JET#2 - Old Tools, New Ways

In most of our day-to-day modern work we remain seated for extended periods of time. No matter how many alarms, pomodoro's or reminders I have going off I’ll be lucky to get up half a dozen times per day. I've never been sold on the standing desk movement, and getting a treadmill under the desk is an accident waiting to happen.

One morning over coffee I thought what if I tried to redefine the way I work. Could I possibly change up the mundane admin and general client support while getting some exercise in? What old devices do I currently own that could facilitate this change?

As I was called to another client emergency, I let this one bake until the evening when I decided to sit down over a cup of tea to brainstorm how this would look (how would it change my mornings?) Ideally, I would pop on a pair of glasses and swipe left, right, up and down like Tom Cruise from the original Minority Report. 😆But since this was an experiment I really wanted to make use of the tools that I already had at my disposal.

After a lot of pondering and scribbling, I set myself the following (3) parameters:

1. It must require movement.
2. I must respond to emails, service requests and review alerts at a minimum.
3. The process should not take longer than what it takes sitting (usually 30-90mins depending on what has come in overnight).

The below is an outline of the 3 devices I chose to go with for my AM Grind.

1. iPad 11” Pro LTE + Pencil
   1. The main input device:
      1. Listen/Respond to Emails.
      2. Skim/Respond to Clients on the Service Desk.
      3. Chat with Staff and Vendors via Microsoft Teams.
2. AirPods Pro
   1. Serves multiple purposes
      1. Primary: Voice-to-Text Input & Listening to Emails in Outlook.
      2. Secondary: Answer Calls on my Apple Watch.
3. Apple Watch LTE
   1. In case anyone is trying to call me on my mobile directly to go back to the office.
   2. Track my steps and record my fitness (close those rings of course).

The below is a representation of how I conducted my mornings using this new approach:

DAY 1 (15mins)
I popped in a single AirPod, iPad and Pencil in hand then started to walk around the block just to get comfortable with the feeling. The 1st walk round was cumbersome, I almost smashed into a streetlight pole, and another person walking. The second time around I became more confident and stuck to the left, while periodically looking up after reviewing each message to remain aware of my surroundings.

DAY 2 (25mins)
On the second day I used Outlook to read out a few emails to me, while it was OK, I found that I still needed to read other items that came through overnight from the Helpdesk and the Alerts Dashboard. My only wish was that all the data I needed to be reviewed could be listened to via the AirPods (Maybe there's a way via accessibility options, but I didn't look into it at the time).

DAY 3 (30mins)
The next day I decided to do the same thing, but this time be a bit more interactive with the iPad using the Pencil for better overall selection to review our alerts dashboards while adding very brief notes using the keyboard (or) clearing with a swipe if they didn't require any further action. 

DAY 4 (30mins)
I stopped using the onscreen keyboard and began inputting my notes via Voice to Text (V2T) and surprisingly it worked very well with just one AirPod.

DAY 5 (20mins)
On the 5th day I chose to be a bit more adventurous and use V2T to respond to client emails and helpdesk requests which worked just as well with minimal errors.

Over the following days I continued with the V2T while getting out of the office to make the boring AM tasks more fun, while also getting my steps up. Time will tell if I continue using this setup, as I would love to get down to 3 devices that I own.