IoT Productivity: How Internet of Things (IoT) Affects Personal Productivity

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 productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I’m Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:24
I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:26
I’m Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:27
And I’m Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:25

And Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode. And what we are going to be doing this week is talking about the Internet of Things, and its impact on productivity on personal productivity. And what we’re going to cover throughout the episode is a little bit of a definition of what IoT is, what the Internet of Things is, and how it relates to personal productivity. Then we’re going to talk about what IoT we currently use in our own personal worlds or don’t use and what we may be planned to use in the near future. Then we are going to broaden the conversation then to what we think how we think IoT is going to impact productivity in the next few years for those of you out there, and we want to do it from this future perspective, so that we’re all a little bit more aware of how IoT works, and how it can work for you, and therefore help make you more productive. And I think that’s a good thing for all of us. So let’s start off with what the Internet of Things is. And so I’ll kick us off just with kind of the basic understanding of what the Internet of Things is. And I’m going to read you the really wonky Wikipedia definition, and then I’m going to interpret what I believe it is. And then I’m going to open it up to the floor for for the other gentleman here to give their views. So Wikipedia defines the Internet of Things as a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals, or people that are provided with unique identifiers, you IDs and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human to human or human to computer interaction. What that really means is that the Internet of Things are all the things that are uniquely identifiable on the internet and connected to one another without someone else having to facilitate that connection. And that ultimately means that the Internet of Things is anything that we call quote unquote smart that is able to be connected to your, your internet connection at home or at work. And I guess along the way, if you were using your smart phone along the way, in a mobile device capacity so if you’re in the car, or if you’re on a bus or a train or plane, and or boat, I suppose you know, all of those things. And devices that are connected to the internet infrastructure are IoT,

Art Gelwicks 3:06

this whole idea of the Internet of Things I think the the Wonka pedia article there because I like your wonky Wikipedia article. So I’m going to coined that new term, the Wikipedia. That is pretty accurate, at least in my book as to what I perceive when we talk about Internet of Things. It’s any, any device that you wouldn’t traditionally consider a computer or a computing device, but you’re still using technology to interact and control with it. So things like our lovely home assistance that we have the the Guillermo and elite, you know, Alicia, I’m trying not to trigger anybody. So pardon me with weird names that will go with big a big G and that and so forth for for naming purposes. So big a and big G is I think what we commonly understand now We think about Internet of Things, and all the things that those can interact with, that’s not limited to that in any stretch. But it’s all of everything wants to be connected anymore, at least companies who are releasing things all want things to be connected. I think for the the more important understanding of it, though, internet of things really needs to go beyond what’s connected, and focus on how you’re using that connection. How is that benefiting you? Is it connected just because it can be? Or are you actually deriving a direct benefit from using that connectivity to make life easier or more efficient or just more pleasant?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:42

And I think what what art is getting at here so that we have context is that I gave the more textbook definition, the longer pedia definition. And really, this ends up being about data and shared data. And when we when it comes to thinking about Your own productivity. Most of what you’re doing is generating data, capturing data, manipulating data in some way, shape, or form. And by having devices, things out in the world that are, quote unquote smart, that are able to share that data, without you being the one to have to do it, necessarily, you know, there are potentially sensors and other things, capturing data ambiently. For example, your smartphone collects dozens of pieces of data points, you know, every second about you as you move around in the world. And that data can then be utilized by IoT devices to get things done for you. That’s really the power here that I think about is how it can transfer and share that data without me having to do it. And privacy implications aside, we could talk a little bit about the the security and privacy behind IoT and the necessity for Security Standards and compatibility for both extensibility but interoperability as well. And those things, but the core here is that I don’t have to do everything. Because now I have these. They’re not that much smarter devices. They’re just devices that are connected to the internet that are talking to one another, that are then capable of passing on these little data points that ultimately become the big data of me, that then knows more about me than I could know about myself in particular categories, and therefore, potentially helped me get new things done that I didn’t know needed to be done. But now it can help forecast. For example, my phone could tell me how to get to work better because it knows the ways in which I drive to work. Or it could tell me that I really like one cafe over another cafe because I consistently rate the beverages I have at that cafe in a particular way. So there’s like the new stuff. But it can also actually help me with the stuff that I know I need to do and know I want to do. And that’s also really great.

Francis Wade 7:06

Like the definition that I’d love to hear the examples. That’s that’s a part because I’m looking around my office or my world trying to think of examples that I may have using without actually knowing I can’t think of any yet but I’m hanging in there.

Augusto Pinaud 7:21

So one of the things that he’s interested in was Internet of Things is that for most people, has come almost in an invisible way. You know, that comment that Francis made? It is interesting, because a lot of people are not even aware of the Internet of Things. And when their phone, you know, told them, they put an alarm that says the location and their phone is able to tell them, hey, you have a meeting in two hours and you normally have this meeting in your office and you are not in your office. Those kinds of things that are a combination of Internet of Things and artificial intelligence are things that people don’t understand what ease they just know their phone do that and somehow the smartphones and these things has been getting into people live without people be necessarily conscious of what Internet of Things is. So they have led the terminology being a quote unquote geek terminology technically terminology without allowing them to understand this is part of your life when you can go to your fridge and Mark milk into the thing or your fridge can intelligently said hey, the milk that you put on the shelf is getting low and then pritch there are some that can so that is the internet of things but for most people, it is invisible. It is invisible. The fact that if you open your phone, it will tell you You are 17 minutes from home, okay or he will tell you do not take I 69 because There is a crash. And for most people, they don’t understand that is the Internet of Things. It’s just a feature on the phone is there always my phone that is getting smarter? Or it is because I have a smartphone without necessarily understand what it is that technical terminology that it comes behind. And I think when we start talking about having this, one of the big challenges is start showing the people how the Internet of Things is present on their day to day life so they could understand how that can affect or not affect their level of productivity.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:40

And that’s a great segue to what we’re going to be talking about next, which is what are the things that we are using in our own worlds today and what we plan to use in our worlds, our homes and offices and and vehicles and so on, so forth, for connecting with the Internet of Things.

Art Gelwicks 9:59

I’ll give you specific use case and I know Francis, you were looking for practical examples. When I leave the house in the morning, I call out to big a big a, I’m leaving. And what that does is that triggers a sequence of events, the first thing it does is turns off all the lights in the living room that don’t need to be on. The second thing it does is it turns on the security camera I have in the house to keep a watch on things to keep a watch on the puppy. The third thing it does is it drops big A into what’s called guard mode, which means that it’s listening for things like smoke detectors and broken glass. These are all

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:38

convenience things that I could do manually each morning if I wanted to. But it would take about 10 minutes each morning to walk through all the different apps and all the different setups because it’s all tied together as a routine. It’s highly efficient for me to just be able to make one command and have this sequence of events happen. I think that’s one of the biggest advantages when we start To think about Internet of Things is how can these normally disconnected devices become a cohesive system? to couple with that, if it’s late at night, and there’s a noise out on the front porch or something like that, I can turn to big a, because I have a little one, the little echo show devices sitting there. I can say, Show me the front camera. There are two different companies, two different systems. But because of the interconnected nature of the internet, it gives me the ability to on that little nightstand camera, see exactly what’s going on with the front porch, on the front porch, without having to grab my phone. Those are just two little use case examples. There’s thousands of others. But it’s important again, I think, to think about how you’re putting these disparate pieces together into your own cohesive system. Great example, art, and I will go through just the very basic I’m going to have a lot of IoT in my world. And so I don’t want to get into like smart shades and, you know, smart refrigerators yet. But I want to just touch base on the things that I do have in operation on my homes that allow me to be able to really function well in the world, which is smart camera, which is an internet connected Wi Fi camera, it actually points not into my home, but out of my home, to be able to watch the front door and the street where my car was parked. And, and so that’s just a helpful thing for me to be able to open my phone at any given time and see who’s out there and see what has happened in the recent past. I’ve had a couple of issues where people have, you know, dinged my car on, on street parking, and I want to be able to identify who the culprit is. And it’s been just very, very useful for that purpose in inside the home, or you know, on the affixed to the home and inside the home, we have smart thermostat, which allows us to be able to identify what the temperature is in the home, we have a dog, and we want to be able to keep the temperature livable for our little pet companion, but also to be able to go on vacation and monitor the temperature of the place at any given time to make sure that the fish stay alive and and also save money because the system can automatically go into energy saving mode. By doing this type of analysis, we can actually look at it and say, Okay, well, we actually don’t need it on during these periods. But we would really like it to turn on automatically when one of us is coming closer to the home. So if we come into a particular radius, it triggers based on our smartphones on us and then says oh, we should start the smart thermostat and start the HPA system or the heating system, you know or cooling system so that it is able to you know, bring the The space into a reasonable temperature. So we come into into the home in comfort as opposed to sweating or still being cold. Lots of other examples from the smart doorbells, smart locks, and a garage door opener, the we have smart displays in strategic places so that we can have conversations with family face to face through video technology. And LED lights. We have lots and lots of connected lights throughout the home so that we are able to say, pay big turn on the lights, and it will turn on all the lights in the home or we are strategic lights, you know, I want to turn on the living room lights, I want to turn on the kitchen lights, I want to turn on the bedroom lights, bathroom lights, that kind of thing, and be able to just have those turned on and off. And then using the Google Assistant, which is the big g part. You can use what are called Google routines, which I think is what art was alluding to, but on the big eight On the Amazon side, where you can then string together a series of things to be done by having those connected smart devices do that.

Augusto Pinaud 15:09

And that’s exactly what makes it easy to make. The problem is when you look at the beginning of automation I remember my parents Oh, we’re talking about the 90 so they tried to do some automation lights on lights off again and you needed to start the wiring and, and he was a mess to do those things. And one of the beautiful things on the Internet of Things is how easy be online all these can be done. You know, we have people are using it for example for Airbnb, okay. They are using, they are coming. And now they don’t give a key. Can you put a smart lock and when you come they let you download the app on the phone and you can enter in and out of the hero, Airbnb and things like that. Service order delights, the routines and routines are fantastic because allows you to connect those bunch of services you know, like you we have, you know, a big a let’s, let’s go to bed you know and there is actually in our house a couple of routines you know one is let’s go to bed and that turn off certain lights turn on certain other ones and then he’s, you know the other one is big a good night and then that again do a second routine turn off the lights turn on turn on other things. Can you do all that manually? Of course people have been doing it for a year but this is so convenient to be able to do all those things to get the alert, you know, hey, you open the garage door and he’s been open for more than 20 minutes. Okay, do you want to close it? All those kind of things that are making really life easier. What is better I want to come back to to the point before you know you get the thermostats that hey, the nest I don’t remember exactly when the nest came out but the nest was one of those first thermostat that was able to identify patterns and and tried to use into the Internet of Things to give you more better comfort and to help you save some money and some dollars and some energy. But for most people they will not know that is the internet of things they will not they just know all there is a smart thing and that can turn on or off depending if we are in the house or we are not in the house. So that I think is one of the challenges. They tried to make the internet of things available for the people without calling it so we didn’t never went into that geek gray area. And because of that most people don’t know you know, most people don’t understand that their phone. Can’t tell them how far they are from a meeting or can tell them on alert on alarm basis on how far they are from the meeting or where they are physically or that they can use in the world of productivity Do you can do you know, a smart list, hey, I only want you to remind me about this thing when I’m close to the groceries on. That used to be something quote unquote, geeky, okay, when you could get your task management to remind you when you get to the groceries to buy milk, it used to be Wow, now, it is a standard you can go even on the apple reminders that is probably the most basic to do app and get stuff like that done, and get it to alert only under certain conditions. But because of the way it was introduced without putting it names, most people is missing the fact that that’s what they’re doing. That’s what they’re experienced that they’re smart refrigerator. It’s smart. Because of that, that they can turn on and off the lights that their big a can tell them, Hey, you know, I this happened to us this week they’ll alert on the big eight came up and he says, well, based on your pattern you have forgotten you need to pay attention to your laundry detergent because you may be low. Okay. And as much interesting are cities in the world of productivity? I think one of the big things is we have missed the point of what it is. And as the geekiness can identify what it is, I’m curious to, to hear from you guys, what is experienced with those non technological people that we are working every day who are experiencing this in their day to day that are seeing all these smart things happening around them, and that they’re intrigued what they are and how can they use it better?

Art Gelwicks 19:59

Well, I think One of the biggest things that we have to take into consideration when we talk about internet of things with non technical people is that there is no singular big win for everybody. There is no one thing that these devices do that will make your life better. It’s an amalgam of little victories. So when you think about, like, you’re talking about controlling lights, I mean, that’s probably one of the most common things and command reductions, secondly, to the voice assistance that people have when it comes to IoT. When you put those kinds of lights in place, at least in my house, when I did, I got a constant push back of well, I can just go turn the switch on. Yes, you can. There’s nothing that says that this stuff is not doable, but it’s the combination of these capabilities that you start to get those little victories in. In this case, for example, I have a routine that says, you know, hey, big a TV mode, and it’s kills all the lights around the TV dims the rest of them down. Could I do that by hand? Sure. But the little victory of me not having to interrupt what I’m doing, not having to change my train of thought and be able to have this action taken for me, is a productivity benefit. If you think about these things like little tiny assistance, all of a sudden, it starts to make more sense, because they’re helping you with those little tasks and chores. But there’s a constant push back. I mean, it’s easy to go off the deep end on this stuff, to have it everywhere. And if you’re the only person who’s really technical, who’s thinking about all these interconnections at all, it can be a little overwhelming. You have to remember what the right command is. You have to remember what the right sequence is. Why is this not doing what it’s supposed to be doing? That light isn’t turning on anymore? Well, that one’s not turning on because somebody turned off the switch. There’s all kinds of crazy things. That can happen. And any of those can be a roadblock to the adoption of this kind of a technology and thereby deriving the benefits from it.

Augusto Pinaud 22:09

But at the same time, even the people with low technology knowledge and I’m talking about my parents in this specific case, okay. It is interesting because after they saw make a in our house, they said oh we need that because when when we get noises in the bottom part of the house, we don’t want to go but we want lights to turn on so people feel that I don’t know they feel that if they turn the light to security somehow. Okay, but and we have the cameras and all that but but for them the cameras doesn’t do anything, but the light will will make a difference but now they had it. Okay, given there are three commands there are not that many routines but for them the fact that they don’t need to do the stairs to go downstairs to turn on. The light has been out big relief and give them a sense of security and all that they need to do is that big a downstairs, and he will turn that the two lights that we have automated for them. So even though things you know, for the people who who deals with those things that that they are not technology, my parents are not technologically at all but giving them that little thin and then go and talk to, to the big a, you know, at least for my mother works really well. My father is still trying to come to, to remember what is the name of the thing, but but that’s, you know, that’s what it is. But it really when you start understanding from those basic points of those simple things on what those simple things can be, you know, and how many of those simple things as you said can be many helpers or media assistance that you can have around you know, I love the fact what I’m Working on my desk, or I’m working on the living room and I can go and say be gay, I’m working. Okay. And then big a knows exactly which are the lamps given I created the routines that I wanted to find the speed and all that so that way it’s getting dark and I get can continue working there without needing to stand up or as you said, interrupt my train of thought. So that really make a significant difference in to stay productive and to keep that momentum when you’re working.

Art Gelwicks 24:30

the audience’s that have the opportunity to really benefit from this kind of technology. And this is one of the things that we hear more and more commonly is because we have generations that are getting older now. A larger population of over 60 people we’re looking at, can this technology help them but also as the son of an 82 year old grandmother Or grant or mother. It’s, it’s can this technology Help me Help her things like these kinds of voice assistance where I can actually drop in and talk to her or just drop in and hear what’s going on, even though I’m not there to make sure everything’s okay. Or if there’s a situation where she has a problem, she doesn’t have to try to get to a phone, she can just call out, and it’ll actually respond to her voice. These types of things. We don’t think about this as productivity. But we really need to, because this is part of the life side of productive execution, being able to keep track of what’s going on, making sure for example, that medications get taken. Well, you can use this kind of tech to set up a way so that the reminders there so that every day it says Hey, take this information, it there’s a lot that can be done. here’s here’s how Minor, but it’s a perfect use case example. And it’s a rather personal one. My father who had a stroke, before he passed away, was unable to reach the light. He couldn’t turn the light on and off in his room when he wanted it. But the combination of a voice assistant, and a Wi Fi powered light switch gave him that peace of control back, it gave him the opportunity to turn the light on when he wanted to turn it off. And in his situation, that loss of control was one of his biggest challenges. It’s a little piece. But for him, it was really important. And I think those are the kinds of things we need to look at when we start to think about IoT. Do you need all the things? No, I would love all the things. I think they’re really cool. But there’s a point where certain things for everyone are going to make a difference. It’s just going to be different for everybody.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:57

Agreed. And I think that we all have to When we’re considering our own productivity, we’re giving kind of home based examples, and we’ll talk about this in future episodes. But when it comes to our productivity, then it’s about figuring out what our normal everyday routines are, if you want to really approach this from from that perspective, you know, what are everyday routines? And how can having a smart or connected device, help facilitate that routine, so that we can have the compound benefits of productive output. And that’s going to be helpful whether you need that in an elder care environment or whether you need that as a mother or father of children. Or if you’re a, an individual who just wants to be more productive in their everyday life. And I just really fundamentally believe that both at home and at work, we can see that benefit from IoT if it’s used in appropriate ways, and so, you know, just some some baseline items that come to mind. You know, paying attention to buying from legitimate manufacturers, and making sure that those devices auto update from the manufacturer for security, stability, you know, longevity, that kind of thing. And you should always know what things are connecting to your internet generally both at home and work right, you should keep a inventory of those things. I’m always baffled by people saying to me, oh, well, I could just look at the the list of things that are connected to my router at any given time. But in reality, your IoT devices aren’t always talking to your router. So you could look at the list and it could not be talking to a smart light bulb that you have in the garage at the very present moment. So you will always see a list of those things. So I really would say start with what do you have connected to the internet it could be your printer. Your printer is technically an IoT device, if it’s wirelessly connected to your your and your Wi Fi system. So that you’re able to print from any device, any computer, in house or phone. So those are types of things like just start with the baseline of what you already have connected to the internet, see whether or not they can do things smart things, right? They can have logic so that when this happens, then I can do that. And that can be very useful to you and see how that might be useful to the to others around you. And, and I and I, you know, back to both of your points about, you know, bringing people who are not technologically savvy or know what IoT is into the fold is a real challenge. And I think it’s one that we consistently have to have creative ideas about how to get them to want to use that technology, if it truly is going to benefit them or benefit us helping them and that’s a that’s just an ongoing challenge. I want to switch gears here, as we come to the end of this episode, with discussions about How we believe IoT is going to impact productivity in the coming years. And not in, you know, 10 or 20 years. But really in the next few years, how do you believe IoT is going to affect us? And I will start the discussion potentially with the most broad discussion of the of IoT, which is that many of us have a conversation about how it will affect our personal productivity on the micro level. But I’m going to take this out to the macro level, and then I’m going to hope that you guys bring us down to the micro level, which is to say that in the enterprise IoT space, we have agricultural it, we have medical IoT, I’m sorry, we have, we have agricultural IoT, we have medical IoT, we have all kinds of transportation IoT, and I believe that that technology being used in the enterprise space, where we then have massive amounts of data being shared among the internet connected devices out there are going to help create a level of information, a sea of information that then helps provide us with the data points that we need to be able to be more productive. For example, if in the agricultural IoT space, if you have smart sensors that are out there in the crops, and it’s capable of telling us that the yield on let’s say, in my world, a batch of wine is getting a lot of really good rain, a particular season out in Napa Valley, well, that means they’re going to have some really good wine coming out of that season. And that’s going to tell me that when I’m ready to buy, say, wine for my clients for the holiday season, I’m going to be able to go out there and No, you know what, 2020s you know, batch is going to be pretty good. I’m going to want to get that over some other years batch that had lower levels of water or rainfall. And so This kind of information becomes really powerful in very, you know, specific senses like, you know, choosing the best year vintage of wine. But also that if there is heavy amounts of traffic on at any particular time of the day, through IoT and transportation, enterprise IoT, now I’ve got real time, a real time see of data, being able to tell my google assistant or telling, you know, whatever other internet connected assistant to tell me, hey, by the way, you may want not want to take this route today, because this is happening now, in some way, shape, or form. This is happening a little bit because cars connected to their mobile devices, their smartphones, or smartphones sitting inside of cars are capable of today, collecting together that information and telling us that data in some way shape or form within Google Maps and Apple Maps and so on, so forth, but we’re talking about on a whole new level because If all the planes, trains, buses, cars and boats are all now IoT, internet Connect internet connected now it’s being able to give us kind of this, this massive amount of information about how things should happen to get us to the outcome that we want in near real time. And I think if we, if we could just step back and philosophize a bit, I think that that larger macro IoT, information sharing is the part that I think is really exciting, because it allows the common person you know, the everyday person to be able to gain access to data specific about them from a sea of information that’s out there happening to everybody else and every other thing, and and that’s really, really cool to me. How about on a on a on a smaller level? Can we bring it down a bit and where do you believe IoT could be impacting productivity For individuals,

Art Gelwicks 34:01

yeah. See, that’s a pretty big question because it’s going to vary by person. But I, personally, I would say that the easiest thing to impact your own personal productivity using IoT is voice assistance. All the other devices, lights and thermostats and things like that. Those are nice. And those are convenience. But voice assistance can really make a substantial impact in keeping things on track. Getting you information when you need it, making it available in whatever venue and having that information and those connections at your fingertips without having to learn complex interfaces and UI and, and things on that line. So, I mean, if you’re, if you’re looking to dip your toe into the IoT space, it kind of stands to reason To start with one of the voice assistant units, whether it’s big a or big G, that’s really up to you, I actually have both and I go back and forth between them, just because I’m kind of wishy washy that way. Find one start to work with it, you may find it works for you, you may find it doesn’t. But I would say start with a voice assistance.

Francis Wade 35:22

Where’s the where’s the killer app that I’ll be using in the next few years and I get the fringe applications, I get the potential. But I think the killer app that I’ll actually be using is going to be so embedded in my world, or in my, the things that I use, that I probably won’t even notice that it’s an IoT app, it’ll be something that’s a capability that’s deeply inherent and invisible to me. So otherwise, it won’t, it won’t even appear on my radar as a use of that technology. Unless I’m personally interested in it? That makes me think that the the people who are looking for productivity solutions, people who are crafting the solutions need to be more creative and do a far better job of understanding what the unmet needs are of ordinary people. then allow the technologist to emerge, wherever they may come from. I think that that’s the frontier is the app, the the the gap, figuring out the gaps? I don’t think it’s going to come from the technology itself at this point based on the conversation I hear us having. And the question that you just asked. I don’t think it’s going to come from the technology people. I don’t think it’s going to come from IoT companies. I don’t think that they are familiar enough with the challenges that people have in the area of their productivity. That’s my is my contrary opinion, I think

Art Gelwicks 37:00

I was gonna I was just gonna ask. Okay, so from that standpoint, is it really the problem of the technology? Or is it a problem of not understanding your productivity needs?

Francis Wade 37:12

Is that Oh, yeah, it’s not a technology. Technology is just a possible enabler. But no, it’s not a problem with technology.

Art Gelwicks 37:20

So the pushback I hear a lot is, there’s so much stuff out there. There’s so many different ways to do this. I don’t have time to figure any of that stuff out. Does it make sense from a productivity community? That our biggest challenge is to not identify the technologies that are out there and that are coming there’s plenty of people doing that. But to help people almost identify those use cases of this is a challenge for you. You can handle it this way. This is a challenge for you. You could handle it this other way. So that they start to connect those dots is that the biggest thing the productivity community can provide to people when it comes to

Francis Wade 38:09

IoT? I believe. So I think we’ve done a poor job of doing just that. And it leads some of the startups I’ve seen, for example, on Product Hunt, are clearly by technologists who don’t know anything about productivity. But they’ve put together in their minds, a marginal use case that they think is really exciting. But it’s actually marginal to people’s everyday behavior. So I agree with what you’re saying completely, that there’s a there’s a service that we need to provide. Which says, here’s the, here’s the need, here’s the nature of the need. Here’s how it’s going to evolve. Here’s where it came from. Here’s why it exists. Here’s why it’s not going away. And we get to that point and then invite solutions. Almost

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:00

I’ll add as we as we wind down this conversation, one of the important things to take into consideration as we look at the future of IoT on our productivity is that it’s not being done in a vacuum. It’s being done with a wide variety of other different types of technology, including machine learning and artificial intelligence, and other types of new types of technologies that are coming out that are very, very interesting. And I’m not going to get into them, because then we’ll be here for another three hours, but the but the machine on the machine learning side, you know, we typically joke about Rube Goldberg machines and, and how those things can impact our productivity and how they may be useless to others and potentially even useless to the person who buys them off of say, Kickstarter or Indiegogo or something like that. Because they think, Oh, this is going to be the productivity tool that’s going to really help me and and then ultimately, it doesn’t do that. For now, we don’t have a lot of this. But we are starting to see more of this where something like Google amassing the data it knows about you is able to predict things that can help you, and then activate those IoT devices to provide behavioral interventions that can support your future self. And I think that’s where this has the most ability to help us is in essence, us not having to write the software to make the logic happen, right is that to say another another in better ways. We don’t have to come up with the logic, the software, based on the data can come up with the logic by identifying goals that we want to have. I want to take 10,000 steps a day, and then having Apple or Google or whomever Now, look at what I’m doing and then Providing little triggers for me to be able to increase the number of steps I make throughout the day. Hey, Ray, why don’t you take the steps instead of the elevator today in your building, things of that nature that are just light touch that are what Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein talk talk about is nudges. Those nudges then put us into these behavioral modes that help to improve our lives. And not just health outcomes, but productive outcomes as well. And I think that that’s that’s where we can actually see the the largest swath of IoT without anyone actually potentially even installing any new devices in their world, because the smartphone in your pocket has a lot of those sensors that are needed for being able to run machine learning. And then with the ambient world around us, we’re coming into contact with those things. You know, when you walk into a building that has Wi Fi, then your system your phone can then register that you That you’ve connected that you’ve come into proximity of a particular place, and just those types of things that help you be better at something. And it may be something that you don’t even know that you’re not that good at. And it giving you a prompt to just do something small to get better at that. So, for example, I’ve been recently noticing that my Kindle has has been calculating how much time it takes me to read a chapter or book. And now all of a sudden, my AUDIO BOOK application that I use through the library is doing something similar. And I’m hoping at some point that those to talk to each other that the Kindle and that the the mobile app talk to each other so that it can rationalize whether or not I’m getting through books faster on one device or the other, and giving me some nudges so that I can actually learn better. It’s not about getting through the books faster, because I can I can power through books pretty easily. It’s about Getting more information that sticks with me longer. And if I can tell that the goal, then machine learning can figure out the parts that helped me be truly more productive.

Augusto Pinaud 43:12

That’s where IoT is incredible Kindles do that. It should add a button and that is screen who says kids interruption when you’re reading? So instead of children’s, you need three more hours to finish this chapter. What it should tells you is you need 20 less interruptions. But you can finish the chapter.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 43:29

Absolutely. Or it can hear the children’s voices in the background and prompt you and say run hi to Agusto.

Augusto Pinaud 43:36

That would be fantastic. I’m all for that. I’m willing to pay for that monthly fee.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 43:43

Well, thank you, gentlemen, for this conversation. This brings us to the close of our conversation, but not to the very end of our episode yet. Just have a couple of things that I wanted to make note of first and foremost. Do you have a question or comment about IoT and how It impacts your productivity. Did we not fully explain something that you want us to help you understand about personal productivity and internet of things? And and do you want to share how maybe you use IoT in your world? Feel free to head over to our podcast [email protected] there at the bottom of the episode is a common field, feel free to leave us a comment. We’ll be happy to respond. You can also tweet at us at prod cast show ProdCastShow. That’s our Twitter account. Feel free to tweet at us or tweet at any one of us individually, you’ll find our Twitter handles on the show notes page. And feel free to let us know we’re happy to answer those questions as you have them. They’re also on the episode page, our show notes. And so links to anything that we’ve discussed are easily jumped to from the show notes. And you will also find a transcript of our conversation both for download and for reading. So if you want to jump to a section and read what we were Talking about easily done from the page as well. So we provide a lot of information there on the on the show notes page that I recommend everybody, go ahead and check out. If you have another question about personal productivity, some topic that you’d like to tackle in some future episode, head over to ProductivityCast dotnet forward slash contact, and you can record a voice message I think under a minute, give about 60 seconds to leave us a message. And and then we can play it here on the show and answer your question in maybe an upcoming episode. Or you can actually write us a message you can type a message to us and that will alert us to your question, and we’ll be happy to respond if it’s practical and capable. So with that, thank you to Augusto Francis and Art for joining me here on this cast. And also, if you could head over to Apple podcasts or Stitcher or whatever podcast app you use that has the ability to leave a rating or review and please do so that helps us to grow our personal productivity listening community. It helps us to know how to be better At what we’re doing here and to provide you with something that you love and value and listen to every week. So thank you for doing that if you have and thank you for doing that, doing that, if you decide to that brings us to the close out of this episode of ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things, personal productivity, take care, here’s your productive life. And thank you gentlemen.

Voiceover Artist
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.