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Google’s 99 Problems
The perception of Google might be as of a benevolent force in a world full of malevolence to a majority of its users, but over the past few years the problems have been mounting up at the doors of the Googleplex. There has been a laundry list of ongoing legal problems, there has been an employee walkout to protest sexual assault allegations by top executives, and for its continued work as a military contractor. CEO Sundar Pichai appeared before Congress in December to answer lawmakers’ questions about data privacy and company censorship. There has also been a recent dust up with Apple over a violation of Apple App Store policy.

With all these problems on the surface, it would be difficult to assume that Google, or its parent company, Alphabet, Inc. would be raking in dough. That is exactly what has happened. Google took in an astounding $39.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018. With every dollar they take in, they take in so much more data. In fact, over the past week, the scrutiny over privacy problems led Google to make the claim that changing their privacy policies--something they will most likely be expected to do--could hurt their company earnings and hinder their ability to create revenue.

So Google Tracks User Data?
Like many of the most utilized services, Google, which owns the Android mobile operating system that powers over 81 percent of all smartphones in the world, tracks data down to an individual level. They contend that they do this to be able to improve their services. The more they know about an individual, the more they know about demographics, and about society as a whole. This gives them the best opportunity to develop, build, and bring to market products and services in line with what people want.

Google has its hands in lots of pies, but its most lucrative, by far, is advertising. In fact, in 2017 Google made $110 billion in profits, $95.4 billion of which came from advertising. In order to be the best they can be at advertising, they need information about consumers (and would-be advertisers).

Google’s tracking tools are numerous.

They have the number one mobile operating system (Android), the number one Internet browser (Chrome), the number one hosted email provider (Gmail), the number one video site (YouTube), the number one search engine (Google Search), and the number one mapping application (Google Maps). This is just a small list of all of Google-owned services as hundreds of millions of people and organizations also use their cloud storage systems, their productivity applications, their virtual assistant, and their news aggregate.

Privacy with Google
With all the services you use tracking every piece of data they can, keeping yourself private with Google around might be harder than you think...or is it? You’d think that you should just be able to go into your Android OS and switch off location settings and they will keep from tracking your whereabouts or your activity. This, of course, is not the case, but there is a relatively simple way to keep your location a secret...even from Google. Throw your phone in a large body of water. If you don’t have a large body of water near you, just run it under the faucet for a couple hours (or long enough for those with that pesky IP68 certification to be proven foolhardy).

We’re just kidding of course. If you want Google to stop tracking you, you will need to find, and toggle off the “Web and App Activity” setting. With this setting turned off, Google will no longer be able to store a snapshot of where you’ve been and won’t have access to browser search metrics either.

This may be annoying to some Google users, as to their understanding once Location History is toggled off, the phone should not be able to track his/her location. Google, defending the miscommunication, stated, “Location History is a Google product that is entirely opt in, and users have the controls to edit, delete, or turn off at any time...we continue to use location to improve the Google experience when they (users) do things like perform a Google search or use Google for driving directions.”

Google’s justifications could make sense, until you consider that a feature called “Web and App Activity” needs to be disengaged in order for Google to stop tracking location, even after you tell the OS to stop tracking location. While the company has a laundry list of valuable services, they continue to try and obtain as much data as they can to drive their ad program’s effectiveness, thus profiting off of consumers’ trust.

Do you think that these major Internet companies reliance on advertising revenue is good for consumers or investors? Who really is profiting? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

How Many Emails Do You Need?
Depending on your office’s organization style, there may be a fair chance that you have to juggle multiple email addresses. You may have one that you use internally, one that’s client-facing, and one to interact with your vendors. However, we do have to address how many messages this could wind up being. You and your team are responsible for more than just checking emails, after all, so you don’t have the time to log into each email account you have in order to do so.

Fortunately, your email platform of choice will have the capability to handle each of these emails from each provider. First, we need to set some terminology straight:

Understanding Email
When we refer to an email account, we’re talking about the individual address used. For instance, if your organization has a branded email address, “” and “” are two different accounts.

An email client, on the other hand, it the program that you choose to use to read your emails, like Microsoft Outlook or Gmail. If these clients are stored on a single server, you can use them more or less interchangeably, as all of your emails will appear in each client.

However, this doesn’t help you if you have too many accounts to keep track of… at least, not without exercising the capabilities of your chosen email client.

Utilizing Multiple Inboxes
Those responsible for developing these email clients understand that there are assorted reasons that a user isn’t going to be tied to a single email account or provider. As a result, email clients are now designed to support multiple inboxes. This means that, if properly configured, a user can access one email client and check multiple email accounts, dividing them into folders (or combined into one large group, if so desired).

Utilizing Multiple Personalities in a Central Inbox
Alternatively, if you don’t mind the idea of using a single inbox to hold all of your correspondence but still want to respond with multiple addresses, you can use a different method. This method will collect all of your messages into a single inbox, while allowing you to select which email address (sometimes known as a personality) your response comes from.

First, you will need to set up an email with an address that you never give out. This mailbox will be the central catch-all. Then, you need to set all of the accounts you have in use to forward to that mailbox (ask your internal IT resource for help). Pretty simple so far, right?

However, you still aren’t quite done. After all, you want to be able to respond to these emails with the address that they were originally sent to, right? This is where the personalities we mentioned above come into play. Basically, your email client allows you to change the address that appears in the From: box to whichever email address is appropriate for that correspondence.

Adding Inboxes and Personalities to Your Email Client
Of course, each email client has a somewhat different approach to adjusting these settings:

Gmail
To set up multiple accounts in Gmail, click on the gear to access your Settings, then select the Accounts and Import tab. To add inboxes to your Gmail, you should see a section labeled Check mail from other accounts. In that section, follow the prompts given after you click Add a mail account.

To add new personalities to your Gmail account, follow the same steps to the Accounts and Import tab. Under the Send Mail As section, follow the instructions provided when you click Add another email address. You can also select this email address as the default selection from here.

Outlook
Unfortunately, we don’t have the information required to provide a walk-through for setting up Microsoft Outlook, as there are too many versions to cover here. Make sure you check the documentation provided online for what Microsoft describes as “connected accounts.” Of course, we are always available to help, so feel free to give us a call at (206) 709-9556.

What other tips would you like to learn for your most-used solutions? Let us know in the comments, and make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss anything!

The Fallacy of Multitasking
Many people believe that multitasking is the art of working on two things simultaneously. You may even be one of these people. If so, I have some bad news for you: multitasking is a myth.

Seriously, it doesn’t exist. Let’s try a brief experiment. Start fiddling with something on your desk as you read this blog:

The human brain isn’t wired to work that way, no matter what you might believe. It isn’t that men or women are better at it, or younger people are more practiced at it… it just isn’t a thing, at least, not in the way a lot of people interpret it.

When you ask someone what multitasking is, they’ll probably summarize it as some variation of “doing multiple things at once.” The problem is, science has shown that the human brain literally doesn’t work that way - it is designed to commit to a singular cognitive task at a time. What is perceived as “multitasking” is simply the brain switching from one task to another.

One of the reasons we’re so inclined to defend our multitasking habits is because we appear to see so many examples of it in real life. After all, Billy Joel made an entire career out of singing and playing the piano at the same time, didn’t he? It also feels good to multitask, quite literally. As we “multitask,” we’re likely switching between many, bite-sized tasks. Between checking email, updating social media, planning where to go for lunch, and all the other easy decisions we make everyday, there’s a release of dopamine.

This hormone is the brain’s reward for a job well done… and it wants more.

Due to this, we are spurred to continue jumping from mini-task to mini-task, and we feel like we’re accomplishing a lot (when we really aren’t). This is why social media can be so addictive, and why so many of us compulsively check our emails.

Why This Doesn’t Work
There are assorted reasons that multitasking isn’t exactly good for our productivity, or even our physical well-being.

Multitasking isn’t actually any more productive.
In fact, your tasks can ultimately wind up taking longer.

Let’s say that you need to accomplish two tasks, A and B, which take 45 minutes and 90 minutes respectively, or 135 minutes, or 2 hours and 15 minutes in total. Now, consider how these tasks would break up if we multitasked and switched between each task every 15 minutes and 30 minutes, respectively.

You get to work on task A, and then B, and then A again, switching back and forth until each task is completed. Since multitasking doesn’t make you work any faster, you still take 135 minutes to complete both tasks. Strike one against multitasking.

Now, for strike two, let’s examine how these tasks would have progressed during that time. Doing these tasks one at a time would mean that A would be done in 45 minutes and B done 90 minutes after that, totaling 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Multitasking, on the other hand, changes things. If you switch between them the way we established above, by the time the 45 minute mark rolled around, you’d have only worked on task A for 15 minutes and B for 30, meaning that each would only be one-third done in the same amount of time it would take to complete one task if focusing on it exclusively. Continuing this pattern, instead of completing A in 45 minutes, you’d be done with it by minute 105, a full hour later than it would have been finished otherwise.

Multitasking stresses us out.
Switching our trains of thought so violently is exhausting, much like most anything violent tends to be. This is largely because switching tasks in such a fashion encourages the production of cortisol in the brain, otherwise known as the stress hormone. More specifically, cortisol is the stress hormone that lingers for extended periods of time in the body, as opposed to short-term hormones like epinephrine and norepinephrine (which are what trigger the ‘fight or flight’ response). As a result, not only are we tiring out our brains, reducing our ability to handle stress, we are actively producing the hormone that produces it.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, that’s hardly the half of it:

Multitasking is actually bad for the brain.
Research has repeatedly shown that attempting to multitask could potentially be the source of assorted mental health issues, or at least have some correlation to them. For one, multitasking can greatly diminish cognitive abilities. One study demonstrated that multitasking dropped the IQ scores of adult subjects enough to bring them to the level of an eight-year-old, much like a sleepless night has been shown to do.

It gets worse - other studies have shown that there is an association between multitasking habits and a less dense area in the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. This area is responsible for a few key human functions: empathy, as well as cognitive and emotional control capabilities. While the jury is still out on whether multitasking causes this damage, or those with the lack of brain density are simply more prone to multitask, neither is a good sign for the habit.

Furthermore, in addition to one’s intelligence quotient, one’s multitasking habits have also been shown to stunt one’s EQ as well, or their emotional intelligence. EQ covers key considerations in the office environment, including awareness of oneself and social relationships. Testing the EQ levels of over a million people, emotional intelligence training firm TalentSmart found that over 90% of industry performers have high EQs.

In short, multitasking actually makes our capacity to do quality work suffer, as our stamina, cognition, and memory are all affected. Without peeking, can you remember which musical artist was referenced earlier in this blog? If you can’t, is it possible you may have been multitasking?

The Difference
The reference, by the way, was to Billy Joel’s ability to sing and play piano at the same time. However, this isn’t multitasking in his case (or in many other cases). He has simply learned to sing and play the piano as a single skill, not to sing while he plays the piano… see the difference?

Fortunately, like any habit, multitasking can eventually be broken through the adoption of better, healthier habits. These habits include:

Avoiding Free Time: Or, in other words, resisting the urge to dive into another project while you’re waiting for a response on one you’re currently working on. This may feel like a squandered opportunity to be productive, but you need to remember the example we went over above: switching back and forth restricts progress from being made on either task in a timely fashion.

This is not to say, of course, that you should sit and wait until you get a response for hours on end.

Instead, you should take the moment to run through your project and evaluate where it stands. Is it set to accomplish what it is supposed to? Once you’ve spent some time doing that, you might consider moving on to something new, but only so long as you resolve to drop it the instant your original task can resume.

Communicate With Your Team: Let’s face it, the majority of your work distractions are going to come from others within your organization, or at least other business matters. Your productivity will require you to discourage and/or ignore these distractions. Whether you communicate to your team your intentions before you begin a task or simply put on a pair of headphones (music or white noise optional) to discourage interaction, make sure you communicate that you are unavailable at the given time.

Disconnect: On a related note, try minimizing the other distractions that may come in. Email, for all its benefits, is a notorious source of distractions in the office. The best approach is to silence your email notifications if at all possible, and schedule out set times to check your inbox. If someone really needs to contact you, they’ll find another way to do so. Your mobile device works the same way: the compulsion to peek at it can be considerable.

However, each time we do, there goes our focus. Unless you’re expecting a truly urgent call, power down your phone and keep it stashed away, out of sight. You may be surprised by how much can be accomplished without the interruptions or temptations.

Getting Organized: There’s a reason that people use to-do lists: they are effective. By mapping out your goals for the day and arranging them by priority, you will be able to accomplish more - especially if you schedule brief breaks periodically throughout the day. By remaining mindful throughout your process, you will be able to better focus on what you need to accomplish, rather than the distractions around you. These habits will help you instill a predisposition to monotasking, multitasking’s more effective cousin.

As its name suggests, monotasking is the full dedication of your time to a single task until no more progress can be made on it. Monotasking enables tasks to be completed more efficiently and effectively, ultimately bringing greater progress towards your goals.

However, just because you can’t multitask, doesn’t mean your technology can’t.

Digital Seattle can help you implement solutions with automation capabilities, giving your team less to worry about and less to take their focus away from their productivity. Call us at (206) 709-9556 to learn more.