Lower your stress with a better approach to capture, with Dave Stachowiak

Bonni [00:00:00] I don’t know about you but it sure feels like there’s a lot flying at me this time of the year.

Bonni [00:00:05] Today Dave and I talk about capture.

Production Credit [00:00:09] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni [00:00:20] 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 the silhouetting learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni [00:00:45] I’m happy to be welcoming back to the show Dr. Dave Stachowiak.

Dave [00:00:52] Wow. Very formal.

Bonni [00:00:53] I was thinking actually about that this morning that I don’t introduce you very formally which one would normally not introduce one’s husband very formally but you know in your own right have earned the right to sit here besides just being married to me.

Bonni [00:01:07] So if it’s your first time last name Dave teaches as an adjunct and has done so for many years at the undergraduate and graduate levels and I think it’s great having you on the show because you can kind of give the perspective of capture for someone that’s got a lot of different aspects of the roles that they play.

Bonni [00:01:27] And then for those of you just listening for the first time maybe I work as a fulltime professor in a mostly traditional undergraduate I’m actually trying to stop saying traditional undergrad drop because people are starting to say the demographics of undergraduate education are evolving so quickly that there shouldn’t be a term like that.

Bonni [00:01:44] But mostly it’s 18 to 22 year olds. Not entirely but mostly. And then I also teach as an adjunct elsewhere in different programs including a doctoral program.

Dave [00:01:54] The world really has changed as far as the ages that people are getting degrees over the last generation for the better in lot of ways so it’s cool to see all of the options that are out there for people now.

Bonni [00:02:05] I have a couple of guys in my classes who have served in the military including one who served over in Afghanistan and just being able to write or read their introductions here at the start of the semester and just think about all the things that they’ve already seen in their young lives it’s really pretty amazing.

Bonni [00:02:21] This week as Dave knows I forgot my power cord for my Mac at home and there just was a lot of stuff flying at me and I was just reminded of the importance of doing what David Allen who wrote the book called Getting Things Done calls capture calls this process capture.

Bonni [00:02:42] And one thing I don’t want you to get confused dead if you have been listening to the show for awhile Dave and I talked about something called personal knowledge management on an earlier episode and we also had a wonderful Georgia Tech librarians come in and do a follow up workflows show.

Bonni [00:02:56] But that idea we did use the word capture to talk about capturing knowledge actually capturing information that then we transform into knowledge. But in this case we’re more talking about the time management the task management all of those actions or potential actions that come into our lives and how we might capture them. That’s the way we’re using the word the way that David Allen does in his book Getting Things Done.

Bonni [00:03:22] Let’s start out by what is capture? Dave, how do you think of the word capture. How do you think of it in terms of that getting things done in context.

Dave [00:03:32] Well I think of it as anything that’s coming to me that I need to I need to act on at some point in the future so if someone is making a request of me or figure figured e-mail or I have to follow up with someone for example this morning we were walking out we’re recording this Sunday we were walking out of church this morning and one of our other members at church came up to me and said oh you know we are we are putting together this committee and we’d like you to help on this committee.

Dave [00:04:00] And can you let me know if you’d be interested in helping. And so right away I needed to capture two things one she handed me her card with her number on it because she wasn’t sure I had it. So I need to capture that.

Dave [00:04:10] And I also need to capture the fact that I had to get back to her. All the while while Hannah’s crying in the stroller. And so I really had to think because it’s one of those things that I have learned that if I you know it seems like at the later in the day like right now I’m like OK of course I’m going to remember to do that.

Dave [00:04:27] But I know that two days later I’d never remember to do that. So I have to find a way to get that into my system somehow. But to do it in a quick way so I don’t have to sit there and agonize over for 20 minutes like OK am I going to do this or get back or what.

Dave [00:04:41] I can think about it later but I know I’ve got it in my system and that I can free my mind to handle what I really need to handle right then which is trying to figure out how to get Hannah to stop crying and get her to the car for a nap.

Bonni [00:04:49] And there is a lot of stuff that goes flying at us throughout the week like that stuff that we didn’t necessarily create on our own. I mean maybe someone’s replying to an e-mail that we wrote to them but a lot of stuff’s coming to us.

Bonni [00:05:02] Phone calls e-mails business cards at our university the student athletes now are all coming around giving us these papers that say hey I’m in athletics. These are the classes that I’m going to miss.

Bonni [00:05:15] This is this is sort of a it’s actually really been a good thing that they do to help them just really emphasize the academic part of their school experience so it’s a good thing they do. But all these students coming up and they’re going to give me a paper and to sign this thing.

Bonni [00:05:30] I mean it’s it’s really coming at us. And actually David Allen and getting things done distinguishes these kinds of things that are flying at us and coming in and all different ways to the things that we should be doing to get stuff out of our head so we might be walking along thinking about I’m going to do some research in this area.

Bonni [00:05:52] And I just have an idea of a possible avenue I might explore that that’s important to get down and he argues that the better that we can capture those things and actually. Go through processes that will generate more of it can get it out of our heads. Think about the different roles we play.

Bonni [00:06:12] Think about the different projects. Think about the grants we’re working on these kinds of things. The more we can get it out of our head the more we free our brains up for creativity.

Bonni [00:06:22] Now I know that we have pretty much all academics or someone who’s on their way to try to teach in higher ed listening. And you might instantly go how could he how could he support that with research and he does he does have some evidence there but I don’t know that it’s going to stand up to anyone listening. Anyone.

Bonni [00:06:42] I don’t know if it’ll stand at the kind of rigor that we might see in a in a peer reviewed study. But I will say anecdotally for myself I sure feel better when I go through this process. I can tell when I’ve been doing it just how the stress goes down for me and how much more creative I can be by going through the process.

Bonni [00:07:02] So it is anecdotal but from one person who does this pretty much every week the process that we’re going to describe today of capturing Oh really lowers my stress. And even though it may be really difficult to quantify really has increased my creativity.

Dave [00:07:17] Well he’s a big believer that it’s not about your mind isn’t for holding stuff it’s for being creative and thinking so. And I’ve certainly found that to be true anecdotally as well.

Bonni [00:07:28] So we’re going to look at each one of these types of capturing the stuff that comes at us that we didn’t necessarily ask for please take it and do the stuff that we do try to get out of our heads to lower that stress and to free us up to be more creative.

Bonni [00:07:42] And when he talks about David Allen when he talks about in his book The different in boxes this was something that as a professor I really had to change because I had worked in the corporate world and back. I mean this is a little bit ago but we have the physical inbox sitting on our desks and we had email and phone calls.

Bonni [00:08:05] And that was about it. And I’d go home and there wasn’t the inbox at home and this kind of stuff but as a professor I’ve got an inbox here at home a physical inbox where mail comes in I’ve got an inbox at my office. I actually have even a mail box that’s different than the one sitting in my office.

Bonni [00:08:26] I have a laptop bag that I carry around that has folders in it. I have a cell phone. I have a work phone. I have a bunch of different e-mails depending on I mentioned I teach as an adjunct to so I’ve got my regular institution I’ve got the institution Agim for me. There are a lot of different inboxes.

Bonni [00:08:47] And that used to make me think like I was doing something wrong and he says you need to have as many in boxes as you need.

Bonni [00:08:55] And no more and I thought that’s OK so it’s OK. And especially if you’re someone who’s going back and forth between sometimes we’re working from home sometimes we’re working at the university the need to have some kind of a traveling inbox.

Bonni [00:09:10] I have found to be really helpful just to have in my laptop bag have a folder there. It says inbox on it and that that’s OK. I just have to have captured somewhere so that I remember to go check that inbox said that the things I need to attend to don’t just get stuck there and left there which I will say has happened to me in the past so if I’m doing my processes well that inbox gets emptied out and processed just like a regular inbox would.

Dave [00:09:34] And this is a place where technology has helped us to consolidate a little bit. And so for example you and I have a home phone number set up that’s just a we don’t really use our home phone but it’s set up as a voice mail and box that goes right to our e-mail when we get a message.

Dave [00:09:48] We have a Google number for podcast effects when folks ask questions this podcast that comes into our e-mail inbox. I try as much as possible to the extent that I can of anything that comes out of a social network or anything on line to always come to my e-mail inbox.

Dave [00:10:02] You know you can set up different things to come different places but I try to use my e-mail inbox kind of my one place for everything. And yes that means I get more e-mail but I know that if it’s there I’m going to handle it and I’ve got a process for going through that. So I think that there’s part of it is how many in boxes do you need to have and have whatever you need to have.

Dave [00:10:18] But when there is possibility to consolidate something using technology that that’s a great thing to investigate and sometimes a little bit of time setting that up can save you a lot of time in the long run to keep things in less places.

Bonni [00:10:29] Two other places I thought where things might come in faculty meetings or committee meetings and also those conversations that students at least in my case I’m sure I’m not alone like to have with us after class when we have 10 minutes to get from the class for in to the next classroom and take down a laptop and set it up in the next room and hope that the projector hooks up and all that good stuff.

Bonni [00:10:49] So a lot of different not necessarily something like an e-mail. Something like of like a voice mail. But in this case a conversation where a student doesn’t realize you know that I don’t want them to feel like one out of 120 or 150 I want them to feel special and important to me.

Bonni [00:11:06] The fact of the matter is at the end of the day some days I’m going to have seen that many students I might not hopefully have them all needing something from me.

Bonni [00:11:15] But boy I will not remember that by the time the end of the day comes I’m spent by the time the day.

Bonni [00:11:23] And so we want to have ways to capture this let’s talk about some of the tools Dave that you and I use.

Dave [00:11:28] Sure.

Bonni [00:11:28] For the kind of capturing that’s just coming at us.

Dave [00:11:32] Well I mentioned my e-mail box already so that that that’s self-explanatory I think. But then.

Bonni [00:11:37] And speaking of the e-mail for anyone who has not heard the term zero inbox that is something that Dave and I subscribe to and that comes back. That phrase comes from Merlin Mann and Merlin Mann is kind of become a little bit of a productivity guru and he did a presentation for Google for their employees about…

Bonni [00:11:58] I won’t go too much on it because people aren’t excited about zero books in academia as much as I think those of us that read productivity books for fun are.

Bonni [00:12:06] But the idea is that we don’t with our mailbox at home we don’t go out there and if we go out there and see that there’s something there and we don’t really need it right now we just leave it in the mailbox come back inside the house and just keep leaving stuff in the mailbox.

Bonni [00:12:20] So his idea is that we go to our mailbox whether it’s our e-mail box or our actual mail box at our house and we process things and get them out of the inbox so that it’s empty it’s zero. The inbox is zero at the end of the day.

Bonni [00:12:35] So Dave and I do subscribe to that we’re not going to talk about that at length on this episode because I have found that it’s not an exciting topic for a lot of academics and our joy in life is not to bore you but if you ever liked to chat about it and I’m wrong tell me because we’ll do that.

Bonni [00:12:50] Talk more about it.

Dave [00:12:52] It’s an issue in academia. I don’t know how many times I’ve had students tell me you know I emailed so-and-so or this past professor I had and they never got back to me or they never respond. And I don’t know I just I just think that’s bad customer service.

Dave [00:13:07] Like that’s just not professional if a student e-mails you. I don’t think you’d need to respond instantly but I think if you’re in a class and someone’s someone has asked you a question you need to get back to them some sort of reasonable amount of time. So anyway all right I’ll get off my soapbox on that.

Bonni [00:13:20] Yeah I was so impressed by so many of the people I mentioned during our last episode. How many great guests that we have signed up already for 2015 and it’s we’re early now still in the year. And boy it’s amazing one of them we have.

Bonni [00:13:32] But I have booked for July. And she’s in the middle right in the book. And so she’s protecting her time in writing her book and that’s how this woman writes multiple books by the way. But she got back to me and said hey I want to respond to your e-mail but I need a little bit of time and then she responded and said hey send me a couple episodes so I can listen and get a flavor. She scheduled actually I’m gonna get back to her in June and we’ll schedule a time for July.

Bonni [00:13:55] I mean that that right there someone who understands the aspect of the professionalism around students and potential partners. Getting back to them at the same time preserving that time for writing and research.

Dave [00:14:08] I think there’s a message there for all of us if you want to be influential in your career and to build a strong network that you’ve learned to get good at that or you’ve helped people you’ve talked to people who could help you get good at that.

Bonni [00:14:18] So a few tools that we use besides that ascribing to the zero in box I mentioned the folders that I have in my laptop bag. I actually really like the folders that David Allen sells on his website and I will link to them in the show notes and they have. It’s the idea of one of them’s the inbox.

Bonni [00:14:36] He has the idea that we could carry around files that we might need to review with us so if we get to a meeting and it doesn’t start on time or that kind of thing that we have something with you I tend to most of that these days virtual I don’t really use that folder that much but it’s a nice collection.

Bonni [00:14:50] And of course you can get them a lot cheaper at a place like a Staples or OfficeMax or that kind of stuff. But what I like about them is they’re made of plastic and they’re a lot more long lasting than ones that you might buy. Like your manilla folders.

Bonni [00:15:04] I also like it because they’re really bright colors and then I can keep track of them or my sign in sheets are. That’s where the handouts I’m going to need for later and it’s the kind of this little thing. The hand was playing with them yesterday but that’s a tandem. So I like that one.

Bonni [00:15:18] We also both use an app called drafts do talk a little bit about drafts.

Dave [00:15:22] Drafts is my go to place when stuff comes at me and I need to just quickly record it because I’m going to forget about it later but it needs to go somewhere. And so what giraffe’s is it’s an app for the iPhone and the iPad for those of or iOS users.

Dave [00:15:34] And it is a brilliant at doing one thing really while it does other things too. But you open it up. There’s a cursor. You type what you need and you close it and it records it as a note and it opens right into that cursor and it creates a new note every time you open it and you go back later and you can look at a list of all the things you’ve put in there.

Dave [00:15:53] So I’ve disciplined myself like this morning when I was talking to someone and it was crying out on the church patio. I opened up my phone. I wrote out called back the name of the person was there took five seconds and put the phone away.

Dave [00:16:05] And that way it’s in the system and I don’t worry about it. OK when am I going to do it. You know figuring out the whole thing. Don’t worry about that at all because I haven’t my task management system. Omni focus which will probably talk about a bit is twice a week to go in there and to process everything that I’ve you know anything that came at me someone made a request.

Dave [00:16:24] Someone mentioned something in a conversation but I also put things in there like if I’m thinking about something where or maybe I’m listening to audio book and I think of an idea like it did this morning it was a sudden audio book when I was doing the laundry and the author said something else like oh what a good idea.

Dave [00:16:39] And so I just jotted that in the draft separate quick and later on I’ll go back and then I’ll figure out what I’m going to do with that it that’s something I’m going to record as a article idea later said some of them and used a class as some that used for work. Is that something.

Dave [00:16:51] Maybe that’s just I want to know about. I want to record somewhere. So that’s my system for getting things in and disciplining myself to capture them in a way that they’re not just going to disappear out of memory twenty minutes later.

Bonni [00:17:03] A lot of the tools that are on our smartphones these days are getting better and better capture and I’d say drafts is one of the cutting edge ones just because it is so simple like Dave said he opened it up and it’s ready to go but one that’s giving it a little bit of a run for its money and is also available on more than just our Apple devices.

Bonni [00:17:24] So those of you on droids or other types of smartphones is Evernote and Evernote. In fact it’s Catt’s tag phrase something to do with it being your brain you know. So it’s that whole idea of getting it out of our heads and out of these sticky notes and the business cards and having it that’s our brain.

Bonni [00:17:40] And so it allows you to capture pretty quick. In fact a lot of times you can just drag down on your phone and tap a little thing an off you’re off and running to the races not just to capture text like drafts as good at it.

Bonni [00:17:52] But also to capture a picture to capture audio and so on and so forth. So Evernote is a great one for easy capture and actually they have two associated apps that I’d like to talk about just briefly. One they just rolled out recently and that’s called scannable and scannable is ever notes scanning app.

Bonni [00:18:10] So if you’ve got a business card you’ve got a document you put it down on some kind of a contrasting surface so if it’s a white document to put it down on a wood table and there’s enough of a contrast there that it automatically recognizes where the document ends and the table begins and it’ll crop it for you.

Bonni [00:18:29] And it also gets rid of any of the shadows that are there because love them don’t know about you but you put your phone above a piece of paper to try to take a picture of it from above. You got the shadow of your arm there. Taking the picture.

Bonni [00:18:41] It gets rid of all that it gets rid of the shadows. It’s really smart cool and it makes it so crisp and easy to read. And then you can do anything with it from send it to Evernote which would be the most obvious choice but you can e-mail it. You can message it all kinds of things that you could do now that you’ve scanned at. So that’s scannable from Evernote.

Bonni [00:19:00] And then this app isn’t made by Evernote but a lot of apps talk to Evernote because it is so popular and ubiquitous sound ever is an audio recorder that automatically goes into ever note.

Bonni [00:19:13] And it could be that you just leave yourself a quick note that you want to take and maybe you don’t want to actually type it but you want to say something to remind yourself of something earlier or if you’re like me and you’re driving down the road and your son starts saying today I wanted to capture on.

Dave [00:19:30] A blueberry muffin.

Bonni [00:19:31] Oh he has a just adorable way of saying blueberry. And sorry I wanted to capture that. I did. And it went right into Evernote. Just a quick and easy way when you got someone being adorable. So that’s helpful. So those are the tools that help us to capture that things coming at us.

Bonni [00:19:48] We talked about zero in box Dave. Anything else you want to say about this.

Dave [00:19:52] I think the key is is have someplace so it doesn’t have to be digital. You can have a three by five no card that you have with a pen. The carry around in your pocket and someone says something or you think about something or you have a great idea you write it down and then you know later on.

Dave [00:20:06] You can always scratch it off not do anything with it. Probably a third to half of the things I jot down drafts a you know whenever I end up process it and I just delete it.

Dave [00:20:14] And like I wasn’t really that relevant after all or wasn’t that great an idea. So it doesn’t have to be digital although the digital tools are really cool now. But the key is to get it down somewhere not to try to catch you.

Dave [00:20:24] And I’ll try to think of to get everything in your brain and I think that this is actually a real issue for smart people which has a lot of the people listen the show is the smarter and more IQ you have the more you try to do this which is to hold things in your brain because you’re good at it and you have a way of organizing that.

Dave [00:20:43] At least you know I feel like I’ve struggled with that before and I’ve learned that I really need to discipline self to get stuff down and not try to hold everything in my head because it doesn’t work. After a while you just forget about things.

Bonni [00:20:57] The other kind of capture we want to talk about. I’m I’m coming up with this term. This is not a David Allen term but is the self generated capture process. So the first types of tools in this first type of things that Dave and I were talking about are the things that are coming at us.

Bonni [00:21:13] But David Allen also recommends that we sort of shake out our brains and get rid of some of the loose change that’s in there to free it up to not have to have it thinking about oh don’t forget this don’t forget this don’t forget this don’t forget this to free it up buy it. Let’s get that down so we don’t have to be spending the mental energy on that.

Bonni [00:21:33] So again this is my phrase self generated capture that we’re going to go in and start to this process he has on his Web site. Some great templates which I’ll link to in the show notes which I use almost every single week I should do if I was 100 percent on my process I would use it every week.

Bonni [00:21:50] But it goes through and it says for personal and it just has triggers little bullets that you would read that would relate to personal things that might help you realize oh you know what there is something there I need to take care of.

Bonni [00:22:05] And then he’s got professional ones and he’s got project ones too for the project. Is anything stuck. Have you identified this. He really walks through and I’ve had to skim through those things and I’ll go up yep there’s something there that I haven’t taken care of yet.

Bonni [00:22:19] I’m going to get that out of my mind. Get that captured at that point in the process. So a lot of times this comes out of what’s called a weekly review. And that’s where we sit down and we start to empty our minds.

Bonni [00:22:31] And so we that’s one tool that you can use are his templates. But a couple of other ways of thinking about it. I will go through and think about my different roles.

Bonni [00:22:40] So I’m professor so I’ve got the roles of any writing that I’m doing. I’ve got the role of classes that I’m teaching and going through those and asking myself questions of what is coming up in the coming week.

Bonni [00:22:54] What do I need to be attending to going back to the prior week and seeing. Well the last time I taught the class was there anything I committed to or anything that came up that I need to attend to. And then also thinking through projects as well and thinking through what needs to move that project to the next step.

Dave [00:23:12] I do something similar to you and I actually probably need to go back and look at David Allen’s book again and walk. Do really think through the Weekly Review even more strategically. But I was showing you the other day I’ve got six or seven things that I ask myself.

Dave [00:23:24] I look at my yearly goals I go through and I look at my calendar for the next two weeks I look at the different projects I do a quick review. I look at my habits that I have I’m tracking so there’s six or seven things I do on a weekly basis that I go through and ask myself in order to kind of do what you did just a little different process for it. But essentially the same the same thing.

Bonni [00:23:44] So when we think about this we’ve got the stuff that’s fine at us and then we have our self generated capture. And one important thing that should happen regardless of how many inboxes we’re talking about or whether we generated this next action or whether it came from someone else is that it’s all eventually going into the same place.

Bonni [00:24:07] I would say that is the biggest distinction in getting value in having to lower stress and knowing that there aren’t things that are flying out there that you’ve committed to and you’re not going to be able to follow through on them because your brain just cannot juggle that many things with all that we have going on.

Bonni [00:24:25] And I used to use a tool called Remember the Milk. That’s a Web based tool. It’s also available on many of the smartphone platforms. And it’s nice because it’s really simple easy to learn how to use has enough features to get us by.

Bonni [00:24:41] And one of the most important features to me in any sort of task management system that I’m going to use is that I can e-mail into it. So it has a special e-mail address that if I’m sent in the middle my e-mail and they go oh this is going to take more than two minutes for me to do I can forward that to my task management system and have it all in one place then I’m not trying to have my e-mail as one task management system my papers that came in from students from another task management system someone who stops by my office says another time management poll.

Bonni [00:25:12] I’ve got it all in one place and I can more effectively evaluate and prioritize it that way. So I used to use remember the milk and today as Dave alluded to earlier we both to use one that is a Mac specific one called Omni focus.

Bonni [00:25:26] And I actually heard one of our podcasts that we love to listen to called the Mac power users refer to omni focus as easy to get started with. I would beg to differ. I do not think omni focus it’s easy to get started with Dave but it’s easier now than it used to be.

Dave [00:25:42] It used to be that the first version of omni focus was more of a it just it was not very user friendly. It’s still not as simple as something like Remember the Milk or some other time management apps but it is easier to use and you can do it you can use it for very simple things and you can use it for very complex things too.

Dave [00:26:01] That’s what I like about it is you can scale with it really easily and it’s powerful and it’s rough and it’s the new version. Version 2 is really much easier to use much more user friendly. They really rethought the whole user interface and it’s a very very powerful if you’re looking for a time management system and you’re a Mac user it’s a it’s a great one.

Bonni [00:26:19] Two more things I’ll mention. As far as tools. Sometimes we want to get more visual and if you like to do that through the old fashioned pen and paper you can do some sticky notes and start to kind of map things out on a sticky note and put them on a wall. And if you want that to then go digital.

Bonni [00:26:36] There is an app for post its plus and I’ll put a link to that. And the show notes which by the way are going to be a teachinginhighered.com/32. And so that’s a great app that’ll help you if you’re. I like to do that sometimes with stickies and then you can kind of move around and start to see trends and patterns and move your ideas around that way. And then if you want a software version this far is a tool that will help you do that.

Bonni [00:27:01] There are a lot of good mind mapping apps including the one that Dave and I like to use.

Dave [00:27:07] Called Mindnode And I think there’s a free version and a pro version.

Bonni [00:27:15] Yeah. It’s nice to be able to have a mind map we can drag things around kind of like you would do with sticky notes.

Dave [00:27:21] Yeah and I like that one because it’s it’s it’s simple it’s not quite as crazy powerful as the mind mapping software out there but it’s just really great for Think it through ideas and doing it on an iPad or Mac or wherever.

Bonni [00:27:32] Dave and I would love to know if there’s any tools that we missed that help you in juggling all these things that are coming at us on all these things we should be thinking about in terms of the capture process.

Bonni [00:27:41] We’d also love feedback too on if this is the kind of topic we like to see because we haven’t been doing too much of this although I do have a productivity guru who’s going to be coming on the show too so that’ll be a fun mix so if you have questions around this let us know and we’ll we’ll certainly add that to the mix.

Bonni [00:27:56] But this is the time in the show where we each will be doing a recommendation. My recommendation this week is very outside my normal kind of recommendation because it’s about cooking. And Dave knows I do not typically do a lot of cooking but I have been doing more cooking lately.

Dave [00:28:14] You have.

Bonni [00:28:14] And it is an app called paprika and it’s an app that’s on your Mac also can be on the IRS devices too. My apologies to my PC friends there are some good recipe apps out there for the PC too but the biggest thing for me is the ease of being able to capture speaking of capturing them and having access to them later.

Bonni [00:28:35] And some time later on we’ll tell you about our grocery delivery service. But for now I would definitely recommend checking out paprika if you have any interest in collecting recipes in a super easy way.

Bonni [00:28:47] You go to a website that has a recipe on you click and it automatically parses out into this uniform database of paprika then so that you can know exactly how long is going to take to cook it and if you want to do things like oh it serves eight but I only want to serve four. Yes. Most of us can do that math in our head Hawera but Ill do it for you. I mean it is really really nice nice program.

Dave [00:29:08] Cool is it cool.

Dave [00:29:10] That’s very cool. And to go along with that I will do a recommendation of our grocery service. My recommendation.

Bonni [00:29:15] It’s a coincidence.

Dave [00:29:16] Coincidence. Amazon Fresh we’ve started to use which I’m not sure is available everywhere yet but it is available in Southern California where we are.

Dave [00:29:25] And yeah this I mean one challenge we have we both work full time we have two children under the age of three at home. It is. I mean I don’t want to sound like what’s I want to sound like a victim but it’s hard to sometimes like figure out how to get to the grocery store to have kids with you and all that stuff.

Dave [00:29:44] And so that’s a couple hours a week. And we’ve tried out this Amazon Fresh Delivery Service and it really has worked great so far and yeah it’s a little bit more expensive I think than buying groceries at the store.

Dave [00:29:56] And it does have a yearly charge so I think it’s what 200 dollars a year beyond the we already do Amazon Prime. So you know 200 dollars a year comes out to whatever whatever amount a month that is. I don’t know what 12 dollars 13 14. Clearly neither of us did any of the degrees in math.

Bonni [00:30:15] Try not to think about it too hard because I was so in love from the first delivery. Yeah.

Dave [00:30:20] And so but anyway I think it’s probably worth it for us when we think of the amount of time that we save. It’s been great. There they have this delivery window they show up they drop off everything they keep it in nice cooled bags.

Dave [00:30:32] And it’s really been helpful to us over the last couple of weeks I think of navigating the first part of the semester and having food here and people not needing to run around and try and make sure is enough milk in the house. And that’s really really cool.

Bonni [00:30:44] I did see this comparison of grocery store prices and it’s comparable. So we’re not paying that much more although they said you do have to watch it because just like anything on any service I’ll have some that are higher and some that are a lower price than you might see.

Bonni [00:30:58] I just clipped our first coupons too they have virtual coupons now.

Dave [00:31:02] There you go.

Bonni [00:31:02] So yes but they came up with for free which nothing in life is free. It’s just going to help us buy more groceries. But it came with this hardware device called the Amazon Dash and it’s about the size of three pound waiter searching glasses and pepper shakers a better example and just sits out on your kitchen counter.

Bonni [00:31:21] And it has a microphone so you just talk into it and say eggs bread or whatever and it goes in and adds that to this little cue on your grocery app so you can go and later on move things into your cart if you want them.

Bonni [00:31:37] Funniest thing our son was sitting at well it doesn’t sit very much. We were sitting at dinner and he had gone to the kitchen. It was awfully suspiciously quiet and I thought what is going on. And all of a sudden he pipes up. I want milk.

Bonni [00:31:52] And he’s talking to the dash and I have it recorded on Amazon about I don’t have the heart to delete it and Teigan save it does an audio file or something that is so funny even he has it figured it actually really is easy to use.

Bonni [00:32:05] I mean it’s because I set it up on the wireless network in about two and a half seconds. I mean it’s just really smart super easy to use. And I do think that yes we are paying more for the convenience of it. At the same time as home more because we tend to eat out a lot so it isn’t home more. Who knows maybe will will work out.

Dave [00:32:22] Well we’re actually pretty good at getting home on the weekends we’ll go out. But yeah it’s but it’s just the time it actually it’s been more of a time saver for me because I’m the one in room does the grocery shopping. Two to three hours a week on average is huge.In my schedule. So yeah.

Dave [00:32:38] Anyway that’s cool so try that out if you’re looking for good advice on some tools and just having fun with technology to which we always have the fun with.

Bonni [00:32:45] And even if they don’t have Amazon in your area perhaps they have a grocery delivery service that’s comparable.

Dave [00:32:50] Almost certainly they do because there’s three or four of them out there now so just do a search online for you know Amazon Fresh versus whatever and you’ll find something good.

Bonni [00:33:00] Thanks so much for listening to this episode. Number 32 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast if you’d like to go to the show notes and comment. Feel free to do so at teachinginhighered.com/32.

Bonni [00:33:12] Also always welcome your feedback in general on the show at teachinginhighered.com/feedback. As always if you have yet to subscribe to the weekly show notes and the Tetun or productivity article that comes into your inbox once a week that you can do at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe.

Bonni [00:33:31] And if you do so you will get the free Ed Tech Essentials Guide and I just want to thank Dave for being on the show again and look forward to having you back in future episodes.

Dave [00:33:41] And I love your articles by the way it’s not just a article it’s one you write every week. Pretty cool stuff.

Bonni [00:33:46] Thanks.

Dave [00:33:47] Bye.

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.