Non-Digital Productivity Gear

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 0:26
Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners today to this episode. Today, what we wanted to do is we wanted to get a little bit non techie with some non digital technology, I suppose. But what we’re going to do today is an episode on non digital productivity gear that we all use in our everyday lives in our in our productivity systems, that help us be more productive, and hopefully will help you be more productive in knowing about them. Even if you don’t use the exact products we use, we you can find the things that we are talking about, and they might help you be more productive. And so what we’re going to do is go around Round Robin, and each of us will describe what the tool is and why we use it and how we use it in our own systems. And that brings me to our first item, I’m going to go with art galax art, what was your first choice of your gear?

Art Gelwicks 1:22
Well, these aren’t in any particular order. But the first thing I’ll pull out here is my favorite little Dymo, letter tag, portable label maker. I mean, we’ve all seen one of those label makers before with the keyboard on the top, type it in. And it makes that lovely little mechanical sound as it spits the label out the side. Well, I’m just looking around my office right now, I’ve got cabinets labeled, I’ve got folders labeled, I’ve got drawers labeled, it’s amazing how important it is just to know what something is without having to open it and route around in it. And it helps get past that hole out of sight out of mind issue that you can run into so often. So that’s that’s probably my first thing. I don’t know that it’s necessarily the best label maker. There’s tons of them out there. And technically, it’s digital. But to me, it’s very straightforward. And it’s very simple. And it just does the one job that it’s supposed to do. And it does it very well.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:19
So what do you find that you use it the most for?

Art Gelwicks 2:23
I would have to say it’s it is primarily for my file folders. And for labeling drawers and cables, it is just that consistent thing where I want to be able to have something clear and easy to read from a distance. Plus, I want that consistency of visual. I’m a little bit of a design geek when it comes to that type of thing. So when I look at, for example, manila folders, I like that consistency of being able to go through and just have all the tabs uniform. So it’s very easy to flip through and identify things. So there aren’t, there aren’t specific things. The one thing I do use it for though, which I don’t know that everybody necessarily does. I use it for labeling cables, and power supplies. Because if you look in a box, for example, we usually wind up with like seven or eight different power supplies, they all look the same, but they have different voltages and things like that. And I’ll admit, it’s getting a little hard for me to read that fine print. So I’ll take the most important information on there such as which computer it’s supposed to go to or what its output voltages and label and just put it back on the back of the power supply so I can get to it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:29
I’ve been using a brother p touch 1100 q l for many, many years. And it’s just one of those workhorses that takes a lickin and keeps on ticking. And so I’ve had it for so long, and it just keeps working. And so it has the cartridges you put into it. And you can type all kinds of things into it and save it and then print on demand. And yeah, I’ve I’ve actually looked into the brother, I forget which model that one is. But it you plug it into your computer, and you can print directly from the machine, various labels, but I’ve just really never gotten over the tactile control you have with the buttons on the P touch 1100 qL. So,

Art Gelwicks 4:11
yeah, that and that’s I think that’s the interesting part about those kinds of label makers. I’ve tried for years to use, like inkjet labels and laser printer labels and the setup and the work, you can do some neat stuff, don’t get me wrong, but the setup and the effort just takes so much time away from actually accomplishing what you’re trying to do. The label makers are just just that they’re just straightforward. Like do the job they get back in the drawer until the next time they do the job. I looked at some of the desktop ones where they do the single label on demand. And I’m like, okay, that’s fine, but I don’t generate that many labels. What I do I generate a bunch, but otherwise it’s just going to be sitting there tying up desk space, and it’s not really getting me any benefit at that point. I want something I can use And put away when I’m done with it. So I will stick with this until it dies. And then I will probably buy another one that looks exactly like it.

Augusto Pinaud 5:08
Mine is also Dymo Letratag. So even more basic model than, than the one you have is the most basic one of the lateral tag. And he was actually what I got when when I begin doing my first getting things done swap. So we’re talking about 2002 I think 2003 when when I got mine and it died, okay, it only lasts so long. And I went and replace it for the same one because of the I had the card that juice and I love the fact that in that one, you can even replace and use paper or you can use plastic. So I have a couple of different things for for different purpose. If I want waterproof, then I have one that he’s made of plastic so that way I can label that. And it is really interesting how good it is to to have that I have never even considered going into a Desktop space where anything is wrong when I need it. I just can’t pull it out and print what I need and continue with my life is a really, really a fantastic tool.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:14
Elisa, what’s your first pick of your non digital productivity gear?

Augusto Pinaud 6:18
You know, the first one I’m going to pick is a 11 year pocket briefcase. I take notes. And not every note even that I take a lot of notes on my iPad Mini. Not every meeting is good to bring the iPad Mini there is still a lot of people who feels that if you have the device on the table, you’re not paying attention to which index cards are your best ally. I don’t have notebooks because I don’t want to carry notebooks because it’s not every meeting that I need to to use it but i have i bought years ago this love in your pocket briefcase on basically, it’s a fancy way to carry the index card. But he works really, really well for these kind of things. I can have a main card, and then it has a couple of buckets that you can put clean one and the ones you just use for process. And it has been a fantastic tool for over the years.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:18
So how much can it really carry? Like how much stuff can you shove into it?

Augusto Pinaud 7:25
Well, right now I have one I have right now 12 clean index cards. And I can probably go until 36 index cards.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:41
Okay, not bad.

Art Gelwicks 7:42
Yeah, it’s interesting. If I think back in the day, they used to talk about the levenger pocket notebook in combination with an old thing called the hipster PDA, where you would actually build out your own personal organizer using index cards in a binder clip. But if you wanted to do it more on the high end, you would couple it with one of the levenger pocket briefcases to give you a nicer place to actually capture the notes on the index cards and then transfer them over into the analog PDA. It’s been around a little while.

Augusto Pinaud 8:14
It’s been around for a really long time. Yeah. And they are. Again, I don’t know how old How old is this thing. But it’s been it’s been with me for a long time.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:25
Fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you. All right. So I picked the for my first item. It’s still a little bit techie, but I’m going to use it anyway, which is the rocket book beacons. And so the beacons are actually these little application. They’re little stickers that are reusable. And they’re little triangles, and you can put them on a whiteboard. And then when you’re writing on the whiteboard, you can then use the rocket book app. And I’ve talked about the rocket book before. I have the everlast rocket books, which are the, the you know, pen and ink, books that you can then scan and digitize into various places. I’ll put a link to them in the show notes. But we talked about them back, I believe in episode, it was Episode 58 and Episode 39 that I talked about them. I’m sure I’ve talked about them in other episodes. But the idea behind the rocket book beacons is that they do a couple of really interesting things technology wise. And so while they are themselves, not that techie, since they’re just stickers, they do this really powerful thing, which is, if you want to whiteboard and show someone a whiteboard in real time that you are physically writing on, you can actually set up the rocket book app and point it at the whiteboard. And it will then give you a link and you can share that link with anyone. And they can open up that URL and see you working on the whiteboard in real time. And so it creates this live whiteboard view for anyone, anywhere and all You need his the rocket book app connected to the internet and the little stickers. And it knows how to do the rest. And so the the very basic use of it is just put the stickers up and take a picture picture of it. And it then is able to understand the whiteboard and lift the images off the whiteboard, from where those stickers are placed in the four corners of the whiteboard, you can take them off, throw them into the little black bag that comes with it, and then take them to any whiteboard anywhere. I found that if I actually just put four corners on a white wall, it actually works pretty well with whatever you actually put on in that space within the four corners of the wall. So I was at an event where I was permanent marker on easel pads. Yeah, something like that. But it was like big paper easel pads that I was writing on, I actually took all three of them, put them next to each other and then put the four rocket beacons up, took a photo, it interpreted it as a whiteboard, and lifted the text right off of it without any without any issue. So it’s just a really, really convenient way to take data off of a large canvas and digitize that, but also if you really are interested in doing whiteboarding, say in a sales presentation or if you’re trying to do a presentation to your team in real time. And your your whiteboarding, being able to use the tool to be able to do that is very, very powerful. All right, Francis, what’s your first choice of non digital productivity gear.

Francis Wade 11:28
So my productivity tool of choice is not really a tool or a piece of equipment, it’s actually coffee inspired by I know that gusto is going to talk about a machine later on. But the reason I mentioned it is that I never drank coffee up until about a few years ago, I started drinking it enjoyed the feeling and the taste, feeling of of extra energy and the you know, the tactile, the drinking the sipping the warm beverage in the morning, then making the process the whole thing. So I became connected to the to, I won’t say addicted but connected. Really, like many people had to have a little bit more each day in order to get that same feeling that same jolt of energy. Until one morning, I woke up and I was feeling dizzy. And I said, I think that’s the coffee and my extra each day is adding up to the point where plus I realized I was also getting high blood pressure. So I said okay, I stopped everything all at once, but a person went back noon. And I took about six months of, of I guess totally not not having a sip at all. But I realized, you know, I did like the feeling. And I did like the taste. So I engineered a solution. And over time I kind of worked it out so that today, I actually drink decaf every day. So I get the ritual. And my my for whatever reason my mind has equated coffee with work. So I want to drink coffee, what I’m going to do work. So it’s the first thing I do before I settle down at my desk and start to focus. So for some reason, my mind doesn’t realize that it’s decaf, it thinks it’s still going through the ritual, because I still feel as if it’s a focusing mechanism. And what I do is I save the regular coffee for once, maybe every two or three weeks when I actually need the job. So whenever I have a deadline, and I’m working on something that is in an hour a day that looks like many items which require focused activity, because there is a high deadline somewhere or there’s some critical piece of work that I have to get done. Then I have a cup of coffee. And I I of course at this point my immunity to the whole thing has has has dropped so I don’t need a full teaspoon, I could take a half teaspoon and get the same feeling of of energy. So it’s my, um, no saving coffee, I guess, for brewing coffee, caffeinated coffee as a tool for the days when I most needed. And I as I’ve said, I guess high standards for myself to say that I’ll only use it when I have to use it. So I’ve not used it for the last about through two or three weeks because I haven’t had a day when I’ve had to use it. And what I feel like I’m doing is I’m banking, my energy day, I guess I’m saving it for when I actually needed that actually half the focus, because then it works. And in the end of the day when I drink coffee, and I’ve gotten a lot done, I feel good. I feel good. I feel like I got a lot done like coffee, the coffee definitely helped. And no regrets and also no impact on my health.

Augusto Pinaud 14:48
On that I can say about that is humbug.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:55
All right. Thank you, Francis. And that that brings us To art, what’s your next one? It’s a pin.

Art Gelwicks 15:03
Of course with me, it’s always a pin, or at least it appears to be. This happens to be one I’ve talked about in the past. It’s a grouping of pens, but I’m going to talk about a specific one, the pilot friction pens. Now, if you haven’t heard of the frictions before, they’re basically a thermo reactive pen, we’ve always had for years, the pens that you could sort of erase, and they were based on basically wearing the paper away to get rid of the ink pencils, when they erase something, they’re actually stripping the graphite off of the paper, well, here a friction pen being thermally reactive, the eraser at the end of the pen isn’t something that goes, that wears down, it generates heat, when you rub it on the page, and it causes the ink to react, causing it to disappear, there’s still an invisible marking left behind. But the actual color of the ink is gone. When the heats applied by the eraser, it’s probably the closest I have found to the benefits of a pen, combined with the benefits of a pencil. Now, there’s a lot of different configurations of it, the one that I use most frequently, and I’ve had a whole bunch of different ones, but the one I use most frequently, frequently is what’s called the pilot friction point, oh four, which is a needle point version of the pen, it’s a very fine point. And it’s what’s called postable. So it has a cap that you can pull off and you can put on the back end of it. I’ll be honest, the portable design is a terrible concept for a friction pen. Because as soon as you post the cap on the back of the pen, you have covered the eraser, which is part of the point of having it but I use it as a workaround, because in the next thing I talk about on my notebooks, I keep the post attached to the notebook. And then I can just pull the pin out, use it and then re clip it into the post. And I don’t have to worry about losing the pin. It’s one of those types of things that with all the different pens I have, I keep going back to it. And that to me is the sign of something that works. If no matter how many glitzy fancy, other things come down the path, if you still keep going back to the same tool, because you know, it’s going to do exactly what you need kind of like a label maker. That to me is a sign of a quality piece of tool, and the friction pens have fit into it for me, especially if you’re somebody who likes neat notebooks, you’d like to keep your stuff clean, and not have a lot of scratch outs and Mark outs, this is the kind of thing I recommend.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:39
And it turns out that those pilot friction pens are the same pens that you use on the everlast, the rocketbook everlast notebooks. And so they’re they’re really quite useful. Just one point of note here for anyone using them, beware of putting them in your car, or leaving them in the sun in any way shape or form because the heat will make the ink disappear. Now,

Art Gelwicks 18:05
what you can do though, is if you’re if the heat has caused it to disappear, you can take the notebook and stick it in the freezer, and it will cause the ink to come back. Which is kind of weird that that works. Because if you had a whole bunch of erased stuff, all of that erase stuff will come back. But yeah, it’s it’s a big thing. My thing that I tell people though, is you always have to have another pen handy. You have to have a standard ink pen handy because you never want to use a friction pen in anything that requires a legitimate signature or a permanent signature because it is eraser you wouldn’t use it on a financial documents, heaven forbid, you would never use it to like write a check or something like that. Those require a regular ink pen. This is really for the situations where you will conceivably use a pencil in the same type of thing. But don’t use it on the psats either.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:57
Yeah, just and I’ve had varying success with putting it in the putting the whole pen in the freezer or refrigerator to get the ink to turn back into normal ink as opposed to having been clearing. And so just just be mindful of the fact that heat is heat sensitive. So you do need to keep it in a temperate environment, including the the package of pens, which you know, you need to keep also in a moderate climate as well.

Art Gelwicks 19:27
Yeah, that’s my bad I didn’t I didn’t even realize you were talking about putting our the entire being left in the heat. I haven’t actually had I haven’t had that happen. And I’ve left my notebook. I think it’s a pretty high temperature it has to get to. I’m not sure it’s easy enough to look up on their website, but it’s one of those things where Yeah, it is thermal, so you have to take thermal into consideration. I don’t know how well it would work and extremely low temperatures either if the link or the ink would gel up or anything. We could get into an entire two hour conversation on the future. Spraying spins. And there are pressurized cartridges if we want to talk about that stuff, so

Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:04
Oh yeah, and I’ve had many, many times of going in and out of pressurized cabins with my fountain pens, which are cartridge based. And, and so the pressure inside of the cartridge equates to a very explosive pen cap moment every time. So never, never ever bring your fountain pens with cartridges in them into the cabin, because that just causes all kinds of problems. But yeah, just just be mindful that the friction pens are temperature sensitive, and I think you’ll be pretty much Okay, I know that when I’ve left them in my own car. In the summer, it’s been warm enough to turn them clear. So thank you art, Agusta, you’re up next.

Augusto Pinaud 20:47
So since we are picking pants, let’s pick a pen. And my pen of choice is across school across tech. And what I like about it is it has, you know, allow me to have a pencil, a blue or a black and a red ink. And it’s only a everything on one pen. So I don’t hand write a lot one because my handwriting is awful. But second, because I do mostly digital on on the iPad. But it is really nice. The few times I need to do that, to have the ability to have every piece of instrument the you know, the pencil or chewings even on one pen, it’s really, really useful. So it’s, it’s it’s a neat device. And again, I can tell you the ink last a lot or not It lasted enough for me I actually use the Fisher ink cartridges instead of the cross ones because I love the fact that they always right. But it’s been a fantastic tool for me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:57
Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so my next tool is interesting thing that I just always have had, I don’t I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have one, which is this targus podium Coolpad. And I’ve had various ones over the years, but this one is the one that I have multiples of and I just have them everywhere. And in essence, what they do is they give you a platform on which to put your laptop, and I got my first one many years ago just because my back then mobile desktop had those fans built into the bottom of the of the device. And so I wanted to give it a greater intake, you know, space between the table and the computer. And so I bought this target’s podium Coolpad and forget what version or manufacturer it was back then. But, but basically, it angles your computer up so that you’re able to have more space between the surface on which the the laptop is and the laptop itself, plus it angles it up. So it gets the laptop and maybe a little bit more ergonomic perspective. So the device has these little risers that you can actually change. So you can actually level it up and down. So you can like take out these little disks and it it puts it up, you know, makes it higher and lower. And it has little rubberized pads that gives it friction. And And so yeah, it’s worked really well for me, I have found it to be extremely useful. What I what I really like is that it actually has a platform, it’s it’s a trapezoid shape. If I’m if I’m getting my geometry correct, and so it’s a trapezoid shape. And you’re actually able to swivel the base from the pad itself. So in so many environments, I’ve been helped by the fact that I can place the base in really awkward scenarios, and then swivel the actual computer or the laptop toward me so that I’m able to so that I’m able to use it so little small spaces, like the corner of a desk can be completely, you know, you put that on the corner of the desk in the basically what would be the opposite of the base for you. And then you’d be able to still swivel it around and use it which is just remarkably helpful when you have a small little cafe table that you want to be able to work on the corner of. And so it just works really well. I’ve been able to put other things underneath the laptop in those environments. So if you have like a small space where you’re trying to work, you can actually tuck your adapter underneath where the basically where the air should be being drawn in. Right now I primarily use it with a MacBook Air, and so it doesn’t have the vents below it. And so I just tucked my adapter in there, and that way it’s not being taking up space in essence So lots of really great uses for the Coolpad. And kind of think of other things that I’ve used it with. And for now that’s just about it, I just really like it, it’s a, it’s a very handy tool, it’s really slim. So you can just slide it, you know, it should be able to just pop off the, the discs for the riser part, and the the pad the base itself, you know, just slide it right into your laptop bag if you want to take it someplace. And so it’s a very portable, it’s very flexible in terms of its usage. And it’s durable. I mean, I think I’ve had, I’ve had three at one point I gave one to a colleague of mine, but I’ve had the same to for years and years. And it’s just one of those things that it takes a beating, and continues to keep working. So I haven’t replaced it at all, in all those years. So good investment on that part. Francis, do you have another item that you would like to share?

Francis Wade 25:57
Yeah, I should do a whiteboard. I guess I got hooked on whiteboards. When I had my first job, at&t, and we were in Bell Labs. And we all had two person offices with a shared whiteboard, and a running down to the side of the wall. And that became, you know, anywhere you any place where you could put any idea that you were developing, or you had a colleague come in and talk about and you could leave it there for six months and come back and it’s the hopefully still be there where you left it off. But the habit of having a visual representation of an important principle or idea, or something I was developing or working on, has always stuck with me. So I’ve always had a whiteboard. And it’s not nothing fancy, it’s you know, it’s the usual thing. But there is something that it makes available. To me that having a note tucked away in my in Evernote or Google key or other places where I develop ideas or even on a mind map on a piece of paper in my folder. Those serve different functions than the whiteboard, the whiteboard is on my wall, it’s if people have probably seen it, if they’ve seen it in my videos, because it’s always behind me hardwired onto the wall. And on it is the are the principal some some ideas that I picked up that I am still using in almost every day. And the benefit is that when I walk in, I can immediately orient myself around the idea happens to the ones I have up there. I happen to be onboarding and marketing ideas, but I can connect with them readily. And I guess I’ve put them up there and kept them there. Because the ideas a year ago were very new to me. And keeping them top of mind has been as simple as just not erasing my whiteboard and just keeping the idea of there. So it’s always accessible. I always am reminded of it. Sometimes I have to glance at it because like I said, it doesn’t come naturally to me. So I have to say, Okay, what was that second step again? Turn around, look at the whiteboard. Okay, that’s the second step. So having a visual representation is, is for me very, very useful of an idea that I’m trying to master

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:23
and you have a particular model of Whiteboard that you recommend

Francis Wade 28:26
white. Yeah.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:33
Okay, okay. All right. Well, thank you, Francis. whiteboards are amazing. For art, you are up with your final offering.

Art Gelwicks 28:41
Okay, this is one that I’ve talked about ad nauseum. But I’m gonna bring it up again for some other aspects of it. And that’s my traveler’s notebook. There are official brands, there’s the majority brand, and there’s what are called fo dories, which are not really modalities, but they have the exact same layout. If you haven’t seen one of these things, all you have to do is either google it or heaven forbid, go on Pinterest, you’ll find it. There basically, except a leather cover with a rubber band in them. At at its core, that’s the system. The cover itself is about. I don’t know the exact dimensions but it’s about eight inches tall, maybe about five inches wide. And the trick with it is that you can get notebooks that slip inside that cover and by combining the elastic bands, you can have a covered notebook, that’s one notebook, two notebooks 345 I’ve seen them go all the way up to nine, although I don’t know how you close something that thick. But why is this so important? Why is this to me one of the ultimate tools, well, one is infinitely reconfigurable you are not stuck with any particular setup. You can lay it out however you want, and you can change it and you can change it on the fly, which I like. Just sitting here during our podcast, I have the insert out of my traveler’s notebook sitting here in front of me. So I could take notes. And I took it out of the notebook. Now, you can’t do that with a bound notebook. And you certainly can’t do that with a three ring binder or a ring based system without making a whole lot of noise and having a lot of complications. But this just matters, slipping it out of the cover, use the notebook and when I’m done, I can slip it back in, you can get configurations of graph paper, grid, paper, dot paper, lined paper, plain paper, you name it, it’s out there. The fact that it is so infinitely configurable, and it is reliable, you know, it’s going to work, you know, it’s going to be there. And you know, you can make it do what you want it to do, has just made it my go to tool. When I traveled to Germany, it went with me it had all my travel information, passports, everything like that. All the flight information, notes, things that I observed, everything went in there. And when you fill up one of the little notebooks and I say little because they’re, they’re usually only maybe about 90 pages or so, pull it out, put it on the shelf, pop another one in, I have a stack of blank ones ready to go just to keep using. So this type of thing, whether it’s a traveler’s notebook, an official one, or I actually just got a custom one from another company that’s a little bit wider. And a little bit. It’s about the same height, but it’s a little bit wider than a standard traveler’s notebook to use for taking more work oriented notes. You just can’t go wrong with it. I mean, I have stacks of bound ones around here. But these lay flat and they’re easy to work with. So if you’re looking to get into a notebook, and you’re not sure, or this is probably the biggest one, you’re one of those people who gets a really nice notebook and then is hesitant to use it because you want to keep it to be a really nice notebook. These types of travelers and leather bound, cover notebooks are just the way to go because they develop character over time for the cover. But the inside you can change them out as fast or as often as you need to.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:10
Wonderful. Thank you art. Okay, so what’s your final suggestion for listeners,

Augusto Pinaud 32:15
my final suggestion, he says, I squishy ball. I had it in my nice tent. And what happened is, the level of stress goes high, I tend to close my feast as I sleep. And then in the morning, all that tension, really bring a lot of pain on my hands as well as my wrist. So years ago, somebody recommended me to hold a squeezable aside, you know, seem stressed out or attention or whatever and what that produces, because you cannot tie it up completely. You don’t get into that amount of pain in the morning. So it is something that I have one in my nighttime one in my bag, for when I’m traveling, and it is really, really useful for those moments that you are stressed out, especially if you are like me, the people who you know, close to face, there’s people who grind their teeth instead. And they you know, go for the equivalent of that but, but for if you don’t grind your teeth, but close your feast really, really really hard. Get a squeezy ball and put it in your bag, put in your nightstand. And when you feel that stress, just sleep within on your hand and you will wake up much, much better.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:35
Thank you good, so good, too. Good to have squeeze balls around. I know I have a few of them hanging around my office. So my final suggestion is something called the lark water bottle, and I actually received this as a gift. And I did not think I was going to use it. And so I just thought, you know, it’s one of those things. It’s a water bottle, what could be you know, whatever. But I’ve actually found it to be very useful actually sits next to my desk. Now the goal of the water bottle is to do a couple of things. One, it cleans the water so it has a UV light built into the camp. And it’s also double walled. So if you put cold water in say you’re going on a hike or something like that, if you put cold water in, it’s going to be cold at the end of your walk. It’s just really really good. I’ve been on several trips now with it where the cold water went in with some ice at the beginning of the day. And by the end of the day, it was still cold in the bottle. So really good testament to the to the bottles ability to hold cold, but the UV light actually comes in two different versions. So in essence, you have like the ongoing water cleaning capability. So that’s why I can put you know fill up the water. Say on Monday morning. The water gets filled up. It sits next to me down here on next To my desk. And as I need water, you know, throughout the day, I can just take a sip out of it, I close the cap, and I don’t know how often, but you’ll just see the light cap turn on, and there’s the there’s a button on the top of the cap, which you can use to control the functions. But the idea here is that, you know, every few times a day, the UV light turns on. And, in essence, sanitizes the water, if I wanted to, I can actually, I think it’s called adventure mode or something like that. But the idea here is that you actually long press on the cap, whatever the function is, and it turns I think, orange or some other color, and it will then stay on for a longer period of time, and therefore, attempt to kill more things in the water. So like you’d go, go to a stream, and fill up the water bottle as you’re hiking, you can then put on adventure mode. And as long as there’s no visible particulate, it should kill anything in the, in the water. So not that I’m going to try that. But but it’s the least useful to be able to have, you know, just pouring tap water into the, into the device. And it’s at least killing any germs that are in there any bacteria or anything like that, that’s in the water. So I really like it, it’s, it’s a nice sleek bottle, I will say that I’ve had a couple of problems with with the cap itself, and I’ve had to reach out to the company for replacement. But for the most part, it’s a it’s a pretty nice water bottle. And I like the I like the fact that it keeps things cold, like if you fill it up, it keeps it cold for a pretty good amount of time. And so yeah, it’s just a nice water bottle. So with that, that closes us out for our gear that we wanted to share with you all today. A couple of announcements before we do close out. And that is if you have a piece of non digital productivity gear that you’d like to share, feel free to let us know, hop over to the episode page. So if you go to ProductivityCast dotnet, forward slash and the episode number. So that’s the three digit episode number, you’ll be taken to the episode on the podcast website, at the bottom of the page, you can leave a comment, you can leave your own productivity gear that you that you enjoy using, let others know about it. And if you have a question, one of us will be glad to respond to it there as well. Also on productivitycast.net, you’ll find show notes. So links to all of these items that we’ve talked about are linked to from there. So you can easily jump to them from there in the show notes. We also have a transcript along with a PDF downloadable transcript. So if you wanted that, you can go ahead and grab those there as well. Also on the website is our instructions on how to follow the podcast how to you know, subscribe to the podcast, as they say, in your podcast app. And so you can go ahead and open up your podcast app of choice and and add ProductivityCast to it from there. So all the instructions are there on the website. If you have another question about personal productivity, something you’d like us to tackle in a future episode, feel free to visit ProductivityCast dotnet forward slash contact. And there on the page, you can do two things, you can voice record a message to us or you can write a message, type a message in and send that along to us. And we’ll get either one of those for us to either read and respond to or just read or potentially, like I said use in a future episode. Also, if you could please add an rating or review in Apple podcasts or Stitcher or whatever podcast app you use that allows for ratings or reviews. Those help us to grow our personal productivity listening community. And so thank you for doing that. Again, thank you to Augusto, Francis and Art for joining me here on this cast. That brings us to the close of this episode of productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. Thank you gentlemen, and thank you you listeners. Here’s to your productive life. And that’s

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.