{"id":1113,"date":"2020-12-31T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-31T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/productivitycast.net\/?p=1113"},"modified":"2020-12-27T15:13:58","modified_gmt":"2020-12-27T20:13:58","slug":"105-year-in-review-preview-for-personal-productivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/productivitycast.net\/105-year-in-review-preview-for-personal-productivity\/","title":{"rendered":"A Year in Review &#038; Preview for Personal Productivity"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemscope itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/AudioObject\"><meta itemprop=\"name\" content=\"A Year in Review &amp;#038; Preview for Personal Productivity\" \/><meta itemprop=\"uploadDate\" content=\"2020-12-31T08:30:00-05:00\" \/><meta itemprop=\"encodingFormat\" content=\"audio\/mpeg\" \/><meta itemprop=\"duration\" content=\"PT42M18S\" \/><meta itemprop=\"description\" content=\"\nWhat a year 2020 has been! This week, the ProductivityCast team reminisces on four of our eight favorite episode topics this year (and all eight are embedded below for your listening pleasure), then we discuss thoughts on interests for next year. Ha...\" \/><meta itemprop=\"contentUrl\" content=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/productivitycast\/content.blubrry.com\/productivitycast\/105-Year-Review-Preview-Personal-Productivity-productivitycast.mp3\" \/><meta itemprop=\"contentSize\" content=\"39.6\" \/><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.blubrry.com\/?media_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.blubrry.com%2Fproductivitycast%2Fcontent.blubrry.com%2Fproductivitycast%2F105-Year-Review-Preview-Personal-Productivity-productivitycast.mp3&amp;podcast_link=https%3A%2F%2Fproductivitycast.net%2F105-year-in-review-preview-for-personal-productivity%2F\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"100%\" height=\"165\" frameborder=\"0\" id=\"blubrryplayer-1\" class=\"blubrryplayer\" title=\"Blubrry Podcast Player\"><\/iframe><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\" style=\"margin-bottom: 1px !important;\">Podcast: <a href=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/productivitycast\/content.blubrry.com\/productivitycast\/105-Year-Review-Preview-Personal-Productivity-productivitycast.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('https:\/\/productivitycast.net\/?powerpress_pinw=1113-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/productivitycast\/content.blubrry.com\/productivitycast\/105-Year-Review-Preview-Personal-Productivity-productivitycast.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"105-Year-Review-Preview-Personal-Productivity-productivitycast.mp3\">Download<\/a> | <a href=\"#\" class=\"powerpress_link_e\" title=\"Embed\" onclick=\"return powerpress_show_embed('1113-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Embed<\/a><\/p><p class=\"powerpress_embed_box\" id=\"powerpress_embed_1113-podcast\" style=\"display: none;\"><input id=\"powerpress_embed_1113-podcast_t\" type=\"text\" value=\"&lt;iframe src=&quot;https:\/\/player.blubrry.com\/?media_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.blubrry.com%2Fproductivitycast%2Fcontent.blubrry.com%2Fproductivitycast%2F105-Year-Review-Preview-Personal-Productivity-productivitycast.mp3&amp;podcast_link=https%3A%2F%2Fproductivitycast.net%2F105-year-in-review-preview-for-personal-productivity%2F&quot; scrolling=&quot;no&quot; width=&quot;100%&quot; height=&quot;165&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; id=&quot;blubrryplayer-2&quot; class=&quot;blubrryplayer&quot; title=&quot;Blubrry Podcast Player&quot;&gt;&lt;\/iframe&gt;\" onclick=\"javascript: this.select();\" onfocus=\"javascript: this.select();\" style=\"width: 70%;\" readOnly><\/p><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_subscribe_links\">Subscribe: <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/productivitycast\/id1088480807?mt=2&amp;ls=1#episodeGuid=https%3A%2F%2Fproductivitycast.net%2F%3Fp%3D1113\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_itunes\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe on Apple Podcasts\" rel=\"nofollow\">Apple Podcasts<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/productivitycast.net\/feed\/podcast\/\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_rss\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe via RSS\" rel=\"nofollow\">RSS<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/productivitycast.net\/subscribe\/\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_more\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"More\" rel=\"nofollow\">More<\/a><\/p>\n<p>What a year 2020 has been! This week, the <em>ProductivityCast<\/em> team reminisces on four of our eight favorite episode topics this year (and all eight are embedded below for your listening pleasure), then we discuss thoughts on interests for next year. <strong>Happy, Productive New Year!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<div class=\"wp-playlist wp-audio-playlist wp-playlist-light\">\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-playlist-current-item\"><\/div>\n\t\t<audio controls=\"controls\" preload=\"none\" width=\"788\"><\/audio>\n\t<div class=\"wp-playlist-next\"><\/div>\n\t<div class=\"wp-playlist-prev\"><\/div>\n\t<noscript>\n\t<ol><\/ol>\n\t<\/noscript>\n\t<script type=\"application\/json\" class=\"wp-playlist-script\">{\"type\":\"audio\",\"tracklist\":true,\"tracknumbers\":false,\"images\":true,\"artists\":true,\"date\":true,\"itunes_subtitle\":false,\"poster\":{\"src\":\"https:\\\/\\\/productivitycast.net\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/sites\\\/5\\\/2022\\\/03\\\/ProductivityCast-Logo-with-tagline.png\",\"width\":\"144\",\"height\":\"144\"},\"tracks\":[{\"src\":\"https:\\\/\\\/media.blubrry.com\\\/productivitycast\\\/content.blubrry.com\\\/productivitycast\\\/063-was-email-a-mistake-productivitycast.mp3\",\"type\":\"audio\\\/mpeg\",\"title\":\"063 Was Email a Mistake? 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And, thanks for listening!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to continue discussing the year in review, please <a href=\"#reply-title\">click here to leave a comment<\/a> down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">In this Cast<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/productivitycast.net\/about\/\">Ray Sidney-Smith<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/productivitycast.net\/about\/\">Augusto Pinaud<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/productivitycast.net\/about\/\">Art Gelwicks<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/productivitycast.net\/about\/\">Francis Wade<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Show Notes | A Year in Review &amp; Preview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Top 3 listened-to episodes of the year<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/productivitycast.net\/094\">Episode 094 &#8211; How Mind Mapping Fits Your Productivity System<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/productivitycast.net\/070\">Episode 070 &#8211; On Getting Things Done with David Allen<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/productivitycast.net\/066\">Episode 066 &#8211; Working from Home in the Age of COVID-19<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Art&#8217;s Top 2<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Episode 063 &#8211; Email (23:38 &#8211; 24:32)<\/li><li>Episode 089 &#8211; Amateur vs Pro (14:09 &#8211; 15:12)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Augusto&#8217;s Top 2<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Episode 066 &#8211; Working from Home (47:16 &#8211; 47:49)<\/li><li>Episode 070 &#8211; On GTD with David Allen (16:55 &#8211; 17:57)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Francis&#8217;s Top 2<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Episode 091 &#8211; Do what you love as a career (23:01 &#8211; 25:05)<\/li><li>Episode 079 &#8211; Detecting and managing burnout (self-awareness that pre-empts burnout) (30:09 &#8211; 31:20)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Ray&#8217;s Top 2<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Episode 071 &#8211; Personal Outsourcing (12:13 &#8211; 13:35)<\/li><li>Episode 087 &#8211; Automating Your Office (7:50 &#8211; 8:47)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Raw Text Transcript | A Year in Review &amp; Preview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>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\u2019s audio).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<span><a onclick=\"read_toggle(958255395, 'Read More', 'Read Less'); return false;\" class=\"read-link\" id=\"readlink958255395\" style=\"readlink\" href=\"#\">Read More<\/a><\/span>\n<div class=\"read_div\" id=\"read958255395\" style=\"display: none;\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Voiceover Artist  0:00  <br> Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith  0:17  <br> Welcome back, everybody to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I&#8217;m Ray Sidney Smith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Augusto Pinaud  0:22  <br> I am Augusto Pinaud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis Wade 0:23<br>I&#8217;m Francis Wade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art Gelwicks  0:25<br> And I&#8217;m Art Gelwicks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26<br>Welcome, gentlemen. And welcome to our listeners to this final episode of 2020 for ProductivityCast. I can&#8217;t believe it, but we have reached the end of 2020. Quite honestly, I think a lot of us are relieved that 2020 is over and looking forward to at least a better back three quarters of 2021 once we have a set of vaccines in order, and folks are starting to get back to a bit of normal life. And so with that, what I wanted to do today was for us to go through and talk about our most listened to episodes of the year, and then get into our favorite episodes of the year. Each of us has selected two episodes, we&#8217;ll play the snippet, and then have a little discussion around why we chose it, whether it still stands, and then go round robin, for our picks. So let&#8217;s let&#8217;s discuss our top three listen to episodes of the year. And so if you are brand, new to ProductivityCast, this will be really good place to start in terms of listening to some episodes that have been most listened to in the year. And those end up being Episode 66 that is working from home in the age of COVID-19. Episode 70, we did an interview with David Allen, the progenitor of getting things done so on getting things done with David Allen, Episode 70. Then our number one, our top episode of of 2020 drumroll is Episode 94. How mind mapping fits your productivity system. And it kind of blows every all the other episodes out of the water. It just turns out that a lot of people were really interested in the mind mapping episode. And so yeah, check those three episodes out if you have not. And feel free to let us know your feedback. Like always, you can find our episodes through that three digit episode number. So 066070094. If you just type in ProductivityCast dotnet forward slash and that three digit number, it&#8217;ll take you to the episode, you can go ahead and listen to it, download it or whatnot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art Gelwicks 2:34<br>I think the mind mapping episode, while it&#8217;s a little bit surprising is not actually all that surprising to me. Because mind mapping is one of those things that I know a lot of people struggle getting their head wrapped around as to what do you do with it? How do you make it work? It&#8217;s it&#8217;s intriguing when you see mind maps, that something is visually focused is what they are could be an input, significant productivity tool. But I still think a lot of people struggle with it. I know even I do. And I do mind maps all the time. But I making that translation from what we have traditionally thought about for note taking and planning into a much more organic visual focus can be difficult. So I&#8217;m not totally shocked that people wanted to learn more about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:23<br>Yeah, I&#8217;m really curious whether or not it&#8217;s a bunch of students that were doing maybe research on different types of note taking techniques, or those kinds of things where mind mapping tends to surface, you know, brainstorming techniques, or or note taking techniques that mind mapping tends to come up in those conversations. And so maybe more students found it since they were doing more work online in 2020, than ever before. Yeah, I&#8217;m really curious why that ends up being such a big topic. And it&#8217;s something that, you know, I&#8217;ve been doing for a long time, but I think maybe you&#8217;re right art, you know, people sometimes have difficulty getting getting around the idea of mind mapping, you know, kind of kind of, quote unquote, how to do it correctly. And so maybe that is why it was so popular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art Gelwicks 4:11<br>And just a second thought to that it could also be people are struggling to find new ways to tackle the problems that they feel a little overwhelmed with right now. They&#8217;re taking notes, they&#8217;re writing things down, they&#8217;re using their normal tools, and it just doesn&#8217;t seem to be cutting it. So they could be looking for a different direction. I be curious. I&#8217;d be curious to hear anybody who&#8217;s who went out and listen to that show, to let us know why you listen to it. That&#8217;d be great to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:39<br>Definitely. Okay, so those are our top three listen to episodes this year. And I&#8217;m really excited to get into our favorite episodes of the year. And so let&#8217;s go around the table and play the different snippets. First up, I&#8217;m going to have arts first choice, which was episode 63, which was about email,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art Gelwicks 5:03<br>it&#8217;s just it boggles my mind. And I hear this all the time in collaboration spaces people like, Oh, yeah, email such a terrible thing. Email is such a terrible thing, no, emails, fine, you just suck at it. That&#8217;s really what it comes down to. You have this inability, you being general, this inability to understand that when you send an email, you have no reasonable expectation that a response will come in short order, they will respond when they get it. That&#8217;s why I go bonkers over this idea of read receipts, I&#8217;m going to send it Read Receipt. And that way, I&#8217;m going to know when they read it, and I should be able to know, all that is is a confirmation that they opened it, it&#8217;s still an unreasonable expectation that they are going to respond as soon as they read it. If you want that immediate response. Guess what? We&#8217;ve got a technology for it. It&#8217;s called chat. That&#8217;s all chat is his email without the addresses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:57<br>All right. All right. Why did you choose that snippet, and you still stand by that statement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art Gelwicks 6:02<br>Okay, apparently, that day, I was slightly over caffeinated, just to be clear, because anybody who listens to the show regularly knows that I do not get keyed up like that. So just just saying, there&#8217;s an irony to that. I still stand by that. And I still believe that email is a very effective tool, it can be used extremely well, and it has a place. It is not the evil thing that so many people have made it out to be. That said, I think I would probably push further into the chat side of the conversation. The more I work with email recently, I have found email is actually being used less effectively than it was even before. Because people are now starting to use it as entire conversations. And that&#8217;s just not what it&#8217;s meant for. That&#8217;s not what it&#8217;s designed to do. And that it&#8217;s not what it&#8217;s good at. So I still stand by that. I don&#8217;t know that I would quite jump up and down on the soapbox as much. But yeah, I&#8217;d probably jump a couple times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Augusto Pinaud 7:11<br>I agree on that there is not a conversation tool. But he&#8217;s what he&#8217;s been turned for many, many years into the de facto conversation tools. And interestingly enough, even with the text and the video conference, and all that, it is, sadly, what people understand as the conversation tool is what understand, okay, I need 20 people to give input, let&#8217;s send an email. And yeah, I agree. And I agree with your comment on the return that return received reader receive same as a text message doesn&#8217;t mean anything I may have read it. That doesn&#8217;t mean I have the bandwidth to give you the proper answer right there. All that you know, is that you open or that I receive it at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:56<br>And I do like that I like to see the I like to see that someone has read it or even opened it. The problem with that is that many of the email applications are giving false positives in that sense, because I know that I have an email application where when it goes to open it open a quote unquote, opens the email in order to to move the email to the appropriate filtered folder. And so people are getting that false sense of hope that I opened their email, because I did not. It&#8217;s the tool that did it. And so if anyone is doing that, and you know, thinks that I&#8217;ve opened their email, until I respond to that email, don&#8217;t presume that I&#8217;ve opened the email, because these tools are doing different things in the background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art Gelwicks 8:40<br>Yeah. And I think you&#8217;re absolutely right with that perspective there a because that&#8217;s one of the challenges that I have you open the email itself, you cannot assume that I want have a response, or B, one or B. Yeah, that makes sense. One or two, that I even have the information necessary to ROA to react to what you just asked for. The other hang up I have with it. And I&#8217;m just going to throw this out as a pet peeve is when you wind up with a novel of questions in a singular email. So you get an email, and it&#8217;s got like seven or eight questions and full discussion narrative around some topic. But yet about seven or eight people are copied in on it. Do those people really want to see the entire thought process conversation of getting to those answers? Or might it be more effective just to send out a summary of the answers once you get to them? I&#8217;m of the opinion I like the second one better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:36<br>Yeah, and some organizational culture requires for either politics or because of policy for there to be more people in a conversation then would be, in essence most productive and so we all have to be mindful of that in so many different corporate cultures especially. And for me, I have a more I would say laissez faire perspective. When it comes to email, I don&#8217;t want to be included on every email. But I do want to stay up to date, which is why we use our project management software so that I can track conversation. And when you need me, then send me that email to kind of surface it to my attention, or tag me in the in the project management tool, with the action associated with the thing that I need to do. So it&#8217;s like conversation on one side, I actually tend to like email more, but on the, you have to do something, then that&#8217;s where I can go to the project management tool, see that I&#8217;m tagged, understand what the next action is that I need to do, and then anchor that in my own test management tool. And that&#8217;s just the way that I work. And again, it goes back to this like how, how do your coworkers and colleagues, clients, vendors and otherwise best work? And can you agree with them on terms of what email communication platforms do you use, so that you get a response when you want it and you get your work from them, right, the delegated or collaborative work that you want to achieve done in a way that you want, by communicating with them the way in which they&#8217;re best communicated. And I think that&#8217;s always going to get you better results, we are inevitably going to talk about email in 2021. I&#8217;ll Park us there and move on to our next favorite episode, which is going to be you Cousteau Cousteau, you selected one of our top listen to episodes this year with Episode 66, which was are working from home in the age of COVID-19. And so here it goes the snippet,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis Wade 11:37<br>I think the number one tool that people will need to manage is quiet, not not quite a physical tool, but they&#8217;ll discover that when they can work in an uninterrupted way, that they can be way more productive than if they&#8217;re subject to distractions, the way they could be in the regular office, which has an open office plan. I think this is about part of the success of working at home is about preservation of your focus, and quiet as a big contributor to that&#8217;s a big tool to preserve your focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Augusto Pinaud 12:14<br>That snippet comes from a previous discussion about tools and what are going to be the difference now that we move into the office and say was listening to the episode that really resonated that, you know, 10 months into these nine months into this is still the element that now we have found more critical. And it&#8217;s not that it wasn&#8217;t critical before we move moving to work from home It is that now we have understand, okay, I can print less I can do the things I can survive without going to the free coffee machine in the thing. Now how can I manage that focus, so I can really do all that I need to do and more?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:58<br>You know, I can say to that is that I think focus is one of those fundamentals of getting more done. And so there&#8217;s no question in my mind that it&#8217;s imperative that we shift our focus appropriately, when we need to, and especially this year, where we hadn&#8217;t we have this kind of, you know, the ground is moving from underneath us constantly, in terms of, okay, where are we working now? And how are we going to get that work done. And for those of us who are lucky, where we have a stable work environment where we&#8217;ve just, we&#8217;ve made the decision, or our companies have made the decision to stay working from home throughout this whole course of events. Some of us are in different states of going in and out of, you know, the office, the office closes, then it opens again, maybe there&#8217;s a lockdown, and you have to go back home. And this is one of those things where it&#8217;s about the focus on the transition for me, which is like, how do you pay attention to the right things in those transitions so that you stay productive, because it&#8217;s very easy to focus on too much of a macro level, and then shoot down to too much of a micro level and you don&#8217;t mediate. And we need to have some mediation there where we spend a little bit of time on the top level to make sure that we do a bit of triage. But at the same time, most of the productive effort is looking at the next five feet in front of you and making sure that you&#8217;re getting yourself forward movement in your projects that are more short term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis Wade 14:35<br>I agree. These used to be niche niche or kind of topics that productivity geek sectors cared about, you know, these were interesting pursuits with respect to flow and deep work and so forth. But I think they&#8217;re they&#8217;re gone mainstream, and the average employee isn&#8217;t taught how to How to find quiet make quiet total focus how to transition, as you said that the concept is hit or miss, you know, if you if you get it, good luck, you got it on your own, but it&#8217;s not a part of the arsenal of corporate tools or skills. And I think that that&#8217;s a huge No, no, we can&#8217;t leave these things to chance because work from home is so precarious. They need to be designed in wherever you are, whether you&#8217;re on the train, or whether you&#8217;re at home working, you&#8217;re in the basement or you&#8217;re around kids or you&#8217;re in the office, whatever, wherever you are. The challenge, though, is how do you turn on this space to do your best work, regardless of where you&#8217;re at? And what do you need to put in place. And that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s not something that can be left to chance any longer. It needs to be trained. See, Francis, I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art Gelwicks 15:55<br>think one of the biggest challenges that this is starting to identify is the fact that most organizations either a have never given value to the importance of those aspects of getting work done. being productive and focusing on things like truly focus and engagement and that sort, they&#8217;ve, they&#8217;ve never just quantified that. So they&#8217;ve never put it in as part of their process. Second, I don&#8217;t think they know how I don&#8217;t think they get the, the importance and the impact of it. So this is one of those things where individuals and we are in that environment now have to take ownership of them of that for themselves. And in some kind, some cases, they have to push back and say, Look, you can&#8217;t bombard me with stuff. If you want me to get some stuff accomplished. You have to choose pick one, and not be afraid to do that, I say afraid. But we have organizational cultures that need to adapt and recognize that it&#8217;s not a matter of X number of hours in a given day, it&#8217;s x amount of work able to be accomplished and accomplished effectively and efficiently. There&#8217;s a big gap. And that gap is going to be critical as we look at the next year in our own productivity community, to focus less in my mind on the mechanisms and more of the mannerisms around being productive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:23<br>Let&#8217;s move along to our next favorite episode, which is Francis&#8217;s for selection, which is should you do what you love as a career Episode 91 091. Here goes the snippet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis Wade 17:37<br>So Cal Newport offers an amazing rebuttal. So he says, Do not Do not wait around basically to find this passion as if it will alight upon you, like the sun shining from over the over the rooftops into your eyes that you that you&#8217;re on purpose. No. He says, do what you do, and find purpose and passion in it. And I can say from my from my experience firsthand experience that that&#8217;s exactly what happened in my case, and it happened unexpectedly. It&#8217;s transferable, it&#8217;s scalable, is what he says in his book, I think that&#8217;s where I read it, that anyone, even the street district people that street sweeper that we&#8217;re talking about. So we may we may look from the outside and judge and say, you know, he he or she doesn&#8217;t add huge value. And you know, they&#8217;re playing a very small role. And it&#8217;s so minor that it doesn&#8217;t really matter in the scheme of things. I read his book and I say, well, that&#8217;s nonsense. I wrote an article about a plumber that I knew. And he&#8217;s passed away now. But this guy came to my house. And I actually knew him from prior incarnation prior relationship didn&#8217;t even remember he was a plumber up until I was referred to him. And so yeah, I know that guy. So he comes to the house, right? He gives me an exposition on plumbing. That was fascinating, though. Somebody may say, Well, he&#8217;s just a plumber. Oh, I don&#8217;t believe there&#8217;s any Justin anything. I believe that what Cal Newport says is true. You can. You can carve and create and find expertise anywhere, if you have the willingness to do so. And if you are willing to work versus the way I think he puts it, if you&#8217;re willing to fall in love, then it doesn&#8217;t really matter where you start. And if you think it&#8217;s the other way around. He says you&#8217;re wrong. If you think you have to find the love first and then you will do the work to discover its intricacies. He said it doesn&#8217;t work that way. I thought that was fascinating because it matched my my experience, personal experience. And my experience of this plumber. Yeah. So I really was surprised by what I read in his book and what we discussed in our conversation. It it&#8217;s something I had never thought about before I read it in his book or thought about deeply enough to have it really make an impact. But I think this is it flies in the face of those Passion first sort of ethos that is so popular no in essays going across, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s in the entire world follow your passion, which is kind of the opposite of what he&#8217;s saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:12<br>And I think a lot of people have said this in the past, I don&#8217;t think that it was just Professor newports idea alone, which is that for most of us mastery comes from involvement in a task long enough in a in a set of skills long enough for us to then become excellent at it. And it&#8217;s at that level that we start to actually find passion in something. And this is where I come at it, which is that if you start with a passion, good on you, that&#8217;s good luck, good timing, good, good. direction and persuasion from your parent. You know, it&#8217;s just like these young people who do, you know, athletics, or, you know, our chess aficionados, by the age of eight, you know, this clearly comes from either a parent or passion. And that&#8217;s great. For the rest of us, we can find mastery, and then passion after that, which is, if you pick almost anything in life, you know, you can, you can likely dive deeply into that, whether that be plumbing, or, you know, advanced quantum mechanics, if there is such a thing as advanced in quantum mechanics. I think quantum mechanics by itself is advanced. But the but the idea here is that at that point, is it something that like with the concept of the Iki? Guy? Is it something that is going to be your vocation? Is it going to be something that you you want to do as a career? Or is it just going to be a part of your life, and something that you enjoy doing, and we&#8217;ve talked about this several times, in episodes. So go back and look through the catalog of us talking about this stuff, because I think it&#8217;s important for us all, to not get so hung up on what we do, like what our role is, as a job. And what we do to be passionate about in life, and our productive lives are not designed around, not to be morbid about it, especially considering 2020. But like, you know, your epitaph is not going to state lawyer who practiced 32 years, you know, for XYZ law firm and won that case against so and so like, no one really is going to care about that, once you&#8217;re gone, what they&#8217;re really going to care about, in terms of the people who really matter in your family is how much you cared for them how much you spent, how much time you spent an effort you gave, to make their lives more enriched. So that&#8217;s kind of where my mindset goes, whenever we think about the whenever we discuss these topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art Gelwicks 22:47<br>Yeah, I couldn&#8217;t agree more. I mean, when you think about it, at least, the way I formulate it is when we talk about the difference of doing something professionally versus doing a passion professionally, is the power of your passion enough to offset the price you have to make or you have to pay to make this your profession when we look at the something that we&#8217;re passionate about. It&#8217;s almost always a good thing or a driving thing or a reinforcing thing. But professions have negatives, professions have downsides. professions have pain and stress associated with it. And is the power of your passion enough to offset that, so that you don&#8217;t lose the passion for that thing. That&#8217;s the only thing I call out to people if they want to do something that they&#8217;re passionate about it as their career. I always ask him the same question. Do you want to do this every day and have your livelihood based on doing it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:49<br>Next up is Episode 71. It was my first selection for our top picks of 2020. And this was the episode on personal outsourcing giving instructions. I always like the idea of recording like literally screen recording with audio, what you want to outsource, if it&#8217;s something that can be written screen recorded, and that is so much more helpful to show someone something once visually by doing it, and then they can just literally watch you do it. I do like written instructions myself personally. But I also like the idea of having a video recording of whatever it is that is I do this all the time with clients and if a client needs something fixed on you know, and they they&#8217;re they&#8217;re not sure what&#8217;s going on, I&#8217;ll usually say hey, can you screen record the problem you&#8217;re experiencing and or what it is that you want fixed and changed and if they can kind of show that then we can have a more thoughtful discussion about it, because I can actually see what the pain point is that they&#8217;re they&#8217;re struggling with. And so I like to do that with any outsourcing that I&#8217;m doing especially if I&#8217;m hiring a some kind of freelance Virtually to handle something for me in my personal life, I absolutely will record just a two minute three minute video showing them what it is. And if it&#8217;s a repetitive task, I can do that one time, show them what it is I want to be done. And then going forward, now they know exactly what it is, what the outcome is on the other side and what all the variable steps are to getting there. So for this episode, I just really believe that going forward into 2021, we&#8217;re going to have so many more opportunities because of the liberalisation of so many different roles. And we&#8217;re seeing this with obviously delivery services, both food and groceries and that kind of thing. But you know, shipping and whatever, I think there&#8217;s going to be more and more liberalisation of things. And with that in mind, that means we&#8217;re going to have to show people how to do things for us, and tools like loom and zooms, recording capabilities, both on desktop and mobile, you&#8217;re capable of actually showing them so much more and recording it, that I think it&#8217;s really important for us all to start to take that to heart, and understand how the tools work so that we can share these things and do them in a both secure way, in a private way. But also in a way that actually helps all of us be more productive by giving instructions once and not having to worry about having to manufacture it over and over again. And I you know, since we&#8217;ve been working from home, you know, I hear the same conversations over and over and over again, from my now co worker in the house. It&#8217;s occasional coworker, thankfully. But the idea here is that, you know, I&#8217;m always thinking to myself, that would be a really great video that you record once about the company guidelines on COVID-19, and then just send the employees to that video. And, you know, again, that probably doesn&#8217;t fit the culture of this particular company and whatever else. But in my mind&#8217;s eye, I think, oh, there&#8217;s so many circumstances there, where if you just had that recording, and shared that, whether that be audio or video, you would create immense amounts of efficiencies, and it would be the correct consistent message each time. So I don&#8217;t know, I just think that the the notion of being able to record today, especially your screens, with your voice over it is a huge, huge productivity asset when you use it correctly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Augusto Pinaud 27:39<br>So for all our listeners, who are the tech support for their parents who tell them, you only do tech support, if you can record it, good luck. That will save you a lot of hours. But no, in a serious note, I think in a compliment with this. That has been one of the best tools for getting in 2020 is to finally get the people when they come to this date, not everybody may have the ability or the skills to record or know even with how simple it is. But now that the assume and the means and the teams are mainstream, it is much easier to help people that way where you can tell them jump into this. And now they are not afraid of share the screen or showed you the screen. And even when you cannot even when you need to do it. And then you share the screen and you do the recording. That has really been a game changer. And I will notice stop saying to to clients and such, how much understand how much this pandemic change that we may have Forget it. But in January 2020, people still are struggling with all these video conferencing how we&#8217;re going to do the soom or not assume or where is the medium, where now we know we most people have nine months of training. And he&#8217;s doing it almost naturally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:05<br>Yeah, and one one new innovation since we recorded that episode is that Google duo, which is the at least current video chat tool by Google, it allows for screen sharing. So when you&#8217;re in a video chat with mom, or dad or aunt or uncle or you know, older cousins, or whatever it might be, you can actually then have them easily share their screen within the Google duo app. So that if they&#8217;re having a problem with their phone, and it&#8217;s not because the phone is a brick, they can actually video call you you can potentially help them with whatever that issue might be, you know, maybe they don&#8217;t know how to get around a particular application and find something on their phone. You can then Google do oh call them, have them pull up their screen, and then walk them through what it is that they&#8217;re having a problem with or you can show your screen and show them how to do something. And I think this is going to just be a really great new piece of the puzzle that, you know, today has been pretty difficult to show someone how to do something remotely. So you don&#8217;t have to go take a trip to mom&#8217;s house to be able to show her how to do something on her phone, you can actually do it remotely now. And save all that time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis Wade 30:16<br>Just Just a quick note that I&#8217;ve been hitting the experience nowadays of the new experience of going to find a new app or somebody refers an app to you discovering a new app, and they are looking for that video that will explain to you what the thing does. And you can&#8217;t find it. And it&#8217;s not on the website. So you you got to go over to YouTube and do a search. And no one has quite put together a video that just says in two minutes, explain a video that says here&#8217;s what it does. It&#8217;s now become such a staple that when it&#8217;s not there, I go crazy. And of course I just abandon the site or abandon the app until someone can explain to me in two minutes, a two minute video. What the thing does. It&#8217;s amazing. Oh, that&#8217;s become just a requirement. Now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:02<br>Let&#8217;s move into the conversation in terms of our 2021 in terms of year in preview, and maybe some of the big topic discussions that you&#8217;d like us to discuss in 2021? What are the big things that you are interested or curious to talk about in 2021. And I&#8217;ll start with the fact that right before we got recording today, we were discussing the idea of caffeinated beverages stimulating beverages. And I think doing a series on different types of beverages that we all use that help us be more productive, are going to be a set of topics, that is going to be a set of topics that I think will be of put onto the onto the calendar for next year. Yeah, I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art Gelwicks 31:54<br>would say one of the things I&#8217;d love to address is not backsliding. I mean, let&#8217;s let&#8217;s say for example, everything starts to somewhat return to a normal state. How do we prevent from falling back into the bad habits of what we&#8217;ve had in the past organizational operation? And open office plans? Those those types of things that we know, we have discovered through this shift were not optimal? And in many cases just not worth doing? How do we keep those from coming back into the mix? And how do we continue to grow on the learnings that we&#8217;ve made over this time period? That&#8217;s something I think we need to dig into more. Because otherwise, people are literally just going to fall back into their old ways pretty quickly, because they&#8217;ll be say, Oh, it&#8217;s all done. Okay, we can go back to the way things work well, but doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean they were right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis Wade 32:47<br>Yeah, I think this year, I agree with that. I think this year has been a year of tactics of survival tactics, corporate level, personal level, many levels. And I think the folks have just basically said, Let me get through the year. And then we&#8217;ll look at what&#8217;s next next year, I think coming into next year, there&#8217;s going to be that shock that the there&#8217;s not a return to what used to be. And among the ones who are more farsighted, there&#8217;ll be a thought, okay, if we&#8217;re not returning to what it used to be, maybe we can create the direction that we&#8217;ll go in next. And I think there&#8217;s going to be a renewed interest in long term, where am I going? Why am I doing this? Or is our company going long term kind of questions. And I think there&#8217;s a lot of pent up pent up sort of strategic questions that people are just put on the shelf, for the sake of survival. So I suspect there&#8217;s gonna be a shift of these kinds of questions next year, because I think we&#8217;re gonna we&#8217;re gonna realize there&#8217;s the new, the new normal isn&#8217;t just ditto, from what we had before. I think that&#8217;s gonna be the wake up call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:01<br>What&#8217;s most important in your life? You know, is it? Is it work, or is it something else? And I think for a lot of people, this has been a reckoning, it&#8217;ll in that way, now that they&#8217;ve recognized more time at home with their kids that may have made them like work more. But for but for others, they will have recognized that, you know, there are more important things in life than what they were doing before. And maybe they want to change careers or step away from maybe a little bit of workaholism that might have been controlling their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art Gelwicks 34:33<br>This could set up a lot of people for a period of introspection that they haven&#8217;t had to date. I mean, I completely agree with Francis 2020 has been a year of reaction. It&#8217;s been a year of, like you said, survival. I look at one of the things that people miss out on most even before this is the relationship of strategy to tactics. So often we get focused on the tactics and we lose the overall strategy at in a corporate environment, we give strategy a good talk, we give it a lot of lip service, but so often will take hours and hours and hours and weeks to build out a strategy. And then because of how the organization operates, it has to be boiled down into a 15 minute presentation for some executive, just so they can digest it. And the reaction is, well, what are you going to do? that that&#8217;s something we can&#8217;t afford to continue to do anymore. And I think 2021 is going to help us recognize that fact, that thinking longer term, putting things to place longer term, stop thinking about everything as the next quarter, or the next month, or the next week&#8217;s activities is going to be critical, because we have to have that bigger mindset to be prepared. When things shift underneath us,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:56<br>we know this has happened now, we would be foolish to think that something like this couldn&#8217;t happen again, be certain that something like this will happen again. And it&#8217;s not a matter of if but when. And so we should just always be prepared. And I think that when we are in that prepared, I mean, we don&#8217;t need to be MacGyver prepared. But we certainly need to be prepared enough to be nimble and flexible. In this environment, and this is this, I just think this has taught all of us, hopefully, a really good lesson in preparation, and how important it is that it&#8217;s not for nothing, that it is for something even when the problem doesn&#8217;t happen. You know, I&#8217;m I&#8217;m want to say, you don&#8217;t get a pat on the back for the heart attack you don&#8217;t get. So you know, good exercise, good nutrition, those kinds of things seem like they are for nothing, but in reality, they are for something. And so we need to remember that, you know, there&#8217;s just not a, there&#8217;s not a pat on the back, you&#8217;re going to get for a lot of the preparation that you do, that sometimes isn&#8217;t seen or heard or recognized. But it&#8217;s still important to life. And, and I just I really stand on that statement. One kind of shifting gears a little bit, before we close out is my my goal for next year is for us to do a few series just like I said about like caffeinated or stimulating beverages and that kind of thing, I think there are a couple of series that I&#8217;d like to institute into, into personal project into ProductivityCast. And I think we can do a few of them next year. And I&#8217;m looking forward to kind of diving deeply into certain topics and having that have give us all a chance to kind of do similar to the GTD series that we did, where we go, where we go deep on a topic, I&#8217;d also like to do some some testing of apps, maybe each of us tries a different application for a week or two. And then we come back and describe our experiences with those applications. And I think those those those kinds of experiences are probably an illuminating for each of us, but also would be useful to everybody else to kind of see how different things work. There are so many interesting new applications on the market constantly. And for the ones that are going to be stable and that we believe will be around a while I think it&#8217;d be fun to play around with those tools and, and utilize them No, really fully invest in them for a week or two and see how they work for us. In our systems. Yeah, 2021 has to be the year of helping each other. We&#8217;ve seen in 2020, how easy it is to get focused in our own world in our own little bubble. And just dealing with the challenges of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art Gelwicks 38:51<br>2021 we have to take that step to recognize that while we talk a lot about being productive productivity and success and accomplishment comes with others as well. And we have to be cognizant of that and work that into our daily activities. Our lives are very, very fiber of our being when it comes to work and getting things accomplished. So I, I really want, you&#8217;re gonna hear me push that thread a lot more during the coming months, and hopefully the coming years. But I think it&#8217;s something we all need to take into consideration is as we&#8217;re mapping things and doing things, how does it help someone else? And how can we help someone else?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:34<br>Yeah, the abundance mindset doesn&#8217;t stop at the internal thoughts about your world for even time. It really comes to the fact that we can all be better when we help each other, be better. And so I&#8217;m right there with you art. All right, everybody. We are you&#8217;ll be listening to this on New Year&#8217;s Eve. So I hope you all have a one And safe New Year&#8217;s Eve, if you&#8217;re listening to this when the episode is has just come out, and I wish everybody a productive and safe 2021. And we&#8217;ll see you next week on ProductivityCast in 2021. So with that, if you have a comment or a question, the conversation for this episode doesn&#8217;t end, just here with the podcast episode with us talking. It really is all about engaging with you all. So if you have something that you want to share with us, feel free to head over to the podcast website. If you go to ProductivityCast dotnet forward slash 105. At the bottom of the page, you can leave a comment or a question, we read and respond to all of the questions and comments on the show. If you are just joining us for the first time, feel free to head over to ProductivityCast dotnet and click on the subscribe tab there you can subscribe to the podcast for free using whatever of your favorite apps you&#8217;d like to you can always listen on the website, if an episode doesn&#8217;t show up in the podcast feed. But you can go ahead and do that in any of the you know, preferred podcast apps that are out there. Also, feel free to go ahead and leave a comment or a rating review in Apple podcasts or Stitcher or if your podcast app of choice does leave an option for rating and review. But Apple podcasts and Stitcher are really the prime ones. Your feedback really helps motivate us. So thank you for doing that. It also helps to grow our personal productivity listening community by letting the podcast Gods know that we&#8217;re putting out good content. So thank you for those who have left reviews, and certainly thank you for those who are going to so keep it coming. All right, I want to express my thanks to Agusta pinout Francis wade in our galaxy for joining me here on ProductivityCast. Each week, you can learn more about them and their work by visiting ProductivityCast dotnet. And you can click on their names and you will find all about them there. I&#8217;m Ray Sidney-Smith. And on behalf of all of us here at ProductivityCast here&#8217;s to your productive life. Happy New Year everybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Voiceover Artist  42:07<br> And that&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/productivitycast.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/12\/105-Year-Review-Preview-Personal-Productivity-productivitycast.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a year 2020 has been! This week, the ProductivityCast team reminisces on four of our eight favorite episode topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,201],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Year in Review &amp; Preview for Personal Productivity - ProductivityCast<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"2020: A Year in Review | The ProductivityCast team reminisces on our favorite episode topics this year. 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