PhotoCredit: BoredPanda
I fell in love with robots in 1986. Conjuring feelings that would lay dormant till WALL-E; I remember the exact moment. A moment of complete movie schmaltz. We thought all hope was lost. Our tears turn to joy. We are reunited with the possibly sentient hunk-of-junk that we thought was a goner. Number 5 is ALIVE people. Number 5 is alive!
My relationship with robots has since become a little more complicated. I grow tired of waiting for Rosie to relieve me of all my household chores. My relationship with my robo-vac(s!) has led to deep disillusionment that even the simple tasks in my life might be robo-sourced. The list of things that the 80's failed to deliver on grows ever longer. We expected flying cars, (working) hoverboards and robot friends. All we got were streets littered with scooters and iPhones. Though to be fair, one of the two I can't live without.
Rumors of their (robot) death is greatly exaggerated. They are alive and kicking inside fancy warehouses in Boston (click that link, the video is short and amazing) and anywhere Amazon has acquired real-estate. It's just we - mere peasants - can't afford them for laundry folding purposes. We can't afford that, no, but there are many ways we can use robots, AKA automation, in our life.
Yes, there was a point to this rant! Below are some of my favorite automated-ish (I took some liberties) shortcuts I use in my life. For those of you who are more advanced, please send me any I have missed. Or instead just go check out all the awesome robot drawings from the dude who drew the cover picture this week. He ROCKS.
GOOGLE: I use CHROME as my browser on all my devices and log-in to my google account on all of them. It allows many awesome features including copying on one device and pasting that copied text into another. A small feature that I use multiple times a day.
IPHONE: The Sleep|WakeUp feature allows you to set a morning alarm that then tells you what time to go to sleep to get your desired sleep quantity. Plus, the morning alarm options are epic and don't feel like someone has just slapped you across the face. I use "birdsong" for my happy morning greeting.
BOOKMARKS BAR: When I first discovered bookmarks I bookmarked everything. And of course never went back to any of the sites. I now only use the bookmarks bar for the top 10 things I need at my fingertips. I probably have links to 6-7 practical tabs and then 3 or so that I would categorize as "frivolous but necessary". It changes as I find something new and cool I want to enjoy. Right now I am enjoying CFDA.com and worldometers.info.
LASTPASS: Lastpass.com. It saves all my passwords. SecureAF.
INSTAPAPER: I think I have mentioned this before. I save all the articles I want to read here and then, as I want to keep them, log them in folders of areas of interest. It's like a new and improved way of bookmarks and has saved me a number of times when I have forgotten my source.
SUBSCRIBE AND SAVE: Coffee, Pet Food, Post It notes. Anything I need a regular supply, I hit the subscribe and save button. Sure, you can tell yourself you are making smart financial decisions but, even better, the stuff you can't live without turns up on your doorstep like magic. And always just before you run out.
TRELLO: I run my life in this. Any tool works, the point is to have one place where you store anything and everything you need to do in your life. It's bursting with power-ups too. Most I don't use but I love to know they are there for me. The kanban-ish board system is especially brilliant as you can have a series of lists and one immediate "to do this week" list. Helps guard against drowning in overwhelm!
GRAMMARLY.COM: I personally do not use this but many of my peeps love it. I much prefer to use spell check and make up my own grammar. Stop being polite, we all know this is the truth.
GOOGLE SHEETS: Mark resisted this recommendation for the first 10 years of our marriage. We are coming up on 13 years of marriage this month AND he's a solid couple of years into his love affair with google sheets. I think both relationships will be lasting. I might edge out google sheets, but only just. Other than being cloud based and easy to update from any device, it's collaboration/sharing feature is enough to make me swoon.
EXPENSES: Actually, I would love your POV on expense software. I used to use expensify but it wasn't as "smart" as it led me to believe. I now use Tiller which is excellent (syncs all banking and credit cards into one spreadsheet) and is super powerful. That's great for bookkeeping but I really want something to track my receipts that is designed for consumers.
Please do send me your favorite power-ups that automate your life. I would like to learn as, as I get enough, I will do a follow-up to this post. WIth more robot pictures.