mindful of. But I’m just excited to see Trello developing, you know, they have the table view coming. It’s currently in beta, and we’re gonna see table view come into into play. So now you can import view, and then switch things into table view, which is going to really help with Project Management. That’s where I use Trello. So much. And art is noting here that keyboard shortcuts are productivity, gold, and yeah, absolutely agree with art there. Okay. Our last story, we before we get to the science of productivity is a podcast episode, actually, that was put out by the less joing podcast armacell, who some of you may know, I’ve known ra for for many years. And he was just noting, in essence, that he’s going to be scaling back the company. And he gives his reasons in the podcast. And so for those of you who kind of have ever thought about what you were doing with the company, and all of that kind of inner turmoil about change, he kind of you know, explains it in the podcast episode. And I thought it was just really, really useful for all of us who are so productivity minded, here goes somebody who built an efficiency company, like how to build a scalable company, he helps companies scale. And here he is kind of baring his reasoning for wanting to step back from things and to basically purposefully not scale. And I think there’s something to be said about that when we all deal with these issues, you know, when the covid 19 pandemic happened here in the United States, and and I started thinking about how my company was going to adapt and change. These are the tough kinds of thoughts that we all keep internally, and we don’t really share them many times to the public. And so just know that we all have to go through these periods and think through really, what does it mean to do the things we want to do in life and enjoy those things. And that’s a part of productivity, right? That’s a part of us understanding what being and having a productive life is kind of, in the concept of the good life, we want to be able to choose the right things. And it sounds like our a miser was doing that. And so kudos to him. And it’s well worth the listen in terms of just understanding that we all have different opinions about what we want to see and how we want to grow in life. And he’s given that opportunity to air that for us
Unknown Speaker 59:06
quick comment too, as well. I love the authenticity and transparency of our in this because every business wants to perceive be perceived as very, very successful. And by golly, it’s important to do a little self reflection to say, Where am I going and how am I going to get there? And is that the best way and maybe I should spend time elsewhere. There’s a great book called doing good better. It’s it’s related to philanthropy, but it’s it comes to mind here because it’s essentially a book that says if I want to create good, is it better for me to spend my money or my time to do good? And for a lot of people they think they should spend their time at it but it turns out their professions deliver better incomes that can then find other people who are better served to do that good.
Augusto Pinaud 59:54
Yeah, there is there. When I listened to the podcast, there is some nautical nautical from and I will put the note On the link on the check notes from Jeff goings, where he talked about something similar after he was getting his business, you know, and growing the business and all that is covered here, but I doing all this and making all the things happen. But what I like to do that he’s writing now I delegated with one simple reason to initiate the business. And what I wanted to do more of it is exactly because of a scale in what I do the least of, because I end up delegating all that instead of really doing what I love and what I wanted to do more of. So it is a really great, honest podcast to hear. Same thing I thought article and I will put the note in in the chona.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:00:38
Fantastic. So with that, that ends our headlines this week, we are going to be on the flip side of this and we’re going to cover our featured story of the week we’re going to talk about Apple and their development of a search engine and what that means for our productivity. I will cover our new tools of the week. But right now, we are going to hear the science of productivity with Matt Plummer from Nirvana, take it away, man,
Matt Plummer 1:01:01
welcome to the science of productivity segment. Each segment, I tried to bring some new research for you on the topics of productivity, important performance, to help you accomplish your goals faster. In this segment, what I want to do is talk about some new research that illuminates the incredible power of taking ownership. So let’s start with research from mergency room data, some researchers from Harvard Business School took emergency room data from between 2007 and 2010. And they looked at the difference in performance of two different queueing systems. And by that we mean so there is a a pooled queueing system in which you know, all the patients go into one queue, and then it’s assigned out from there to the different doctors. And then there is a dedicated queueing system, which basically each doctor had its own queue of patients that it would work down. And so then they said, Okay, which one was more efficient and which one was more effective. And you know, what one thing is that the pooled queuing system, the one where all the patients are together and then are distributed most efficiently to the doctors that that would generate better results, because the system intrinsically inherently is more efficient in terms of distribution of resources. But what they found actually is that when they compare these two different queueing systems, the dedicated queuing system where each doctor had have their own queue had better results on two dimensions. So the length of stay how long the patients were in the emergency room went down 17%. And the average wait time even went down 9%. So why did this happen? Why did the dedicated killing systems which should be slower, less efficient, result in more efficient systems and better results? Well, according to the researchers, and I want to quote them, what they say is that improved performance stems from physicians increased ownership over patients and resources, the power of ownership, I define ownership as taking responsibility for the outcomes of your work, so not just the output, but the outcomes you take responsibility for. And when you take responsibility and increases your motivation to do the work, you invest, you add disk discretional, effort, discretionary effort. And so ownership is really powerful. What these researchers then did is they said, well, let’s take some mathematical models and simulations and try to see if this these findings will apply to other fields. And what they found is that largely, these results apply in fields where they’re knowledge intensive, and there’s a high sense or high level of customer ownership. And so they found that it would likely apply in you know, medicine, obviously, that’s where it first started personal banking, and even places like the apple Genius Bar. Now, these findings resonate with research from Wharton, Professor Adam Grant, who found that when you look at university fundraisers, and when you expose them to a scholarship recipient, you know, people that raising funds for for even just five minutes that their fundraising amounts, and as they were able to fundraise increased 400%. So this idea of taking ownership of being motivated to do your work and actually, you know, take responsibility for the outcome of your work is a really powerful effect. So, if you’re trying to do work or trying to increase the efficiency of a team focus, at least in part on increasing ownership. That’s it for this science of productivity segment.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:04:30
Wonderful. Thank you, Matt. That was Matt Plummer from Zavala with the science of productivity segment. And with that, that brings us along to our segment, which is new tools of the week. So each week goes through and I scoured the interwebs for all the various new tools and apps that are out there. And we also have tools that we use that we know and love. And so we talk to you about them. We tell you, each of us brings a new tool of the week and we invite our panelists to also share one with you. So let’s get started with our new tools of the week. The first tool is a tool we’ve actually lightly talked about today, which is coda, I first came into contact with coda, because it was used for the David Allen companies. GTD summit that happened, I believe that was in 2019. And so David Allen had put together this summit, this virtual summit. And in essence, what they did was they used Cota as a living document of sorts, to be able to share with everyone, all the various parts of the summit. And I just thought it was this really remarkable application. And so what Kota does is, it gives you the ability to, in essence, create a living document and use that data in kind of a very seamless way. Um, you don’t have to know, you know, coding, you don’t have to do all of those pieces, you could just basically put all the data into the system. And it goes ahead and gives you kind of a database on the front end, while still giving you the the styling, and the productivity tools on in that same environment. So think of it being akin to kind of air table or maybe even fibery, or other tools like that, that gives you that kind of sense of control, and seeing the data in different ways that are useful to you. I just really like it. It’s a useful tool for being able to share things with folks and fits into that kind of space of of data management in a way that really works for everybody. Okay, well, Cousteau, what is your tool this week.
Augusto Pinaud 1:06:32
So the tool for me is called low caste. And the story happens that my seven year old loves baseball, and he wanted to see the world serious and he was really frustrated about it. So we don’t have cable, we cut the cable, I think before he was born, so he don’t know that we have never have cable. But in fact, if you wanted to watch baseball, and we discovered this app, you can donate money to them. But especially you can watch loyalty, a local TV using a, you know, Android use an apple store Apple TV, so we have it on the Apple TV, Amazon, Roku and many more things. But now he can go there and watch his baseball. That is what he wanted to watch. But it’s a great way to get the local channels. If you don’t have an H. H antenna, or really, it’s not that great. I just want to put it to the web to the Apple TV. It’s low resolution, but for what he wanted to watch was perfect. So if you are in the interest of getting some local channels, this is a fantastic way.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:07:36
Fantastic. Thanks a gusto. Dr. Buck, what’s your tool this week, you’re muted.
Frank Buck, EdD 1:07:41
There we go. That’s better. unmuted now, mine is a website. And I’m not sure how new it is. I just know it’s new to me. But PDF bear.com, you working with PDFs can sometimes be a real pain. But this just gives you a number of ways to convert to convert word to PDF, PDF to word, put pages of a PDF together, split pages apart, that for years I’ve used a similar website called PDF candy really sort of does the same thing. But it’s always good to have a backup because you never know when one site that’s especially one that’s free, is going to go belly up. So this gives, you know, gives us a new player in that arena. For example, a lawyer not too long ago contacted me and she said I’ve got this PDF, I’ve got a brief, it’s in PDF form, I’ve got to add this word document into into an appendix. How in the world am I going to do that? Well, we just use PDF candy or could use PDF bear here to split the pages apart, convert what needed to be added into PDF and then just merge the pages back together, you can put them in any order you want to and just very easy to do is just dragging things onto the screen. You can have a free account that does some things. You can pay money, and it’ll do even more things. But it’s just a really nice tool I think to have in your arsenal
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:09:25
with it as well as being able to just use the web instance itself. Fantastic. Thank you, Dr. Buck. Chris, what is your app here this week?
Unknown Speaker 1:09:34
Excellent. So thank you for giving me a chance to talk about it to do cloud, is it this is a bit self serving, but to do cloud is one of the applications for productivity purposes. We have iOS, Android web, Mac desktop and Windows desktop. And we have a Chrome extension so it fits in nicely. Yes, I’m the product manager and strategists so it’s a bit self serving, but it’s a very capable tool. It’s been around since 2008. And I’m pretty excited about what we what we’re developing for iOS and Big Sur. iOS specifically has a wind down mode and widgets applique capability. And we’re taking advantage of that. So it’s a really nice way for a productivity person at the end of the day to make a list of things and then wind down sequence of the things that need to be done the next day, or a quick view of other tasks from the widget view on their home screen. Two really quick things. I also re dropped in a second application, if I might make a mention of this parsehub parsehub, about a week ago became one of my favorite tools. And parsehub is a screen scraping tool. And it is really, really capable. They have a very generous free tier, which is what hooked me. I built out my sequence, I basically was trying to gather data from a public directory. Well, this tool allowed me to program, the bot that navigated the public directory, and click multiple times through the searches and captured and extracted data from this public directory, right. So it’s all legitimate and solid, I could have done it by hand. But parsehub made it super simple to do. And I used screen scraping tools years ago, but this one has my attention now because it’s so quick and capable. So those are my tools. Thanks, Ray.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:11:28
Fantastic, wonderful. So that was the new tools of the week. And that, of course takes us along to our story of the week. Today’s story the week is that Apple, there was a story out of the Financial Times basically, that basically, the rumor mill started that Apple was creating their own search engine to rival apples to rival Google’s search. And so I thought it would be interesting for us to have this discussion in gousto. And I kind of had this conversation about it being interesting for us to discuss what the the concept of an apple search engine would look like. And this is my time to make a potshot at Apple. Because of anything they have, if they haven’t learned anything from the Apple Maps debacle, they are attempting to challenge Google in Google’s dominance space, which is search. Now this isn’t the right, exactly. And, again, this is in the context of something important, which is that Google has now had a kind of a political situation come about with the Department of Justice, basically, you know, filing in Confluence with with several other attorneys general, a, an antitrust violation lawsuit against them. And this is going to take years years to play out in the courts. But the reality is, is that this is a political environment, and Google is trying to play plate cool in that space, they’ve come out very strongly against the lawsuit. And and I think they will prevail. And I think they have a pretty good argument against this, because of the reasoning for the lawsuit and the way in which it was filed, and so on, so forth. But the reality is, is that Apple and Google are negotiating right now, for that, you know, multibillion dollar, I don’t actually know how much it is, but it’s a it’s a lot of money that Google pays Apple every year to be available as the primary search engine on their devices. And and so here we are at a place where Apple may start surfacing their own search above Google in that space, and what does that really mean for our productivity?
Augusto Pinaud 1:13:31
So the fan of Apple, you know, put his flag in here. And I agree with the maps thing. I don’t think it was wrong. I mean, it’s taken years to, to make it but also Google had years ahead that, as you said, you know, the rumor, according to the DOJ is that is between eight and $12 billion that Apple receive from Google. But also it’s important to take into consideration that even though this will take years will also take years for Apple to develop something good, you know, that the go, for example, has take time to get to a decent level. And but there is nothing else in the market. Okay. I mean, sorry, blamed doesn’t bling and there is nothing else in the market on if Google gets in trouble with the government. And they get to be limited because of the vision of the government then what is what is going to happen? The other thing that may be interesting is what game is going to play Google in the sense or Apple in the sense that Google plays advertising game. Okay, now, what is going to what’s going to be the game that Apple is going to play because $12 billion Oh, here is are coming with me. So 12 billion bucks, even on the size of Apple, this is still a nice amount of change. So what is going to be better getting to a game for Apple To get into that game, I believe, need to be on something that will produce more than $12 billion. Now, when you’re thinking on a project that will produce more than that, that’s I mean, project to see what they have on the back end. To make them consider it. If
Unknown Speaker 1:15:17
I can chime in, it’s gonna be interesting to see how they tie search into the assistant, Siri, and whether they can enable Siri to be more effective doing audio searches, then the current technologies today because we have an Alexa in our home, and it does decent search results it works well with with basic search results. But beyond the, you know, the the what’s the weather or, you know, what’s the news headline? It doesn’t deliver great results today. And I think that is the potential of Apple to tie those two technologies together.
Augusto Pinaud 1:15:55
Oh, I will send my seven year old your house for a week he will train your Alexa like you have no idea.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:16:02
So artists, artists noting here that search in Siri is the next Bing and Cortana. I think that’s a I think that’s a snide comment. And I am right there with you. I don’t think that Apple can do this. Well, they can do a lot of things really well, predominantly hardware. And they can they can write limited software that can work and integrate among those pieces of hardware. They have not done well, when they’ve tried to create cross platform software, as infrastructure. And search is infrastructure. It is not its own, you know, platform or ecosystem. And, and Siri is still you know, kind of limited in its abilities. And I think it will continue to be limited in its abilities. Even with search added as a feature, I think they’re going to lose a lot more money than they would gain. If they were to try and develop a search engine, are they really going to try and go into the advertising space and challenge, double click inside Google, you know, Google Ads is is really dominant in that space. Facebook is the next biggest arm there, and they’re potentially going to hurt themselves. geopolitically, if they try to challenge Facebook, in that sense. I think Zuckerberg is willing to cut off his own left arm to be able to continue to challenge their dominance in social search. And, and so there’s a lot going on there that I don’t think Apple can really make themselves dominant in that space, better yet, even a competent competitor. So I’m, I’m more than happy to see what they what they develop. But I think this is going to fall into the into the rubbish pile pretty quickly. This is, you know, an internal, you know, private project that they’re building. Obviously, they’re trying to take advantage of this situation, quite honestly, I think it could bode well for Google. And I’ll disclosure I am the Google Small Business advisor for productivity. So clearly, I am in the camp of Google being dominant in search and continuing to be in search, because it works so well for myself and my clients, both personal and professionally. But, you know, we have a lot of really good search engines out there. We don’t need another one. And I and I don’t think that Apple is the right company to do that. To be quite honest, I wish that Microsoft would better and put more energy into being I think that Microsoft with Azure, and its ability to see data at that scale, can do a much better job than apple. And I think that Apple, Microsoft’s reasons for pulling back Cortana and pushing it more toward enterprise was a mistake for them. And art can speak better to this than I can, but I really feel like Microsoft could have done a better job here and challenging Google in search. And they still fit in that, you know, whatever it is four or 5% of search that they currently dominate, dominate as their next biggest competitor. And, you know, they could really do a much better job. And they could be what Apple is to hardware right now, which is the privacy focused search engine, right, they could buy DuckDuckGo they could become the privacy aware search engine, and that by Wolfram Alpha, is that correct Wolfram Alpha, by all of those.
Augusto Pinaud 1:19:14
Not to compete with Google on the advertising, but to tied up with this privacy. And now we’re going to have this browser this search engine that will keep your privacy that it will be an interesting game for Apple to get it.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:19:29
Yeah, artists noting here that Bing is moving more inside the corporate world than the public one. And I think, you know, it makes a lot of sense. But I also see there being a real opportunity here that Apple with its current, I mean, they’re, they’re in 20th place if they launch tomorrow, better yet giving Google another, you know, two to three years of lead time in developing out its neural network and AI frameworks that are really, you know, just rocketing out of the park and Google Cloud just announced this at Cloud Next, the ability for them to do, in essence, secure basically encrypted data in process, right, so in use, so now we not only have encrypted data at rest, encrypted data in transit, but encrypted data in use. And so if Bing is going to try and challenge the corporate world, they’re not going to really make much inroads when Google Cloud can can offer three sets of encryption, that no other technology I’ve seen out there can do. And then for Apple to step out there and say that they’re going to be the privacy focused, you know, search engine, potentially, I don’t know if that’s what they’re going to say. But you know, it’s one of those things. And art is jokingly saying that he’s waiting for Tim Cook to announce that Apple has now invented search, which is typically what Apple does, it comes out and it presents a product that’s been on the market for many years. And they say that they invented it. That being the case. any final comments from the panel on Apple search?
Unknown Speaker 1:20:58
Yeah, if I can make just a couple and I volunteer that they’re, they’re not as well studied, as your thoughts ran in you, you shared a lot there, that would be interesting to unpackage and talk through in more detail. But you think about Steve Jobs. He was the visionary leader who launched, who really made the Mac brand, a consumer brand, not just a digital advertising, creative persons machine. And he launched the iPod and the iPhone, the Tim Cook has had a bit more of a difficult job to launch new products that are revolutionary. But he’s been a great iterative. leader at Apple, I will say I would love to see someone else that’s more competitive with Google because I feel a little bit at risk with its dominance in the search market. I also feel a little bit vulnerable with the advertising dollars to propel Google because I don’t know what search results are on page 234 or five, six, I don’t go there. So very well, Google could be controlling and manipulating the results based on the ad dollars, plus their algorithm that delivers value. You know, I’m influenced by the sort social dilemma, a Netflix documentary that was very compelling about how ad dollars are manipulating the experience that we have on social platforms. Well, the same thing happens in search. So I would love for Apple to come with a new model that’s not driven by advertising. And there are so many consumers out there that have adopted their tools that are not technologically savvy, that they’re going to do a better job than I would say other vendors have. And I don’t think Microsoft did a great job even though it had dominance in hardware. Maybe you will say that it’s a it’s a business dominance versus a mom and pop, average person who, who uses devices and might be an apple user, with their iPads, their iPhones, their watches, and maybe a Mac desktop. And maybe Apple will be able to deliver services to all of us that competes more effectively in that search market and takes away some of the strong market share that Google has. That’s my hope.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:23:07
Yeah, I would, I would only I would only challenge the point that in some way, shape or form. Google themselves is monolithic. The reality is, is that alphabet as a holding company holds multiple pieces to what is what we colloquially call Google is multiple companies with multiple different pieces. And many times, there’s lots of infighting that happens directly inside of Google, it’s well known that Google has these factions that don’t really control any part of the system. So Google is its own worst enemy here, I think more than more than any other challenger in the market. Google is their own worst enemy. And they have to actually, I mean, we’ve we’ve talked about this on the show before, which is their communication strategy with Hangouts, and Gmail and Google duo and Google Chat, and Google, and Google and Google, you name the products that they have come out and killed and come out and killed over time. And and so this ends up being Google infighting, right dealing with who’s going to be the dominant piece in this, is it going to be Google meat now? Is that are they going to be the dominant communications tool on the platform? Are they going to be deprecated and lost to a new tool that somebody in a side project created? And everybody thought was the next thing that they should publish into the into the world? So if anyone is going to outdo Google and search, it’s going to be Google. And if anyone is going to topple Google, it’ll be Google. So that’s my, that’s my kind of thoughts there. And if it’s going to be if it’s going to be another competitor that will come out and do better than Google. I’m all for it. I don’t think that Google actually is worse off for that reason. But with with all of the IoT out there that is supported by Google Now, the Google Assistant that is I think we are in a much better place. And I actually I’m, I’m of two minds here. I think what you’re talking about Chris is really important that we actually Focus on privacy, and especially with more federal regulation coming out, similar to the GDPR. And what California has put out in terms of their Protection Act, Data Protection Act, as we see that happen, it will become progressively more difficult for other companies to come in and challenge in that space. And so it will, it will be imperative, it’ll be really incumbent upon the, the governments of the world to decide how our data is both controlled and protected in that sense. But then on the other side of it, I honestly don’t want my data in all of these places, right? If if we have more competition in the space, then I have to go outside of Microsoft and Apple, and Verizon or whatever your major telecom is at&t, and Google. And, and, and my data becomes more diffuse. And in so many other places, that makes me less secure. So I’m always really concerned about those pieces. It’s like you have to trust a few. And and there is that competing force of those of those two points. But I take it to heart and I and I take it seriously, both my own privacy and security, but also everybody else’s, as we have to make some of these hard choices. regarding those any final thoughts?
Unknown Speaker 1:26:11
It’s great commentary, like I think,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:26:13
no problem. All right, that brings us to the end of anything but idle. And before we close out, I just wanted to give our panelists an opportunity to tell us where we can keep up to date with them, and keep on top of the work that they are doing. Dr. Buck, I’ll put you at first working folks keep in touch with you. And up to date regarding your work out there in the world.
Frank Buck, EdD 1:26:34
Come over to Frank buck dot o RG. And when you get there, first thing, just hop on the mailing list, get two really great gifts for you. And follow me on Twitter and Instagram. At Dr. Frank buck. In other words at Dr. Frank book on both Twitter and Instagram. Wonderful.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:26:57
Thank you for being here on the show. Dr. Buck. And then Chris, Chris, how can folks keep on top of your work? Keep up to date with you or connect with you?
Unknown Speaker 1:27:06
Thanks. Great. I’m using a traditional approach people are welcome to email me at Chris at apa go.com. That’s a PPI gio.com Chris apa.com. Thanks so
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:27:17
much. Thanks for being here. All righty gousto. We are closing out the show. Another one in the bag Episode 27 is done. Thanks for much for joining me as always and helping to make anything but it’ll happen. Wonderful. Pleasure. Great. So with that, that is anything but idle. Please let us know if there’s a story we missed. I mean, we can’t track everything in the world. And if you if we did miss the story on head over to anything but idle calm there on the website, you can click on Contact, you can go ahead and leave us a message send us a message. We have our DMS open on twitter at anything but idle, you can tweet at us so reply to us or you can dm us on Twitter at anything but idle, give question or comment anything but idle as well head on over there. And we are happy to respond to you if we need to. While you’re on anything but idle. Each episode, we have the embedded video for the show that we recorded, as well as the podcast episode itself. When we have the show notes with all the links, you know to click to for the stories of the week, the new tools of the week are there and any extra stories or anything else like that, that we collect along the way there’s a text transcript that we produce it’s machine transcribed, so it’s not, you know, super accurate, but you can jump to sections and kind of understand what we talked about throughout the episode on that this is your first time watching us on the live stream. Feel free to subscribe to the show. So you get notified of our weekly live streams. If you’re listening to the podcast, you can go ahead and subscribe by going to anything but idle.com and clicking on that subscribe tab. And it has instructions for how to subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Thanks to everybody for watching this show. listening to the show. If you can leave us a rating a review in Apple podcasts or Stitcher or wherever you listen to your podcasts that allows you to leave a rating review that really helps us grow our listening community and so thank you with that. Take care everybody. Here’s your productive life.
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Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.