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Google Meet is now a Progressive Web App and Left-Handed Productivity, and more Productivity and Technology News This Week
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In this Cast | Google Meet is now a Progressive Web App and Left-Handed Productivity.
Headlines & Show Notes | Google Meet is now a Progressive Web App and Left-Handed Productivity.
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
Left Handed vs Right Handed Productivity
Hands-on: You can now run Windows 365 on iPad, and Microsoft even has an app for it
Google Slides Sheets and Drawings add Smart Compose to make commenting faster
Hands on Review of the iReader XS Kindle Oasis Killer
Google gently pushes Apple to adopt RCS by pointing out the poor security of SMS fallback
Google’s ‘time crystals’ could be the greatest scientific achievement of our lifetimes | TNW
Wellbeing support boosts productivity, survey finds | David Sapsted | Relocate magazine
Bill Gates Always Reads Before Bed. Science Suggests You Should Too
How To Set Weekly Goals To Change Your Life
5 Simple Steps to Creating a Productive Daily Schedule
More Flexibility with Your Work Schedule? One Challenge No One Has Mentioned.
7 charts Asana customers love to use for real-time insights
7 Tactics For Dealing With Annoying Coworkers Who Talk Too Much
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
Google Meet is now a progressive web application making it easier to access
Announcements
Anything but Idle 074: Galaxy Unboxed with Art Gelwicks on Thursday at 6:00pm
Superhuman Raises $75 Million For Its Waitlist-Only Email Productivity App
Other News
Episode #117: David Allen interviewed by Doug Goldstein
Podcast #729: How to Fight Internet-Induced Numbness
Amazon acknowledges 3G Kindle shutdown offers new incentives to upgrade
Google remembers Voice exists adds new missed call and caller ID features
How-To Geek: What Is Google Tensor, and Why Is Google Making its Own Processor?
Raw Text Transcript | Google Meet is now a Progressive Web App and Left-Handed Productivity.
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. This is Episode 73. Google meat is now a progressive web app and left handed productivity. We’re recording this on August 9 2021. And of course, each week we cover and discuss the productivity news headlines of the week. But of course, to start us off, we usually have a little theme that we discussed before we get into it. And today’s theme is all about left handed productivity. And I was curious, because though Do you know how no one he left handers in your life? And what do they and how do they think about productivity differently? No.
Augusto Pinaud 0:47
Let me tell you, God made a few perfect people. The rest are right handed.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:56
I figured you would have an opinion about this considering your your left handedness. And so So talk to us about how you perceive the world differently as a left hander versus those of us who are the majority. So let’s start off with the fact that most people are right handed 90% of the population on the planet is right handed and left handers were once considered like the devil’s work. Thankfully, we’ve gotten over that.
Augusto Pinaud 1:25
In some places, there is places in this world that is still bringing that back in for budgets.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:33
Yes, at least in my circles, I don’t have to deal with that. And and so left handedness though it is a wiring a neural wiring that’s just a little bit different than the rest of us. And so I’m just curious, how do you think being left handed affects your personal productivity?
Augusto Pinaud 1:51
You know, I am I’m a glass half full kind of person and I have always been an I hopefully always will be. I said younger person, there was more challenges because the desk at school, but after you get out of school, and now you get to square dance court, regular office desk, then the plane was even into that it was quite challenging. Okay, drove and right. Was your hand falling to the side. The other thing that you seen are minor things, you know, what did you wear your watch you were you’re watching it, normally in the opposite hand of everybody how you handle your devices. But I don’t think it’s an obstacle for for productivity. And I don’t even think that because you are left handed you actually think different. What it gives you really is. You need to learn to use certain things for me, I learned to use scissors, I learned to use my right hand. So if anything, it gives me the advantage of learn to train the other hand. So if anything, I have a strong hand and I know so we can. We’re most right handers has a strong hand and a really weak one. Because they never had that need to, you know, train the other half to be able to do things, you know, I cannot do that anymore. But at some point in my life, I could highlight books with either hand without an issue. So it’s really a matter of what are you going to do with that and how you’re going to make that skill?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:40
Yeah, so I’m just going to rattle off some interesting left hand versus right hand productivity analysis that I found from simple texting Comm. They did a survey and basically taking the respondents answers and put together this this. It’s kind of like a infographic of sorts where they talked about some of these pieces. I thought it was interesting, although probably not scientifically accurate, but still kind of interesting in this sense. So they found that the the most productive day for left handers were Mondays. And that is by by a pretty good margin. And that left handers also found Fridays to be very productive. Whereas for right handers, it was across the kind of across the spectrum of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday were the most productive for people income not equal measure, but you know, kind of it within the margin of error. So it seems like left handers tend to concentrate their their productivity on Mondays and Fridays. They also found that left handers procrastinated more than than right handers which is quite kind of interesting here. That left handers spent more time on social media, then right handers. So the little interesting little tidbits here I’ll put a link to this in the in the show notes so folks can kind of look at it and see if there’s anything of interest in here. For those they said left handers wake up typically between six and 7am was right handers wake up between five and six. That’s not the case with the gousto since he wakes up much earlier, but then bedtime, both go to sleep around 10 to 11pm, on average. And so there are some minor looks like minor differences based on this very unscientific survey between left handed and right handed desk. And there’s a couple of other really interesting thing. It noted that both left and right handers prefer to work independently. But the highest percentage of respondents that prefer to work with a team were left handers and left handed males technically, and so or specifically. And they found that 38% of left handers reporting feeling bogged down by details are very frequently, frequently or very frequently bogged down by details compared to only 32% of right handers. So again, what within what I would consider margins of error. And then they started talking about most effective learning styles. And just so everybody knows, that’s all bunk. So there was no most effective learning style for left hand, right hand left brain, right brain or anything like that. And, and so that that’s just very interesting, you know, just kind of seeing some of the ways in which something that seems fairly benign can still have these profound, you know, potential differences between people. And that is not to say that one is better than the other or anything like that. It’s just interesting to note where you land on that on those scales. And that if you are a left hander, and you feel like you procrastinate, you know, then you can potentially put in some, you know, levels of behavioral interventions that can help you overcome those issues and get back on track. So just very interesting. But either way, left handers is left handers day coming up, I think in a couple of days, I think Thursday or Friday is his left handers day. So Happy lefthanders Day to you gousto early. And with that, let’s get into our headlines for this week. Let’s do our tech headlines for the week.
Augusto Pinaud 7:02
Well, our first article is an article from nine to five hands on, you can now run Windows 365 on the iPad, and Microsoft even have an app with it. So there there has been we will cover that Windows is coming vertical, at least for the corporate and the business. From the article tell the story, hey, would they tried to do in the browser, but then they discover Oh, I can use the Microsoft remote app, and then access it much, much better than with the browser. So this is a really interesting concept. Do I see places where this fit incredibly? Well? Yes, it has still certain requirements, you need to be on a certain level on the Microsoft accounts, we don’t have a lot of details of what the prices are going to be. But still, I think this will be something that we are going to see. And it’s going to be really useful in this now remote or hybrid mode that we are going to go hey, you know, you want to bring your own device, bring your own device, and you can now connect to this remotely and use the computer secure remotely and everything else. So for corporate world, it is going to be really interesting. And I’m really curious what’s going to happen with this?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:24
Yeah, I think the only downside to this is that I you know, I do a lot of training. And so I will see people with their devices, and I will frequently then identify, okay, that’s a Mac, that’s someone with an iPad Pro, that’s somebody with a Windows machine, I think get a fairly good feel about how to direct people based on that. But with people running, say, Windows on boot camp on on Mac OS, and now running Windows 365 on their iPads, I’m not going to know what operating system one is using. It’s gonna be a little difficult. But you know, that’s a that is a that is a marginal problem in the population. I think it’ll be interesting to see.
Augusto Pinaud 9:00
That is correct. But I had have clients who who are iPad only, or mostly iPad, only, that they have one or two things, they need to still run in a PC, mostly because the software is not available for the center senior enough where they may get it so. So for those clients, this is an incredible solution. They can continue living on the iPad and now login to that to run that query that they need to run or those kind of things. I yeah, I think is exciting.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:29
Yeah, and I do a lot of testing of software. So I will want to you know, usually use an emulator for being able to pull up a particular operating system and see whether or not the software I’m testing has a particular bug in a version on a particular operating system. And now being able to run basically a full windows in a box. You know, utilizing that on almost any device. That’s a really great piece of of mind to be able to have access to that no matter where you are. You’re like okay, I could have my Mac out on the road, flip open my Mac, pull up windows 365 haven’t opened it up and see if it works for that particular software. So I could see some really good edge cases for this being useful. So, okay, onto our next
Augusto Pinaud 10:08
story. Well, our next story is the pixel six prime and iPhone user. I don’t get excited about pixel phones, but you do so. Absolutely. So the pixel six is coming out. What was your impression about it?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:28
Yeah, so So I would say let’s start off with the pixel five, right and the pixel five 5g specifically. So I’m I’m carrying a pixel five, 5g, as well as my old pixel two XL. And I run them side by side, you know, and I’ve segmented one for one part of my work and one for the other and personal, and I love my five 5g phone, I mean, I’d really do it’s, it’s the same exact screen size as my two XL. Even though the two XL is much larger. It’s remarkably you lay them over each other, the screen size is exactly identical. But you’re talking about in the six. And these are, these are rumoured specs. So these are not actuales. Until we know for certain, but we know that we’re going to get a B for your battery, both on the six and the six Pro, we do have the five, eight coming out very soon. And I’m really curious to see how that really makes its way into the market, because we’re going to come up with you know, sometime in early September, we’re going to get the five a and then we’re going to immediately in October, then get two new flagship phones. Now these are going to be what I think Google is trying to set them up as truly flagships. That is they’re going to be higher priced. And they’re going to have better specs. Plus, they’re introducing this new tensor chip their own, you know, tensor SOC system on a chip. And they’re utilizing basically the same concept that they do in terms of GPUs, or tensor processing units in Google’s data centers. This is like adding machine learning to the phone itself, so that it has this SOC dedicated to doing those kinds of processes that require it to have a high degree of automation running through the system. And so they demonstrated to these reporters that were able to see the pixel six in action, the idea of having on screen captions, while say it was translating, you know, language in the background. So I was able to do multiple sets of, of processing, you know, capabilities all at the same time. So I’m really looking forward, I’m probably going to get the six or the six pro when when it does come out. And I’ll be sad to see my two XL go away. But but it is getting long in the tooth. And I’m time for I’m hoping that Google actually releases a pixel watch. If not, then I’ll probably go to the galaxy watch. One of either either the newest actives that will hopefully be announced on Thursday, this week. So or is it Wednesday? This week, Wednesday, this way, this
Augusto Pinaud 13:00
way? Yeah. Well, we’re recording this,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:02
we’re gonna do a show on Thursday. So you’ll hear us talking about it, either a very, very happy Ray or a very, you know, resigned Ray about sort of the galaxy watch. But I think this is this is this is where Google should be going. And they’re taking a very different perspective than Apple here, right? You know, Apple would keep a tight ship and a tight lip on what was going to be released. Google just is like, fine, here goes everything. Here it is, look at it. They didn’t let them take it home. But they did. Let them look at it and see all of the details. So very cool stuff.
Augusto Pinaud 13:35
Yeah. And it is interesting that you mentioned that comparison, because as the technology is has evolved, and all that do we still I mean, yes, the secret is exciting. Yes. Coming to the event. And knowing you know, we have the Samson event. And we have seen most of the things now is just going for the show. Which one is better? And I don’t know if I have an answer that I still want to dream that that is actually what is going to be announced or know what it’s actually going to be announced on Thursdays.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:06
Yeah, and so just so everybody’s aware, the specs in terms of the six in this and the six Pro, they’re going to run the latest version of Android that’s going to be 12. So they’re going to release with 12 on them. The displays on the six is going to be 6.4 inches, it’s going to be an OLED at 90 hertz and the pixel six Pro is going to have a 6.71 inch screen also am OLED but running 120 hertz as as comparison to the 90 hertz on the on the six, eight gigabytes versus 12 gigabytes and then you can upgrade the six up to 256 gigabytes in terms of storage. Half a terabyte for the pro and the cameras are a little bit better on the pro having a 48 megapixel telephoto lens and and that’s pretty much the difference 15 megapixel wide and 12 megapixel ultra wide on both of them and then you get that 48 megapixel tele photo On the Pro, and that’s that big bar, you’re going to see a lot of those promos, promos and ads, it’s going to basically rested. But I’m actually, I’m actually looking forward to it. Because you’re going to have the ability to kind of rest your hand on that point. So instead of having to have one of those, what are those things called that you put on the back of your phone, and they’re like pop ups or whatever they’re called? Yeah, whatever they’re called, I have one sitting around here, I’ve just never been able to bring myself to putting it on my phone. I did think about it for the two XL, because it’s a big phone. And, and so but you know, now you’ll be able to basically that that ridge will rest on your hand, and instead of the back of the phone, having the fingerprint sensor, it will now be built into the screen. So it’ll be interesting to see how that works, whether it’ll be optical or, or otherwise, in terms of that sensor. And you’re going to get a bigger battery on both the six and the six Pro. So the current five, I think has the five 5g that I have has a 4000 milliamp per hour battery. So we’re gonna go up to 40 605,000, again, according to these rumors, and so yeah, I just think this tensor chip is really going to be the the separator between everything else and the pixel series, this is going to be truly a flagship phone now, because it will have something that no other phone is going to have presently. So I’m looking forward to I’m looking forward to seeing more about it. And I’m interested to see how Google will launch this, and what the pricing is going to be because it’s obviously going to be more pricey than the average phone that’s out there.
Augusto Pinaud 16:36
So the next news is Google Sheets and drying, are adding the smart compose to make typing much faster. So you’ve seen already in Google dogs in Gmail, that you start typing, and then it gives you an idea based on artificial intelligence, what the sentence you’re trying to write, well, that’s coming to Google Sheets and Google Slides and drawings, said you will be able to, you get used to that and write faster.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:05
Yeah, that’s going to show up both in the the body text areas where you’re typing, as well as in the comments. So if you’re typing a comment, you’ll see that smart compose that kind of light gray text appear in those sections, also, right now for Google workspace users. And then it will expand to the consumer, Google workspace, folks as well. So right now, if you are in Google workspace for business, any of the tiers from essential up, you’re going to be able to turn that on in the admin console. But obviously, they’re gonna roll that out to everybody over time, and I’m, I’m excited to see it, it’ll reduce the number of keystrokes you need to make on mobile, it’ll increase, you know, obviously, accuracy, because if you just have to hit, you know, hit the text, and it’s typing it for you. That’s just great. I love it. So
Augusto Pinaud 17:51
our next article is a hands on review of the eye reader x s, that as the article is going in good reader.com. It’s a Kindle Alesis killer. It’s a big screen. It’s a ink paper, screen, and, you know, I say Look at all this review, it’s a great review. It’s a great device. But I wonder, okay, then I’m willing to buy that device and disconnect from the Amazon, hey, there is the iBook store. And that continuing for me, the Achilles heel in many of this, and actually, today happened, my son needed to read up or wanted to read a book. So I got the book in Kindle, downloaded in his Kindle and could not read it, because now it has much graphics that is not compatible with his old version of the Kindle. Fine. He opened the iPad, open the kids iPad application, and he was reading the book that he wanted to read. So I’m done no jet, if I am willing to let that comfort of the Amazon store, even for the Apple Store, I we consume much books still on the Amazon world, then what I consume on the iPad and on the iBook store. And I don’t know if I have, at this point, any interest on only in that That said, it’s a great device. The question is, are you going to be able to beat the usefulness and ease of get a book out of the Amazon store?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:36
And I don’t I think I think the good point. Those are good points. I think the argument against it is if you’re trying to get rid of Amazon from your life, this is a way to do it. So you can you could definitely do that. Plus, this is running Android 8.1. And so you can sideload the Amazon Kindle app onto the device. So if you really do need to access Kindle going, you know, going into legacy books that you had in your catalog, you can do that you can also download the AZ w threes directly from Kindle. And then the this particular ebook reader does open and read them. So you would still be able to read your Kindle books if you loaded them in into this particular reader. I like the reader, it seems really nice. It’s currently in Chinese, so you have to navigate it in Chinese, they are putting out an English version supposedly, so that you’ll actually be able to have it in English in in that space. But it seems like really nice specs, the hardware is really nice, it seems, you know, from the review, it seems like it’s a really nice device to be, you know, kind of having to hold it has the physical rocker buttons for you know, being able to go page forward and page back, it seems like a pretty good, you know, Kindle Oasis competitor. And if you’re really trying to get out of Amazon’s claws, you know, that’s not something I’m looking to do. I’m, I’m unfortunately as as bought into the Amazon world, but grudgingly as I could be. But you know, if you want to then then this is this is probably a really good device. To think about doing that. I would also think about the security there it is Android 8.1. It’s a limited device. I mean, really, you can’t do much more with it. You can install apps, it does have speaker and Bluetooth connectivity. But it’s going to be a limited device if you try to really run a lot of apps on it. But I think that if you’re installing maybe the Kindle app or some podcast applications, like Google podcasts, or I’m not sure if Google podcasts even runs on 8.1, but you could probably test it out and see but there are other podcast apps that are out there that you could install on on 8.1 and see if it would work or not. But you know, you’re you’re capable of D tethering and and it’s a good price. So you’re coming out at a competitive price as well. So okay, on to our next story.
Augusto Pinaud 21:44
Well, we have been talking a lot in this show about RCS and the standard for text and how the mobile did rice and data and and what it means for Google. And now the list the next article is Google gently, you know, pushing Apple to adopt RCS and pointing out on all the securities that SMS have and security issues. And, you know, we have discussing here and we are in agreement, we hope Apple bush forward to RCS that will be fantastic for everybody. It’s not about the iPhone or the Android or Google. It’s about everybody and security and messaging. So I hope that this poking the bear that Google is trying to do really take Apple to pay attention and really implement RCS,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:36
right? Well, I mean, it makes a good argument, which is to say that, you know, Google RCS which is going to be scaled out across all the major telecom telcos in the United States, at least, that’s going to create a secure environment for everyone on Android. The moment that happens, though, iPhones will then become less secure when they fall back to SMS. And that’s a good argument to Apple. If they are, if they truly believe in privacy, they truly believe in security, then they would adopt RCS not because of their business interest, but because of their values. And so put they need to put their money where their mouth is this is potentially going to hurt sales. I don’t know that it will, to me, I don’t think it would, but potentially, I’ll you know, make the argument that it could. But if they’re if they really believe in their values of privacy and security that they’ve been spouting for years, then they need to they need to put up or shut up regarding privacy and security. And so you know, I’m I’m a privacy and security Hawk, so I’m constantly paying attention to what big tech is doing here. So I’m really hoping that they they step up and adopt RCS and make this right for us, the consumers, you know, because I want to be able to message with you and you know, go from Android to iOS to you and feel secure doing so. And and today, you know, that’s just not possible.
Augusto Pinaud 23:55
Alright, our last article for this segment is exciting. It’s about Google time crystals. And the article from The Next Web is Google time crystals could be the greatest scientific achievement of our lifetime. It is a really exciting one without any doubt, explain what it is and the fact of quantum complex enough, but but the idea that they have been able to progress at the show and at least write their pre paper, the paper has not at least at the time, we are talking about this has not been validated the scientific community and everything else, but this is still exciting that we are going to be able to experience something like this. You know. It is really interesting how the things that 30 years ago were science fiction and impossible. We are seeing you know, we’re seeing people Well, public transport or private transportation get to the stratosphere. And we’re seeing now, time crystals, and we’re seeing so much advancing science that it is a fantastic time to be here.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:18
Yeah, so that everyone has a kind of a basic understanding, I can’t I can’t go into how this rejects antonian physics to that level. But the reality here is that the second law of thermodynamics is basically been been altered by virtue of the time crystal. So in essence, things at a state and that are transformed, tend toward entropy, right? They tend toward less order and toward chaos. And so that concept of entropy has been found in these time crystals to be reversed, or to be held constant in that sense. So as those crystals are transforming or doing some process, they’re not losing both their state, and therefore they are, are not expending energy, in essence, energy is not lost in that state change. And so therefore, at the quantum level, you can now utilize these time crystals as a mechanism for being able to flip bits, in essence, without losing without increasing entropy. And that can be incredibly powerful because on the quantum level, entropy is a problem. So that’s, that’s kind of the constitutes the breakthrough here in this preprint research. And so I’m looking forward to peer review here, I’m looking forward to seeing how they’ll be able to scale this technology. And this is, you know, it’s a baby step. This is like, you know, a throwing a piece of sand in an ocean of the next set of technological, you know, movements forward toward true quantum computing. But we’re seeing it born like literally in front of us today, we are seeing the technology born. And that’s incredibly exciting. Even if this proves not to be the right mechanism for quantum computing, we’re seeing the first opportunities of this kind of technology coming forward. And so looking forward to it. All right. So with that time crystals and, and breaking Newtonian physics, we’re gonna take a break, and come back after a word from our sponsor, co working space by personal productivity club, and then we will cover the productivity articles of the week, we’ll cover our new tools of the week, and then we’ll get into our featured story this week, we’ll see after the
Sponsor Voice Over 27:27
break, well, working in person may be normal for you. It’s unlikely your co workers are as interested in being productive as you are, or working remotely or from home can be isolating and there’s something powerful about being with productive people, even virtually that helps you be more engaged. If a flavor of these sounds familiar, co working space by personal productivity club is for you. co working space is a virtual work community designed to help members be more effective and efficient in their work and personal lives. At its core, we provide goal tracking and host focused action sessions throughout the week for accountability and camaraderie, visit Anything But Idle comm forward slash co working to learn more CO working space lives inside personal productivity club, a digital community for personal productivity enthusiasts. So you can find people who use methods and tools you do 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 28:38
Come back everybody to Anything But Idle on Ray Sidney-Smith joined with Augusto Pinaud for the second half of our show. And so Augusto, what is our first productivity article this week? First
Augusto Pinaud 28:51
productivity article come from relocate magazine, and he’s the well being support boost on productivity according to a survey and survey in the UK. And he’s showing how this people in the survey being part of companies who are putting health and well being ahead and how they have found an increased significant decrease in absenteeism, an increase on retention that we know are two of the biggest expenses any corporation has, you know, especially staff retention, and it’s a problem that we have been talking and discussing now that we are coming back or not coming back. Well, well being is a priority. And even that this survey is done in the UK. I think it’s a priority anywhere. It’s a priority here is a bridge in Europe’s abroad in Asia. Where is that well being in water use organization are going to do with that just today. I was reading another article that we’re not quoting that About a CEO in Seattle who lowered his salary so he could raise his people salary to, I think the number was 50,000 a year starting point. And the people after six years, he’s still how his business has tenfold and, and how his employees decided to give him a car as a precedent and recognition for all that he has done for their life. So that’s part of well being that part is treating your people well, that’s part of making people feel that they have something to come for and to come with.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:37
Yeah, that’s fantastic. I think the article makes a lot of really good points. And, again, mental health, and well, being of the people who are working for you is is really tantamount. I mean, you know, like, you can, you can argue that, you know, that profit is the ultimate aim of the of the firm. But at some point, you need to also understand that there would be no business without those individuals who make the business run. And no matter how automated your business can be, humans are fundamentally a part of the business, the concept of a business. And so we need to make sure we take care of them. And I think we’re starting to get there, we’re starting to understand that as a fabric of, you know, enlightened society. And I hope that we continue to keep moving in that direction.
Augusto Pinaud 31:26
Yep. Our next article is ink. And it’s about Bill Gates. And why are his reads before bed? And the science suggests that you should too. This is something that is interesting for me, mostly, because not because of Bill Gates, I have always read.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:47
Yeah, they could have taken Bill Gates out of the article completely, it’s kind of clickbait, that they put his name in there. But
Augusto Pinaud 31:53
for me, reading it support actually, last week, we talked about parents, and that’s one thing we did for kids is we got them a Kindle. And why a Kindle? Well, because a Kindle can allow you to read, so I don’t need to be worried about them taking it Well, actually, I encouraged take the Kindle to bed and read. But what that produce is that my kids read both a lot. Why? Because they know it’s one, it’s allowing bed to it’s the rule is simple. I will buy a book, as soon as they finish the last book. So my son was eight. It’s already reading a collection. And he said the book 16 or 17, out of 25. Okay, on a topic he pick, I don’t care. It’s when he goes and then need to read he the school, give them a reading list for the summer. And he was like, this book are so boring. I understand that from where he’s coming. Because the problem is, for him reading is part of his day to day. So my kids, yes, go and read before you go to bed. And the article says, you know, you will probably sleep better I asleep at night. And I have a Kindle, just for that purpose. So I can read at night with the light off, you will end up being retrieved Well, I don’t know, I cannot prove that. But they said that according to the article, you know, you will make 3000 or almost $4,000 more a year, you will be less stress, you will be more empathetic and you will be more focused, can talk about those things. That’s a scientific study. But what I can said is, you know, who are those people that read at night, and that has that fond component of random night, and I wish I could pass that to more people. So more people will come read and enjoy at night. Yeah, I
Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:57
know, I keep a Kindle at my bedside. And then I have my regular Kindle which which basically walks around with me throughout the day. And and so that Kindle there at at my bedside is for those moments when I just want to do some quiet reading before bed. And I usually don’t read immediately before bed, but I do read in the evening and then do a few things and then go to bed. And it’s just part of my ritual, part of my routine. I don’t like the word ritual. And so it’s just part of my routine and, and I really enjoy it. And so it’s interesting to see how they they quantify some of these components there. But I think it’s really important for us all to remember that if you just take a little bit of time every day to read, you’ll get through far more reading than if you don’t put a little bit of time in your routine for reading. And I know that a lot of us want to read more. And it’s on our bucket list of you know books or on our bucket lists and that kind of thing. If you are having trouble reading, then just choose a time of the day to dedicate that and it turns out that right before bed is a good time to do it because you can just go ahead and it’s relaxing. potentially even something that is boring, you know, you might only get 10 pages in and then and then conk out who cares, right? Because then you’ll pick it up the next evening, and you can go from there. So it’s a good, good practice.
Augusto Pinaud 35:12
Our next article is how to set weekly goals to change your life. And this is an article that is interesting for me, I have it I create the impact journal with that idea was the idea of show you, you know how to plan 13 weeks, and how to use that 13 week plan to bring it to from 13 to week two, what did you are going to do today and and remind yourself consistently, what are those and they talk about the time to reflect the weekly goals. And that time to reflect, I believe, is what makes this powerful you need to reflect you need to review your goals you need to and if you are lucky enough to be able to find an accountability partner to do this with, then this process has the chance to potentially give you a tenfold of productivity.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:09
Yep, absolutely love it. I mean, I saw these, this and the next article side by side, and we’ll talk about the next article. But you know, this whole concept of having a weekly review of some kind, and setting weekly goals against those reviews, you know, I frequently talk about the fact that, you know, my whole thoughts around getting things done the methodology, or GTD as most people know, it is based on a week to week cadence, and that we can look on farther horizons. But if we don’t identify those more granular goals closer to the week, then we don’t actually get more done, we actually end up getting less done, because we’re both so focused on either the forest or the trees, that we never actually look at the segments that help as building blocks to them. The cadence of the week is a really good cadence for being able to identify chunks of work that can be done that can really build up and get you toward some priorities that you might have been setting aside. So I highly recommend people make those weekly goals. And you don’t have to call them goals. I mean, you can call them whatever you want. You know, you can call them milestones, we can call them plans, or you can call them whatever. But knowing where you’re going to hit each week, breaking up projects into those more fundamental pieces means that you’re going to be able to get more done. And there are all kinds of things that can stymie that. But you know, the reality is, is that you’re going to have more success. And as a gousto said, having a partner, you know, an accountability partner say, Okay, I set this goal for this week, did I make that happen, and what really caused me to not make that happen. So you can look at each week after that, and hopefully make progress on fixing those and writing better goals.
Augusto Pinaud 37:42
Not as you said, Our next article, talk about simple sub five steps to creating a more productive daily schedule, you know, discover your optimal work schedule, block off productivity, time, schedule, break times, schedule, availabilities in the shortest possible windows, and avoid multitasking. This is interesting to me, because as a person, I’ve been lucky to work early into the productivity journey to discover that optimal work schedule, and even to change the way I was doing it because of that, and I told the story on a book, but, you know, I, I was the proud member of the night owl club, until I discover okay, but let me analyze this, I get home, play with a kid, go dinner, you know, wait until everybody gets to be it. So I waste God knows how long I’m like, now getting to the time that my brain is now calm enough to work. And then I tried to burn that Midnight Oil for the next three hours. And I did that for the longest time until I said, Okay, what if I go to bed, and then try to wake up much early. And I’ve been doing it for in the morning. And that gives me the time to meditate that gives you time to journal that gives you time to look at that schedule and those objective and what I’m going to do for the day, how I’m going to block time, or not block time I discovered today, there is no time. But it allows me for a much, much better day and for much, much better week.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:33
Yeah, I’m in the process of actually looking at my own daily schedule. And so this was an article that kind of piqued my interest because it’s in that category of things, as you know, gousto and many of you probably also know I track my time very carefully and closely. And so I have lots of data to look at and I started to notice that my data wasn’t matching up with my my outputs. And so I was I was like okay, well something’s going on here. You know, I can feel the struggle in some of my goal or you I need to figure this out. And so I started looking at how my routine was actually misaligned with my productive output. And so I’ve been looking at how to make these kinds of things adjusted, you know, moving these these blocks of time around so that the adjustments can actually work better for me productive, you know, output wise. And so I’m really looking forward to kind of rejiggering and using some of the advice in this article for doing that. So, you know, nothing, nothing mind shattering. But you know, we’re new to me. But it was a nice refresher, in that sense. And I think, you know, if you are having any sense of this pandemic, and this kind of leads into our next article from retro Reuben, you know, like, if you have had any upset in your routine, that this is the time to start thinking about it, because we’re going to basically be yo yoing back and forth between, you know, working from home to hybrid work to remote work, and, and then to in person, and back and forth, right. So this is the time to start thinking that if you are having any struggle in that sense, or if you want to optimize to have even more productivity in that sense, you don’t feel struggle, but you want to basically, you know, go and go in the the next level, your routine is the thing that will get you there, I fundamentally believe that So, alright, onto Gretchen Rubin.
Augusto Pinaud 41:12
So more flexibility on your work schedule, one challenge no one has mentioned. And it was really interesting, the challenge is that routine, you know, the reality is when you are going to work, pre pandemic, you know, Monday through Friday, well, you had a routine good or bad, you had one, when you’re now brought, were brought to home now that routine change. And yes, a lot of people has found that the new routine they like they enjoy. But now as we are going back to a hybrid or not hybrid, or whatever happens, that routine is going to be challenged again. And it is interesting to see until Look how that effect or that negative effect on the routines, it’s now going to start affecting people who now have a routine that works. Again, I said this before the pandemic start, or at least before the lockdown start, okay, 30, around 30% of the people will discover they don’t want to ever go back to the office 30% cannot see them hoping to get back into the office. Okay. And the other 30% had already discovered this and don’t care one way or the other. The core problem or not, the people who don’t care one way or the other problem are going to be those people who are already established a new routine. And now they are stuck into this note change again, on possibly losing that routine that is working so well for them.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:53
Absolutely. Change is difficult. I mean, you know, there’s no question about it, the change is difficult. Most change is palatable, but when you have rapid change in and I’m not talking about rapid change, meaning every day, but rapid change in the sense that you were going to see different work modalities in you know, like every two or three months because of something that is outside of our control, that is very disruptive to our overall work. And I think that that’s that’s the issue that we’re facing here. And I think, maybe not what necessarily Gretchen was talking about here, but certainly what I, you know, imply, you know, seems implied in this particular article, and I want to make sure everybody, you know, prepares themselves. And just like, you know, I used to travel for work, and I presume I will again in the future. And, and, and so I have two sets of systems, right, I have my on the road system, and then I have my home system, you know, or home based system. And so that wasn’t at one time in my home home, but now it is. And so you need to kind of set that up for yourself. On days when you’re going to work in a in an office environment. What does that look like? How are you going to set yourself up for success so that you have a mobile system? And then when you get home? And you have to work from home? How are you going to set that system up? And how are the tool going to reconcile? When those things change from one to the other? Right? It’s those it’s those changes between places, right? It’s, it’s at stoplights that we have the most accidents, right? It’s at the acceleration or deceleration lanes on highways. Those are those transition points are the difficult moments in our productivity systems as much as on is on the highways. So if you can learn how to transition well, then you’re going to have a greater success of being able to be productive and switching between those gears. So that’s that’s kind of my thought there. All right, on to our next article.
Augusto Pinaud 44:49
So our next article came from the blog of a 77 charts that authentic customers love. For real time insight. I need to pass About Tony to hear because I am not really an Asana user I have use it, I use it for a couple of things. But I’m not really spend time I use it mostly as a place, I pulled the task and put them into my system.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:15
Yeah, so this is just basically in a thoughtful ad on their blog for their universal reporting features, which is, in essence, a feature set they brought out, I think, in June of this year. And now you get these real time insights into how your team is moving projects forward, you can see budget, you can see how work is distributed, you can see log jams, and you can create flexible reports. So you can see things like how many open tickets, if you’re tracking open tickets in some of some way, shape, or form, you know, are kind of moving throughout the system, how many projects you have in the pipeline, it gives you a lot of flexibility and being able to manage those types of data, and then filtering down to the data that you want to see, this does require you to upgrade from any of the free Asana plans, you know, the free plan up to one of the paid or premium plans for Asana. But you know, ultimately, if you do need that data and your entire company’s productivity system is in that space, it makes a lot of sense for you to be able to have this kind of data. And it is really quite amazing how much data you can get out of it, when you do upgrade to the universal reporting, or to the premium plan that gives you the universal reporting, because you can see, you know, just like all of the various ways in which you can do that, and you can say like, Oh, you know what, we have this many hours booked toward this kind of work, and you want to be able to distribute workload a little bit more evenly. And you can see the people who have way more work on their plate than the people who don’t. And so then you can say, Okay, well, this person has a lot on their plate, maybe we can shift some of that work to somebody else. Or maybe we need to hire someone to help diffuse that workload on that individual. So it gives you a lot of really good information regarding your human resources, and wanting to make sure that your labor forces is working well optimally, and also not being taken advantage of. And so I think that’s a really good component there that they that they talked about. So it’s good. It’s it’s a good concept. And I hope that more people look into it, because it is a feature set within Asana and I love data. So I just love looking at the various reports.
Augusto Pinaud 47:22
Well, this one I didn’t pick, so I took it as a personal offense to me. No serious 17 tactics to dealing with annoying coworkers who talk too much. I don’t know, I, I have never had that issue of talking too much. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Anyways. Some of the things I have done, okay, I have for many years now working at home, but I have I do not disturb sign. I even when this podcast star, I sent a text message and announcement to everybody in the household that the podcast is going to start same thing when I have phone calls that I need to not cannot have or don’t want to have people shouting around me, you know, but one of the most important things is to understand as an empathic person, my door has always been open. But also try to find with these people why? And hey, can we have this conversation maybe later on, maybe at lunch, maybe in the middle of the afternoon, and make it work, you know, nobody who talks too much is coming to you to be annoyed to you. And to annoy you. That’s not the case. They come because they have another need. So understand what that other need also can help you to be a better listener to be a better person, and to get this person what they need without you getting annoyed.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 48:55
Yeah, I think this article is just a soft skills article. It teaches you how to do active listening so that you can be able to effectively tell somebody that it’s time to end a conversation and move on with things. It gives some sense of why people sometimes will take your time I did a prod pod podcast episode was about time thieves, time thugs and time terrorists. And this fits a lot of those concepts. Right? You know, there are certain people who just come in and they just bash up the place. They take your time and attention without really having any good reason for it. From your perspective. You know, terrorists have some kind of principled reason for doing it. That’s adverse to your own values or system, you know, time thieves are stealing your time because they have emotional reasons why they feel like they’re not being heard or otherwise. And so you have to kind of think through why is that person taking my time and, and my attention and how do I how do I gently because this is a work, collegial relationship. How do you gently do that and then take that to the next level and be more firm. And then ultimately, and as the article says, you know, you may need to go to a superior and say, Hey, you know, HR or whomever, you need to talk to this person, because they’re breaking boundaries. And as much as I’ve tried, I’ve been unable to be able to get through to them, that this is unproductive use of my time and theirs. And so I think that, you know, we all have to deal with it, we have to deal with difficult people, we have to deal with negative people, we have to deal with sometimes people who talk a little too much, and and we have to deal with that, you know, and not everybody gets to just be a podcaster and talk all the time. So, you know, I think it’s a good thing for us to be able to work through those issues in productive ways. And that means you learning, again, just behavioral interventions that help you appropriately deal with people when they are acting inappropriate with you. And, and, you know, just takes a little bit of energy. Alright, so that takes us through our productivity articles this week. And that leads us into our new tools of the week. And so a good stone, I come across many personal productivity tools and services each week, as we put together the list of articles and tech articles as well, that the tech news for each episode. So when new tools of the week, this segment, we each bring you a tool we think you might like and so let’s get into it. So our first tool this week is actually a physical tool, well, I just decided to be in like the left handed space. And so this is a fun tool that I found. And what it allows you to do is to have a it’s like a little workstation, you know, like a bed tray, but it’s for the left handed, right. So your, your mouse is there on the left hand side, and you get a little drawer there as well. And, and then you have the section on the right hand side that lifts up for a laptop or whatever. So it really flips the script on the design. So that left handers can have a little bit more of a little bed table. But I see you could put this on a desk or on a kitchen table so that you could have a standing height, you know, environment, it seems like it’s pretty well built. And it’s got some some little covers for it to be able to you know, stand on the surface without damaging it. And I just thought it was a pretty good product. So if anybody’s interested in doing that, they can check out the it’s new vonti two ends, and E n n e w VA n t e adjustable laptop table so they can check that out. All right, good. So what is your tool this week?
Augusto Pinaud 52:29
Well, this tool comes from a conversation with our friend Art Gelwicks. And he was saying how he’s on his phone, he can do live wallpapers, and he may consider an iPhone when you can do live wallpaper. So therefore there was nothing else to do other than research and find an application called into life live wallpapers, who can allows you to put videos like wallpapers. So now the ball is on our court and I’m expecting to see an iPhone soon on his life.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:09
I do not think that’s gonna be happening anytime soon. But
Augusto Pinaud 53:13
But he said this was one of the one of the things so well, we, we just want to be helpful here and removed.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:22
So it’s called into live live wallpapers.
Augusto Pinaud 53:25
And it’s really cool. It will allows you to grab small videos that you create and put them as the wallpaper and the live wallpaper. So it’s it can be really, really sweet and really nice.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:36
Fantastic. Wonderful. All right, that brings us to our featured story this week, which is that Google meat is now a progressive web app. And you have all heard me talk about the Progressive Web App before. But I feel charged with consistently explaining this because it is so so important and powerful. So a pw a or progressive web application is basically a full featured application within the browser. But instead of it looking like you’re in a browser window, it takes you out of the browser window and displays its own application in your dock or in your taskbar and provides you with basically all the features that you would have in a normal application. And now Google meat has brought us there. And so now you can basically use Google meat as a full desktop application in a progressive web app. So you’re you’re you’re a Google meat, you know,
Augusto Pinaud 54:34
I am a user. Yes.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:36
So so what what is this going to do in terms of changing your experience with Google meat?
Augusto Pinaud 54:42
Do you know until they do it for the iPad? I have not tried in the iPad. They’re progressive because you have the application and the question is are we going to bring this to Are we going to stop producing the apps in center of this that by the way, it will make sense to do that. So if that comes, well, then I will start using it. But on the Chromebook, I have a Chromebook, that’s what I use to record all these shows, and I have used it, and it works pretty well. So it’s a matter of really off for Google to let us know, when it’s going to be on an iPad, the iPad is my main device, when you go there, you still get pushed to download the app from the store, instead of go into the pw A. So yeah, we will need to see,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 55:45
yeah, I can only imagine that they’re gonna stay doing that on iOS. This is really for, you know, windows, as well as Chrome OS and Linux boxes. And so just so folks have an understanding, what I’m talking about here is that if you are looking at Google meet, if you go to meet.google.com, you will now see this little button, it looks like a desktop monitor with a down arrow inside of it. And if you click on that, it’s going to give you an option to be able to then install the application, at least on this Windows machine. That will then create an icon in your programs folder. So when you click on the Start menu, you look under programs, you’re going to see now Chrome apps as a folder, that directory directory will then contain a, a an application called Google meet. Now, this will be tied to the chrome profile that I’m in right now. So I’m logged into my personal account. So this will be attached to my Google meet personal account, if I switched over to my business account, then when I created that Chrome application, it will be tied to my business, Google meet account, my workspace account. And this is really important and powerful, because you can have multiples of the same Google meet progressive web app installed on the device for each of those particular accounts. And that’s what is so interesting here, because now I can have Google meet logged into multiple Google Chrome profiles. And those accounts will then how’s the credential. So if I have a meeting in one of my Google meet accounts, I just jumped to that profile, you know, open up that particular, you know, listing from Chrome apps, and then just hop into it. So this is really, really great for being able to hop into meetings in the right account, and just having those available. So I’m really pleased with it coming to TWA. And I know that it just makes it easy to have that freestanding floating window that you can now you know, you can now use that for split view, you can do that for tiling and all kinds of other things, you can put it on a different desktop, so that you have it on its own separate desktop, all kinds of good things there that I think are pretty positive, plus, the Chrome OS experience is just going to be that much better. Because now you don’t have to install a separate application, it’s not taking up any more space, by having that pw a and I have lots of pw A’s now on my system, and it’s not taking up any more space. You could do this with YouTube, YouTube Music, you could do this with so many different applications, just look for that little icon in your browser bar, and you’ll be able to install it. So I think that’s just really, really positive. Any any final thoughts there? gousto? Before we close out?
Augusto Pinaud 58:26
No, we don’t have any final thoughts on this. I think we who for what I have been testing, it is really a great way to go. Not only that, it gives you something that is important. That is consistency. Now you can open that BWI on the Chromebook on the windows on the Mac, and get this same exact experience. And I’ve been a huge complainer about that for years. Okay, the more standard is experience, the more it helps productivity. That means now I can open data on a Windows or data on a Mac, or data on a Chromebook and get exactly the same experience. And that is fantastic.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 59:08
Absolutely. So we’ve got a couple of announcements.
Augusto Pinaud 59:13
So we have two announcements on Thursday at 6pm. We will record in Anything But Idle 74. We will recording the galaxy unbox with Art Gelwicks here at 6pm. And then the other announcement we have is supernatural race 75 million for his waiting list only email productivity app. So aside of that, you are going to find a bunch of other articles including an interview with David Allen, and the gold stain and other things. So check the notes and another show will be tomorrow morning. You will be alive in the podcast of your choice and with that, that’s all I have.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:00:00
Yeah. And so that was superhuman not supernatural. For folks who might. superhuman is the app and superhuman? Yeah, yeah. And with that, we have covered the productivity news for this week. So thanks to Augusto Pinaud each and every week for joining me here and helping to put the show together.
Augusto Pinaud 1:00:18
It’s my pleasure. Thanks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:00:20
If you have a question or a comment about anything we discussed during the show, feel free to leave a comment on the episode page. So you’d go to Anything But Idle comm forward slash 073. That’ll take you over to the episode page. So every episode is numbered. And those numbers are the links that will direct you to the episode page. While you’re on Anything But idle.com, you’ll find our show notes with links to all of the stories tools, our extra stories, the ones we couldn’t cover during the episode for time restrictions, and then our text transcripts, they’re available both in a readable format, just click on that Read More link and expand it on the page where you can click on the download link and that will download a PDF to your local system. But of course, if after reviewing all of that, please let us know if there’s a story we did miss you can either leave a comment on the page itself, you can contact us on Anything But Idle comm if there’s a Rada let us know because we do make mistakes and Twitter DMS on Twitter at Anything But Idle and that way we can go ahead and correct ourselves in a future episode or put a comment on to that episode page for that if this is your first time watching the live stream welcome and feel free to hit the subscribe button and then that little notification bell so you can be notified when we go live weekly. If you’re listening to the podcast show after the fact you can also subscribe to the podcast if you already don’t and just by going to Anything But Idle comm and clicking on subscribe or follow whatever the the little tab says on our web website and you’ll see instructions to follow us or subscribe to the podcast and get episodes downloaded every week for free. If you’ve enjoyed spending time watching or listening to us, feel free to click the thumbs up icon on the video or you can rate review us in Apple podcasts or Stitcher or wherever you listen to your podcasts that allows you to go ahead and do that. Your compliments of course, are good for our egos, but more important they help us reach more personal productivity listeners and viewers like you. And so thank you for doing that. And so with that we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle Here’s your productive life.
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