TIHE181.mp3

Bonni: [00:00:00] Today on episode number 181 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast Dave and I talk about gifts for learning and productivity.

Production Credit: [00:00:11] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:19] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our personal productivity so we can have some more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni: [00:00:48] This is Bonni Stachowiak and today I am joined by my best friend partner and husband Dave Stachowiak and we thought we would talk a bit today about what the upcoming holidays. Maybe you’re trying to think about some gifts for others or maybe you just want to get a gift for yourself. And we have some recommendations for you today all around gifts for learning and productivity.

Dave: [00:01:11] Bonni we’ve never done this before. Not only have we not done this before for the first time ever we’re doing a joint episode between Teaching in Higher Ed and Coaching for Leaders.

Bonni: [00:01:21] And I’m excited about some of the things we’re going to be sharing about. But even before we get to that point I just wanted to take a step back and show my gratitude for everybody who listens to either or both of our podcasts and to you for suggesting back in 2014 actually suggested it a long time before finally getting me through that final nudge in June of 2014 to start a podcast.

Bonni: [00:01:45] It’s really been transformative and we could talk all day about gifts and products and services but ultimately it just comes down to me about the relationship and the way in which we at different times of the year get to just celebrate that and celebrate how thankful we are.

Bonni: [00:02:01] And I know you and I really work hard at not doing that only on holidays and only on birthdays and things like that but really trying to make that something that is an orientation that we have toward living of just being people of gratitude. And with all of that we should just say that then throw it out the window. We’re just totally going to talk about it.

Bonni: [00:02:18] Actually no I know you had a couple of things you wanted to say just about as we are coming toward the holidays how we like to think about gifts and some of our philosophy around that especially with our kids.

Dave: [00:02:30] Indeed. And even before that I am echoing what you’re thinking too. We have great listeners with so many wonderful people in our community. I’ve said this before I think on the show one of the things that people who do online platforms get warned about from friends and colleagues is watch out for the spammers out there and the haters and all the people you’re going to get the negative e-mail from. I don’t think either of us have ever had that happen in any substantial way.

Dave: [00:02:54] I mean knock on wood we just have such wonderful people in this community so first and foremost we’re also grateful for you all the support you’ve all given to us. And so today’s episode will be about gifts a bit but a bigger message is how can we utilize gift giving in order to show appreciation.

Dave: [00:03:13] And and and we really try to do that in our family of course gift giving with small children is part of the holiday season with the culture we live in here in North America especially and yet we really bonding I really try to be intentional with our kids especially about gift giving being. You know one piece of the holiday season and around the religious context of things we we celebrate and honor versus being the focus of the holiday season.

Dave: [00:03:37] And so we really do try to think about how can we give to others and that’s one of our our motivations for doing the show today is thinking about you know how can you find the right services gifts products things that will inspire others. Have fun and also just be part of that fear. Good feeling about the holiday season. Not good fear. It’s a slip. The holidays do sometimes bring fear with all the stress that happens around this time of year.

Bonni: [00:04:03] One of the other things we wanted to mention is that for some of the things we’re going to mention we receive some sort of or we have some sort of an affiliate relationship with and by recommending it we might receive either an extension on the service that we’ve already bought or some sort of monetary reward.

Bonni: [00:04:22] And that’s something legally we want to share but also ethically it would be important to us that you know everything on our list though. We bought well before having any sort of an affiliate relationship with and everything on our list.

Bonni: [00:04:34] We would keep buying. That’s not a primary motivator for us and you know our shows. That’s not how our shows are sustainable is through these kinds of affiliates. I joke and sometimes say that occasionally the affiliate relationship we have with Amazon occasionally actually means that our book budget is you know funny but that’s not even always the case.

Dave: [00:04:56] And in some cases we’ve actually gone out because we did a little thing of this in advance and thought of you know what would also be helpful to you is our community so we’ve reached out to a few of the folks and the organizations that we’ve utilized well and asked you know what can they do to offer to you all. So we’ve got a few things. We’ve set up opportunities for free trial or some money off if you decide to do it.

Bonni: [00:05:16] The first rule category of what we want to talk about today is about gratitude. And of course Dave and I have been sharing some gratitude with all of you for being a part of this community. And one of the ways I have found really helpful to show my gratitude.

Bonni: [00:05:31] And I think a really creative way is a company called Greetabl, Greetabl.com and Dave I’ll have a link to all of these things and the show notes.

Bonni: [00:05:47] But picture this Dave you get a little box it looks a little bit larger than a box you might see a Christmas ornament coming in just one single ornament and you open up that box and inside is a paper box decorated beautifully with vibrant colors and just beautiful artistry.

Bonni: [00:06:08] And then inside is a gift that has been selected for you it might be a candle. We sent one to my mom for her birthday it had a little Moleskin notebook in it a little teeny tiny one.

Bonni: [00:06:19] It could be the lollipop it could be some sort of scrub for your hands to help with the dry skin. I mean there’s all kinds of things that you can put inside of it. They have chocolate. They have chocolate and carmel all kinds of things and then you can write your own greeting.

Bonni: [00:06:34] So it opens up the box opens up it folds out almost to a flat piece of paper at that point although there’s cuts in it so that it could have folded out to be a box and you get to write your own message to the person you get to include up to three pictures.

Bonni: [00:06:49] And I’ve been sending this out. I’ve been able to do some keynote speaking recently and really connected with some amazing people at these institutions I spoke at and I just wanted to send them a little something. But it’s going to sound like a huge thing but don’t want to send a card. It just seemed the perfect thing and it was such a nice way for me to try to express how much it meant to me to have been invited and become a part of their event.

Bonni: [00:07:11] And that was also fun because I can include the logo from the event or I could include a picture that I took at the event. There was one that I took for my kids next to some character a giant green alien looking character like this is brought in that you know we shared this common experience together I can’t recommend it enough.

Bonni: [00:07:29] And it was really fun because when my mom got hers then she took a picture of what she got when she had opened it and she texted us and said how much she enjoyed it sounds really fun. That’s my recommendation as One creative way of showing gratitude. And I know that the next category here a number of things we’re going to share about have to do with learning.

Dave: [00:07:47] Now indeed and we’re going to have links to all of these in showboats for both episodes you can either go to coachingforleaders.com/324 or teachinginhighered.com/181 Bonni and I are both also going to send these out as part of our weekly guides.

Dave: [00:08:02] So you don’t need to remember any of these links but for the the Greetabl Bonni set up a 15 percent off coupon for you to utilize so. So check that out when you see the links come over or you can go track it down on your own.

Dave: [00:08:15] Our next section here is going to be on learning and I think you said right. So my first recommendation I have for learning is a service called Blinkist that I get introduced to two years ago by one of our academy members. What Blinkist asked is. It’s one of those books summary services but it’s it’s entirely online.

Dave: [00:08:35] And so what you do is when you get an account with Blinkist to go on to your account and you can search for any popular book they have most of the popular books cataloged and what they’ve done is they’ve taken a book that might take you know three or four days to read and they’ve gotten it down to a summary of 15 or 20 minutes. And I have utilized Blinkist actually a bunch in the last year in order to go back and reference material.

Dave: [00:09:04] I know you know things that were in prior books especially when I talk to authors I don’t really use Blinkist to prepare for interviews per se but I will often use Blinkist to go prepare for prior books someone has written because I may have read the book five or ten years ago.

Dave: [00:09:21] But I want to just be refreshed and reminded of what they’ve said and a lot of our academy members actually use Blinkist in order to preview the content in books they’re planning on purchasing. It’s a really great way to get a fast overview of some of the key concepts and some of the most important books that are out there.

Dave: [00:09:37] So if that’s something that’s of interest to you if you’d like to do a better job of kind of seen more content out there and also previewing books but also being reminded of things that maybe books you’ve read in the past I think Blinkist is a great option for you. And you can set up a free trial with the link that we’ve got coming in the weekly guides. So certainly recommend us to think you’ll find that is a great way to improve your learning.

Bonni: [00:09:59] One of the things that both Dave and I love to learn about is podcasting. We’ve gone to the podcast Movement conference for a number of years now and I came across a course that is hosted or taught by one of my podcasts.

Bonni: [00:10:16] I think Dave you said he’s my podcast crush but I feel like that’s insulting to you to talk about a crush but it certainly is a Platonic crush. Is Alex Bloomberg and he is he’s been around podcasting for a longtime a great storyteller.

Bonni: [00:10:30] He started out with the podcast This American Life and has since branched out on his own and has an entire network of his own of different podcasts he’s just a brilliant storyteller and the company called Creative Live has a podcast storytelling course by Alex Bloomberg.

Bonni: [00:10:49] And I just enjoy it so much. And one of the things that Dave you and I mentioned is so important in this episode is that we not recommend things that we haven’t done ourselves. I was I will admit to being tempted by other courses that they have listed up there uncreative live but the one that I have gone through and can definitely say is well worth the time and money if you’re interested in storytelling and particularly the storytelling through podcasting Creative Live is really really good when this course and we’ll link to that in the show notes page sohw notes pages that Dave talked about and Dave now you’ve got another one I’m learning too.

Dave: [00:11:23] The next one for me is Amazon Kindle but also the Amazon Kindle ecosystem. We were having this conversation and Academy session this week many of you know some folks have like Barnes Noble and they have Apple’s app set up and kindle they’ve got books and three or four different ecosystems I know a lot of us have that happen and one of the things I really love about the Kindle platform is all of the things that are built around it. And Bonni how much do you read on your Kindle Bonni I know you read on. I y ouuse the Kindle app on your iPad to read most of teh time right.

Bonni: [00:11:55] I use the Kindle app on my iPad. If I really wanted to read more and be disciplined about it I would only use my Kindle because there’s just nothing like zero distractions. And as soon as I find spans of time in my life when I am more dedicated about that my reading just goes through the roof.

Dave: [00:12:12] You bought me a Kindle you remember for Christmas last year and it has been huge for me on improving and improving the quality of reading and quantity of reading I’m doing because I would have an iPad 2 but I tend not to read on the iPad because I get so much I get distracted doing other things or reading the news or Twitter or whatever.

Dave: [00:12:31] So the Kindle is great for picking up and being able to read in an environment we’re not distracted by anything else. But the other thing is that I really like about Kindle is just the ecosystem that goes along with it as I was mentioning. Nowadays you can link up Kindle with audible so if you have an audible account or you’ve just purchased the audible audio on Kindle when you buy the book which you can do now it will sink between the two.

Dave: [00:12:58] So if you do like I do where I’m on the road a bit is you can be listening on audio and you can stop and you can pick up your Kindle or your Kindle app and it will pick up right where you left off and vice versa. So it’s a seamless system.

Dave: [00:13:12] And the other thing I love is that you can highlight and do notes and folks in our community have seen that because I’ve been started to share some of those around the podcast community here. And you and I since we are linked if anybody buys a Kindle book it’ll show up on my device for me to use. And same thing with her.

Dave: [00:13:28] And so if you have family members who you’ve got Kindle devices or apps with you can you can share in that whole ecosystem so I’ve really found Kindle to be a game changer for me as far as being able to consume a lot of books which of course I do. Preparing for interviews and highlights and all the things I’ve ever. There’s a lot of service authors I mentioned but I think Kindles really the richest one at Amazon just got a great platform for it so I’d encourage you to check out Kindle if you haven’t already.

Bonni: [00:13:52] I’m cracking up over here because I keep thinking we’re married we’re in love we are parents we are linked because we’re linked. Yes it does sounded funny to me. I did want to mention that someone who listens to my podcast as well as yours is Isabeau Iqbal.

Bonni: [00:14:11] She had asked me if I would consider reflecting a bet on some of my own digital reading practices and I’d love it if we could link to in our show notes a poster that I wrote about digital reading because I did go through and I talked about some of that some of the things that you just mentioned but also some stuff that we’re not going into that much depth about today.

Bonni: [00:14:30] And then also in the comments section people also shared about their own practices that I hadn’t mentioned so it’s a good post to go over and look at if you’re interested in learning more about the kinds of things that Dave mentioned. We are transitioning away from learning focused items and now into what would fall into the category of productivity or efficiency.

Bonni: [00:14:50] How do we do things in a more streamlined way so that we can be more present for the people that are in our lives and not get bogged down with some of the minutiae. And the first one is Amazon Fresh.

Dave: [00:15:05] Thank you amazon Amazon Fresh.

Bonni: [00:15:08] Amazon Fresh is their groceries service. And for I believe now it’s the structure is a monthly fee. They changed it midstream so I’m always getting confused but a monthly fee that as long as you order more than I believe it’s thirty five dollars worth of groceries something like that then you get free delivery. I mean it’s free in air quotes because you’re paying a monthly fee.

Bonni: [00:15:30] But they deliver it and you don’t have to necessarily be home. There’s two different ways you can schedule you can have your groceries delivered to your doorstep and it’s in a cool packed thing that will keep it cool. I believe they save for two hours. We’ve been gone for even more than two hours and it’s still been good.

Bonni: [00:15:46] But yeah to be safe two hours and then they also have part of the which we’ve never used but where they’ll carry the groceries into your kitchen if that’s something that you prefer. So Amazon Fresh. It is one of those things we have a device in our kitchen.

Bonni: [00:16:02] And any time we run out of something we can either just there’s a barcode scanner on it. So you push a button and scan the barcode and that puts it on your shopping list for your next time you do Amazon Fresh order.

Dave: [00:16:15] It’s an Amazon device. Yeah. Amazon Dash.

Bonni: [00:16:20] And they do promotions throughout the year where sometimes you don’t even pay anything for it the most you’re going to pay is going to be like 20 dollars. But ours was free when we signed up for Amazon Fresh and we also can talk into it and the kids can talk into it so we will go up there and there’ll be like 20 orders for piñatas pinnata.

Bonni: [00:16:37] Piñatas because they think it’s hysterical to try for some reason to order. I think because of the reaction that we gave them the first time they did. It’s like who goes shopping for pints on a grocery list. But it was really fun. And so the Amazon Fresh. Great way. I mean it’s really it’s been a big deal to us it’s been a really big deal to just not.

Bonni: [00:16:56] And I say this really for you Dave is the one who has historically has done more of the shopping.

Dave: [00:17:02] We probably do 80 percent of our groceries I think through Amazon Fresh now and the schedule it the day before and it shows up and you don’t have to be there and it’s hot outside. I mean it’s it’s. Really a cool service. And we don’t run in any issues where anything comes that’s not good or spoiled or.

Bonni: [00:17:16] Yeah. And the pricing is just comparable to what we would be paying at a grocery store sometimes even less around here.

Dave: [00:17:22] Yeah. Other than the monthly fee. I mean it’s pretty much the same and it’s worked out really well. The hard thing it’s not available everywhere and I don’t know about internationally but it’s available more and more places we have a bunch of academy members using Amazon Fresh so check it out.

Bonni: [00:17:34] So we will stop talking about it now for those of you who are hearing this next one Dave. I know for you has been something you’ve really been enjoying and that is blue apron what can you tell us about that.

Dave: [00:17:47] You know the struggle we’ve had over the last year or so especially as the kids have gotten a little bit older is cooking meals at home and wanting to cook nice fresh meals and at the same time how do we have the time to do that. And and so I forget what triggered it but I don’t know a month or so ago I said we’re going to try one of these meal services and there’s several of them out there.

Dave: [00:18:12] And so we just decided to try Blue Apron. And for those of you are not familiar with the way this works is Blue Apron. There’s a few others out there too that deliver the ingredients to you so they put together in a box basically all the ingredients you need for the meal and they give you the recipe information and then you need to do the cooking.

Dave: [00:18:30] So what they’ve measured everything out though and put it all in and so we’ve been using blue apron now for about a month month and a half and it has it has worked out really well and we’ve gotten a whole bunch of different varieties of food. It’s two meals a week.

Dave: [00:18:45] The system we’re on so we’re not trying to go crazy on cooking out a long dinner every single night. So sometimes we’ll do something that’s quicker sometimes you know occasionally we’ll go out but once in a while you know this has worked out really well with getting us to cook more.

Dave: [00:19:01] It’s getting us eating more vegetables all of us because they have that as part of every meal the kids have for the most part like the meals and have eaten them and enjoyed the cooking process. And I’m actually feeling like I’m getting to be a little bit of a better chef just by going through and doing some cooking. The one thing is it’s not one of these things where you can put together in 5 minutes. Bonni snickers.

Dave: [00:19:26] You need a good I mean for most of the meals you need a good 30 to 40 minutes. But I think that the advantages is if you think about the time you would normally go to the store or figure out the recipes all the things you need to get. There’s a time and a place for that.

Dave: [00:19:39] But on a regular basis this is I think saved us a bit of time and gotten us the benefits of having a home cooked meal so we try to.

Bonni: [00:19:46] That didn’t really sound very timesaving and maybe I need to work on my categorization here. I know the next one you want to share about here is a Acuity scheduling Dave.

Dave: [00:19:54] Yeah I think acuity scheduling. Speaking of timing and efficiency. So we previously had mentioned one of the other services for this time trade and I think that works if you’re just an individual doing things we were running into some issues with time trade though because here’s here’s the problem we have. Bonni and I have a studio here in our house.

Dave: [00:20:12] We both book interviews and we both have automated that process so people can schedule interviews who our guests are coming and people are making invitations to so they can book on our calendars.

Dave: [00:20:23] But the problem is we can’t have it happen we’re both of our calendars get booked for an interview at same time because we only have one set of equipment. So the nice thing about acuity scheduling is that you can really customize a lot of things and you can set up resources.

Dave: [00:20:35] So for example if you are a business that say for example you want a book you have two or three rooms available you can set them up as resources and people can automatically schedule and you cannot overbook yourself because it will allocate people to the correct number of resources in rooms that you have and you can coordinate schedules across different staff.

Dave: [00:20:56] For us this has been huge because we didn’t need like our own calendar server all those things you can set up with berms and resources that a lot of corporations have. But the just the one on one scheduling app wasn’t doing it for us. And acuity scheduling has absolutely made that seamless. We have had zero issues with a Bonnies since we started this past summer.

Dave: [00:21:16] We’ve never been double booked works both of our calendars seamlessly. And you can set up tons of I can set up links where if I set out the link to someone I want it to be a video meeting versus a phone call. How many. How much time. And whatever I want to schedule that person I just send them the link. They find the time on my calendar to put it in. It all happens automatically it sends them a reminder the day before or the hour before depending on how you get it set up.

Dave: [00:21:40] It is really a seamless system and if you’re someone that does business in such a way we’re setting appointments also triggers people getting charged for something. You can have that system set up to take payments and automate that entire process. It is really a fabulous system I know a lot of folks who work or you have started using acutely acuity scheduling.

Dave: [00:22:01] So it’s certainly recommended as an option if you’re looking for a way to automate your calendar and not do any of the back and forth of does this time work for you. Does this time work for you. It just is totally seamless for us.

Bonni: [00:22:11] If you’re ever considering one of these online scheduling tools and I can’t recommend them enough. I can’t think of a role today that you might have where you wouldn’t benefit from this because it’s an all different kinds of contexts but one of the biggest things for me. It used to have to be that there was a piece of software running on my computer that would look at my calendar and talk back and forth to it and then look at their service and then talk back and forth to it.

Bonni: [00:22:37] So if my computer was not on or that software was not running then it could very well be that someone tried to schedule. And then I added something to my calendar and all of a sudden things are out of sync. I got used to every single e-mail that would come in. I’d go in and make sure transferred and I mean I just I did not trust it.

Bonni: [00:22:57] And it’s hysterical because now I still am like oh I should I should but it just works because it’s not happening on my computer. It’s happening on my calendar service which lives in what they call the cloud.

Bonni: [00:23:08] So it’s it’s on servers that are running all the time and that’s who it’s talking to back and forth. And I could be have my computer be off for two weeks and not get out of sync because it doesn’t rely on software that’s running on my computer really really like a QAD scheduling. And this next one both Dave and I love so much. And that is the Apple Watch Dave do you share a little bit about what you’ve gotten out of the Apple Watch.

Dave: [00:23:30] Oh gosh. So to back up a little bit. Remember when the Apple Watch came out and we by the way were Apple fans we have a lot of Apple products in our house that’s probably a bit of an understatement. Number one I said Bonni like I am not buying that Apple Watch. The last thing I want on my wrist is the Internet. And why would anyone want this.

Dave: [00:23:48] And then of course I did end up getting one to try it out. But the things that I love about it are things I totally expected to hate about it. And what that is is the the Internet. So here I was worried about being connected the Internet all the time.

Dave: [00:24:03] And it turns out I never did a lot of text messaging before we became parents. I mean you and I would text once in a while but it just it turns out as a parent you actually really need text messaging caregivers and school and messages and all that kind of thing.

Dave: [00:24:16] And I would sometimes miss things because I wasn’t tied to my phone all day long. I found the Apple Watch to be really helpful for getting messages because I don’t get a lot of text so when I get a text it’s generally something that I do want to pay attention to it’s important. I used to miss stuff all the time I don’t really miss stuff anymore.

Dave: [00:24:31] Now that I have a watch because I can come through right to my wrist so even if I’m not near my phone or if we put it down somewhere that comes the other thing that I really love about the watch is you can dictate to it which I never thought about before I purchased it.

Dave: [00:24:44] But the thing that I find and maybe this is it just me and the kind of work I do. But I have ideas all day long of things like who I want to talk to or here’s an idea for a show or someone mention something or I’m driving down the road and listening to a podcast or hear someone on the radio and say you know I really want to you know.

Dave: [00:25:03] I want to interview that person or here’s a follow up that got me thinking about this or I’m reading this audio book and I want to capture that quote before that stuff would all get lost. Now I dictated it to my watch. So push the dictation button dictated and it copies to my reminder list. I was driving along the other day Bonnie and I was talking into my watch because something.

Dave: [00:25:21] And there was another driver looking at me weird and I know I looked like a complete look down the freeway docketed my watch but it works so well and so I capture all those ideas during the day and then once a day I pull up my task list and I look through like OK what’s on the list that I need is actionable that I can do something with or doesn’t need to go and that is last summer. So that’s been huge.

Dave: [00:25:40] And then the other thing that I love the watch for it and are used to is just setting up timers as weird as this sounds and as basic as this is you know I’ll dictate the watch I’ll say you know a five set of 15 minute timer and if I sit down with someone in a meeting or a lodge you know like you don’t you want to give your full attention to someone.

Dave: [00:25:58] But at the same time there is a time you have to end the conversation but you don’t want to be looking at your watch the entire time you did this with students is all set. They’ll watch to be to vibrate on my wrist five or ten minutes before and so the other person doesn’t even know necessarily but I can certainly mentally starting to close down the conversation and make a very nice transition.

Dave: [00:26:18] And I mean those three things text dictation and just the vibration and also I mean and speaking of vibration the alarms in the morning like I sometimes get up early and you can sit to watch to alarm. I don’t have to wake you up it’s not so good for that stuff.

Bonni: [00:26:32] I was going to mention I talked about doing keynotes a lot lately and I haven’t even told you this but I get really very down to the details on exactly when that’s going on vibranium arrest so halfway through it’s going to buzz me on my wrist. Nobody knows what’s happening because only I can feel it it’s not like there’s any evidence to them and I know right away to to dismiss it either.

Bonni: [00:26:54] Yeah it’s vibrating but like you don’t you don’t have to have that shock value because it’s a very subtle tap it’s hard to describe to someone until you actually experience it.

Bonni: [00:27:02] But then when I have a moment then I’ll go and dismiss it and then I have it you know a setup for precisely to keep me on track because it’s you know it’s unprofessional when you’ve been hired for something like that to go over your time it just throws off the rest of the event.

Bonni: [00:27:16] And I really want to respect other people’s time and it’s nice when they have someone there who will do that for you but you can always count on that. It’s really been nice as far as that’s concerned. I know this next one is a really great one for both of us.

Bonni: [00:27:29] It has changed how I do e-mail completely and that is sane box and sane box is one of a few services that are out there that divide up your e-mail in a very intelligent ay to have only the really most important e-mails going into your main inboxes and other things going into other folders such as there’s bulk e-mail that might come in.

Bonni: [00:27:55] There is more newsletter type e-mails that might come in and you get to decide exactly how these folders get constructed and the intelligence behind them. And if it ever gets one wrong and it will tell you it just it’s a very rare occurrence that it categorizes something wrong for me.

Bonni: [00:28:12] But all that you do to train it to put things back in the right bucket or the right folder in your e-mail is drag the e-mail from where it was so let’s say something came in to newsletter’s maybe days newsletter’s go into newsletter’s but I’m like No I want every email from tave to come right into my xbox one and then I can just drag it over to my.

Bonni: [00:28:29] I’ll have to do that once. And by doing that once it trains it and the next time it’s going to show up in my inbox there are so many things that sane box can do. I am just concerned that you and I could talk for the next hour or just about this one alone so I’m going to leave it at that except to say if you have difficulty with managing your e-mail something like saying box could completely transform for you.

Bonni: [00:28:54] And really help you spend less time navigating through sorting through and then not doing that for you is just really it’s time wasted and it has just saved me a ton of time and actually tells you how much time it’s saved compared to other people. If you want it to. To other people that you know that use the service. It’s just a great service I’d really recommend that people look into it. It has been well worth what we’ve paid for it.

Dave: [00:29:20] And sane box is been a game changer for me on dividing my e-mail into the most important things and it is it is. It is also helped me to be better at prioritizing for myself what I need to respond to. And so I’d highly recommend it.

Dave: [00:29:37] We set up we talk to the sane box folks and we set up an opportunity for all of our listeners to try it out for free trial and to get 15 dollars off a plan. So if you want to try it out the links will be in The Weekly Guide and on our notes for checking out same box so I’d highly encourage it. Another technology gadget that we’ve both enjoyed a ton. And last year is Apple’s Airpods.

Bonni: [00:30:02] It is an amazing device. It’s about the size and it actually looks like a small dental floss container and people made fun of the way that it looks because it does look like you’re wearing Apple’s headphones that come with an iPhone.

Bonni: [00:30:16] If you buy them but that you just cut the cord off. So there is a little sort of tube things ticking down. I’m past all that for the convenience that it is to just have the case by the way isn’t just for holding them. The case cases for charging them. I recently have been doing a lot of travel so if I’m using them a bunch for a number of hours and they start to run out of batteries I just need to put them back in the case.

Bonni: [00:30:37] The case doesn’t have to be plugged in because it’s holding a charge of its own. And just like a lot of Apple products and we did warn you that we’re big fans but they just work so they work and they can they can connect to my computer when I’m using it.

Bonni: [00:30:50] So if I want to do some sort of a video call and use them for my both my microphone as well as my earphones that works great if I want to listen to podcasts walking around that works and.

Dave: [00:31:03] Sorry to interrupted ddi you say what they are. If people don’t know they are wireless headphones.

Bonni: [00:31:06] Wireless headphones.

Dave: [00:31:07] I don’t think we said what it was.

Bonni: [00:31:08] I’m not sure I got so excited I ran right past that. That happens a lot to me. I’m sure I did that earlier on the show and didn’t realize one of the things we talked about earlier was the Apple Watch.

Bonni: [00:31:19] Now things have advanced so much with the newest Apple Watch that Dave and I could go walk around the block right now and not even have our phones with us and just have our wireless headphones that Dave just described the apple air pods in our ears and our our watches can stream music so we can be listening to music we could be having a phone call.

Bonni: [00:31:41] And there’s no phone involved. There’s a watch and there’s these headphones and it’s it’s just they’re amazing. And I will tell you that it’s it’s a miracle that I have not lost them yet. It’s a miracle.

Dave: [00:31:55] It is a miracle you haven’t gotten electrocuted in the shower.

Bonni: [00:31:58] Hey were not going to talk about that.

Dave: [00:32:01] Well I’m just amazed you could you use them in the shower .

Bonni: [00:32:03] Oh I wasn’t going to mention that. They are not waterproof. Don’t even think they’re water resistant but I don’t not wash my hair every day. So it just works. They stay in your ear. I mean not everybody’s ear but they stay and they stay in Dave’s ears and they stay in my ears. Maybe they would stay in your ears too if you give them a try.

Bonni: [00:32:21] So our last one is a big one I know that’s really changed for you. How do you think about planning and that’s the Best Year Ever.

Dave: [00:32:28] Yeah I mentioned this last month on the planning episode that I aired and talking about how I’m doing planning differently and for those of you who are already writing down your goals regularly maybe you’ve done the best year of course before going to put that episode in the show notes as a resource because you may be ready for that next step as first planted even in more detail. Most people have not done that.

Dave: [00:32:49] And one of the things I’m often encouraging our audience to do is to think about how can you start to get goals down on paper and be really intentional about where you’re going for yourself your family and for your organization and a resource that we have supported over the last several years that I’ve used many times is Michael Hyatt’s Best Year Ever course.

Dave: [00:33:12] At the time were airing this. It is not quite available yet we’re actually airing this a little bit early so we’ll put a link in the notes and I’m actually gonna send out a a note to our community once it airs or with a little more information. I’ve actually had a short story about you Bonni, a little bit in that coming up. You have to see with what that’s all about.

Dave: [00:33:29] But the Best Year Ever course is really a great start to planning out the year. And if you want to get 2018 started on the right path it particularly if you have never really taken the time to sit down and document and write out your goals for the year and be intentional about where you’re going.

Dave: [00:33:48] It is a fabulous place to begin that process and to really encourage you to go through that step by step. And in a way that’s really proven in my cly it always does one wonderful things with all of his courses and this one is no different. So Best Year Ever. Check it out. More information on that coming very soon.

Bonni: [00:34:07] Thanks Dave for joining me on this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed which will be available at teachinginhighered.com/181 and if you go to that link you’ll be able to access the links for all of the resources that we talked about and some of them have discounts associated with them or free trials.

Bonni: [00:34:27] And just a way for you to get started. So again go to teachinginhighered.com/181 in order to access those links. And also if you don’t want to have to remember to do that but want an e-mail to come into your inbox once a week you can subscribe to the weekly Teaching in Higher Ed update at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe.

Bonni: [00:34:51] And in addition to receiving weekly e-mails with the show notes and a blog about teaching or productivity you’ll also receive a downloadable free ebook with 19 tools that will help you incorporate technology into your teaching and personal productivity. Thanks so much for listening and I’ll see ya time.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.