Top 10 Life Habits Podcast Episodes

I've been reflecting on all the top ten this and top ten that I've seen on blogs and the social networks toward the end of the year. That got me thinking about what the top ten Life Habits podcast episodes would be.  I had a look and aggregated the results from several of the top countries and found some pretty interesting results.  They reflect the top ten episodes being listened to right now. The list may also be interesting to you if you haven't listened to the full 67 episodes produced to date and would like to listen to ones that other listeners are particularly interested in. This list may also be of interest to people who just got a device for Christmas and want to get into podcast listening too.

So, here's the list (the numbers in parentheses indicate the episode number):

1. Types of Help (LH67)
2. Assertiveness (LH49)
3. Managing Stress (LH24)
4. Visualizing Progress (LH64)
5. 5 Lazy Ways to Get in Shape (LH66)
6. Life Lessons (LH65)
7. Stop Procrastinating (LH46)
8. Time Management (LH2)
9. Staying Positive (LH3)
10. The Power of the Mind (LH4)

Many podcasts that deal with news or technology developments are time sensitive and listeners typically only listen to the most recent episode and past episodes have very little value because they're essentially old news. In contrast, my Life Habits episodes are essentially timeless and people regularly listen to the full list of epsides. Many listeners subscribe and listen to every episode as it comes out but others selectly listen to podcast topics that specifically interest them.

The most listened to episode right now is the most recent one that I did with UK Psychologist Mandy Kloppers. In addition to being the most recent, it is a topic that I would think would be of particular interest to many of the listeners and Mandy also does a really good job of outlining the types of situations and challenges that would be appropriate for which to seek some professional help, the types of help that are available, and also what to expect and how to get the most out of the various types of professional help. Many people also have difficulty being appropriately assertive so that comes in as the second more popular episode. The session provides information on how to avoid being to unassertive but also very importantly to avoid being too aggressive too. We live in a rather stressful world so managing stress comes in at position three. Visualization of your goals and visualizing progress toward them is important and the episode on that topic came in at position four. The session with my regular guest Marie-Josée Shar on five lazy ways to get into shape is especially of interest at the moment when many people have resolved to get into better shape so this episode came in at position five. Steve Jobs's life lessons came in at the sixth position. The common challenges of procrastination, time management, and staying positive took positions seven, eight, and nine. The tenth slot was taken by my session on the power of the mind during which I describe the various biases we have and often don't know we have.  If you'd like to check out these episodes, you can do so by going to the podcast page on iTunes or the show notes site.  

Apple's Post-PC Era

I was just setting up a new iPad for a family member who wanted to use the new device she received as a gift as a stand alone device without needing to connect to a PC. Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm usually pretty positive about Apple's designs and, of course, I'm certainly not alone in that view. Apple is incredibly good at hardware design and the integration of software with its hardware. However, the company to date has had some difficulty with the design of its cloud capabilities.

Apple has recently used the term "post-PC era" as a basis for its mobile and cloud strategies and communication. Recent updates to iTunes and iOS have provided some independence of mobile devices from computers, but only partially. You can now push updates from a PC-based iTunes to an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad without using a cable but you still have to use a computer in the mix.

There are other use cases that have absolutely no support on iOS devices. The most annoying and concerning one for me is the inability to subscribe to podcasts on Apple mobile devices. You can download individual episodes but there is no way to actually subscribe within mobile iTunes. With the increasing popularity and use of mobile devices (see last blog post), the inability of podcast listeners to subscribe via mobile devices is not only inconvenient for users, it is also a major problem for those creating podcasts, like me. It is really strange that Apple hasn't provided the capability to subscribe. All it would require is to include the same "subscribe" button to the right of the podcast name and artwork on mobile iTunes as is included on the computer-based version of iTunes (see visual on the right). It was pointed out to me by a friend on Facebook that there are separate apps that provide this capability with one called Downcast that is particularly good and one that he recommends. That's a temporary fix but I still think that this missing function needs to be included in the base mobile version of iTunes. I know that it is a herculean task to develop mobile device operating systems that never need to be connected to a PC and to design that really well. However, leaving off the subscribe button seems to be a rather strange oversight on Apple's part. 

To the listeners of my podcast who may be reading this, I'd suggest that you use the iTunes on your PC to subscribe to the podcast or download an app like Downcast to essentially replace the podcast part of mobile iTunes on your iOS device. I do hope that Apple addresses this problem soon in an update to iOS so that we won't see bifurcation of the podast audience on Apple devices and also no longer have a single reliable place to determine podcast popularity and feedback.

Mobile Device Use, Activities, & Apps

We all know that the use of mobile devices is increasing but what isn't as clear is how much and what sorts of things people are doing on mobile devices. As I often do, I decided to turn to my social network and I asked my followers "what percent of your daily use of technology would you say is on mobile devices versus non-mobile?" The results were rather interesting. The mean for mobile use was 41.4 percent. That would suggest that we're approaching using mobile devices for nearly half of all our use of technology. I did notice that the range of percentages was also rather high so I checked the median which was 35 percent. That finding reinforced my suspicion that a subset of people use mobile almost exclusively.

Given the significant proportion of our technology use that is mobile, I wanted to next find out what people are doing with their devices, particularly work-related use. I then asked "what are the top three work-related things that you do on your smartphone and/or tablet?" The results are shown in the Wordle on the right with the font size indicating greater prevalence of the activity. The most frequent work-related activities carried out on mobile devices include doing email, accessing social-media services, working with the calendar, and using a web browser. The prevalence of social-media as a work-related activity may appear to some as surprising. It must be realized however that I surveyed people via social-media services so the sample may be biased in that regard but nonetheless it is also likely the case that these services are increasingly being used for work-related purposes.   

Lastly, I wanted to get a sense of what apps people use on their mobile devices and would recommend to others. In this case, I didn't restrict the question to work-related use but instead left it open to all apps. I asked "what are your favorite apps on your mobile devices that you would recommend to others?" The results are again shown using a Wordle on the right. The first observation that is immediately obvious from looking at the Wordle is the sheer diversity of apps with only a few standing out as used and recommended by many people. This perhaps shouldn't be surprising given the vast number of apps in the various app stores. It is interesting too that the most popular apps included Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pulse, Flipboard, and Google Maps. Respondents likely use the built-in apps for email, calendar, etc. so didn't report those. The vast majority of the apps they did mention are essentially apps for accessing social-media services and information aggregating services.

I didn't differentiate here between smartphone and tablet mobile devices. It may well be the case that the majority of these results are based on smartphone use predominantly and that additional types of use and types of apps would be found if we looked specifically at tablets. I plan to examine the use of tablets in a future blog post. 

Back from the Life Habits Hiatus

Life sometimes gets busy. Mine got a lot busier than my normal busy over the past while which also resulted in an unplanned hiatus from my Life Habits podcast series. The podcast is my hobby and a particularly enjoyable passion of mine. However, when things get busy, our hobbies get squeezed and this one of mine did.

A staycation during the US Thanksgiving break allowed me to get caught up. I recorded an episode titled Life Lessons which was a companion to the previous blog post on this site about Steve Jobs. The blog post focused specifically on Steve's contributions to design while the podcast episode dealt more broadly with the advice and lessons we can glean from Steve's life.

I also just completed an interview episode titled "5 Lazy Ways to Get in Shape" with Marie-Josée Shaar. She and Kathryn Britton recently published a great new book "Smarts and Stamina: The Busy Person's Guide to Optimal Health and Performance". My intereview with Marie-Josée covers a subset of the material in the book and includes advice to sleep all you need, to eat by design, to "do a mini", to not make it a big production, and to exercise on company time. I love how practical the advice is that she shares, the way she explains foundational concepts, the examples she provides, how she practices what she preaches, and how she clearly is living proof of the efficacy of the approach. Marie-Josée also knows of what she speaks in that she has a degree in Organizational Behavior from McGill University, a Master of Applied Psychology from University of Pennsylvania, and she's also certified as a Personal Trainer and is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness Consultant. 

I encourage you to check out these new episodes and let me know what you think.

Steve Jobs: Contributions to Design

Much has been said and written about Steve Jobs, particularly after his death. I haven't said much until now because it affected me rather deeply and I also wanted to reflect more comprehensively about his contributions. I have had a professional and personal interest in Steve Jobs and Apple for years. As a result, I was pretty well aware of most things that had been written on the subject which wasn't an awful lot due to Steve and in turn Apple's famous position on privacy and secrecy. However, all that changed with the publication of Walter Isaacson's authorized biography titled simply "Steve Jobs". Having read Issacson's book as soon as it came out filled in the many gaps in our understanding of the man and the company. The book chronicled the brilliant and the bizarre aspects of Steve Jobs. It also helped bring into focus and further hone my perceptions of his contributions more generally as well as his contributions to design in particular.  

First of all, Steve wasn't a designer. He was a visionary, a dreamer, a big picture thinker while at the same time being arrogant, passionate, and a fanatic about attention to detail. That's quite a combination, and one that is very rare. He would come up with brilliant new ideas, new combinations of old ideas, and old ideas made new again by doing them right. He had an eye for design and an eye for design talent. He inspired, promoted, enabled, challenged, and elevated designers and the role for design within an engineering company. After looking for design talent externally when he returned to Apple, Jobs discovered that he had an amazing designer inside the company, Jonathan Yve, typically referred to as Jony Yve. Steve promoted Jony to the position of Senior Vice President of Industrial Design and had him report directly to him. It is Jony and his team of industrial and user interface designers who are actually behind the design brilliance of Apple. 

There are many very talented designers at many companies. Those companies have produced products that those designers knew weren't the best that they could possibly be. Those designers had to compromise their designs given a variety of common constraints such as time, money, and engineering. What those designers lacked was a design champion like Steve Jobs. A design champion who would generate ideas for the designers to explore, challenge the designers to do their absolute best design work, challenge the engineers to implement designs that seemed technically impossible, drive for perfection in the design and the implementation in the product at all cost literally, and would only deliver a product when it was "insanely great". His evangelism for design permeated outside the company too into his famous product launch performances during which he expounded on the design nuances of the product.

Steve Jobs raised the bar for design at Apple and showed that an engineering company can meet that high bar. He showed that great designers can be insanely great and produce industry transforming products when inspired, championed, challenged, supported, and rewarded. Steve also, in turn, provided a lesson for all other companies who want to achieve what Apple has achieved. I think Steve's legacy will not solely be what he did at Apple but what insight he provided to all others who in turn could learn from his example and could well improve the design of everything we see and touch. Thanks Steve.