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This week, Augusto Pinaud and Ray Sidney-Smith discuss their tips on how to move more productively, Tasks in Evernote arrives for everyone in Early Access, and more productivity and technology news this week. Enjoy!
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In this Cast | Evernote Tasks and Moving Productively
Art Gelwicks
Art Gelwicks, a productivity and collaboration consultant, blogger at theideapump.com, and host of the Being Productive podcast as well as ProductivityCast Podcast.
Headlines & Show Notes | Evernote Tasks and Moving Productively
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
How To Declutter When You Move
Chrome OS may be going back to a smaller app launcher design that resembles the origina
Google Messages integration on your Chromebook just got a new namel
The upcoming ASUS Chromebook CX9 will feature an industry first for Chrome OS
Amazon Echo Security Features for When You Leave Home
Hands on Review of the Smartbook V5 Color e-note
Gmail for Android iOS now lets you quickly change your Google profile picture
“Software is eating the world, and cars are next on the menu.”
Mobile Technology and Home Broadband 2021
Why Emotionally Intelligent Minds Embrace the Rule of ‘Writing in Reverse’ | Inc.com
Use These New Google Calendar Features to Optimize Your Remote Work Hours
Can a no meeting policy work for you? | HR Morning
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.
Featured Story of the Week
Evernote launches Tasks feature on iOS and Mac to help boost your productivity
Evernote Mac and Windows Video
Announcements
Anything but Idle 064: Commenting on WWDC with Michael Sliwinski at 12 noon on June 8.
What can I gain with Jeff Siegel and Augusto Pinaud on Personal Productivity Club
Asana Focus and Flow Summit – June 9th 2021
Other News
Google Cemetery — Learn from Google’s 100+ biggest failures
Nearby Share arrives as Chrome OS 91 begins rolling out
How to Find the Best Online Prices Using Microsoft Edge
For Better Video Calls — Lean Back! | by Rafi T | ILLUMINATION | Jun, 2021 | Medium
Scribd is now available on Apple Watch
Raw Text Transcript | Evernote Tasks and Moving Productively
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).
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to Anything But Idle the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:12
I’m Augusto Pinaud.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:13
And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. Today is June 7 2021. This is Episode 63 Evernote tasks and moving productively. As you can imagine, I’m very excited about this episode. And so each week we review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And to do that this week, we have a surprise guest we’ve been invited Art Gelwicks to the show Art Gelwicks is a productivity and collaboration consultant blogger at the idea pump.com. He’s the host of the being productive podcast, and he joins us on ProductivityCast each week. Welcome to Anything But Idle art.
Art Gelwicks 0:50
Hey, guys, thanks for having me at the last minute.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:53
Happy to have you
Augusto Pinaud 0:54
happy to have you
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:55
happy to have you. So this is National moving month. So it turns out did not know that. And so I thought we would have just a quick comment, comment to discussion. I Linda, how’s it going? If you all are joining us live, by the way, hello, how’s it going? I feel free to chat in the chat panel. And we’ll be happy to interact and answer questions and all that fun stuff. So in light of national living month, I thought we would tackle the topic of really how to move productively. And I’m sure that all of us has, or have moved in the past. And I’ve recently had a move in the last year and a half, right before the pandemic moving to a new home. And so I know what that’s like. And so I wanted to talk through some of those pieces. First and foremost, how soon do you think you should be planning a move? Like if you have a move that’s imminent? What how much lead time should you take?
Art Gelwicks 1:53
I would I mean, I’m going to defer on on the side of caution. I’m thinking months out as soon as you know it’s on the radar, or even a possibility. That’s when you start planning. At least that’s when I would because I from that point to the day the door closes behind me and I hand over a set of keys or even just moving from one office to the other. It’s going to be constantly rattling around in my head that this could be going on. And I need to do this. And I need to take care of that. And what happens if I forget this. So I would start early and just start that whole capture process right away. There’s a lot of good checklists and things that you can use out there and templates to help you with that. But every situation is unique.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:38
Because I know that you’ve you’ve had a few moves out there.
Augusto Pinaud 2:42
I can see there my split my moves into parts before 2004 and after 2004. And I happen to be with the discovery of GTD my first moves were a mess. I moved country first. I moved from from Venezuela to Colorado. And then I move from Colorado to Colorado to Denver, Colorado and then I moved from Denver, Colorado to Los Angeles. And they were county cadets and mostly because lack of planning and mostly lack of knowledge. From 2004 after going on I have moved cities states multiple times I have been in LA for two different places in LA two different places in Bakersfield, Fort Wayne, Indiana took place in Indianapolis and now in New Jersey. So yeah, I have moved one or twice what have you learned to what I have laughing when you say how much time I must have those corporate move I have not had that luxury of when will be convenient like we need to be at these day. That’s it. As I said before 2004 they were kind of a mess after that has been much better I have checklist that the eyeball as soon as I heard we may ought to maybe move to the checklist. And it is really funny when we moved to this house I still getting mail from the people the old owner of the house they never did that and and I remembered and the only reason I know that is because he’s part of my checklist. But one of the things I learned is to get rid of his stuff. In regardless if you move into a larger place or not and I tried to search for an article to share on the notes from becoming minimalist but has nothing to do with becoming minimalist and really to pay attention to what you’re moving. And we move into different styles my wife keep everything that you can and I get rid of everything that I can. It’s it’s how it works. So we have boxes who has been closed, okay with tape that says Colorado 2003. Okay belongs to my wife and I have no boxes that says Indiana police. Okay? If a My theory is if a box is more than 12 months, and I have not made anything that is on that box, it can go to the trash, I don’t even need to open. But that’s again, that’s my criteria. But I think it’s important to do those checks that aren’t mentioned, there is a lot of resources on the web that I didn’t knew how to exploit on the first of my moves, and keep the list so you can rebuild the list. And as you look into reducing, and I mean a mood of reduce as much as I can on certain things. I suddenly noticed, oh, how about this next time I move I should remember. And then I go directly to that list and collected. So the checklist is your friend, there is a lot of movements, you’re not going to have enough time doesn’t matter how long you try to plan. So, as Art says, As soon as you can start pulling this list and understanding which who is moving or not moving with you, okay, in In my case, I said my wife will hurt everything. So I need to pay attention what is coming on or not, and also what she will take care of, and what I need to take her off. And there are two criterias for that. One is what is important for me. Because moving in means different things for different people, various people who moving in means having internet and where their screens are. That’s enough, there is other people who need to have food in the pantry and be ready to have a set the table and have dinner. That’s not me, by the way. Okay? So but you need to understand what is those important and capture all that in the list. So at least you make sure that all the people involved have that concept of move in any possibility for them.
Art Gelwicks 7:11
It’s an important point you bring up how it’s different for everybody, because the checklist aspect, while it’s it’s so critical, I think it’s critical for different reasons than most people think, to me, the checklist gives you the opportunity to free up the mental cycles that you need to deal with the unplanned events, and every move has those. So you’ll never get a checklist put together that covers everything. But if you have the important things covered in that, then when something goes awry, you know, the truck goes to Indiana, instead of you know, Iowa, you can adjust and you can adjust quickly because you know, you’re ready to take care of all the other stuff, it’ll handle itself. So that that gives them a say a peace of mind because there really is never any true peace of mind in a move. But it can be slightly reassuring.
Augusto Pinaud 8:04
And I can give you an example of that when we moved from Indiana to New Jersey, our checklist plan says okay, in January, we are going to travel to New Jersey to find a home, of course started the process of finding a home and we put the house in the market in December is Christmas. The realtors is Christmas could go fast, Google slow, nobody knows really in Christmas is all bets are off. Okay, we put the house the household involved our now they plan to come and search for a house was more. That’s the initial moving. And we need now to find temporary housing and all those problems. But having that checklist was just add a set of things for that checklist to allow us to move forward.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:46
Yeah, so a couple a couple highlights here. One is I think 30 to 60 days is kind of minimum. For me in terms of a move, I really need two months to be able to cycle through, say for example, just making sure that mail that’s being received is automatically being, you know, identified for putting in those change orders with various companies, I like to kind of receive all of those pieces. Since I don’t get a lot of mail, I like to pay attention to those. And also it just gives me enough lead time for purposes of being able to do that reverse or retrospective planning. And so I like to set up the checklist and then put in all the dates from the point of when we’re going to move. I’ve never had a time when I didn’t know exact dates for moving. So I’m pretty lucky in that sense. I’ve been able to determine the date and then put everything in the calendar that were major milestones back toward the first day that where we need to pack a couple of tips. Plan for moving day like food for the kids food for yourself, making sure that you have toilet paper. You know like all of those things you don’t think about when you’re in transit between two homes. You want to make sure you have all of the pieces of the puzzle so that you have you can have a kind of a The conveniences that you’re used to, in route to wherever you’re going to pack your stuff in reverse. So put the stuff you need last, you know, in the truck first and the things you need. First, you’re gonna pack last because you want to get those things out. Also, think about where you’re moving to. So for example, you know, we moved to a five level new home, and you know, it’s a townhouse. So we have multiple stories. And what I did was I packed everything in order in which it would be taken up so that the first stuff went to the first, you know, top floor, which is the roof deck, and then everything got put in each, you know, each level after that, so that the movers, when they were bringing things up, they weren’t having to go back and forth, and kind of mishmash things, they were putting things in from the top, then the next level down, then the next level down all the way down to the garage level. That was just incredibly efficient for them, and really helped them move things. And that meant less time, less cost, and really just a much more convenient move. I also labeled all the boxes, they’re all numbered, I actually color code them, I know a bit much. But that really does help for being able to identify for people who don’t know your home and don’t know your stuff. To be able to say red goes on that level, green goes on that level, yellow goes on that level, and so on, so forth. And it’s just very easy to identify that can’t get things wrong, you can sticker the furniture, you can sticker, the you know, the the appliances, and so on so forth, all the same color. And it really helps for consistency in that move. And I will never not do that. It’s so so helpful. The other part that I would say is that, in this process is a really good time to do an inventory. And this is not just for like insurance purposes. But as gousto noted before, like decluttering, this is a good time to purge, maybe things that you don’t need. So I think that moving is actually a really good opportunity to kind of deal with some of those pieces that are, you know, is there like a particular piece of artwork that you have been trying to like let go of, or some mementos that maybe have some sentimental value that may be a little negative, it may be a time for you to be able to let go of that stuff during the move as well. And also think about the unpacking process, how can you pack things, so that unpacking becomes easier for you. And many times people pack things in such a way that’s trying to just like shove it all in a box, well, that doesn’t really help you get it out of the box or out of the packages, you know, in a seamless way. And so I always think about how am I packing lists so that when I get to the new place, it’s going to be able to go up. So for example, I invested in those hanging those like those little boxes with the hangers in them. So they’re basically, you know, mobile wardrobes, all the hung clothes went onto the onto those hanging things, the boxes moved, and they came off the hangers and back into the closet on hangers, there was no having to fold and unfold and those kinds of things. And it just saved so much time. And then I sold the boxes to some some other person it was you know, very lightly used. And so I mean up selling all those boxes to someone who then moved it in, you know, used it in their move. So it was minimal cost to me. And a very, very easy transition for moving things. So think think those pieces through or what my suggestions would be.
Augusto Pinaud 13:10
And I will add to what you said two things on two different conditions. If you know where you are moving before they if they you are going to pack or they come to pack sword where you want to do to be them. So parquet This is going to be on the office is going to be on the attic, this is going to be survey things get back together, if you don’t know, try to think you know what goes together so that way again, as Ray was saying, when you start on packing those things, you make it easier for you. So my office, all the boxes that when we arrived to this move on the truck arrived my office where all the boxes in my office, there was no missing stuff. So I agree on those hanging boxes are completely well worth the cost the cost of them.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:59
Yeah, fantastic. All right. So this is a fun little discussion to get us started, Happy National moving month to anybody who might be moving, who’s listening to us. And hopefully that helps folks. And you know, there’s like probably a little bit of sentiment here about not just spring cleaning, because we’re making our way into the summer months for those of us who are who are in our hemisphere, those who are in the southern hemisphere of going into your winter months. It never hurts to kind of think through what you’re doing and what you’re planning for. Like, if you think that you have an imminent move, now’s the time to start decluttering. And it’s a good moment in in just thinking about, hey, what should I be doing to kind of start getting rid of some things that I don’t need. Alright, with that, let’s take our way into our top stories of the week. And so the first half of the show, we do our headlines regarding big and small tech and then in the second half of the show we do more of the productivity articles that we’ve been reading and looking through. And so let’s get into our headlines a gousto. What is our first story this week?
Augusto Pinaud 15:00
Chrome OS may be going back into smaller application launcher designed and resembles the original. I’ve never, I never play with the original or the beginning of the Chromebook. But as we have mentioned, they are trying to go into giving the launcher including the launcher, encourage people to have launcher and make everything smaller, space wise so they can get more out of those components. But you guys know way more about Chromebook and what happened at the beginning than what I’m aware of.
Art Gelwicks 15:33
Yeah, it’s it’s interesting that they’re going down this path, because it was there for a while they had almost a desktop style launcher for a while. And then they made this shift to something that was more, I want to say tablet friendly, because we had the first two and one started to really roll out in the chrome space. And they’re like, okay, maybe we’ll make it touch friendly. Well, the problem is, is that’s not intuitive for using like a desktop. So it’ll be interesting to see them bring it back, I can’t help but wonder if at some point, this won’t be a toggle, and an opportunity to flip and have the two interfaces changed depending on the configuration of your device. So if it’s a two in one, and you have it opened up in clamshell mode, you get the desktop equivalent, if you flip it around, like a tablet, you get the touch interface. It’s possible. I don’t know that that’s going to be the case. But I would not be surprised if we saw that eventually happen.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:27
Yeah, and with connectable keyboard devices, you know, the ones that are more tablet, you know, with keyboard, kind of like surface pros or iPad with a with a keyboard attached, presumably, it will be able to know when the Pogo pins are connected, and it will display a different launcher for that. And you know, those kinds of variabilities I really like it, I actually don’t like the fact that it takes over the whole screen. So I like the new launcher style, it is very reminiscent of Windows. And that gives me It gives me a nice feel to it. But I think you’re right, it would be nice to have an option and just determine how you would like to be able to do it and be able to set it either way. All right, next story is Joe.
Augusto Pinaud 17:09
So we continue in, in Chromebook world and Google message integration in Chromebook, just got a new name. So that way, you were confused before the goal is that you get more confused. That’s, that seems to be the name of the game. I pick a name die with it, you know, give features but it’s really confusing. At least for me coming to the iOS world. We went having I message since 2007. Just before that there was a name also that last like seven years. So I don’t understand why. In Google, you never know what the name of the thing is. But
Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:50
yeah, but I messages is kind of got long in the tooth, didn’t it? I mean, I mess. It’s still called I messages? I don’t know. It just seems it seems like I think is
Art Gelwicks 18:01
they scary? Yeah.
Augusto Pinaud 18:02
Everybody knows that name. And he’s not confused.
Art Gelwicks 18:06
If Google was not, if nothing else, they are consistent in being inconsistent when it comes to messaging naming so that if they had stuck with the name, I would have been more concerned. So but
Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:18
I’m curious. So they change this from Google messages for the web to now device pairing? Do you see this as a sign of things to come? You feel like I,
Art Gelwicks 18:30
I absolutely think that it’s what they have recognized is the value of having the messaging client be able to be accessible from the web, especially from the web on Chrome devices, and taking it to the next level and being able to have that machine level integration of not only messaging, but notifications and running apps and having that connection between the mobile device and the Chrome device. Yeah, I absolutely see this as the direction they’re going. It would be limiting if they had just continued to just call it messaging. So it’s not really a surprise, device pairing could use a little bit of a cleanup from a marketing perspective. But we see where it’s going. It wants to be that dual device. And if you’ve heard me talk about the Samsung integrations before, I think this is again, one of the things that you’re seeing is the blurring of the lines between Chrome OS devices, highly mobile, ultra low or ultra book style laptops, and mobile phones that are so powerful. They’re basically one of these devices. We’re seeing these things just blend into one another. And this is just another example of them. Recognizing that, yeah, eventually they all have to talk to each other.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:49
All right. onward to Amazon’s sidewalk. Amazon sidewalk labs Have Amazon spark as the next story?
Augusto Pinaud 20:02
Oh, I have I have the the upcoming of the aces.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:05
Yeah, we could do we could do that story and then go back. Yeah, go for it.
Augusto Pinaud 20:08
I don’t know why, where he has the aces. aces is coming to a new Chromebook, the CX nine. And here’s a feature that they said first time for Chrome OS, I honestly think is the first time for most platforms on is they trackpad has a calculator or a keypad. It’s really one of these. So you will be able to use the mousepad as a keypad to work categoric numbers to enter numbers on the calculator. And I think it’s brilliant. To be honest with you, I think it’s an awesome feature a side of the power of the thin, the thin is really high end, prettier. Chromebooks. Chromebooks are more and more surprising me on the level of power that they have. This is a beauty.
Art Gelwicks 21:07
I, I like the the idea that they’re trying new things. This to me sounds like more of a novelty play in the space than anything else. I all I can think of is, you know, Apple’s touch. What is it? TouchWiz or whatever the heck there. But
Augusto Pinaud 21:23
this seems useful. Wow.
Art Gelwicks 21:26
Yeah. And that’s exactly, you know, appearances can be deceiving that once.
Augusto Pinaud 21:31
I think
Art Gelwicks 21:32
there are, there are devices out there. And they’re not Chromebooks. But they’re there in the windows side. But I won’t be surprised if we see them on the Chromebook side. But in fact, there I think there was a, there was an Android based one. From Lenovo, I think it was one of their yogas. That was a dual screen configuration. And the second part of yoga actually typed out Yeah, and and while nice, it’s not a keyboard, it’s not that functionality. I can see them doing more with the touchpad they have the opportunity from a software standpoint, the question is, what can they do from a hardware standpoint? Can they take it because to me, the next logical step would be to turn that into a little display, and be able to then configure that to whatever you need it to be. But it’s nice that they’re doing something different. I absolutely, I love aces products, and I will not knock them for trying something different.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:23
But I’m really a fan of this particular device I’m I’m I’m not going to get it i’m just i’m still feeling like the galaxy book. 360 is is my current contender for winner. Once I once I get a new laptop, I just really feel like it’s it’s, it’s the top contender in my book right now. But the CX nine is really a beauty. I’m a little bit cautious of it only because it’s not getting the tiger like chip. I don’t I don’t understand that. But they took that off the off the product page. So maybe they they’re gonna delay it, maybe they will get it maybe they won’t, you know, we have some some supply chain issues right now, obviously. So maybe that might be why that’s the case here. But if it could be supercharged with the 11th Gen processor, then I would be very inclined to try this out. I’m a touchpad user in terms of the number pad user. And I really liked the idea of having a number pad and having that functionality directly kicked into the touchpad. If that’s something that would appeal to me, you know, so I can I can see its value. And and don’t get me wrong,
Art Gelwicks 23:25
I think it’s a great idea, having bought multiple laptops that are oversized, specifically because the user of those laptops, wants the numeric keypad. So now everything’s wider because of that, it just makes logical sense to pull that down and forward to be able to work on that. So I think I hope it’s successful. I hope other manufacturers say, Hey, we can do this, this doesn’t look too hard. And we start to see it become more common. I just, it’s one of those things, it’s it’s an early days thing, and I reserve judgment to until I see a couple more, try and play with it.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:01
And I don’t need it if I have a touchscreen laptop, you know, like if I have the galaxy book 360 is that the pro 360 either way, that that device has a touchscreen. So bringing the keyboard, the calculator up on screen and just tapping on the screen the calculations ends up being less of a hurdle for me, but I do like the idea of having the the touchpad available to me in a in that configuration for me to be able to do calculations. So it’s just it’s a nice feature. I think that for folks who are dealing with finances, dealing with business numbers, that kind of thing. It’s a nice, it’s a nice feeling. And I use my calculator all day like I’m constantly you know, winters are calc to launch my, my calculator on screen like it’s it’s it’s like built into my fingers to be able to launch it from from the command prompt.
Art Gelwicks 24:48
Now what would be nice to see is for them to take the device pairing and allow you to use the calculator on your phone and then send the values directly into wherever you’re typing on the computer. Oh nice. Yeah, that would be a nice little feature developers were talking to you. All right.
Augusto Pinaud 25:06
So the next news you see interest in Amazon is trying to turn mme A into a home security system. And it is really interesting because when when I look at the number of Muslim A’s in my house, they’re really enough to cover the whole thing. And I’m happy to walk over and buy one more for the, for the garage studies Prowl the only place that there is not one. And they are now putting a program called guard that is going to be free where you can configure so it recognize the smoke and co alarm, sound, glass breaks, and turn on or off. Lights when you are outside of the home, but also they put guard clause for $49 a year that is really not not a lot, that then will allow you to do emergency helpline calls from the echo. Activity sounds, sound dog barking when motion is detected outside and sound a siren when activity is detected inside 50 bucks, it’s not not a lot, even if you put it on the 499 a month and you end up paying 60 it’s not really a lot. And you already have the devices are already there. And you know, we I installed the madam a on my parents house exactly for that reason, because there is two levels. And if they hear noise on one of the levels when they are on the other one, they are all they cannot move that fast. I wanted them to have, you know that ability. Now for 499 a month, I can set up that automatically. So that way they don’t even need to hear the noises. That is the other problem. We are getting old. And now they go to sleep and they don’t hear the noises. So the the morale a real estate, I’m paying attention to the so I am really excited about this. I think it’s a fantastic thing.
Art Gelwicks 27:12
I’ve been using the free guard mode for several months now actually. And I have it configured into madami routines. So for example, I have a routine that says I’m leaving now. And when when I trigger that, it turns off my living room lights, it leaves one lamp turn on and it flips all of the echo devices to this guard mode, which if you see it, it actually takes a little white light and just makes it circle on the top like little Cylon keeping track of everything. So it will respond. I’ve had a trigger for smoke detectors, I’ve had a trigger for co2 just to test it out and make sure it hears it and work. And it works great. So it makes sense. I mean, honestly, if you’re going to where the privacy tinfoil hat, if you’re going to bug your house, you might as well put it to your own advantage and allow it to keep track and monitor the the paid service I haven’t looked into in detail yet, but I am doing so specifically for the reason that you’re talking about a gousto. Having elderly relatives and being able to keep track of them and allow them to keep track of things. It helps it helps a great deal. There is a there’s another mode that ties into that that’s available right now, that’s a caregiver mode that you can enable, which is it’s not hard to set up. But it’s separate from this. So I don’t know that I would consider this the equivalent of you know, a high end monitored security system, because again, it’s not hardwired, it’s not battery backed up. It’s there’s a lot of ways that this could be conceptually, but that’s
Augusto Pinaud 28:52
lack of imagination, there is two of those in my house that are battery packs already,
Art Gelwicks 28:57
right. There’s still ways to conceptually defeat this. So I don’t know that I would necessarily consider it a high security thing. But for example, just knowing that if a smoke detector or co detector in your house goes off, it’s going to notify you on your mobile device. That’s a big chunk of peace of mind. It really is reassuring to have that and I actually had a similar one trigger off of my wise camera system. The wise cameras can be configured to do that as well. So and they all integrate together. So there’s more than just these things being voice assistance. And I think you’re right at this. I think this is something that there are lots of reasons to look into this and to try it out.
Augusto Pinaud 29:41
Yeah, I have I have in our house, the ring and the cameras that connect with all the other products and we have two doors, one on the front, one on the back. And I love the fact that you can configure the back to give you an alert if there is movement, no matter why because there is I mean, no, there should not be movement unless I’m up and the kids are up and fine, I don’t care. But he’s really, really nice. And a couple of times, I have walked through the back and entered to the pro lifers receive a bill for it not a nice I learned, she has freaked out about it, because you don’t you don’t think about it, but but he’s, you know, making their purpose.
Art Gelwicks 30:23
Yeah, there’s, there’s absolutely value to this kind of extended piece. And I think we’re gonna see more of that too. I mean, this is just using the ambient sensors that are built into the devices. But as you tie that together into things like the wise systems, where they have the door contacts and the window contacts, and then you tie it back end into the automation pieces like Zapier and you know, ifft, then all of a sudden, this becomes a very powerful, controllable environment for you. And like I said, it can give you a great deal of peace of mind. so
Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:56
fantastic. All right, on to our next story.
Augusto Pinaud 31:00
Hence, on the smartbook, five color he note. And we mentioned this when this product went out, it’s a full review, you can go and play with it and read it. But it is exciting for me to seen how many e readers are coming in last week, we covered the Kobo, this week, we are covering this review, ink and color ink is coming. People is getting normal to see these devices now. And I think that stream make into the hands of most people will make them just more and more powerful. So I am really excited about it.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:45
Yeah, so this is a competitor to probably the Kobo elliptica that we talked about last week plus the remarkable two tablet. And I was just actually working with a client and learned that the remarkable two tablet actually does have a desktop application that allows you to be able to once you synchronize to the remarkable cloud infrastructure, you can actually export in PDF or PNG, I think it is, I think also SVG so that the vector of scalable vector graphic file format, and so that actually gave me a little bit of reprieve there. Because as I noted last week, the Kobo ellipse allows you to be able to gain access to your library, overdrive account. And so that’s a huge benefit. I think, to me to having a device like that, also, the price point can’t be beat, where you’re paying only 399 USD here, this particular product, the color, the V five gives you color ino tablet, and you can get it in English. I suppose. It’s currently in Chinese markets, I’m guessing it’ll probably be available and other international market soon. It’s a little bit more pricey. I think it’s like 599 USD currently. And so I like it. I like the the capability here, it’s running the the books, books, I can never figure out how to pronounce that. I think it’s books, the the Onyx OS, they’re the boots, OS. And so not quite Android, but you know, a variant. And, and we have a really nice tablet here. I think. Overall, though, I’m still between the Kobo elliptica and the remarkable two. But now that I know that I can actually grab my notes from the remarkable two and then just toss them into Evernote. I’m I’m a little bit more inclined to go with the remarkable to hear. I know it’s a little bit more pricey, but I just feel more comfortable with the remarkable to hear. But I’m actually inclined toward the toboe ellipse as well. I’m, I’m, I’m a little indecisive about either of those.
Art Gelwicks 33:48
I was interested in this until I got into the operating system itself, because you’re right, it uses this books Oh, S. problem is it’s based on Android eight, one. And it hasn’t been updated recently. So that to me, just worries me for long term support and upgradability of this thing. Otherwise, it looks interesting. And it’s got 36 LED lights in it to give it a white display, gravity sensor and dual microphone configuration. It’s got some decent tech in it. here’s, here’s where I get a hang up though on this. The price point you’re looking at this. Can’t you just go buy an iPad? So okay,
Augusto Pinaud 34:35
just for the record, I did not set any of that record,
Art Gelwicks 34:39
because I could go buy two Samsung tablets as well. So
Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:45
yeah, I mean, like I would I would get a Samsung tab a or something like that to to replace this instead if you if you don’t want to spend that price point. But I can also see like in the Chinese market where this is going to be released, that market would be very I’m open to this, and not particularly care about the, the Android 8.1 issue as much. And I don’t, I don’t know what they’re gonna do about updating that they clearly haven’t in a while, and they need to. But I’m still, if I were, if I were looking, I would certainly still be looking at the COBOL lips against the remarkable tablet to mean those two devices just side by side, look and feel like they’re both quality devices that can do what you want to do in an ereader, where you want to annotate and do those kinds of things. I’m really interested in in seeing how the market works with the COBOL epsa versus the remarkable two. And we’ll see I’m I’m still inclined to where the remarkable two though.
Art Gelwicks 35:47
Well, and here’s here’s the thing, though, and I can’t really dissuade this. iPad 10.2 inch Wi Fi model. 490 grams. This thing 240 grams, half the weight on die big deal. Yeah, that’s, that’s big. Now it’s only running 2800 milliamp battery, but then again, it’s not powering, you know, I retina quality screen, so does need it.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:17
Yeah, definitely. Are. Yeah, the eating screen in color. I just yeah, those are those are just so much less power intensive. So that’s a that’s a remarkable two is black
Augusto Pinaud 36:29
and wide, if I remember correctly, right, right.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:31
So so it was the Cobo? Yeah, so this, this V five is a color ereader? Which is why you’re going to pay more money for the screen.
Augusto Pinaud 36:40
Yeah, because that’s gonna make it worth it.
Art Gelwicks 36:43
Well, and keep in mind, too, it’s 4096 colors, it’s not 16 point 8 million, like you have on other things. So the colors are going to be there. But you’re you’re dealing with a box of crayolas versus the entire pallet. So you have to think about the what you’re going to do with it.
Augusto Pinaud 36:59
I’m going to agree with you on that comment, except that when I noticed, for taking notes, that is really what I want that device for, how many colors you’re going to use. Now that’s true.
Art Gelwicks 37:10
Absolutely true. If I if that matches the purpose that you need for taking handwritten notes or, or doing that type of annotation, then yeah, there’s no reason no way 4096 won’t be enough.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:23
And then I switch between three colors ever. When I’m taking notes. I mean, you know, like, I’m just I don’t need that many colors. But I like the options. I like the options. All right, on to our final story and our first half, Augusta, what’s our next story,
Augusto Pinaud 37:37
Gmail for Android. and iOS Finally, lets you update your Google profile picture, they are improving the app little by little. I still don’t understand why that app is not really powerful. But this is a complaint, I moved certain things on that app. And it is painful. They need to go to the Chrome browser to fix some things that should be able to fixed on the app. And you can’t I don’t understand why. But I’m glad that now you can do the profile picture and it’s getting better.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:13
Yeah, Google just wants you to centralize everything by going to my account google.com. And doing those kinds of things there. I’m not particularly I don’t really care. If Gmail allows me to change my profile picture. What I do want Google to do is allow me to change my profile picture and for it to like, show up everywhere as the same photograph, I have a photograph in my account continues to show like a 15, maybe 20 year old photograph, and I’ve updated it in my account. It’s just in certain places like Google Calendar, otherwise, it still continues to show this old image and I don’t know where it’s coming from. And I don’t know why. And it is incredibly frustrating. So you know, like, fine, I’m gonna I’m gonna do it in Gmail, just so that I can see if it’ll update in other places. But it is incredibly irritating.
Art Gelwicks 38:57
Just admit it, Ray, you like that early 2000s. Look, you’re enjoying that, you know, that kind of?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:04
It shows me with a lot less gray hair, I could tell you about There
Art Gelwicks 39:06
you go.
Sponsor Voice Over 39:08
I don’t I don’t care about my hair color. But it is very different. And so if I want it to be the most recent photograph, and it does not show it to me all the time, what are you going to do? Alright, everybody, we have reached the halfway point of the show. And so with that, we’re going to step away for a word from our sponsor this week, which is co working space by personal productivity club. When we get back we have more headlines to cover. Then we’ll do new tools of the week, our story of the week, our featured story the week and then we will close out. See after the break. Well working in person may be normal for you. It’s unlikely your co workers are as interested in being productive as you are, or working remotely or from home can be isolating and there’s something powerful about being with productive people, even virtually that helps you be more engaged. If a flavor of these sounds familiar co working space by personal productivity club is for you. co working space is a virtual work community designed to help members be more effective and efficient in their work and personal lives. At its core, we provide goal tracking and host focused action sessions throughout the week for accountability and camaraderie, visit Anything But idle.com forward slash co working to learn more CO working space lives inside personal productivity club, a digital community for personal productivity enthusiasts. So you can find people who use methods and tools you do to again, head over to Anything But Idle comm forward slash co working to see how co working space can help you be more productive. And now back to our show.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 40:49
Welcome back, everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith joined here with a gousto pinout and our guest today, Art Gelwicks. Hello, gentlemen. And back to our headlines. Let’s get into our headlines for our productivity articles that we’ve been paying attention to this week. Because though what is our first headline?
Augusto Pinaud 41:10
The first headline is an article from MAC Sparky. Title software is eating the world on cars are next on the menu. And it’s a commentary of an article came in Wall Street Journal about Apple getting into the automobile business or not. But it really comes with a couple of interesting arguments about really that what software is doing and what are the risks. You know, it sounds really nice to have your car. You know, months ago, I read an article really nice article talking about or bracing a Tesla for a software update that that really update the vehicle. And at the same time I was complaining because I was trying to get something fixed on mine. And they wanted me to do something that I wasn’t going to when he was a software update. So yes, software. It’s going to continue revolutionising all these industries. And you know, seems like everybody’s putting their eyes right now in vehicles and cars and how we can make them better. BSL four. But as the article mentioned, we need to be careful, because software also mean box and hacks and other things that hey implies certain risks to
Art Gelwicks 42:29
this, this is not this isn’t new to the car world. I mean, we look at things like Tesla’s we look at things like the ID force from Volkswagen, the the electrical, the electric cars are bringing some of this thinking because it’s like, oh, it’s tech, it’s electronic. This has been around for years and years and years. And so many vehicles can’t be maintained. Unless you have a computer reader, you’ve got specifically licensed software, you have specific controllers, and even dedicated cables to be able to interface with the car. And literally, I had a car that was made in 1996, that the engine would turn off because the computer would tell it to in specific situations. This is the type of thing that we have is the challenge. It’s not so much that the tech is carrying us forward. It’s that it’s dragging everything else along with it. It’s determining that everything needs to be tech driven, everything needs to be computer controlled. And what that winds up with is literally massive quantities of vehicles and maintenance people who wind up disenfranchised out of this entire thing. Because if you’ve been if you’re an old school mechanic or even a new school mechanic, there’s a lot of stuff you just can’t do. I mean, the the days of the shade tree mechanic are long gone, because there’s a lot of things you just cannot touch and control. And when one of those electronic ECU goes bad in a car, that’s a grand.
Augusto Pinaud 44:01
I mean, that’s
Art Gelwicks 44:03
without batting an eye. And there’s no way to diagnose it and there’s no way to work on it. So then they have a valid point. I just think that this isn’t new folks, this is your living with this. Now I guarantee if I were to go out to your car right now, and it was made from 1996 on, you have a little data port just under your dashboard. And that onboard diagnostics port gives me access to your computer in your car. Yeah.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:34
Yeah, so so I’ve got my thoughts are kind of mixed about this right, we are in a transition point, right. So in the in the mid 90s. As you noted art, we went through this transition where computers started getting embedded basically our toss, you know, chips, basically real time operating systems were being embedded on chips and being put into vehicles and they’re they’re now controlling most of those vehicles. I think that was a huge benefit to the automotive industry. And I saw People pivot, you know, and now we are in a position where if we do electrify more vehicles, I mean, just the the announcement of the F 150. Going electric, that, you know, that car, that truck by itself, you know, the most sold vehicle on the planet, I think, you know, at least in the United States, you know, it’s like a $42 billion industry for that one vehicle, you know, when they electrify that is going to force it’ll be a forcing function for electric vehicles for the rest of the world. And, and that means there’s a great, maybe sustainability thing there. But I think more so it means that if you’re going to go get certified as a mechanic today, you’re going to get the opportunity to learn that kind of software skill, and the hardware skills necessary, I hope, I mean, we’ve done a really poor job, at least the United States of workforce development, but but at least in the automotive industry, we have seen a remarkable shift happen in the way in which we do education and in that space, and I hope that happens here. That’s kind of my thoughts on it,
Art Gelwicks 46:02
it’s, it’s truly, you’re right, it is the kind of thing where we have to stay along with it, because it’s just the new normal, this is not going to go back to the way it used to be it will, it will continue to grow. And I’ve done things like reprogram my Jetta to change how the width windows work through software control controls and configurations. But that, again, is that developing skill set, when you start to look at a mechanic now, you have to stop looking at them as somebody who just turns a wrench, he or she is going to have technology skills that are going to be on the level of most networking engineers, especially if they’re dealing with performance level vehicles or higher end ones talking about the Ford F 150. I have a slightly different position on that. Because I think it’s the right idea for the wrong market. I think though that market is going to be resistant to something that doesn’t have the range of a diesel or doesn’t have the range of VA gasoline powered engine doesn’t have the same level of power. Does it have the body reliability? Does it have the battery reliability, there’s going to be a lot of questions for a long time. We were I was kidding about it with my son or my son in law. We said yep, that is the perfect retired dead truck. Because it has a giant trunk in the front end that there’s nothing in there has the back end. And he’s gonna wash it like every two days. So it it will have an audience, but I don’t see them being on construction sites, unless corporations invest in them.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:41
But I think this is a this is a commercial, this is a commercial vehicle for commercial contracts. I see this as being a really great truck for a commercial fleet. And I think there’ll be there’ll be a lot of consumers who will who will buy them, just because their f 150s. And they know the brand, and and then they can iterate from here, they can make them better. So we’ll see what happens either way, I think that the future is electric vehicles, the future is autonomous vehicles. And that means less deaths on the road, that probably means a lower environmental impact from not having, you know, the carbon dioxide being produced. So I think we have two positives there, we’re just in a transition point. And it’s going to be difficult. And that’s that’s the part that I kind of think about whenever this topic comes up is that it’s just tough. And we need to make sure that we’re having people doing the workforce redevelopment, training people and all of the external small businesses that support that industry, right, you don’t like you know, large conglomerates, you know, like GM, and Ford, and otherwise, there, that’s only part of the story, because there’s all of this downstream, you know, industry that supports or is supported by those big decisions. And so now is the time when you know, those people who are who are capable of doing that work can do that. Think about like all the 3d printed, you know, opportunities to remodel electrical electric vehicles can be done once we get to that point. So I’m really excited for this period of time. And I hope that we can, we can get through it better off than we were and I think we will,
Art Gelwicks 49:17
yeah, it’s it’s going to change the game in so many ways. And having fixed configuration chasse ease and things like that, where you can modify by just swapping out the body configuration. Yeah, there’s a lot of opportunity. I will say though, I have a problem with any vehicle that’s putting like a 14 inch tablet on the dash as part of their control system. Please don’t do that anymore. People have a hard enough time with not paying attention to their phone, much less that TV screen you put in there.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 49:46
So yeah, I’m really I’m really curious about that. I you know, I understand why a self driving vehicle would have to have a touchscreen and that kind of thing. But I also feel like this sense that they should still be paying attention and Maybe I’ll you know, I’m just old and I’m, I’m, you know, like, have an old mindset, so to speak about it, but I, I really do. And I’m concerned about people’s attention to what is going on in front of the vehicle in the direction that is moving. And so we do have to deal with some of these societal changes. And I imagine that in several generations, cars will look very different. And people will interact with them very differently. I for one, if I don’t ever drive a car again, and it just takes me where I want to go, that’s all I care about. So, you know, like, I want to be able to do what I want to do. More More importantly, if it’s safe enough, I would even like to just like, you know, if I want to drive to DC right now, you know, like, get in the car, I can do work, I can nap, I can have a conversation, I can go have a video meeting, doing all of those things, while the car does its job would be a huge benefit to me. And so I really do want autumn autonomous vehicles to come and certainly an Eevee vehicle would be preferable for me. The problem is that just doesn’t have the longevity right now. Right? Like if I, if I tried to suck power by running a video meeting, you know, and all in all my devices and all that stuff over the course of roughly three and a half hours of drive, you know, you’re talking 300 plus miles to get to DC from where I am. The the EBS just don’t have that longevity and power. And so it ends up being a hurdle for me, I would really love to see us get to that point where we can have roughly a day’s drive, and the ability to have autonomous vehicles drive us there. That is
Art Gelwicks 51:28
that is the ideal for me. Personalized public transit is where this will wind up being being able to have a vehicle pick you up take you to, let’s say a local train station where it loads itself into a car, the train takes the high speed, you know, slo down to Washington and then the car unloads itself and takes you to that last mile destination. If that can be reached when that can be reached, then yeah, there’s a lot of reasons to not have individual vehicle ownership. There’s a lot of options for people to say, I don’t want it anymore. Just as many people are gonna be be like me who want to crawl underneath with a wrench and get dirty.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 52:05
So don’t get me started because next I’m going to want my flying vehicle. They promised it to me when I was a kid, and I want my electric flying vehicle.
Augusto Pinaud 52:13
I’m sorry to I’m sorry to tell you I was also promised that when I was a kid, the Jetsons bring all these things. Where is my robot Tina that I was always was calling the Spanish. I have no clue how that lady was called in English. But where is that? Where is that Robert? That was going to clean the house for me, Rosie, I’m bringing me good Rosie. Where’s Rosie? That’s what I want. Forget about the vehicle. Where is Rosie,
Art Gelwicks 52:35
the flying car scares me to no end. Because the majority of people I see can’t drive in two dimensions, much less three.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 52:44
They would have to be autonomous. I mean, you know, we just really have to you know, just
Art Gelwicks 52:47
give them balloons, let them float around. We’ll do tethers I don’t clean up. I’m alternative the century steampunk that’ll work, you know, they don’t fall as fast out of the sky.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 52:59
All right, moving along to our next story about mobile smartphone ownership and broadband adoption.
Augusto Pinaud 53:09
So the article talks about how much, you know since 2019. So that’s really the pandemic broadband technology has changed. But more importantly, how much use or how many users are adults are now, mobile only internet users. So not only you have seen the increase on broadband, but also has seen so many users going out and stop using or going to pure mobile.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:41
I think it’s it’s at 15% are now mobile only in the United States alone. When we when we look at the when we look at the various data. You know, we still see quite a number of of at least in the US market, a number of Americans, about a third of them are still experiencing problems connecting to the internet from home, we still have a problem with mobile broadband. And we have a problem with connecting the right computing power to the individual. I mean, this is kind of what I read in this research. I think it’s positive that we have the capabilities. I think it’s it’s still one of those things where we need more right matching of internet access with the devices so that people who are it’s not just rural, right, it’s not about rural versus, versus urban. This is about low income versus high income. And the disparity between those lower income populations don’t have as good or solid broadband access. And that means less access to education, less access to jobs, less access to people. And when we separate people from other people, they become radicalized in ways that I think are kind of, you know, unfortunate for not just here in the United States but around the world. And so we need to keep people Like interacting with people, and by doing so they like, you know, keep normative beliefs. And I think we’ve actually done a poor job of that. And so we’ve left some people out. And that has caused this shift in dynamics in the country that I think is not good for democracy, it’s not good for you just like, being able to talk to your neighbor, you know, like, I could disagree with you without being disagreeable. And a lot of that is lost when I am living in a world that some people don’t have access to. And so therefore, they’ve built their own world, their own reality in that space. And so we need to kind of figure out how to make this work for everybody. And I think equity means also better and stronger democratic norms in the in the US. So that’s kind of how where my mind went when I was reading this article, and I’m very concerned about that, of course, there’s the productivity implications here as well, which is, you know, how does the labor force do remote remote and hybrid work consistently, if they are left out of the market, because they don’t have access to strong mobile broadband.
Art Gelwicks 55:59
And I think the mobile broadband piece is just a core push back to the lack of physical infrastructure and the difficulties of deployment of physical infrastructure, especially when you get out past urban areas. Even even mid state, I mean, I’m in Pennsylvania, and you go mid state. And there’s whole sections, that there’s basically no cell coverage, much less data coverage. So those people wind up being isolated, just as you’re talking about. This is the type of thing that when you have 15% of your population, supposedly operating purely off of mobile, well, are they doing it because that’s the best option for them? The most convenient option, or the only option, I’m inclined to think at that number, you’re looking at something more in the first and second categories. It’s convenient to them, and it’s the one that they like, but it’s not their only option. It’s not that default, when you start pushing in the range of 50 to 60%. Now, you’re going to have people that have no choice but to use that mobile functionality. And I think the devices are to the point where we’re, that’s okay, I mean, we talk all about 5g. Well, 5g requires a pretty hefty infrastructure investment, even though it’s wireless, it’s got to be spread out on just about every pole to cover an area. So getting that device, if that’s an option, I go all the way back to our earlier conversation, that idea of device pairing, if that mobile device can become my connection to the wireless signal I need access to, then I can pass my Chromebook through that. And I can have access to the things I need. Now what we become challenged with, though, is cost and availability, and reliability.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:51
Now, and again, I’m just I think about the younger generations, if they’re, if they’re being raised in lower educated households with low income, they’re less likely to have access to broadband, and especially mobile broadband, which is where their peers are, are capable of then being able to excel. And that just continues to reinforce economic uncertainty for them in the future, the future will be mobile, and broadband, right, the more more of that will be based on you know, like the ability to just like take my laptop and work anywhere, that is a very freeing thing. But not everybody has access to that. And that really makes me feel, you know, just I don’t know, sad, empathetic, sympathetic for that generation of people who, who deserve good jobs, good paying jobs, but they don’t have access to the technology. And that’s the part that I really want us to be focused on focusing on here in the states is, let’s let’s utilize the the wealth, we have to be able to make those people and give those people access to the technology so that they can compete in the marketplace of the future. And that’s going to make America great. That’s the thing that’s going to make America Excel really any country you know, no matter where you are, your company, your country’s ability to compete is when your younger generations when I retire, I want the young people to be able to do the jobs so that I can retire and kick my feet up and and have my country still being a productive country. And my concern is that we’re doing we’re doing things that are going to compete against that reality there. So
Art Gelwicks 59:22
yeah, anybody who tells you that the digital divide is not a real thing either doesn’t know or doesn’t care, because it is and it has a negative detrimental impact to not only individuals, but societies as a whole and that has to be dealt with.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 59:41
And so from disparity to emotional intelligence and writing. Okay, so what’s our next article today?
Augusto Pinaud 59:49
next article comes from ink and is why emotionally intelligent minds embrace the rule of writing in reverse and what they call write in and reverses it. On the article at least is you have to reverse roles between the writer, you and the recipient or audience. And, and he’s talking about how to respond better to certain things, you know, and we tend to, as humans to tend to write long emotional responses that not all the time has the content that we need, or as the questions how many times you have, get an email that after you read five paragraphs you say, and what is what you need, and you need to reply, what is what you need, please. So look into that writer and reverse think what they need, what he’s doing, what they’re trying to do, and what is what you need them to do and write the email that way. I don’t know if I can consider myself emotionally intelligent that way. But without any doubt, over the years, I have learned that the more emotional my responses to the initial receive of their email, the more that they need to fall into my world before I can respond.
Art Gelwicks 1:01:04
Yeah, I agree with the context of the article. I mean, the the concept of providing too much content in an communication is often you trying to convince yourself and them to do what you’re asking. And it’s an attempt to be persuasive, or attempt to justify the request as a whole. But also, too little, can be abrupt, can lose context, you have to listen to what you’re writing, and the old trick of writing something and leaving your draft, that’s a great trick. I mean, I use that quite a bit where I’ll write something and just say, it’s just gonna sit here until I’m ready to send it. I actually do that trick with OneNote. All the time, I’ll create an email in one note as a note, and then I know I can’t accidentally hit send. It’s just sitting there. And then I can go back to the context later and say, Oh, that was kind of rough. Why did I say it that way, or realize that the messaging is left behind. So the sensitivity is important. But it’s also important to be clear, I think we’ve all gotten emails on the flip side of the coin, where there’s so much emotional waffling within the email, you have no idea what they actually want, and how you can help this person. So it really becomes a balance as to how much of your communication is going to help them understand. But also help them feel comfortable with what’s being communicated as well.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:02:33
I follow the bottom line up front method and military kind of flavor of email writing for many years with a little bit of a modification. And it seems to do the trick for me, which is, whatever I’m asking you ask it up front, then you go through the process of identifying background details, and then repeat what you’re asking at the end of the email. So that a person who is more detail oriented like I am is going to want the all of the underlying details, but the person who is a director of style kind of in the keirsey Temperament Sorter perspective, is going to read that first line know exactly what you want and be able to, to respond to it. And so that helps different personalities deal with different emails, especially when you’re sending emails to multiple parties, and expecting them to understand, I also like the idea that if you’re directing an email to multiple people to address each of the persons in the email, who are in the To field, so that you’re capable of saying, you know, john, do this thing, Jane do this thing, you know, and so on, and so forth, so that you’re addressing each individual in the email. And that shuts down the number of emails that need to be circled and cycled through any given thread, because people can respond to in line to just one message as opposed to many different messages going off in permutations. So I really like the the that kind of method that I’ve used for myself over the years, and it’s worked well. So, you know, I agree with the premise of the article on the whole, as he said,
Art Gelwicks 1:03:59
I’m a big fan of using the subject line to identify the request. So if I need an update on something, I’m going to my subject line is going to be needing an update on licensing. And then in the email, it’ll have the specifics and breakdown who I need from what and things but that way, as soon as everybody sees that show up in their inbox, they’re like, okay, so I know what this is about. Not like meeting minutes.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:04:20
What the heck is that? Yes, clear. subject lines are really, really helpful. All right, good. So what is our next
Augusto Pinaud 1:04:29
story for next story is a bunch of tips how to use Google Calendar much better not only Well, the articles, features to optimize your remark work, work hours, but really, even if you’re in the office, there is a ton I think it’s there 13 or 14 or 15 tips of how to use it better from a scheduling your calendars, your events directly from calendar to how to use zoom or reschedule directly with Soon share your availability. If you leave in this world of Google Calendar, you know, it is a great article to, to see and to check it. It has really, more things that I want, I thought it was possible. And I use that and you know how to connect to some Exchange servers and everything else. So if you are a Google Calendar use user sorry, this may be a really interesting article to read.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:05:31
Yeah, the only one that stands out to me is that if you are trying to track billable time, that toggle Chrome extension is just brilliant, because you can just click on any calendar event and click the little toggle button and it starts tracking and it grabs the data from the calendar so that you can immediately start tracking your time. And the toggle also works in a bunch of other web based programs. So I use remember the milk and Evernote and whenever I’m in the browser, I just click on the little icon and it grabs the data from that particular task and starts tracking from Asana. Wherever, wherever I’m at, I just click the little toggle item. And now it’s off to the races tracking the time so that I can quickly and easily capture that stuff. So really, really helpful. And with toggle, you can then download the data in a CSV. So you can then import it into different places that you might need to take that billable time and slice and dice your data. So if you’re trying to know what you’re using and how you’re using your time, it is just a really helpful tool. And so it doesn’t just connect to Google Calendar. Alright, onward to no no meeting policy. This company has a no meeting policy.
Augusto Pinaud 1:06:44
After today, I need to say I agree. I mean, the problem was the meetings, I think no extreme is appropriate. Okay, I don’t think they’re meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meet into meetings we have seen is appropriate. And we know Microsoft has done and we have quote here articles on the show how Microsoft is trying to give time to the people to breathe between meetings to meetings. But I think the other extreme of Okay, now nobody can do meetings. A meeting? Well, time well established with an appropriate agenda. It’s really useful. The problem is not if we need meetings or not, is how much your team knows how to make a meeting, when you go into a meeting, okay to make decisions. But what you do is discuss that is a waste of time. defer message, you say we’re going to have a brainstorm, meeting. Great. But what happened in my opinion experience is, most people don’t know how to set a meeting. So the meetings are set as a thinking time, instead of us doing time. That’s it, I read the article. I don’t I don’t know if I can agree with having no meetings as much as they drive me crazy, I think, especially in the remote world that we are living, and we are going to continue to live more and more. I think what we need is to teach the team to make better meetings.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:08:22
Yeah, go ahead. And
Art Gelwicks 1:08:24
I was just gonna say reading through the article. I mean, this idea of the no meetings, I think, the devils in the details when they talk about meetings, because I don’t know that they necessarily qualify as like collaborative work sessions as a meeting. That’s kind of the feel I’m getting from this. It’s not like they don’t have everybody, or groups of people talking to each other at the same time I that’s operating within their environment, apparently. But the concept of like a status meeting, or something like that is eliminated in their structure. Personally, I think that’s a fantastic thing. I love that I think it’s great because the tools are out there. And there’s no reason to have that conglomerated waste of time that these turn into. But that said, there are opportunities were working together in a real time session can be extremely useful. But like a gousto said, the majority of the time, that’s not what we’re doing. That’s not the process, and especially in a remote environment. And I’m going to soapbox here for a second, we keep talking about this remote environment. We have been working in a timeshifted environment for years because we’re working in a global workplace. So if you’re trying to get if you’ve ever tried to schedule an international meeting, you know that it will cost you hair, just to try and set it up because you can’t get people at the right times at the right places. Or you have some people who were on the call at 11 at night. Be just because you’ve got an executive That has to be their nine in hit nine in the morning. So being able to leverage these tools and, quote, eliminate unnecessary meetings I’m totally for. I just think, as you said before, there’s a contextual piece, where can you get the maximum value? The flip side is that was learning how to use this collaborative tech. get good at it, start to work with it, turn it into a core part of your culture, that’s one of the things that this seems to say is that they have made this a core part of their culture. And every organization I’ve seen every team I’ve seen where they’ve tried to do no meetings or reduced meetings, and have failed, it’s because almost always, leadership has failed to make this part of their culture so that their people can adopt it, get used to it, and integrate it into their operations.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:10:54
I think you guys covered it. Alright. So with that, we are brought along to our new tools of the week. And so every week, Augusto and I are scouring the interwebs for the various stories, the productivity in technology news that we bring to you here for Anything But Idle. And we come across a lot of tools. And so we’d like to share those tools with you in the new tools of the week segment. And so this week, we have a few tools and service art to share with you. And so first up is the first tool, which is because we were talking about national moving month and moving productively, there are a wide variety of home inventory apps that are out there. But the National Association for insurance commissioners actually produce their own app called the home inventory app, very aptly named. And it is a free application available on iOS and Android. And it gives you the ability to just track the inventory in your home. It’s a free application. And so it’s out there, I know that there’s sortly. And there’s other applications that have kind of a freemium model where you have some base of, of features, and then kind of scales up. But the home inventory app is just a free application, and it’s available for you. So if you want to do an inventory, I highly recommend it, it really helps you in insurance environments, you know, if you have a fire, even if it’s if it’s a fire in just one, you know, part of your home, or water damage in a part of your home or on a part of your property is is really, really helpful to know what was in there so that when the insurance claim process begins, you’re capable of making sure that you have all of that data together. Because so what is your tool this week?
Augusto Pinaud 1:12:28
So my tool this week is the Alexa app. And for In my case, obviously for iOS, but you can find it for the other applications. And the reason is, again, as I was saying, you know you have guard, you have many other features, you know, you have the announcement, you can do so many things with this app. And one of the things I like now is I can type the announcements, I have two little kids, you can make emoticons and they do different sounds that the kids find fun. So but once in a while you are the Joker, and that and the clown of the houses as part of your responsibilities. So that, but it is a fantastic way to manage all your needs from mme a. And we haven’t covered since this is we cover the guard today. I thought it was good to cover that too.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:13:23
Fantastic.
Art Gelwicks 1:13:23
Art, what’s your tool this
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:13:25
week?
Art Gelwicks 1:13:26
Mine’s a little one called sesame. It’s an Android app. And it’s a universal search and shortcut tool. It’s available. And it integrates with several of the launchers that are out there, such as lawn chair and Hyperion. And it is just a neat extension indexing the content of your phone, being able to find contacts, being able to find applications and create shortcuts to things that even your launcher doesn’t support. So I I installed this originally with a launcher, I have since uninstalled the launcher, but I kept the search tool. And being able to quickly go through and find across indexing just by keyword entry is has been extremely useful. re you’ll like this, they have a switch so it will search Evernote as well. So you can do that search from the desktop or from the application. So
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:14:22
that’s great. I love all of these tools that just allow for indexing your data so that you can get faster access to it. I’m just really really pleased with any tool that allows you to do that cool. So sesame, the universal search and shortcut app. Alright, new tools out of the way that takes us on to our featured story of the week, which is that did it a tasks is now available in early access for Evernote in the new Evernote only. So in the in the new Evernote desktop and mobile applications, you now have access to a new feature called tasks and so what Do you think gence about tasks in Evernote? Have you had a chance to play around with it? What are your thoughts about the task management market where we go in here with tasks Oh, and disclosure, I am an Evernote certified consultant and one of the Evernote regional leaders for North America. So clearly I am biased towards loving this new feature. But I also feel like it is missing some features. And I’m hoping that they do come to the platform. And yeah, but interested to hear your thoughts.
Augusto Pinaud 1:15:28
So I’m excited about it. I think for the heavy Evernote users, it is good to have everything in one place. For the people who is entering their time management work is great. It’s a beginning application. I don’t know for the people who have already solved that problem who has robust implementations in other places, if it’s ready, but I think it’s good, I think anything that can challenge the status. Cool, it’s good, because that will just improve everybody else. Yeah, it’s
Art Gelwicks 1:16:08
it’s about sorry, Ray, it’s about time. This is the kind of feature that you know, everybody asked for in all of these applications, I hear about it all the time in OneNote. It’s nice to see this has been integrated in because to me, it’s less about the function. And it’s more about the future of Evernote. Evernote is recognizing that they need to broaden their horizons a little bit, excuse me, stay connected to their user base. And this is one thing that just makes that an easy connection.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:16:40
Yeah, I’m incredibly pleased by this because the the person who is a power user of any other task manager, this is not going to bring them into Evernote necessarily in this first early access feature set. I think that once Evernote makes this more robust and connects the pieces of the puzzle here, which in this case is your notes, to the tasks that are being that are being taken. I think this is just incredibly powerful. I’ve already found power. And I’ve been testing this feature set for quite some time now. And I find that for myself, the ability for me to now track in my notes, commitments others were making, in essence in GTD lingo, the waiting for context, just being able to track all of my waiting for us in a place that can now remind me to remind them if I have not gotten what I’m expecting in time has been a major opportunity piece for me. So now I’m able to take my meeting notes like I normally do, I’m in Evernote while I’m capturing it into Evernote after the fact. And then I add my task, add a reminder, if there’s a real due date for some deliverable, I can put that due date in add a reminder and keep myself apprised of those things. And now I’m not sending many, many emails, I’m capable of tracking all of that in one centralized location tied to the meeting notes, I can see a lot more opportunity there. But I am really pleased with how Evernote has implemented it. I am looking forward to them increasing some of these other pieces. But most importantly, I am interested in seeing how third parties integrate with Evernote tasks. Right now we have a lot of integrations to the note itself and to the to the reminders set to the note. I’m going to really really love the ability to set up Zapier an ifft to tie to the Evernote tasks now and being able to do things with those pieces there.
Art Gelwicks 1:18:27
So is that is that on the roadmap of the whole
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:18:30
Evernote API, Evernote API is exposing tasks. So so that’s the possible thing. Yeah, big thing with my data’s there, right, like that’s my second brain. So I know it is for hundreds of millions of users. And so the the goal here is to be able to tie back to that to those now granular action steps that can now tie other things to it. I’m just really looking forward to seeing those kinds of things come together. So. Alright, we have reached the end of our featured story of the week. And so that brings us to announcements of gousto. What do we have in announcements this week?
Augusto Pinaud 1:19:12
Well, the first thing we have in the announcements is tomorrow 12 noon, eastern time, we are going to record Anything But Idle 64 commencing the WWDC the apple event was Michael’s Lewinsky that happened today. And tomorrow we are going to be it was my call to make comments of the show. I can only I was only able to watch half so but the first half I watched was really exciting. So I’m looking forward for tomorrow given I’m the apple fan of this. On June 9. On the personal productivity club, we have a talk with Jeff Segal and myself studying the Word or the question What can I gain from the health perspective as well as a productivity perspective. Also, in you nine, a Santa has a focus on flow summit. If you are interested in Finally, on June 24, Microsoft is starting to tell us that something is coming. There are rumors from this Job’s going to be a little thing too. It’s going to be windows 11. So I don’t know what it’s going to be. I don’t have other than the rumors. But is there? Yeah.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:20:39
Yeah, well, we’ll see whether or not it’s a new skin on Windows or whether it will have some new features. I think this is cosmetic and kind of branding. And we’ll see what happens there. But either way, I’m excited. I mean, this is the first time they’re making an announcement in quite some time about Windows, you know, and so I think this is a good good opportunity for them to do something I believe that Microsoft under Satya Nadella has been has made an a remarkable turnaround. And so I have great trust in Him and what he’s doing there with the company. So that being the case, thank you Art for joining us here on Anything But Idle. How can folks keep up to date with what you’re doing
Art Gelwicks 1:21:18
out there in the world, best place to come find me is just look up the idea pump.com that’s where I am. That’s where I write. That’s where I post. And that’s where you can talk to me.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:21:28
antastic Thank you, as always, for joining us here on Anything But Idle art. My pleasure. Already gousto then we’re to Thanks so much, as always for joining me on Anything But Idle helping me put together the show and all of that jazz.
Augusto Pinaud 1:21:45
It is fun every week.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:21:47
Fantastic. All right, everybody. Please let us know if there’s a story we missed. But note that in our show notes on Anything But idle.com, you will find our show notes with links to all the stories, the tools of the week, and inclusive of that are extra stories that we didn’t cover. So go through those extra stories before you tell us if we’ve missed anything. But we also have a text transcripts on the website. There’s both a readable version and a downloadable version. So if you click on that, Read More link, it’ll expand it. You can read along while you listen or watch the episode directly on the page. And there’s also a PDF download link there as well. But if we did miss something, you can head over to our contact page at Anything But Idle comm or you can tweet or DMS on Twitter at Anything But Idle. Have a question or comment about the show, feel free to go ahead over to Anything But Idle comm and leave a comment on the episode page or click the contact page. And let us know those thoughts. This is your first time watching the live stream, please feel free to click the subscribe button. And that gets you notified when we go live weekly. We usually do this on Mondays at 6pm. Eastern so it’ll just notify you when we are going live. If you’re listening to the podcast show after the fact obviously we do have the live show. But if you’re listening to us after the fact, you can go ahead and subscribe to the podcast or follow it in Apple language. You can also go to the subscribe tab on Anything But Idle comm and learn instructions on how to do that ratings and reviews also help so if you can feel free to click the thumbs up icon, the video rate or review us in the apple podcast app or in the Stitcher app or wherever else you’re listening to the podcast that allows you to do that that helps us reach more personal productivity folks. And so thank you for doing that. And so with that, see you all next time on Anything But Idle Here’s your productive life.
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Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.