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Episode 065 | Ergonomics and Your Productivity With James Olander, The Roost Laptop Stand
For James, he found the right thing to work on by being very close to a problem that affected him personally and discovering an unsolved problem in that space. He had been working at a laptop for years, hunched over, until it put him out of commission. RSI (repetitive stress injury), carpal tunnel, constant neck and back pain.
James started his career in aerospace engineering, worked on satellite and rockets, mainly on lightweight structures. When he came across the ergonomic crisis with his laptop, he found that no one made a compelling solution, something as portable as his laptop, that could help solve the bad posture laptops put us in. He then decided to put his engineering background into practice and worked to develop a laptop stand that was indeed very portable. He put it on Kickstarter and they rest they say is history.
The Roost Stand is the resulting ergonomics-focused laptop stand. Today, we talk to James about his experience, his laptop stand and the future of ergonomics and your productivity.
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In this Cast | Ergonomics and Your Productivity
James Olander, The Roost Laptop Stand
Raw Text Transcript | Ergonomics and Your 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).
Voiceover Artist 0:00
Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you’ve come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
And Welcome back, everybody to productivitycast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I’m Ray Sidney Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:24
I am Augusto Pinaud.
Voiceover Artist 0:00
Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life? Then you’ve come to the right place, productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
Welcome back everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I’m Ray Sidney Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:22
I’m Augusto Pinaud.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:24
And welcome to our listeners to this episode of productivitycast where we’re going to be doing another interview, and this time, we have the founder of the roost. stand with us James Olander. Welcome to the show, James. Hello, thanks. Good to be here. Yeah, so a little bit about James he found the right thing to work on by being very close to a problem that affected him personally and discovering an unsolved problem in that particular space. He had been working at a laptop for years, hunched over until it put him out of commission. That is he got repetitive stress injury RSI, carpal tunnel, constant neck and back pain. James career started actually in aerospace engineering, he worked on satellites and rockets, mainly on lightweight structures. When he came across the ergonomic crisis with his laptop, he found that no one made a compelling solution, something as portable as his laptop that could help solve the bad posture laptops put us in. He then decided to put his engineering background into practice and worked to develop a laptop stand. That was indeed very portable. He put it on Kickstarter. And they, as they say, the rest is history. So it brought us the roost stand. James, give us a little bit of background in terms of what the stand is, and how it’s different maybe then from some of the other products that were out there on the market at the time.
James Olander 1:41
Yeah, certainly. There’s this idea that you only will use stuff if it’s easy enough to use and it’s not like a huge pain. Like no one no one wants to carry more stuff or, or fidget with with bad things and not that we can execute at this level but the you know, the apples might Try that, you know, it just works and, and how it’s a pleasure to use it that is really important for, for us humans to actually use stuff. And so when I was looking around there wasn’t a, there was nothing that was remotely close to something you’d actually want to take with you and was was not like a fidgety QG thing to set up and didn’t look pretty obnoxious. The idea was that maybe there’s a way to come up with a neat linkage and some mechanisms that allow this thing to collapse really small and it’s easy and we can just get past that threshold where you’ll actually use it. And then and then it’ll solve that problem for you because now you don’t have any excuses and and it’s fun to use. So that’s been really the focus this whole time on designing and then been working on this problem is, is how do you keep making it easier to use and solving this problem so that people actually actually use it like that’s our that’s our measure of success is that you buy the product and then you, you really do use it and it becomes like a daily part of your daily habit.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:08
And so tell me a little bit about your first design. I know we’re in currently version 2.0. And what did you learn between the first version and the second version? As you were, as you’ve gone journey to developing an ergonomic portable land, you know, laptop stand? And what did you learn? What’s new about the new one that was not in the last one?
James Olander 3:28
Yeah. So this was my first time really tackling an entrepreneurial endeavor since probably since like my own lawn business and in high school. And I started this when I was about 26 or 27. As you know, as we were saying before, when that’s when the ergonomic and the RSI issues kind of caught up with me. That’s something I tell people to they’re like, well, I don’t need this thing. And, and if they’re under the age of 25, I just tell them to just wait like you body will, will eventually let you know when it’s time to being the first entrepreneurial endeavor, trying to make this in a fail or like a, you know, fail quick and minimize, minimize, like the major production risks, where, if you haven’t like a lot of Kickstarter is fail because they have this massive design and production challenge. And if it’s your first time making something, you’re probably going to fail pretty miserably when you try to scale it up to mass production. So now you start getting into injection molding, and you’ve got a third party manufacturer that’s building stuff that you don’t really know what the end product is going to be until it actually comes from them. So So did not want to be in that realm. And so the production of this v one was actually with a laser cutter. And so the same machine that I was doing my prototyping on, I could actually use that same machine to make Production parts. And when you’re using a laser cutter, we you know, if you look at the first one, it’s actually everything is a flat pattern piece of material. So everything’s cut just in 2d and then we snap it all together. And that’s pretty limiting in terms of in terms of like all the functionality we wanted to get in there. So we had to really like draw a line at what you know what’s the bare minimum feature here are a couple features that we want that are that’s going to convince people and want them to have to know that we want them to use the product with so Sophie one was kind of the bare minimum which was you know, super portable, and it gets your screen, way up off the desk. So when we say like I level that’s about anywhere from like your screen moving up. So if the laptop your screens, like on the desk, but we want that screen up at least like eight to 12 inches apart. The desk so that your, the angle your heads making is really you’re not looking down anymore, you’re just looking horizontal. But that is the key component for ergonomics, at least in terms of the neck. So the first one did just that. And it was actually a fixed height. So you couldn’t adjust it. And I’m kind of a taller guy. So I size it for myself. And turns out not everyone, you know, that didn’t work for everyone. So the v2 is it adjustable. And the two also, though, is mass manufactured. So it’s a whole new ballgame in terms of production challenges and so that it was good to have a bunch of history behind us in terms of, you know, we had a customer base that was sold on the concept and now we reintroduced a more useful version. And we could actually pull off the production without tank in the whole thing. second time around.
Augusto Pinaud 7:00
I’m an iPad only guy I work on my iPad for since the second iPad, okay? The first time but I still carry some of the laptop when the second iPad came, I stopped carrying a laptop. So I remember the first roost because I love the concept and I at that time was Karen, you know, computer when when you send us the the second ruse to play I was happily surprised how, you know how much went into into the engineering into the ability to race it on lower and all that. So, obviously, you know, from a person on the outside, you know, I can see how much time and effort went into into developing something that is incredibly light but at the same time, you know, super adorable and but share with us a little bit what went into this research because as you said, well I’m a you know, kind of taller guy. So I didn’t thought about this works perfect for me. But then for the not so tall people did not work as great. So what went into engineering this second two point O version and share a little bit more about that that story.
James Olander 8:16
Yeah. So that the great thing about shipping, even an MVP of a product is that you’ll get tons of feedback. And your the number one requests was Hey, like this, you know, this isn’t the right height for me because I’m shorter, taller. And I mean, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t believe like, how many people want one that’s even like five inches, six inches taller than the current one. So you imagine like your laptop, a foot and a half off the desk. And there’s a number of reasons. One is human bodies are all different shapes and sizes and then to when you’re moving around and working from different spots. There’s no standard in desk height, and then chair chair height. So being able to adapt to Wherever you’re you’re working from, you know, there’s certainly those are certainly problems that we wanted to solve. And the benefit of having the screen at eye level. And when we say eye level, that’s where, if you’re, if you’re sitting upright or you’re standing up right, and your head and neck or are kind of neutral, looking forward, the rule in ergonomics is that your eyes hit either somewhere between the top of the screen and one quarter of the way down the screen. So what that forces your body to do is to to stay upright because now that your attention is focused horizontally, you’re not going you’re naturally just not going to droop and start leaning forward. And so being able to move that sweet spot up and down for people is we want to have that functionality. with kind of a funny thing, though, with ergonomics is that, given the chance, a lot of people will adjust their ergonomic setups to a non ergonomic position, because it’s it’s kind of how we’re used to slouching, it does take a bit of effort to stay in an upright and good position. So there’s there’s actually kind of a benefit of the first version in that it wasn’t adjustable. It’s sort of forced people in a more upright posture position. And that’s actually kind of an unsolved problem we have right now is how do we how do we at scale educate people to set their setup up correctly, so that it is in the best position for them and what I’ve noticed is if you’ve worked at a big company, before, they’ll usually have on staff or economists are they’ll have someone come in and do an eval of your workstation. So go get your setup, right, but it’s not a skill set that is super common to be able to set your workstation up yourself like that. So that’s something we’ve been playing with for, for going forward is a you know, adding that education piece in a, in an effective way. And I think that’s always hard because there’s tons of ways to not do it effectively and just be annoying. So that’s another area we want to keep solving.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 11:28
So some kind of onboarding video training maybe or something that comes with the product that that helps people understand. This is what you should be doing with the product. Exactly.
James Olander 11:39
Yep. Yep. Some kind of some aids of some sort of training event. Exactly. an onboarding.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 11:44
Yeah, that’s a that’s a that’s a real unique challenge with a with a physical product, you know, as opposed to digital where people already onboarding on screen
James Olander 11:53
right again, that if you watch any of the unboxing videos, you know, the first thing most people do, and I I don’t blame them, because I could probably do the same is just throw out all the instructions, right? People the expectation is that like, people don’t want to have to put a new wrinkle in their brain of how to use something, you know, it should just conform to how we already use things. And that’s Yeah, that’s, that’s a real interesting space there.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:22
How do you do that? And I would imagine that it becomes a kind of a, a conversation with all of the other ergonomics products that are out there that it becomes kind of a coalition based education movement, where you need you need to you need to work with the people who have ergonomic keyboards, ergonomic mice, and, you know, ergonomic mountain mount monitors and displays and, and, and desks and chairs. I mean, like, all of those things together. If everybody is is beating the same drum, then I think it helps to move people in the in the right direction.
James Olander 12:57
Yeah, that’s a great,
Augusto Pinaud 12:58
great point. Great idea. When you said well you know eventually you know when people told me that they don’t need it eventually I tell them when you know that will catch up with you and I know exactly what you mean because I’ve been suffering from back pain for for many many years and then you just said in the segment well you know people wouldn’t give him the chance will go to the bad posture and I couldn’t help but laugh looking at right now I you know, my current setup and you know, I’m temporarily in some place and yes, I am sitting in the worst position possible for my back. Okay, that’s I’m sure I will pay off in a little bit. But as you were saying that I was like, Oh great. Yes, he’s right need to pay more attention to this and and I guess Yes, that’s, that’s a massive, a massive challenge especially. That is one of the things on the virtuous I think on the wrist is how light and a small this is to carry that with you, you to be able to get a better position. In other you know, when you are when you are remote. You’re new and you’re working different places because other than that most people i don’t i mean these really exceptional the companies that are giving desktops over laptops that then it’s now more for the user to figure it out that good ergonomic Buster that most likely they are not this is my pie in the sky goal but the way to solve
James Olander 14:26
humans like human nature to just kind of revert to the whatever the most slouchy or you know at the time comfortable relaxed posture is but at the you know, doing long term damage the way I I have the theory it’s not been proven yet but if you can make something that is actually just cool, like it’s, it’s cool, it’s fun, it’s neat. And, and there’s, you have some other bass, human like, come on. You know the reptilian part of your brain that you just want to use something cool or you know there you just have a kind of irrational reason to use something if you could, if you could fire up that mechanism to counteract the, the other part of the reptilian brain that just wants to slouch and be lazy, then maybe you can find you know, kind of hack, hack that behavior by just making it a cool thing to do. And so trying to make it look neat trying to make it easy to use is all pushing towards that that cool factor. And, and I the other part of that too is if if you can make it cool enough then all the kids would want to buy it because when I did most of my damage was really in probably in college and in my early 20s when I really didn’t pay attention to it and, and and set those patterns up. For a lifetime of those kind of slouchy patterns. If there had been something cool and had been on my radar when I was at age and I wasn’t buying it for ergonomics, but I was just buying it because it was the end thing. You know, I’d be really happy with that. Providing that hidden benefit so that you’re not trashing yourself later.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:10
Yeah, kind of on that same vein, then maybe it becomes a game that you guys develop. That’s on the mobile phone and on the desktop that engages a younger generation to, to learn about ergonomics. And then the product is one of the tools one can use in the process of getting there. I don’t know, I just see something very, very unique and interesting associated with that for adults, like I can see you creating just a small application that prompts me to sit up,
hey, Ray,
you know, once an hour, are you slouching, and then that being the trigger for me to say, Oh, yeah, you know, what, or it just, you know, on occasion saying, Are you sitting at your laptop and not using the wrist and that just being a reminder, right and, and, and I think that can be very, very useful to people, but for a younger generation, it has to be more dynamic. And so that it becomes, you know, using game design to say, Are you doing all of these things to get the right points to be more ergonomic in your structure throughout the school day? And when you get home, you know, are you are you getting the right lighting? Are you getting the right you know, sound? And is the air quality good, like all of those things to educate them that these are things you need to think about in order to have proper biological function while you’re working. And then the rest is just a part of that. I just, I think there’s something really unique there. I like I like the idea of it.
James Olander 17:38
Yeah, no, I do too. I, I’ve seen it done really poorly, a number of ways.
So I just have kind of sitting back
trying to be or maybe let let others get all the ways that don’t work out of the way that like so when I was at a at a big company, they would install this software. That would monitor your, your keyboard movements and everything like that it was is almost like, like Microsoft’s Clippy. Remember that amazing invention is like pop up on your screen and tell you to do something. And I mean, it’s probably after a week you’re just like this is how do I delete this thing? But I was also in my early 20s and so that was definitely not the right way to interact with however, I was seeing the world at that point. But yeah, yeah, maybe like streaks or something. Like, you know, some guy gamify the gamify the process
Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:41
I think, I think I’d be really interesting.
James Olander 18:43
The The other thing though, is that the the payoff on it is
that I forget the term but it’s like, I think it’s called an intangible good, I think is the, you know, it’s like you’re, it’s like brushing your teeth, you know, you’re not you don’t You don’t get rid of a cavity by brushing your teeth. But if you do it every day, you’re going to have an effect long term and a preventable effect. And that’s
what’s the what’s the psychology behind behind that, you know, the
scary into it or, you know, cigarette packages with terrible photos on me knows that I do you do you show a picture of like fused vertebrae to people every every half hour? Like
Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:32
yes some people some people some people need fear based marketing and and so yeah so maybe that maybe that could work. I tend to be on the positive motivation side of things and wanting to positively motivate behaviors, but there’s still a business model that needs to be adhered to. So if you need to, if you need to scare people to make them, you know, do the right thing, and it makes sense for the business. Maybe that’s the right thing to do. I wanted to just make note of the fact That you all, because it’s a portable tool I this is just one thing that I noticed about the entire experience when when you sent us the, the the the ruse to try out, I looked at it and I said, Oh, this is really great, which is you have a Reuss recovery program. So it’s this little card that you include within the product and you act you activate it with a code. And if the roost is lost someone who has found it can then just, you know, punch in this code and and return it to the owner. And I just I just wanted to commend you for thinking through the process because this obviously happens. And I don’t know what your numbers are in terms of the number of people who activate and use this program. But I just I thought it was very, very forward thinking and I hope more people who were doing mobile products like these small electronics small, kind of have products that move around with people that they think about something like this recovery program that you guys set up
James Olander 20:59
Yeah. Certainly, you know, that came up with this thought of like, how do we just add more value to, to people that are already moving around a lot? What problems are they encountering? And what’s, uh, what’s just like an easy thing for us to, to throw in there. And that’s actually something we don’t even advertise at the moment.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:21
That’s why I’m telling people People need to know this, this is such a great value on top of the roost itself. I mean, that’s really, ya know, it’s
James Olander 21:32
we’ve iterated on it a couple times. That’s why we I think we’re still playing with the recipe. But ideally, it’s something that you could put that sticker or we give you a couple stickers and you could put one on your laptop, you could put one on your cell phone, and and it’s just
an easy and easy thing to do that helps out.
The other. I’ll have to look at the activation rates, but because we don’t advertise it, I think a lot of people just throw it out. So it’s not like a huge, a huge activation number. But I think it’s over, probably over like 10 15% probably more than a typical insert. If you Well,
Augusto Pinaud 22:12
nobody, nobody’s buying a product was a hope to sell it but to lose it, but I agree. I agree with that. I think, you know, I noticed on my own, you know, my home office, I have the iPads and that’s what is in front of me but there is an old MacBook Air that has been towards the right in a desk. And what I have noticed since you send the roof is I race it and then now the snow that I use it a lot so I don’t but it is always there. And now the screen it is, you know at the right height. And I didn’t notice really obviously until the product arrived, how how comfortable is to have all the three screens at the same height instead of having them You know, different things so, so that was that was really cool for me to to really discover
yeah corner.
James Olander 23:09
That’s, that’s something we thought about actually is like, it’s a know how do you give people a trial it’s hard to do a free free one week trial with a hardware product. Some companies have done it like you know, Warby Parker, they’ll send out five frames to try on and then you pick one and then they pop the prescription lenses in it that you know after you send it back. So we thought about that, how do you get people the experience at home so they can try it out? And that’s on the that’s kind of on that list of things. We’d like to still experiment with of, you know, do you give up? Almost like, we just have a flat pack version that’s really low costs and they could set that up or do you give them a free return label and A lot of people to demo it for a week before sending it back or something. Because Yeah, I think it’s and once you use it, you’re like, Oh man, this is way better. This is, this is like, so much better than hunching over. I had no idea that was such a big deal. And I think though, that like the, the group of people we really speak to most is are those that already know they have a problem. And they found that out from either going to a physiotherapist, a chiropractor, or maybe they had an economist tell them like hey, you know, you can’t hunch at this laptop anymore. And so they’ve already gone through like a cycle of trying to solve this on their own. And so then it’s kind of an easy sell. It’s like Oh, man, Okay, perfect. This is Yep. No questions asked. Thanks. And, and that that’s like such a big group of people. I think still, especially when you get into like a corporate environment. And now with more people that are working out a co working spaces and whatnot, but that’s not going to last forever. So
having having tools to
broaden and get people educated about this thing is the next thing that we definitely want to look at that going forward so
Augusto Pinaud 25:14
I will be curious I don’t know that the answer to this is just you know Muslim because you mentioned back pain and I mentioned but I and I believe the back pain but chiropractors offices they tend to have all these tools for the people who go and you know go to getting fixed and and a straight and actually, my own story was not I went to the chiropractor after you know, everything else has failed. And practice tomorrow, I can help you fix your back pain, but it’s going to get worse before he gets better. Not exactly what you want to hear but but he went through his problems again, he got a lot worse before he got better, but now, I tend not to have the back pain but but one of the things we went into was, you know, some of those ergonomics and how I was doing some of the things and, and maybe, you know, not necessarily advocating or trying to educate one by one but maybe educating the people who is looking into these postures day in and day out who, you know, are giving the solution. So, who are going to be listened to because they’re already bringing some of that healing?
James Olander 26:22
yet? Certainly, no, that’s
when I went to healthcare professional can recommend something, you get that immediate authority that we’d love to be right in there that in that discussion at the time,
you know, as in terms of business models,
you know, started the product on Kickstarter. We’re still probably really just a product, not a company and kind of have hitched our wagons for the first two versions of the product to the Amazon and direct Direct Selling from our website, we really aren’t in many different types of wholesale or distribution. So going forward, though, that entire space and how to most efficiently structure a successful business to be there at that point, is this something we’re looking at? It’s a whole whole different can of worms, though, in terms of how those types of industries operate. So we’re so a bit of a learning process, but one, one that we’re looking at to we’re just trying to trying to not have the business hinged on any 111 type of model
Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:39
diversify. Yeah, yeah, I can see how you could have a you could have a really strong wholesale retail relationship with chiropractors. And you know, so that they could, you could drop ship, you know, inventory to their shop, and they could sell them directly in the, in the retail environment for you. And you know, so there’s like, lots of opportunities there. I think that’s really, really awesome. We’re coming up on our time together. And I wanted to just kind of get from you a sense of, you know, you talked about being more of a product than a company and what’s what’s on the horizon for roost? And what do you what do you think will come in the next version, maybe what what’s going to benefit people’s productivity more with regard to having this product and what you really want to see happen with it, a little bit of vision, you know, visionary thinking or forward thinking about what you want to happen in the next say, 18 to 24 months with the product,
James Olander 28:36
that the thing that’s kept the business successful is that the product is what we say it is, and that it is as useful as people hear from someone else that recommends it to a more what we’d say on our website and just reinvesting everything into making the product even better. and solving even better the, the, the challenges that people face when they’re working remotely and so more more adjustability, more more range so it can fit a wider range of environments and bodies sizes. And then and then also just the, you know, there it is not portable enough. If you’re carrying it every day with you it’s still is a bit bulky, and just making it smaller, lighter, more portable. So kind of, you know, Apple went too far but you know, just the I believe Apple went too far with making things thinner, you know, their iPhones are bending and half and iPads bend in half and whatnot. So not, you know, don’t go over the limit but make it as portable and as small as possible. Then there’s also other devices so like iPads, we that’s definitely a growing request of Hey, I, you know, my entire workflow is on an iPad or on a tablet. And we want to, we want to have a solution for that. So we got a couple other things too, that I think are pretty massive engineering challenges that and honestly honestly been working on for almost over three years now and we’re still still working on them that are solving like kind of even a bigger, bigger problem in the space and I don’t want to tip my hat on that yet, but we, we do customer service and, and then r&d. That’s that’s all we spend our time on. So it’s about 95% r&d and 5% customer service. So the team is a couple people here full time, product designer engineers and just continuing to make super useful, portable things that’ll help you when you’re working remote is, is what we want to just keep doing. And I think there’s a few more milestones we want to hit. And I hope to hit them within
12 to 18 months that will actually have something to show for it.
And we will love to come back and talk about what we want to what we’re what we’re launching, when we get to that point. Absolutely. Yeah, that’d be great. That’d be great.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:37
So, as I always like to ask people that we’d like to ask people when they come on is, what’s a practical tip that people can take away from listening to today’s episode, and more to the point of the roost is is there a unique use of the roost that you seem people I’m curious that if there’s any really unique circumstances that people have used the roost for or unique places. And if you have kind of a story or a tip or a trick
James Olander 32:07
for folks, this is crazy. Someone was, I think at the G 20 summit a couple years ago, and they had their MacBook Pro that they were using for all of their audio video compiling, they had that on a roost and then they took a photo with like all the world leaders behind it, you know, from from their point of view with the roost in there. And so, yeah, I mean, we want to make a product that professionals so you know, that if you’re if you’re recording the G 20 stuff, you know, you can’t have any bad equipment. So that’s that was really cool to see that. And in terms of one thing to try that there’s a bit of a growing movement towards it, but it’s this idea of single screen, single hap in Meaning not just on your phone, but on your on your laptop screen. So it’s a swing back the other direction from multi screens, and multi monitor. So you just have a single thing of focus and all of your attention is on that one box and you’re done. You got all your other notifications turned off. So just kind of siloed you into a certain work piece of work that when you only have a laptop screen and it’s only so big, it really is, is great for that and we’ve had a number of people really get into that type of work and and I’m actually not doing that myself. Now. Let’s have a big widescreen monitor that I have way too many tabs open on and I am a couple months ago before I got that monitor I was I did all my work on just a 15 inch MacBook Pro. So everything was on that one screen and that’s all I had and I think I’m kind of might be getting the edge to go back just the single screen again. So I think that’s fun to try and people are over whelmed with multiple monitors and try try going just single single piece. Right?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:04
Yeah, definitely, I definitely see the value in focus, I actually thought about the idea that, you know, probably back in the early 2000s, maybe late 90s, there was a movement toward having these privacy screens, you know, either overlays on the on the monitor that you had in your laptop, and when you went out in public, you know, someone looking from an angle other than directly straight on would, you know, either block or, you know, make it a little bit more translucent or opaque, so that you couldn’t see what the person was working on. And I thought, you know, it’d be really interesting if there were blinders, like, like horses have running down the racetrack. And those were actually blinders that were put on the laptop screen, so that it actually blocks out peripheral vision. So when you’re looking at the screen, there was less stuff around you. And I thought, you know, that would look really, really awkward. But it would actually also be really, really useful in CO working environments where People have to put up with a lot of noise and movement. Yeah, absolutely. So if you if you had kind of like something blocking your, your peripheral vision in some way, shape or form, that would actually be really, really, really interesting. And it would fall in line with this whole, you know, attention movement to have a single app, single screen kind of thing. So, really, like really like that idea. with that. I want to thank James Overlander from roost stand for joining us here on productivity cast. Thank you, James.
James Olander 35:32
Thanks, guys.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:34
And so with that, if you have a question for James about roost, feel free to head on over to the podcast website if you’re not listening there, and they’re at productivity cast.net forward slash 065, which is the episode number, so productivity cast.net forward slash 065. there at the bottom of the page, you’ll find a comment field, you can leave a comment or question and one of us will be glad to respond. And if you have a question for James will try and get that answered for you. You’ll also find the transcript in text as well as in PDF. So you can download that and read that through as well if you would like. Also on the page there on the right hand side, you should see the subscribe option so you can follow us across any of the favorite podcast apps that are out there. And you can go ahead and subscribe as you wish. If you have a question about personal productivity generally or a topic you’d like us to discuss, feel free to visit productivity cast.net forward slash contact, and there on the contact page, you’ll be able to leave us a voice and or written message and we’d love to hear from you. Thanks to James o lander, founder of Bruce laptop stand and to my co host with us to put out for joining me here on this productivity cast. If you could please leave a rating a review in Apple podcasts and or the soon to be defunct iTunes. You can leave is a review also in Stitcher. And just to let us know how we’re doing. Help us to grow our personal productivity listening community as well. We really appreciate the feedback. And so thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, here’s to your productive life.
Voiceover Artist 37:17
And that’s it for this ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things productivity, with your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.