SPEAKERS
Frank Butler, Paul Harvey, Stephen Robles

Frank Butler  00:17
Hello busybodies, welcome to another episode of the Busyness Paradox. I'm Frank Butler here with Paul Harvey.

Paul Harvey  00:24
Good day.

Frank Butler  00:25
And, boy, we've got an episode chock full of content today. Paul, what do we have going on?

Paul Harvey  00:32
Well, I think this is the most excited I've ever been before episode, not just because of the topics that we're going to discuss, but who we’ll be discussing them with. So, you know, I'm a fan of a lot of different podcasts. But, well, not surprisingly, I listen to a lot of shows in the workplace/techie genre. And we have one of the really big names in that genre with us today from Apple Insider. I'm almost giddy to announce that today's episode is an interview with Steven Robles. Apple Insider, of course, is the name of the company that he works for, but also the name of the podcast he hosts. And he's also the co-host of another show called HomeKit Insider. Steven’s a really well known person in that world, right, not just for his affable personality, but for his depth of knowledge about how we can use technology to make our jobs and our personal lives more fun and productive. Now, Frank, you and I, we don't hide our status as Apple fanboys very well. But listeners, even if you have no interest in technology at all, we promise that you're going to get some good tips, ideas and suggestions out of today's episode.

Frank Butler  01:41
Yeah, it's pretty exciting. We're looking forward to it. So off to our interview.

Paul Harvey  01:47
So, we recently released our first episode with a guest. And we got a lot of good feedback on that. So we thought we would perhaps try to do that again. We're punching a little bit above our weight this time, we have with us, someone who's far more established and well known in the podcast arena, as well as the tech and media arenas. Probably one of the biggest guests that will have on the show, at least until our Keanu Reeves/Tim Cook Christmas special. 

[laughter] 

You know, I won't say too much about that. It might not happen, but that that's our plan. But until that time, I think this will be our most famous guest on the show. So, we're really excited to have from Apple Insider, Mr. Steven Robles. If you're familiar with Apple Insider, if you listen to the podcast, he hosts Apple Insider, the podcast, and also co-hosts Homekit Insider, with his co-host Andrew O'Hara, two of my shows that I'll really stop what I'm doing once I see them drop in the feed and listen to them. So, for me, this is kind of surreal that, you know, our little podcast has a someone that someone else in the world has heard of before now. We're real excited to have you with us, Steve. Steven. Thanks so much for being here.

Stephen Robles  03:01
Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. And you know, it was fun hearing some of your episodes you've done you guys are talking about productivity and work and you name dropped Cortex, which is a podcast that I love. So I love just get to talk about technology productivity, and very excited for the Tim Cook/Keanu Reeves episode. Hopefully they bring up The Matrix. I would enjoy hearing him talk about that as well.

Frank Butler  03:21
Oh, man, I tell you what, I went to one of my favorite trilogies of all time. Last one was a little bit weak, but as a whole still, I love it. 

Stephen Robles  03:30
I still like it, it's still fun to watch.

Frank Butler  03:31
I agree, especially for the time, right. But I think first we should start off maybe talk a little bit about how your industry being in media and broadcasting that such has been affected by the pandemic and what you've seen with that.

Stephen Robles  03:47
Yeah, it's interesting, when you talk about journalism, and especially technology journalism, a large part of it didn't change. You know, I have colleagues who have worked from home for years, decades, even a friend of mine, Jason Aten, he writes for Inc. He's working from home for years as well. And it's like, well, this is kind of the same for us. So, for some, it hasn't changed at all, but for others, especially journalists who would go in person to events. And with Apple, we've always had in person Apple events. And so that was a big change where journalists kind of have to figure out if we typically did that, you know, how do we translate that now where you know, we're watching this 45-minute video basically from Apple. And it's not a live keynote. There's no hands-on of devices, which is a challenge for Apple as well. You know, there's talk that Apple wants in person services back as soon as possible because one of the biggest features of that was as soon as the event is over, all the journalists rushed to the hands-on area and you would have photos and videos of the devices right then you know, you can go on YouTube 20 minutes after an apple event unsee a 20-minute hands on video from some journalists. So that part of it has changed and looks like it will be coming back soon. But I think a lot of companies too have seen, you know, we can just produce something really well to announce a product or some companies don't do that well, like Samsung, I mean, some companies fail at it. But, you know, it's interesting as all these companies have navigated over the past year, that hands on experience has definitely changed. And for some of us who have worked from home for years, it's like, welcome. You know, we've been doing this for a while.

Frank Butler  05:21
I think that's about the same for us. For the most part, if we're not in the classroom, we've had the opportunity to work from home, or at least I have, I don't know about Paul's culture at his university.

Paul Harvey  05:29
This home office that I'm sitting in right now didn't even have electricity a year ago, because I started rewiring it and I got distracted. But you know, now I've got this like, airplane cockpit going on. I got monitors all set up, and lights and microphones. So I think a lot of us have upped our work from home game, either because we needed to, or just because we use this as an excuse to spend some money on it. Which by the way, Steven, I just have to...I assembled a sample of the products that I've purchased, directly or indirectly, because you've mentioned them on your one of your shows. So I'm running up a real tab over here.

[laughter]

Stephen Robles  06:05
No, that's a danger man, you enter that technology world, you could spend some money fast. But it's interesting, as people have had to figure out how to work from home, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, you couldn't buy a webcam, or a microphone on Amazon, you know, everything was backordered. And it was incredible to see people scramble, you know, I'm like, ‘how did you not have good internet at home before’, but you know, I stream everything. I'm a cord cutter, I have never paid for cable in my life. And so internet is how I consume everything. And so and obviously, being a nerd, you know, you have good internet, but so many people had to figure it out right away. I have a friend who works at Consumer Reports. 

And once the pandemic hit, they were just bombarded with questions, saying, what Wi-Fi router do I need to buy, because now I have to make a home office, maybe it's in a garage, maybe it's in an attic, you know, someplace that you never tried to work from a laptop before. And all of a sudden, you realize, oh, that $50 Wi-Fi router I bought 10 years ago is not gonna cut it to do a zoom meeting via video. And that was a huge adjustment for a lot of people, you know, you need to have good Wi Fi, you need to have good internet. And then once people start realizing they're going to be on camera for a large part of their workday, they want a good camera. And that's why we saw again, webcam sold out. But also the resurgence of apps where you can use your iPhone as a camera. I think EpocCam was one of the most popular ones where you connect your iPhone via USB to lightning cable to your MacBook. And then you can use your iPhone as a webcam. And we just saw people rush to try and figure these things out so they could work from home.

Paul Harvey  07:37
I think that's what both Frank and I are currently doing. I've got Camo app. And I think are you using EpocCam Frank? Or are you using a webcam?

Frank Butler  07:45
I'm actually currently using an actual webcam just because I got a little slide on, it's easier than me always setting my phone up and everything. I have an old iPhone I should actually grab for that.

Paul Harvey  07:55
So - I may be wrong about this - but I think the thing that has gotten us the most listener feedback so far was the mention of one app on one episode, when we were talking about structure, believe it or not, and the Eisenhower box method and the focus matrix app. There's been other examples as well. But it's clear to us from just our audience that there's a huge appetite out there for things to simplify all this stuff that we're talking about. So, this work for home thing we got past the initial ‘Oh my god, this is happening’ stage. Now how do we fine tune it? So, apps or pieces of equipment or services or anything that you found that you've personally find helpful that you think other people would find helpful that maybe they don't know about?

Stephen Robles  08:37
Yeah, so I'll talk maybe about email tasks and calendar as a whole. Because if you have listeners who are not Apple, users don't have Apple products, a lot of my app recommendations are going to come from that side. But I think, you know, people who worked in an office all the time beforehand, much of their day might have been scheduled out for them, you know, whether it's meetings, or their management is kind of with them all the time and talking them through stuff. And when you work from home, you really need a good system, for keeping track of your own tasks and your projects. And then how to deal with all the, you know, emails and calendar stuff and all that. And so, as you mentioned, a productivity way of thinking. 

There's a book called getting things done by David Allen. He talks a lot about productivity and tasks and all that and Merlin Mann really, you know, talks about his methods a lot, too. But this one idea sticks with me and I tell everybody about it, is the idea of a brain dump. Meaning when you are just in the middle of your workday, there's probably 1000 things in your head, whether it's small to dues big to dues, personal things, work things, so much stuff just floating in your head. And when you are spending that like background brain power to try and hold on to those things and then also actually focus on your work. They can be a very stressful moment and when you're trying to do all that together and you You're gonna forget things, you know, that is, of all the things computers can do that our brain cannot do well is remember things keep track and have a good memory, you know, we we're at a time now where you don't have to worry about your entire task list just like disappearing from an app, you know, it's, it's probably not going to do that. And so I highly recommend that people figure out how they can systematize their work tasks. And I would even go say, like personal and life tasks, you know, if you keep thinking throughout the day, ‘oh, I need I need to remember to take the garbage out’, stop trying to think about it and just write it down somewhere, and put it on a list that you know, you're going to get to eventually, and then you can put it out of your mind. And the idea is if you can get all that stuff out of your brain, put it down in an organized fashion that you can reference later, whether it's apps, if it's pen and paper, whatever, you know, whatever method is easiest for you in the moment, then you can actually focus on what you're doing. And so I encourage people to do that.

I also encourage people to, you know, use the things like email, calendar and task lists as they're intended. You know, I know a lot of people who don't have a good system or know how to start. And so they'll use their calendar as like a task list. And I don't know if you know, people will do that. Maybe you guys do it, no offense, but I'm like, just don't do that. You know, the calendar is supposed to be when things happen and where you're supposed to be. And if you start putting tasks there, in addition to reminders or whatever else app like it's going to be confusing. So I would say keep things where they're supposed to be. 

And when it comes to something like email, again, I'm just trying to give broad ideas before I actually dive into specific apps. I don't want to alienate the windows and Android users just yet. But also when it comes to email, you know, Merlin Mann, he might have come up with his name, he doesn't really like to say, take credit for it, but the idea of Inbox Zero, where you do something with all your emails every day, you know, basically, so your inbox is at zero, and I live that life. I do inbox zero. And you know, I see some people who have the little red badge on their email icon, and it's like 20,000. And I just have  heart palpitations. I don't know how you can see that and experience anything but stress

Paul Harvey  12:12
Oh it’s easy, just turn the number badge off!

Frank Butler  12:14
I have 332 right now. 

Stephen Robles  12:17
Yeah, but even, you know, even without the badge, when you open that app, there's even like this, this pre-app stress, you know what I mean? Like, if you're saying, ‘All right, I'm gonna open my email app’. Now you feel that like, ‘Oh, no, it's not gonna be good’. Because I know, there's 1000s of messages in there. And you know, sometimes you have to just declare email bankruptcy and say, ‘Okay, I'm just gonna put all these in an archive folder, and I'm gonna start from scratch right now’. And if something is that important, the person is going to email you again, nine times out of 10. That's the case. And so I encourage people, you know, as you get email, figure out how you're going to deal with it. Some people say, I'm going to check email twice a day, in two 30-minute chunks. And, you know, some of you are like, ‘I get 1000 emails a day, that'll never work’. For me, it's like, ‘Well, okay, but that is a system, you know, say, I'm going to check email in the morning, in the afternoon, and not in between everything’, because then you're breaking up your focus and all that. So you can choose to do that. Or, like me, I actually like to answer emails throughout the day, as emails come in, I will answer them if it's a quick answer, I just reply. And if not, that's when you have to have a system to say, Okay, this email, you know, could be a three day project. 
You know, that's the thing about someone sending you an email, you could have someone say, send a two sentence email, and it'd actually be three days of work for you. You know what I mean? And that's just stressful. You know, that comes in 

Paul Harvey  13:35
'Quick question'

Stephen Robles  13:35
Yeah, exactly. 'Quick question', or 'I just need you to do X'. And like, the just need is really days of work. And so I would say, you know, if that comes in, then Okay, you can reply and say, got it, I'll be working on it. And then I have a system where I will take that email and put it in a task manager app. And I know that the task manager app is when I'm ready to do work, I'm ready to work on something. That's where I look to find my two dues. I don't look at my calendar, I don't even look at my email. Because if I open that, I want to see other stuff. I say this is where I keep track of my tasks. And this is where I go to work. And if you can have a system like that, even if you could just figure that email to task system connection, and you find a good system for that. I think it'll help a lot of people, especially from that stress of just the mountain of email people get and now working from home, I'm sure it's gotten even worse.

Frank Butler  14:23
So what do you use as a task manager?

Stephen Robles  14:26
So again, all in the Apple world, this it's going to turn this way now, because that's all I use. But I use an app called Things. It's a great app. It's a one-time purchase, it's not a subscription. And I love it, because it's designed, well, I need to I need the apps that I use to actually be a statically pleasing, and most people might not have that need, but I just want it to look nice, because I want it you know, and it actually has little animations that make it a joy to use. And so I'm a big proponent of Things. It's slightly more powerful than like reminders that might be built into an iPhone and it's probably platform you get on your Mac, iPhone iPad. And so that's my personal Task Manager. It also integrates with shortcuts and other email apps like Spark. So all that but things is a good option. But if you don't want to spend money, you know, I tell people, the Reminders app has come a long way on the iPhone, you can do folders, you can do projects, you can do subtasks, you can do date, time, or repetition of task. So just getting started, like just use the stock app on your phone, and start there, you know, put two buckets personal and work and start putting tasks in those two buckets, just to get it out of your mind. But I use Things personally. And for email, I use the native Well, the Gmail and the Outlook app, because I have both of those email accounts. And I use those just because I trust those to deliver my messages. Sometimes it can get wonky with the built in iOS email features in Google accounts. So I use Gmail and outlook for email. And I use things and if you're like pro level, you want to do project management to the max, I recommend OmniFocus and OmniFocus is a huge app daunting. But if you love that kind of stuff, and you really want every granular control over how you view your tasks, and your projects. OmniFocus is good.

Paul Harvey  16:13
I just started playing around with that about a month ago. It's…It's impressive. Yeah,

Stephen Robles  16:18
It's a great app. I just, yeah, it’s impressive. I'll jump into it every once in a while. And then I just like came over because it's so it's so much you know, but it is a great app,

Frank Butler  16:29
I started with Todoist for a little while, and I kind of liked it, I just haven't picked up the habit, right, because sometimes it's just getting into a habit and developing that habit. And I think that's something that people, you know, you talked about system, it's the that's the idea, right is getting into that system, or that habit of going from one to the other. And I have not done a good job with that myself. So

Paul Harvey  16:49
Well, that's where a lot of these things fall flat. People say I tried that and didn't work, it's not going to do the, it's not going to make the system for you, it's not going to keep track of your life for you. You need to develop the system that works with that app, or vice versa. You can't just say ‘I paid five bucks for an app. Organize me’.

Stephen Robles  17:06
Right, right. And I do want to recommend to you know, if you're at a company, organization, business, and you can speak into what tools you use in that business. And if you're not using a project management platform, where all the members of your team can be in there and see the tasks and be assigned tasks, I have to highly recommend that you find one of those systems, I've used all of them. I'm a project management nerd too. And I've used Trello, I've used Asana, there's monday.com, there's a git flow.com. They're all good. They're all a little different in their own rights. But if you work on a team, even if it's just a few people, having a platform where you can keep track of a project, put the tasks, assign them to people, and know who's responsible with a deadline. It's so key, you know, you can't keep track of projects and tasks via email, it just doesn't work. You know, there's an email with five people on it, all those five people are gonna think someone else is responsible for the task. So he can do that. And what I love about these kinds of platforms, is when you assign someone a task, there can only be one assignee. Other people can be added to the task for visibility, but there can only be one person assigned to it. And this is actually an idea that Steve Jobs, I remember reading about it, his biography, he calls it the DRI, or the directly responsible individual. And it's so important that if a company organization or just you if you're working with your employees, that you say you are responsible, you know, you are assigned this task, because again, if you send an email even to two people, and you say, hey, I need to get this done, both of those people are gonna think the other one's gonna do it, right, unless you're explicitly clear. And so that idea translates into these project management platforms. And I highly recommend that business company, whatever, try those out.

Frank Butler  18:56
I'm gonna have to get you to come and speak to my, my project management class when I teach just about this very thing.

Stephen Robles  19:02
I would love to…listen, project management is so fraught, you know, I love reading books about how teams work, because they're all dysfunctional in different ways. No, and, and they all learn and one book I highly recommend to everyone is creativity, Inc. Yeah, it's, it's the story of Pixar. And the way they talk about team communication and collaboration. One of my favorite chapters actually did a talk on this. It's called the ugly beast. Now the ugly baby and the hungry beast. And that chapter is about new ideas, versus the machine of an organization and they use Disney as an example. You know, when Disney made the Lion King, it was so popular, they turned into a machine saying we need to put out good movies every year to keep this engine going. And because they fell into that methodology, they you know, turned away good ideas and original ideas and they just made kind of not great movies for about 10 years until we got to like WreckIt Ralph in that era. And that's really when Pixar came on the rise. And it's this idea of what things in your company or organization are you guys doing, just because you've always done it, or because you feel like you need to for whatever reason. But no one knows why. And does doing those things, prevent good ideas, which is the ugly baby in the in the illustration in the Pixar book, you know, because a new idea might not be profitable right away, a new idea doesn't have it all figured out right away. And a lot of times we push aside those new and original ideas, because we don't know if they'll work. And so we just keep doing the things we've always done because the trains moving. And so you have to ride this balance of being able to foster good and new ideas and not squash them at the outset. But then also test them and hold them accountable. So they eventually do become something you can't keep it a baby forever. But you can't let the beast run the organization either. And when you talk about a team and project management, that all comes into play, because when a team talks about a new idea or a project, you have to be able to facilitate those meetings because we all know those meetings, you know what I mean? Someone either has a good idea, and it gets squashed right away. Or someone says, Well, we can't do that. Because x y, z, and you can see both things play out in the same meeting the beast that's running and doesn't want to stop and this baby that, like we need to let's foster this thing. Let's see if it can have a chance. And it's again, I just love it.

Frank Butler  21:25
Yeah, no, I agree I that's on my reading list, my recommended reading list to my students, for example. I love that book. It's one thing I also being again, it strategy, and I always tell my students, uncertainty is what makes people afraid. And it keeps them from changing, right? When you need to make change, which is in this case, the baby is that's the change. And it's scary, because it's the unknown. And that's what good leaders do is help guide people through that process and make people feel at ease as much as you can, but you make it part of the culture of the organization to is the change or the team or what have you. Yeah,

Stephen Robles  21:59
There's also this analogy I heard of, if you think of like a retail store, back in the day, you know, retail store, every product takes up space on a shelf. And any product that's on a shelf means another product can't be there, because you have something on the shelf already. And a lot of times in organizations, we leave a product on the shelf for so long, because we feel like well, maybe it sells one copy a year. And we have such a struggle, especially if it's our idea, or if it's if it's an idea that you know, some upper management put in place. And so they're holding on to it, that we don't take it off the shelf for something better. And we just feel like we need to keep it on for whatever reason. And that's really why if you drill down into the psyche of organizations and teams, a lot of times there's not good reasons for keeping that mediocre thing on the shelf. It's just an emotional thing that we have maybe because it was our idea, or we've always done it that way or whatever

Paul Harvey  22:50
Escalation of commitment

Frank Butler  22:51
Yeah

Stephen Robles  22:51
Yeah, actually. And now that you mentioned that I'm gonna throw out another. This is I was a name. So work life with Adam Grant is a podcast he hasn't touched on. And he actually did a recent episode talking about that sunk cost fallacy, where we have a bad idea, we have just any idea. And it's not succeeding. So we keep sinking money into it, hoping that it will eventually succeed. And it's a totally emotional response to these kinds of issues. And we really need to recognize that be analytical, especially when we're analyzing something midstream and say, we need to stop spending money, stop spending time or effort on this thing, because it is not working. And try to put our emotions aside and just say we're going to be done with it. And we're going to go to something else. Because it's we're not going to make a profit on this.

Paul Harvey  23:38
Yeah, that's a tough conversation to have, especially when egos and emotions tend to cloud, what we say and what we hear.

Stephen Robles  23:46
You know, the one thing that requires all of these tools to work is the ability to communicate well. And I feel like if any company can invest in something as teaching their teams to communicate well, either via spoken word or in written form. And I would focus on the written form more because so much of our work life is email. You know, I've heard this quote one time that, you know, choosing a career nowadays is just choosing what topic you want to email about all day. And the more I think about that, the scarier it is. It's like, shoot that is it. Like that seems so much so true. But, you know, one of the challenges in the project management side, when you're using one of these tools, his team members who have not historically had to communicate in a way of commenting or writing what they want, and not being able to verbalize it, not being able to wordsmith it. And you don't have to be a poet. You don't have to be Shakespeare. But you do need to realize, you know, read what you write back to yourself, like, does it make sense, you know, do you feel like someone with no context can understand what you're saying? 

And then, something that a lot of people struggle with is, when you're talking to another person, you have a bunch of context in your mind with what you say. And that's and you understand what you're saying because of it. But you have to speak as though the other person has no context, no idea what you're talking about. And, you know, if you get an email from your boss that says, hey, that thing's due Thursday at 5pm. It's like, wait a minute, what, what thing? And what part of it? Do you want do and what about these other things that I have going on? And that vague communication, which I think has plagued many organizations and businesses, I hope that some of that has gone away in the pandemic, as companies have just had to communicate via that. But I would also encourage businesses to invest in how do we communicate? How do we write to each other? Let's be brief. You know, brevity is so important. And let's be clear, in everything we communicate I, I read the biography of Winston Churchill. And he wrote this letter to all his general saying, like, Listen, brevity is the utmost importance. Say what you need to say in as brief as possible and as clear as possible, and nothing else. And you know, if it's good for Winston Churchill is good for me, like, let's let that be the policy that we use in our company.

Paul Harvey  26:11
To that end, I appreciate your recent recommendation on I believe your Apple Insider show of iAWriter, I said, oh, I've heard of that. But I hadn't tried I checked it out. And one of my favorite things about it is that it has that setting to automatically kind of gray out any filler words, cliches, unnecessary adverbs. You think you're concise writer until you see that thing. erasing your words voice? Oh, wow. Yeah,

Stephen Robles  26:36
Yeah.

Paul Harvey  26:36
Are there any of those types of apps that you recommend or don't recommend? You know, I hear a lot of controversy around say Grammarly, and that kind of thing that it's, you know, a lot of people need help. We all could use some help with our writings, effectiveness, but then there's expenses, there's privacy concerns, there's quality issues, I kind of feel like that's an aspect of the market that hasn't really matured yet.

Stephen Robles  27:00
Yeah, it's a tough problem to solve. Because it's like, how do you, you know, if you want a tool that's going to help you write anything on your computer, that app needs constant monitoring of your keyboard. And that's problematic, you know, you think about if this app has access to every keystroke that I do on my computer, that means my passwords to and that means you know, whatever, inputting that could be secure, you know, it could be social security number, whatever. And so, I do think you know, Grammarly, honestly, it's the only one that I know of, it's kind of this hugely popular thing. And you don't say, try it, you know, use it. But think about in what area you're using it this is one of the reasons why I prefer Mac is because of the security and privacy implications as something like Grammarly if you install, like the web browser extension for Grammarly. I know it doesn't have full access to my computer, you know, it's not, it doesn't have permissions to do whatever it wants. It's just going to see what I type in the web browser when I tell it to and it'll you know, help me out there. So, you know, Grammarly, you try it. Just be careful of apps that want full disk access or want, you know, access to see every keystroke you type in, you really get into some weird privacy situations. And that's just things to be wary of.

Paul Harvey  28:15
I have never felt uncomfortable enough, even on a Mac to click that box and say, yeah, record my keystrokes.

Stephen Robles  28:20
Yeah. And so maybe I could do a lightning round of some productivity apps that I think are good, cool. And you should use again, I apologize. These are all Mac related. But well, actually one and one tip before I dive into that before the Windows users tune out, I actually saw this on Twitter recommendation for your email one last thing there. If you create a filter, in your email provider, where any email with the word unsubscribe, appears in the body of the email, and then have those filter to a folder and not hit your inbox, it has changed my life. I have a set of that filter, I created a folder called newsletters. And any email with the word unsubscribe goes directly to that folder, it doesn't hit my inbox. And it is amazing. And you can do this in Gmail, you can do it in Outlook, you could do whatever email provider you use, I encourage you try to set up that filter. Because it has cut down everything and I visit the folder every once in a while just to see did an important email go in there by accident? or whatever and it never does. And that is just amazing. So I heard that somewhere else. I'm not gonna take credit but definitely try that. That's awesome.

Paul Harvey  29:30
That's absolutely brilliant. I'm so frustrated that I've never thought of that until you just mentioned it because it's so simple.

Frank Butler  29:36
Oh my god. Now I wish we had known that when we did our email episode because literally we're saying take baby steps and that would have been a perfect baby step 

Paul Harvey  29:43
Skip the baby steps, one filter!

Stephen Robles  29:46
You know, email’s just so fraught for people don't use some people feel like they just need to look at every email. You know, they need to open it up for whatever reason. And I just encourage people get in the habit of just putting things in the trash and then wipe left and swipe left. So yeah, you don't know what's from, you don't know what that body text is, you know, I do this with mail saying I know this is a car dealership thing, I know that I have no reason to open, this just goes right in the trash all my bills or E-bills Anyway, I'll get any bills in the mails, trash, all trash. 

But a couple app recommendations real quick, this is for Mac. And this is productivity related. Even if you're just new to this or just trying to get into it, I highly recommend these. First of all, you need a clipboard manager. And what that is, is an app where anytime you copy or paste something, it saves it as a little text string. And this way, you can copy 50-100 different things. And then you can click this little thing in the menu bar and access to those clipboard things. And you need a secure app to do it, because again, it's looking at your keystrokes. But Pastebot is by a company called tap bots. They make all iOS apps and Mac apps. But Pastebot is what I use, I trust the developer and you can actually tell the application, ‘don't look at my clipboard when I'm copying from these apps’. 
Another app I use is 1Password to save all my passwords, I highly recommend everyone gets a password manager app, make secure passwords. And I tell Pastebot ‘don't pay attention to when I copy and paste in 1Password because that's my password app, I don't want to give you access to them’. And you know, the developer is on Twitter, he's well known very trustworthy. So clipboard manager I highly recommend, Pastebot is the one I recommend there. 

There’s also an app called Text Expander. If you don't, if you've never heard of Text Expander it is this app where you can program keystrokes, maybe it's semi colon e m. and a simple example is whenever I want to type my email in a field or to someone, I just do semi colon the letters E and M, and it expands into my full email address. And it's like well, I'm not saving that many keystrokes. Why would I do that? Well, I also have it set up for a lots of things. And one of it is in the apple insider podcast, we have a number of sponsors who sponsor the show regularly, I have calls that come on regularly. And depending on the show, I have keystrokes where it will allow if I do three letters, it'll expand an entire article with the co-host name and their Twitter handle LinkedIn HTML, it'll do the sponsors all the text about you know, visit this, save whatever, all of that in a Text Expander keystroke. And you can even do things with the clipboard and where the cursor ends up after you paste something from Text Expander. So ,Text Expander, I highly recommend people tried that. 

And finally, I would also recommend something called Keysmith. Key Smith is an application where you can hit a record button. And then open apps or close apps or click around your screen. And it will record everything you're doing. And then once you stop recording, you can program a keystroke, where you will do all those actions automatically. And so I do that when I record a podcast when I record a podcast, I open Skype, I open audio hijack, I open Apple notes, because that's where we collaborate on the notes. And so rather than me going and clicking notes going and clicking Skype, I hit a keystroke, and all those applications open automatically go on the screen where I want them cursors where I want it to by open a website automatically. All done for me just by keystroke saves a lot of time. And all those monotonous tasks. I can't stand monotonous tasks. And so I'll go whatever tool will help me cut down on having to do the same thing every week. I will use a tool like that. And so Keysmith for that, Text Expander again, and getting a clipboard manager, I think will help a lot of people.

Paul Harvey  33:43
I have a Text Expander snippet that spells out sorry for the slow response to your email or something like that. I found myself starting so many emails with this sorry for the slow response that Yeah, that was my first text bender usage.

Stephen Robles  33:57
Yeah, yeah. So many different things. And one last one last little tip too. You know, social media is so fraught now and trying to I use to use Twitter as my news source. And I still am still on Twitter all the time. And I love to interact with people there. But as far as getting news, you know, this is an old protocol, you know, that the nerds might know but RSS man, I've been using RSS to read my news for like the past year. And it has been great. And the app that I use for that is called Reeder with two E's. I use it on my iPhone, iPad, Mac, and iOS, whatever news sites I want to read especially for Apple stuff for the podcast. You know, there's no ads. It's the raw article. And it saves time and I don't have to worry about I'm on a social platform. It's just the news. And so I encourage people to try out their RSS again if you if it's been a while

Frank Butler  34:48
I switched from reader last year to net news wire when they updated it. Yes, I've been I've been using reader for years love reader. I think it's still great. I went with net news wire because The developer returned after it was released again by I guess who bought it? And I, yeah, I swear by my RSS feed reader.

Stephen Robles  35:06
Yeah, I think Brent Simmons is the developer of that wire. And yeah, that's a great app. And there's lots of great ones out there. But I recommend RSS for sure.

Paul Harvey  35:15
We'll put links to all these things in our show notes. Because there's a lot of a lot of good recommendations there. I haven't actually tried  Keysmith yet. It sounds a little bit like Keyboard Maestro, which I am more familiar with. Sounds like it's the same sort of idea. At some point, I'm going to convince Frank to do an episode or a whole separate podcast on automation, getting rid of the monotonous work, busy work, the stuff that we can't get out of our lives altogether. To the extent we can have our computer do it for us, it really does add up like is that whether it's just a shortcut for even just to spell out your whole email addresses, you know, that that adds up over time. So next thing you know, you got more time.

Stephen Robles  35:51
Yeah. And I have to say man, automation in Keyboard Maestro is so powerful of a tool. And it does exactly what Keysmith does. And Keysmith is just a simpler application with that does less actually and, and the reason I like it is it's a little more approachable. Because Keyboard Maestro, again, if you're a power user, man, Keyboard Maestro is the deal. But for me, it's like, oh, you know, it could be intimidating for people getting into it. So I highly recommend that the Keysmith. And also, maybe I can come back some time, we could talk about some Siri shortcuts on the phone. Because me I got some automations that I love. You know, I love shortcuts. And hopefully the apple brings it to the Mac at WWDC this year. That's what I'm hoping.

Paul Harvey  36:26
Fingers crossed on that. We'd love to get you back to talk about that. Because those shortcuts, that's a lot of fun. A lot of good stuff to be done there, too. So we would certainly appreciate that. And we certainly appreciate your time, you know, we do want to be respectful of the amount of the window of time we're supposed to keep you for and we're nearing the end of that right now. But if there's any last-minute things if you want, let our listeners know how they can find you.

Stephen Robles  36:53
Yeah, so check out the Apple Insider podcast. I'm on that every week comes out every Friday, it's all Apple related news, but you should check it out. You can go to appleinsider [dot] com [slash] podcast to look that up. And follow me on Twitter @StevenRobles. And that's kind of where I put all my energies and social networking. So follow me there. Tweet me questions. I'd love to hang out there. Cool.

Paul Harvey  37:13
Well, we'll be in touch with you there. 

Frank Butler  37:15
Thank you so much, Steven, we really appreciate your time.

Paul Harvey  37:17
We really do appreciate you being here. It's been a lot of fun.

Stephen Robles  37:20
All right. Thanks, guys. A lot of fun.

Frank Butler  37:21
Man, that was an awesome interview. So glad we had Stephen on the show.

Paul Harvey  37:25
That was really a best-case scenario for how I might have anticipated how that would go. And I've learned something today, Frank, or from this whole experience. Several, maybe two weeks ago, at the end of one of his shows, Stephen said, if you if you're a host of a podcast that is kind of tech adjacent and want someone from our show to come and visit, just let me know. And I thought they're not going to want we're nothing on that radar. They're not going to want to come talk to us. But you know, what's the cost to try? And well, it just happens. So yeah, one of those things, sometimes you can't hurt to try sometimes.

Frank Butler  38:03
Right? And I think that's the same advice we always tell our students, right, get on LinkedIn, make those connections, reach out to people, you know, that cold call idea. And if you're not a salesperson, it's not easy to do. And I've never been a salesperson, I'm not a huge fan of cold calling, necessarily. But if you don't take the shot, right, I don't know about you. But my students sometimes ask, Hey, is there anything I can do for extra credit? Even though I clearly state I don't do extra credit? It's like they don't? They don't ask. They never know. Right? It doesn't hurt to necessarily ask 

Paul Harvey  38:32
See, that question…it hurts to ask me, I think, because it's the open-endedness that I don't like, ‘Is there anything I can do?’ Like, ‘Sure. Go mow my lawn’ Like what do you mean, ‘anything you can do?’ It's just so clear that: ‘I have a grade, I want a better grade.’ Right? What can we do? I would prefer if something specific accompany that. ‘Could I maybe try to do a better job on that paper knowing what I know now from your feedback’, something like that. 

Frank Butler  39:02
Propose the solution

Paul Harvey  39:04
Propose the solution. Don't say 'I need you to fix this for me.'

Frank Butler  39:06
Right. Yeah.

Frank Butler  39:07
Don't make me come up with…yeah, I think that's actually a great point. But anyway,

Paul Harvey  39:12
What the hell were we talking about?

Frank Butler  39:13
Yeah, uh...

Paul Harvey  39:14
Oh, the interview 

Frank Butler  39:16
No, truly though, we appreciate having Steven on. Hopefully, we will have him back again, in another episode talking shortcuts or automation of workflow type things. If there's anything else that you guys would like to hear from Stephen on our show or from us, please reach out to us at input at Busyness. paradox.com or reach out to us on Twitter as Busyness Paradox. We're here to help answer your questions for the workplace. Or you can go to our website Busyness Paradox comm where we have more information now on our blog,

Paul Harvey  39:50
And you know, if we don't have all the answers to this stuff, which is why we have experts who know more about certain things than we do like Steven, so don't be afraid to reach out with a question that we might not know the answer to, because there's always a chance that we know someone who can help you,

Frank Butler  40:05
Right. There's a high likelihood we'll know someone or somewhere else you can go. That's going to be a good source for information. I know sometimes when you go Google something, you're gonna get 50 different options actually get like 1000s. But you don't know which one's a good one. That's something we'll help you with. We'll help you get the good ones too.

Paul Harvey  40:23
If we can, if we can. We will help. And actually, speaking of sources of good information, I smell a segue opportunity here, Frank. 

Frank Butler  40:32
Really? 

Paul Harvey  40:32
I do. And I think it has something to do with why we're both wearing Florida State apparel for our recording session today.

Frank Butler  40:40
Go Noles

Paul Harvey  40:40
Go Noles. 

And that is, we would like to congratulate and thank four members of the faculty at the Florida State University, College of Business Management Department who are retiring today.

Frank Butler  40:54
That's right. Pam Perréwe, Jerry Ferris, Lee Stepina, Caesar Douglas, congratulations, y'all. You get to enjoy the fruits of your labor. You've earned it. 

Frank and Paul 41:04
But

Paul Harvey  41:06
We're sad. 

Frank Butler  41:07
Definitely. 

Paul Harvey  41:08
Yeah.

Frank Butler  41:10
No doubt. I know for a fact that I wouldn't be where I am today without the support of these individuals. I mean, they've been so important in getting me to where I am and I'm sure they have for Paul as well.

Paul Harvey  41:22
Oh, yes. So much of what I get to enjoy about life, including doing the show really would not have happened without their support. And the other faculty members at Florida State during our time there. Mark Martinko, my advisor,

Frank Butler  41:35
Annette Ranft was mine. She's been huge, helping me get here,

Paul Harvey  41:39
Jack Fiorito. Bruce Lamont. Oh, sorry, anyone that we're forgetting. Steve Humphries.

Frank Butler  41:43
Chad van Ideking.

Paul Harvey  41:43
Thank you all. But congratulations to the four of you that are taking the next step in your personal professional lives. Enjoy it. And We sure hope to see you at the conferences coming up that we hope we're coming up after this pandemic thing runs its course. And I am actually just about to get my first shots. 

Frank Butler  42:01
I've been shot already. So but hopefully we can all at least have a proper get together send off for the retirement. But again, we just want to thank you for what you've done for us and wish you all the best. 

Paul Harvey  42:13
Congratulations.

Frank Butler  42:14
Congrats.

Paul Harvey  42:16
The Busyness Paradox is distributed by Paul Harvey and Frank Butler. Our theme music is adapted from its business time by Jermaine Clements and Brett McKenzie. Our production manager is Justin Wuntaek. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and we'd love to hear from you. Please send questions, comments or ideas for future episode topics to input at Busyness. paradox.com, or find us on Twitter. Also, be sure to visit our website, Busyness paradox.com to read our blog posts and for links to the articles and other resources mentioned in today's show. Finally, please take a moment to rate and follow or subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, I Heart Radio, Google podcast for your preferred podcast provider