Episode transcription

(Be aware this transcription was done by AI and might contain some mistakes)

Fabrice Neuman (00:00)
The most dangerous phrase in the language is, « we've always done it this way ». This was a quote by Grace Hopper, a woman pioneer in computer science.

Hi everyone and welcome to the Human Pulse Podcast where we talk about living well with technology. I'm Fabrice Neuman a tech consultant for small businesses.

Anne Trager (00:21)
And I'm Anne Trager a human potential and performance coach.

Fabrice Neuman (00:29)
2026.

Anne Trager (00:30)
Human pulse is usually never longer than 30 minutes. So let's get started. And I'm going to start. I just want to jump in and say, I love the quote you started with. And now it makes me think about Grace Hopper. she was always bringing to the fact that we should think about how we do things. And she used to keep a clock that ran counterclockwise on her desk. So.

I thought about that when I heard that quote and I thought about how now I want to have a counterclockwise clock on my desk. And it reminds me of a story about a family that always used to cut a chunk out of their Thanksgiving turkey before roasting it because that's what they did. And then some, you know, quote, annoying, perhaps I just should just say curious, you know, early teen asked why.

Fabrice Neuman (01:03)
hehe

Heh.

Heh.

Anne Trager (01:23)
in

a big family gathering. So you can imagine, like everybody's fixing the turkey the way they've always done it and you have this annoying, curious young person saying, but why do we do it this way? Why? It doesn't make sense. Why? Why? Why? I mean, really. And as it turns out, after going around to all the different members of the family, it was the great grandmother or something who said, yeah, it's because we had a really small oven back in the day.

Fabrice Neuman (01:31)
Heh. Heh heh.

You

Anne Trager (01:54)
So anyway, I guess what you wanted to talk about today was something about challenging our assumptions and our ways of doing things.

Fabrice Neuman (02:01)
Exactly. Because so something happened to me and I need to tell you all about it. So let's say a couple of weeks ago, I had to go for a two day trip with just one night layover. Right. And that night, but just before going to bed, something happened, which was that I didn't have to charge any of my devices. And it was liberating. mean, yeah, so, you know, we go on vacation and we make sure we have all the chargers and all the different

know, wires and different types of wires because, you change the was liberating and it's one of the most interesting results of changes in my tech usage I started to implement at the beginning of this year. I found a way to.

Call it I call that the great revisiting basically I started to question the use of the devices I use every day to determine whether they're bringing me something that was either useful joyful anything, you know Just you know because to avoid this I've always done it like this. So is it useful and that led me to Keep the iPhone I would say obviously But I put my iPad on the shelf

And also ⁓ I'm not wearing my Apple watch anymore, which I was a great fan of. I also got back to using ⁓ wired earbuds.

Anne Trager (03:34)
really you using wired

earbuds? I know, I noticed that the other day and I thought like something had gone wrong, you know. It was like this little glitch. I was looking around and I saw you with wired earbuds and there was a little glitch in my thing. Because I remember pushing back on getting Bluetooth earbuds at some time. I was really feeling like I needed to convince you of it.

Fabrice Neuman (03:40)
hehe

Heh.

Yep.

Anne Trager (03:59)
I had all of my arguments and I had some about Bluetooth around my brain and others about, well, but they always fall out of my ears. And I mean, had so many arguments just because I didn't want to go there. Well, because of the charging and because there are two of them usually and I can just imagine me losing one of them every other day. then of course, I did discover something which are

the air shocks, these wonderful, beautiful bone conduction.

hearing devices. I don't know what you call that. Anyway, whatever. And I love them. And yes, they are Bluetooth. So anyway, that was the end of my struggle to stay away from Bluetooth.

Fabrice Neuman (04:35)
Well, yeah.

Yeah, so we can go further on that. So some will remember the time when at some point Apple decided to remove the audio jack on their phones and then starting pushing the AirPods, you know, so as we are now calling them true wireless.

earbuds because as you said as you described there like two small devices one for each ear that they are not Linked with any wires, right? So they're really wireless and some people Losing them for sure. I never lost an air pod. So, okay, maybe I'm just lucky in that department and I ⁓

Anne Trager (05:27)
I put anything in my ear and it just falls right out.

Fabrice Neuman (05:30)
So I do remember using the same, at least in my head, the same word, was liberating, you know, because so I was using wired earbuds before and the wire would get tangled or ⁓ blocked into some kind of, you know, the doorknobs or whatever. ⁓ it was annoying. But then so I got a pair of AirPods and they died because that's what they do after a couple of years. The battery that's very small in it.

and the AirPods they don't hold the charge very, very well up to the fact that they would only work for like 10 minutes. It was obviously not usable. So I changed for another pair, but then they started, you start questioning yourself about, okay, but these are absolutely not repairable and you have to change them. You cannot change the battery in them. And they're expensive and stuff like that.

One of the things is that also the microphone quality is pretty bad. something happened. ⁓ So since I was retrying, revisiting my use, so I took my earbuds, my wired earbuds out of the storage. the first two times I did that and used them for a phone call, two different people said the same thing to me.

before starting the conversation saying, wow, I can hear you very Basically asking what's happening. And what's happening was I was using these wire earbuds that are like 30 bucks microphone on them is very good. It's incredibly good compared to a $300 pair of AirPods. And

Anne Trager (07:16)
Yeah, yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (07:17)
Wow. then, you know, so that made me rethink about, sometimes the wires are annoying. They're not as good for, you know, exercising. It's true that having wireless earbuds, whatever the type of earbuds you use, exercising, running, whatever you do, not having a is ⁓ more comfortable. But...

⁓ There was one less thing to charge and the quality is very good. They're very cheap. know, I know how I sound. I know. So it's like, you know, going back in time, but still.

Anne Trager (07:50)
Yeah, there are so many advantages, so many advantages.

Okay,

and I also think there's a lot more to unpack with your great revisiting because it's not earbuds

Fabrice Neuman (08:09)
Yeah, yeah, so not that I want to drown you into too many details, but okay, let me explain just a bit. So I guess you agree there's no surprise about the smartphone, you know, so whichever one you use, whether it's an iPhone or not, so it's still I think the center of our digital life or even of our life basically for almost everyone, even if I still use a computer more than I use a smartphone on a day to day basis, but still obviously smartphone is a...

at the center. Okay.

Anne Trager (08:40)
I don't know,

that might be a sign of your age or something like that. don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I'm the same. I use my computer more than my smartphone. There are things that I just won't even do on my smartphone. I just bump it over to the computer.

Fabrice Neuman (08:43)
No question. Absolutely no question.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But

this is also,

I would say when you have a job, basically you're in front of a computer. Basically if you have a, you know, what you would call it, you know, you're not in a assembly line, but you're in front of a computer. So basically you still use your computer all day long. But okay, the smartphone does so many things. We don't have to list them here. But then there's the case of the iPad.

I've after you know, so I start to feel very frustrated by you know, how often I had to recharge it. You know, even though it's a pretty recent iPad, it's an iPad Air with an M2 chip. It's pretty recent and still this is one of the devices in the Apple ecosystem that hasn't changed a lot in that department. They still advertise it for you know, a 10 hour day, 10 hour use or 10 hour battery life.

which is pretty actually short compared to the new Macs that were released five, six years ago where you can go 20 hours without recharging them. And so that was my first frustration, ⁓ which was I thought I had to charge it so many times and so often. And plus this year I want to use this stylus more because I want to start writing longhand a bit more for other reasons we can discuss probably in another podcast.

But as you know, I don't like paper on a whole. So for me, writing was not on paper. It was writing with the stylus on a screen. And I discovered that I really don't like the iPad for that particular purpose either.

Anne Trager (10:35)
I never managed

to use an iPad for writing. I tried. I tried. I tried all of the covers and the pen tips and whatever, the stylus tips, sorry. And I don't know, I just gave it up.

Fabrice Neuman (10:41)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, you tried that too and you didn't like it. And so I tried, you know, the paper like screen protector, as you said, and the tips and so, that didn't work. And so I started to use the Kindle Scribe again. So the Kindle Scribe is the big version of a Kindle e-reader, which has a stylus. So, but it has an e-ink screen. So yes, it is black and white. I don't have the color.

color version yet. I'm not sure I actually want it, but you know, but the main thing as well is that so I read on it. I read Kindle books and we've been in the Kindle ecosystem for quite a while, but it also has a stylus and the feel of writing on it is excellent actually. And you can actually also change the tips on the Kindle Scribe stylus.

And I so I changed it for a felt ⁓ like tip and it's really nice to write on with it on the Kindle scribe. Plus, stylus doesn't need to be recharged at all because so to add insult to injury, the iPad has to be recharged, but the Apple pencil has to be recharged as well.

Anne Trager (11:51)
I might have to try this.

Mmm.

Yeah, true.

I remember that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (12:09)
It's

annoying. The stylus on the Kindle scribe doesn't have to be charged at all. And the device itself, the battery life, you don't count it in days, you count it in weeks. And when you only have 20 % left on your battery, it's okay for a week. And so, wow, that really changes a lot. ⁓

Anne Trager (12:28)
Nice, nice.

Well and then of course you can't do anything else. I you can read a book or you could write whatever you're writing but like you're not going to be doing your email or watching YouTube videos or checking your social media feed. I mean if you still do that, yeah. So I love the simplicity of it.

Fabrice Neuman (12:49)
God forbid.

That's very true.  And this is something that we've been discussing here for ⁓ many times, know, having ⁓ more ⁓ centered, more focused ⁓ use of devices and that helps. Plus it adds a lot of benefits and advantages as far as I'm that was it. So that was that. So in my story of my two day trip, obviously...

Kindle reader with me and so I don't even think of bringing a charger if I leave for two days or even a week for that device. so I talked about the Apple Watch, And so that was the main surprise for me because I used to love I do remember that once the one that I had broken for a few days, I didn't have a replacement and I was really missing it. know, like feeling it on my wrist.

even though I was not wearing it. as you can sometimes, you know, with a ring or something, you have this ghost feeling of having something. then something happened. So started get a longer battery life on the Apple Watch because it also has to be charged every day. And that's somewhat annoying. So...

you can convince yourself which is what I did for several years. That's okay. I charge my phone every night so I can charge my watch every night and that's fine. But then ⁓ it used to be very useful for me to have the watch to ⁓ push myself into moving more because ⁓ that's what it does. The Apple watch wants you to close the rings, your activity rings every day and so it's kind of a nice push to ⁓

move more and do more exercise. But then I realized after quite a while that actually I didn't the push with the activity ring. ⁓ So I started not to use it. I I disconnected, I deactivated data collection, if you will, which was very good for battery life, actually. If you do that, you deactivate, you disable everything that's ⁓

Anne Trager (14:39)
Mm.

Right, right.

Fabrice Neuman (14:57)
fitness related on the Apple Watch and then all of a sudden the watch can last three or four days. How, you know?

Anne Trager (14:58)
Right, right.

Yeah, it's so interesting what you're saying. Yes, about the battery life and about ⁓ how ⁓ you liked it for the fitness reminder thing for a while and then you didn't need it anymore. And I think that that's one thing about all of these tracking devices and these, you know, helping you along devices is that is useful for a while. And then if you actually build the habit of

Fabrice Neuman (15:16)
Mm-hmm.

Anne Trager (15:30)
your exercise, you don't need it anymore.

Fabrice Neuman (15:33)
For exercising, yes. I think there's still something to be said about data collection in the long run where you have a year, two years, 10 years of data and then it can start being It can detect whether there's a change in patterns for you. So all of a sudden your heart rate is getting higher when it was...

Anne Trager (15:53)
Hmm. Yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (16:00)
not before, stuff like that.

Anne Trager (16:01)
Yeah, yeah. So this is

true. This is true. And I agree with you there. if we get back to the charging kind of thing, and for those devices, you still need to charge them. And I know I stopped wearing my Oura ring when it came sort of to the nearing the end of its battery life after God knows how many years, because I couldn't make it through 24 hours. So.

you know, I'd have to charge it all the time. And so I'd wake up in the morning to look at my data, my sleep data, and it would say I didn't sleep at all because, I mean, there was no data because it ran out of battery. It ran out of battery in the middle of the night. So was so frustrating. now it just sits on a charger on my desk, but I never put it on again, you know.

Fabrice Neuman (16:35)
Because the ring was dead, not you.

No.

But so that's the thing. So all of a sudden, the Apple Watch for me was a very useful fitness tracker when I needed a little push for me to move. And then at some point it was not anymore. then data collection all the time, maybe the Apple Watch is actually not the the best device to do that.

Anne Trager (17:13)
Mm, yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (17:14)
And

I used to, so I liked the fact that I had the cellular Apple watch. it means that it meant that I could like leave the house for a couple of hours for an errand or something without taking my phone. ⁓ With still being connected to receive calls or messages. But so I didn't have to take my phone. But so I was happy for a while and then, okay, but still, so it's still two devices to charge.

And as far as the cellular Apple Watch is concerned, it's a cellular plan in addition that you have to pay for. here in France, it's five euros a month. ⁓ And still you need to manage things. I used to. So, for example, you go for an errand or you go for a jog and you can have your podcasts or your music on the watch. it's and so you have this wonderful wireless life where you have ⁓

Anne Trager (17:48)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (18:10)
what you listen to on your watch and you can listen to that with your wireless earbuds. Okay, wonderful, you don't have a wire and it's lighter, but boy boy do you have to manage devices to do that.

Anne Trager (18:22)
Yeah,

yeah, I mean there's a lot of cognitive load going on there. so it sounds like when you ⁓ reduced it to, so let's just go back to your story on your day and a half trip. You had just your phone and your Kindle and no chargers. Okay, well so how did you keep your phone on?

Fabrice Neuman (18:25)
Right? Exactly.

Yes.

Yep. Yep.

So yeah, that's a good point. It's a particular case because during those two days I drove, right? So the phone was charged and charging in the car during the trip, you know, so I had several hour drive both ways. So of course that's a particular case because at the end of the day, the phone fully charged. Maybe it was like 80%, whatever.

I knew that the next day I would be in the car anyway. So I just put the phone in playing mode. So on top of that, smartphones, in particular, but I think other phones can do that now, which is you put your phone in playing mode at 80 % at night and the next morning you're at 79. And so it doesn't lose charge when it's not connected to anything. And so...

Anne Trager (19:35)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (19:42)
And so I just took my phone and I got around my day and I left after the morning with a friend at 70 % and I was in the car and it was fine.

Anne Trager (19:54)
So it sounds like that brought you a lot of feeling of relief and freedom. mean, like, that's the way you speak about it. It was like this great liberation, you know, after the great revisiting comes the great liberation. So and I can just imagine, I mean, when we travel together, if we travel together and you did not have to think about me charging my devices, because yes, I have already had that great liberation, but I did it slightly differently.

Fabrice Neuman (20:02)
Yes. Yes.

Yes, exactly.

Anne Trager (20:23)
I just delegated to you to be the charger control person, right? So that I didn't have to think about it. And I know that's kind of cheating and it's not very fair. And not everybody has a Fabrice to delegate to, okay?

Fabrice Neuman (20:28)
Heh.

Yeah, but then are you afraid now that if I don't charge my devices that much? Yep, indeed.

Anne Trager (20:40)
Yeah, that I might have to take on some of this cognitive load myself. my,

my goodness, or just I'll forget about it. And since I don't ever look at my phone anyway, and I don't, you know, like,

Fabrice Neuman (20:54)
Now,

this thing, for example, you are using an iPad Mini. do you feel about the charging situation for that particular device?

Anne Trager (20:58)
Yes.

Well, so I have a very

particular ⁓ use of the iPad Mini is that I only ever use it to read the Kindle ⁓ app ⁓ in the evenings before I go to sleep. You know, I put it on the dark mode with, you know, the letters, backlit or whatever you call it. I don't know exactly what you call it. Yeah, white on black.

Fabrice Neuman (21:11)
Mm.

It's white on black. It's reversed mode.

Anne Trager (21:27)
And then I put my red light glasses on and then I read before I go to bed on that. So it is never connected to the Wi-Fi except when I upload a new book. And I have a little charger right next to the bed. So I don't really know how long it lasts because whenever it flashes up, battery low, well, I have a little charger and I just plug it in. But it stays right there. It doesn't move. I mean, it's a total

Fabrice Neuman (21:53)
Hmm.

Anne Trager (21:54)
It's a very weird,

Fabrice Neuman (21:55)
It's an e-reader for you.

Anne Trager (21:57)
very small usage of such a versatile device. So that's that experience.

Fabrice Neuman (22:02)
Yes.

So we'll put a link in the show notes about the e-readers and stuff like that. So I always like the e-ink screens just to say a few words about that. Because on top of that, you use a whichever device you would use reading, and let me stress again the fact that so I don't use paper, I don't like paper for reading as some people know, but the e-ink screens on e-readers are very good when you're outside.

and it's a very bright day. An iPad is not. In addition to that. All of that put together, yes, I'm freed!

Anne Trager (22:39)
Yeah, you're right. right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

⁓

Well, so it sounds like today we've really been talking about, first of all, about habits and about assumptions. And yes, habits are hard to change, which means it's hard to let go of our tech and the platforms we use and we choose to use.

Fabrice Neuman (23:00)
Yes.

Anne Trager (23:10)
So I can't help but ask, tell us a little bit more about your experience with some of these choices we've made.

Fabrice Neuman (23:18)
Well, and it seems that it's not getting better in that department either as a general thought. ⁓ We are as a family, well embedded into ⁓ the Apple ecosystem, right? so some people and me included, you you call that a so-called walled garden. So if you're inside the walled garden, it's ⁓ all great and good.

And sometimes it's also annoying because it's hard to change or hard to get out. So as far as the Apple ecosystem is concerned, I don't want to get out of it maybe yet. I don't know. But I still very much appreciate the fact that everything works together. I have several Macs I use every We have an Apple TV and with the iPhone, you can control the Apple TV with the iPhone and stuff like that. And we share data and stuff like that. It works pretty

Anne Trager (23:46)
Mm.

Fabrice Neuman (24:08)
So that's fine. The other ecosystem and we hinted at that at the beginning of this conversation is the Amazon ecosystem. We're not that much into it, but still actually we are in a way because we are Amazon Prime subscribers for basically for delivery, know, for free delivery for lots of items that we ⁓ order online. That's very convenient as we know. but then

Anne Trager (24:16)
Mm.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Fabrice Neuman (24:36)
something happened and it's more on the political side. I for one reacted pretty strongly to the news about Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. ⁓ He's not running it day to day anymore, but he's the founder of it, you know, and he's the owner of the Washington Post newspaper. And the newspaper fired a third of its workforce pretty recently and they didn't even financially help journalists working abroad to come back home. Right. They abandoned them. And I was really, really annoyed by that. And so as you remember, some point, as you and our daughter. So can we get rid of Amazon? Can we get out of Amazon? Because basically this is the only thing you can do, you know, as a message from, you know, from us, this tiny

Anne Trager (25:25)
Yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (25:31)
very tiny portion of Amazon's revenues. And so we talked about it and you'll tell us your first reaction, but basically it's hard because first of all, Amazon services are very good. Why did we go there in the first place? this is probably, and it is to the detriment of other companies and stores and what have you, but it's very good.

Anne Trager (25:45)
Yeah.

Fabrice Neuman (25:57)
It's ⁓ more often than not less expensive. The delivery services are incredibly good. In addition, you get prime video So and we are in the Kindle ecosystem. So that's Amazon too. This is what we.

to at the beginning of this conversation. So it would be very hard to get out of it and it's annoying in a way.

Anne Trager (26:17)
Yeah, yeah. Well, so it's a really big topic that you're bringing up. Because we do try to keep within a timeframe, ⁓ I don't think we'll go very deep into it. But I think there are actually more than one topic here. First of all, there's how embedded these services are in our lives. That's one aspect of it.

Fabrice Neuman (26:42)
Hmm?

Anne Trager (26:44)
There's another one which is also how sometimes we need a slap in the face in this case related to deep principles and values that you hold in order to question and to bring awareness to what we are doing. why else would you ask us, you know, come home and say, hey, are we sure about what we're doing with Amazon? I mean, maybe we should be asking that question more often, you know, and we don't.

Earlier you said you were questioning your devices and whether they were bringing you something that was either useful or joyful or anything at all. now you're adding a deeper question which is, and where do my values stand in this choice? And this is where intentional use, which we've talked about frequently and you're just adding another layer onto it, is it bringing joy and is this aligned?

with the values that I stand It's a complicated question. It's a complicated If there is even an answer to that. intentional use can also be uncomfortable use, or it could be no use at all. And maybe it'll change day to So thanks for bringing that up.

Fabrice Neuman (27:44)
Hmph.

Yeah.

So yeah,

so that's the thing. I think questioning what we use just by habit is a good habit to have, to question your habits. And I also know that it's my trait to change, you know, because when I get to something on my computer, it's all well organized, I have all the services that work. And then all of a sudden, yeah, but what if I could do something different, right? So...

Anne Trager (28:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, I know. And then all of the services do not only not work for you, they do not work for me.

Fabrice Neuman (28:26)
That's exactly right. So I have this family responsibility to make sure that everything works. so we are, for example, I am questioning the use of a particular password manager. And so we have to talk about that. But that will be for another time. Exactly.

Anne Trager (28:40)
Yes, I don't think we want to do that out loud right here right now. Okay, thank you everyone. I think that's it for episode 32. Thank you all for joining us. Please do visit links and past episodes.

Fabrice Neuman (28:59)
And thank you for subscribing and reviewing wherever you listen to our podcasts. That helps other people find us. You can also share it with one person around you.

Anne Trager (29:08)
We'd be most grateful and see you in more or less two weeks.

Fabrice Neuman (29:12)
Bye everyone.