Taking a Break from Technology

Episode Notes

Transcript

The Kennedy-Mighell Report

Taking a Break from Technology

08/04/2016

Intro: Web 2.0, Innovation, Trend, Collaboration, Software… Got the world turning as fast as it can, hear how technology can help, legally speaking with two of the top legal technology experts, authors and lawyers, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Welcome to The Kenney-Mighell Report, here on the Legal Talk Network.

Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode 173 of The Kenney-Mighell Report. I am Dennis Kennedy in St. Louis.

Tom Mighell: And I am Tom Mighell in Dallas.

Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode we jumped into the current conversation and discussion about Artificial Intelligence and whether AI can actually replace lawyers, and then we delve into the impact of machine learning on lawyers, some really interesting ideas on that episode, but I got to say, Tom, at the end of that episode our heads were spinning and that point introduced to our topic for today. “Do breaks from technology help us?” Tom, what’s on our agenda for this episode?

Tom Mighell: Well, Dennis, in this edition of The Kenney-Mighell Report, we are going to be talking about whether taking a technology break is a good thing, and if so, what that might look like?

In our second segment, we are going to ask whether it’s time to let apps and websites track us even more than they do now, and as usual, we are going to finish up with our parting shots that one tip website or observation that you can start to use, the second that this podcast is over. But first we want to talk about a topic that might seem I guess a bit unusual, given that this is a technology podcast, and that’s taking a vacation from technology.

I am going to have some very probably different opinions from you, Dennis, again on this particular podcast, but I’ll ask you, what got you thinking about taking a technology vacation?

Dennis Kennedy: Well, Tom, both of us were recently on vacation and so being away made me think a little bit differently about technology and I sort of have the old-school approach to social media. I don’t like to let people know when I am not at home. So I tend not to post a lot and if I do, I sort of post ambiguously when I am out of town on social media, so that sort of changed the way I normally use technology, and then we had a big storm here and we were without power for a couple of days and then it came back up and it would blink on and off every now and then. And so, that also kind of forced me into a non-technology kind of space for a little bit.

So both of those things got me thinking and then this is the time of year where you usually see an article or 2 or 10 of people saying that they’ve taken some time off technology and they have had this revelation that we are actually humans and that you can talk to people and they make that seem like that’s some sort of big discovery about technology. So I thought it was a — all those things sort of made me feel it’s time to kind of rethink technology and maybe take a step back and say, does it make sense in a sort of controlled fashion to take a little break from technology?

Tom Mighell: I had some of the similar issues that you had on vacation. Well, I mean – maybe I didn’t have these issues. You and I and we are going to talk in the B segment the issue about being tracked, and I am going to ask you specifically pointed question about your social media use when you’re traveling. But let’s say that for the B session, traveling for me with technology I find that there are parts of it that I can and happily do without, but there are parts of it that I don’t want to do without.

I will say though that using technology can be a challenge. We landed at the airport, in the very small airport on the West Coast of Canada and I was immediately panicked because I had no signal on my phone and that’s — if you see in the commercial where people without Internet, I literally had that moment of panic and that’s something that I can probably get used to, but I think as we talk more-and-more about this, I’m going to stand for the position that taking a break from technology doesn’t always solve whatever issue you’re trying to solve, and that maybe there’s a better way to deal with technology that gets you the benefits but also gets you the benefits of the technology.

So maybe I want to ask Dennis, how are you defining taking a break? Do you mean it calling it cold turkey, do you mean no tech for a while, do you mean no social media for a while, are we just going to look at one thing? But for purposes of framing this conversation in this podcast, how do you define taking a break or taking a vacation from technology?

Dennis Kennedy: Well, I think this will work toward, and so I mean, Tom, you and I are technology people so the idea of taking a total break from technology seems ridiculous to me, but phrasing back a little bit, so sort of two things that I was thinking about that in the last episode we were talking about machine learning and maybe trying a little bit on our own and stuff. It’s to realize like, wow, there is a lot of stuff going on and I can’t really do it all, and I need to be smart about how I do this.

(00:05:08)

So I think one sense of taking a break from technology is saying, can I step back in a way so I am not overwhelmed and I become simpler in my approach to technology and maybe build in some gaps and some spaces in what I do and not try to do everything.

And then the other thing is, I think there is a need to be kind of smart about what you’re doing because like I mentioned it seems like every year there are these articles about somebody who takes 30 days off social media and decides that you can actually talk to humans and have dinner with your family and stuff like that. And it’s just a boring sub genre that I really hate, I really hate those articles because you can do all those things and use technology to enhance those situations. So usually they are written by somebody who hates technology and this is the way to pat themselves on the back for taking a break.

So I think that total break doesn’t necessarily make sense. I mean, I can see a thing where you do in your retreat and you just kind of step back, but I don’t know like you were saying, Tom, that you actually want to be in a place where people can’t reach you on your smartphone or you can’t find where you’re going, those sorts of things. But I think the idea of turning off a little bit, slimming down, those sort of things and saying, oh, for a structured period of time I am going to vastly simplify and see what benefit that might bring as how I think of taking a break. So it’s a limited formal break, but definitely, I don’t really see it’s possible these days to do a total break.

Tom Mighell: Well, and I agree, and so maybe we’d actually do agree in this podcast.

Dennis Kennedy: We never disagree.

Tom Mighell: I know and that’s what people complain about. I was trying to find a point of contention and it looks like I’m not going to be successful this time. I mean, I think — I think what you boil down to is that I don’t think I ever want take a complete break from technology, it’s too helpful to supplement what I do. So if we take the example of just going on vacation and I know that some people they say, I am going to completely unplug, I am going to turn off my phone, I am not going to bring a laptop with me, I am going to completely unplug and just be a human being.

Well, I appreciate that, but there’s too many things that technology does that can help me enjoy my vacation more. It can provide me the map and the walking directions if I want to go sightseeing and see something. It can help me learn more about where I happen to be and provide those resources.

Okay, don’t force me to read a paper book because I just don’t read paper books anymore. It can help me read a book when I just want to relax and sit somewhere and not do anything.

And so, I think that taking a break thing, the people who are off social media forever I think that’s a false argument.

Yeah, I think you’re right. I think those are individuals who have a different issue and I think that the real issue is learning how to do without or to minimize or reduce the amount of technology that you have. And one resource that I really like and I sometimes think about taking a break from technology as reducing the amount of information overload that you have, because that’s one of the implications of technology and I think I’ve mentioned on this podcast before, I have mentioned it to a lot of people, I am a big fan of the Note to Self podcast on WNYC, and for a period of time, a couple of months ago they had a series that they called Infomagical, which was designed to help you make information overload disappear and had a bunch of exercises that they challenge you to try.

And one exercise was no multitasking for a day, just focus on one thing, don’t try to multitask. One was, tidy up your phone and get rid of the junk in the apps that you don’t need on that. I am a big fan of that. One was consume only the news and content that’s valuable to you and don’t follow every single story that you see on websites or on social media or wherever. One was, discuss something with someone for at least seven minutes, which I am really scared and it bothers me that there is that lack of communication with people, but I don’t know if I even want to try one of these infomagical, they are vaguely interesting to me but I’m at least intrigued enough to think that these are ways that people can find to disconnect in a certain way or to reduce the amount of reliance that they have on technology. So I think that’s not entirely a bad thing.

Dennis Kennedy: And I think there actually is a point to taking a break from — when you feel so overwhelmed by technology and try to learn new things I might kind of go back to our typical notion when we look at technologies is there is a sense, and I know this is a bad word because it’s tax connotations, but there is a sense of doing an audit is a great starting point. So I like to just kind of — and I did this a little bit of kind of add up all the technology that you do, and the sort of things that you routinely do, social media, email, those sorts of things and just figure out how much time you are spending on all of that technology.

(00:10:09)

There is a great podcast by a guy, Michael Hyatt, and he was talking about ways to simplify your life and one of the things he said is, when you look at all the things you are doing, can you step back and say, is this really sustainable? Is it sustainable that I can keep doing a blog-post everyday, I can do all this Twitter thing, I can spend a half hour here, I can do all these different things, is that sustainable over the long run?

And then as you start to look at that — answer that question I think that can point to some ways where you say, well, maybe I am trying to do some stuff in technology that doesn’t make sense that definitely is not sustainable over the long run, or gets in the way of the things I really might want to do using technology. So I thought that was a useful thought and that’s a good podcast I think for people to listen to, because there are a lot of good ideas there on how to slim down your life.

And Tom, I will of course task you with chasing me down to find a link that we can put on the show notes to that podcast, but I think that is this sustainable is one good way to start looking at taking a break from technology.

Tom Mighell: Well, I need to go and find that link because I saw your note about his podcast in the show notes and I am — or in our script for our podcast and it made me — I was curious so I went to go look at his podcast; I have now subscribed, because I want to listen more.

I will say though that, and to be honest, I can’t find the one that you were just talking about, so I need to come back to you and figure out which one that is. But I did find one that I thought was interesting, because I initially thought the one that said, how to take the perfect vacation and I thought, oh, that’s the one Dennis must be talking about, because it’s a vacation. Maybe it includes a vacation from technology.

I will say that I don’t, and maybe I am heading down a rabbit hole here, but I don’t agree with every single thing that he says, because one of his recommendations is to basically delete every single email that you get while you are on vacation, to set an out of office message to everyone, including your clients, which really, really bugs me in certain way that says, I am on vacation, I am going to be deleting all of my email, it is going to be copied to my assistant, who is going to help, if she can. Otherwise, if this is really important then please email me back after the date that I get back.

And that’s a kind of break from technology that I really have a problem with, because it really gets in the way of good relationships with your clients, because you never know how a client is going to react to that, and I think that there are instances in which a break from technology could perhaps be harmful to your career, depending on how you handle it and the types of clients you have and the type of people that you have.

It’s kind of like to me declaring email bankruptcy, let’s just get rid of all my email and start over because I have got too much, I think that’s a cop-out. There’s clearly smarter ways to deal with those issues. There are smarter ways to deal with the avalanche of email that you have when you come back from vacation. I just don’t know that that’s the answer, and I am sorry for that rant in the middle of this discussion, so I will kind of turn it back over to our regular scheduled program.

But to me, I don’t view that as an effective break from technology, because I think that that brings up different issues.

Dennis Kennedy: Well, I think that the part that is something I did on my recent vacation, which was that I definitely had backup on work projects, which is a great thing. So I knew that if something really important came up, my backup person was somebody who was going to show me that they would handle it on their own, which is also a really great thing.

But I also knew that if there was something really big I was going to get a phone call from one of three people, and that if they really need me they would call me and it wouldn’t be an email. So I basically could get away with not looking at email while I was on vacation, because the backup systems were in place.

So I think that that allowed me to really leverage a vacation that I felt I really needed and needed to have some downtime by kind of pulling back from the technology that’s sort of most impressive, which is email. So there are different ways to handle that.

So I think as you start to look at taking a break, you can again look at the components of the technology. And then I just look at it as when you are taking a vacation you are overwhelmed, you know you just can’t keep going the same way and so the email is one place you can take a break, social media, posting, listening to podcast, all those sorts of things you can say, I can for some period of time cut that back and see if that takes a little bit of the pressure and stress I feel about technology or I can say I’ll cutback on these things and learn something new.

(00:15:00)

I have a question I wrote here in the script time, which says, I know that both of us have kind of slowed down our blog posting, and I am wondering if our blog slowdowns are kind of an example of taking a little break from technology as we take our writing and other energies in some different ways.

Tom Mighell: So I am going to answer your question and then I go back real quick to that email issue because it’s still stuck with me. My answer to your question is that my blog slowdown is not a break from technology, it’s a break from writing.

For me, the time-consuming nature is coming up with the content and really taken the time to write something thoughtful and that has my brain flummoxed sometimes is that I just don’t want to sit down and commit to the writing stuff.

The technology, I can deal with. In fact, sometimes dealing with the technology is the most industry part for me. I may be different in that regard.

Let step back though. I know this is going down another route, but hold on, let me do it one more time and say that you dealt with your email in that way, but when you came back from your vacation all that email that you didn’t pay attention to is sitting there, and you’ve got to deal with it at that point in time.

And so, the way that I dealt with it, I did not take as much of a technology break, but one of the things that I really like about our new apps for iPad and for the mobile phones is that my Outlook app gives me the ability to swipe through my email and either delete something I don’t need or marked as read email that I need to deal with later.

And so, my practice when I was on vacation, granted, I’m not unplugged and I’m making that admission upfront. Morning and evening I would go through my Inbox, I would swipe left or right with each email. I would either delete it, because I knew I didn’t need it. If it was going to be handled, if I still needed to deal with it I would mark it as Read, and that literally took me — I don’t know a minute, two minutes, and that was it. If it was something important I knew that somebody was going to handle it or call me otherwise.

And by the time I got back from vacation it literally took me 30 minutes to process all the email that had been waiting for me all that time just because I took a minute or two during that time, and so, for me, it’s finding the balance. It’s saying, here’s the amount of technology that I can handle to make it easier for me later on, because otherwise I just don’t know that I like that offset there.

So again, I will shut up and I will let you take the lead again on where we head with this, but that’s where I — maybe we do disagree is that I tend to think that there is that balance that you have to find and for me, for me personally, the balance tends to be with using technology probably more often than more people would want to do.

Dennis Kennedy: Well, I would say is that you and others I think would get this tremendous – you’ve got this great insight which was that by spending a few minutes in the morning or in the evening that you are able to basically stay on top of email.

Tom Mighell: Correct.

Dennis Kennedy: So nothing was really bothering you, and that habit could actually extend to when you went back to work and say, instead of answering, looking at every emails that comes in, which is sort of the great killer of productivity is, if I look at email —

Tom Mighell: Batches.

Dennis Kennedy: First thing in morning and then I batch it again in the afternoon, then it’s not dominating my day. So I think that by taking that little break you can say, oh, here’s something I can do different.

So I guess, Tom, I wanted to talk about like, so if you actually decide to take a break, I am thinking what might that look like, and so for me, I sort of think that the whole going tech free for 30 days or 6 months or whatever doesn’t really make sense to me, especially if you’re working.

So I look at the break, it’s something to be limited or focused and a short term, so it’s doable, a day, couple days a week in connection with the vacation. I think you can target things like I know Tom, you and I both probably know friends of ours who — for them and probably for us as well it would be nice if they took a week or two break from replying to every single political issue out there and argue with everybody who disagrees with them, and who think their life would probably be a lot easier and a lot better.

So I think that sort of short-term, limited focus and then saying, what’s the purpose of this break? Like, what’s overwhelming me and what am I taking a break from and what can I learn from it? Because I think that email lesson that you kind of learn, Tom, is something that other people could do and can carry over to their everyday work later.

Tom Mighell: Right, and I think you’re right, and frankly, if I had to take a break from something it would be from something like Facebook or Twitter, and I think it’s because it’s not that technology overwhelms me, it’s that the messages and granted we are in an election year, but frankly these days every year is an election year, and it has the potential to get me worked up to the extent that I want to say something, but I know that either, one, it will make no difference; or two, it will make me just angrier.

(00:20:06)

And so I think that if I really took a break, it might be a break from all of that, but what I lose on Facebook is I lose learning about what my other friends are up to, the ones who don’t care about politics or the ones who are talking about what’s going on in their lives.

I really like the ideas from Infomagical, and I think they are very similar to what you are talking about in that, no multi-tasking for today, just spend today working on one task at a time, finish that task and move on to the next one and focus on that.

Or my biggest issue I think is that I like to keep informed. So I am always catching up on the news, whether it’s reading my RSS feeds or reading Twitter or other sources, I am always wanting to see the news, but sometimes I get chased down rabbit holes or I look down things that I don’t really want.

So if I focused only on stories that mattered to me and stories that I was interested in, maybe I would find that I wasn’t spending as much time getting that kind of information during the day. So I like that idea of finding that one area that really is a problem, that takes up the time or that gives you the most aggravation and find a way to make it more manageable, just for a short period of time, even a day, I think, is a useful exercise to see if that makes a difference in your life.

Dennis Kennedy: Well, and especially if you understand what it is that’s bothering you or overwhelming you. So the example I have recently is I have seen or heard a number of people complain about LinkedIn and how they hate LinkedIn and they are going to quit LinkedIn because they get all these emails, and I just want to go like, dude, it’s just setting, just go into Setting and then change the email alerts and then you go to LinkedIn whenever you want, you are totally in control of it, like you are complaining about an issue that would take you like 15 seconds to take care of.

And so I think if you take the break and then you say, hey, maybe there are these tools built-in there, I can do Facebook groups, I can do these other things that maybe you would make this stuff more manageable. I could go through and the thing I do is you may — you can mark things to like see less of a certain type of thing or to block certain political or other things that you want to do without Unfriending people. So there are ways you can kind of help things.

So part of the break I would say, well, what I can do that’s productive.

And then also, time to wrap up, I think what I like about this notion of taking a break is what I liked about going on vacation is it gives you this chance to come back refreshed, to demonstrate to yourself that you don’t have to be in everything all the time, that the world of social media and everything goes on just fine without you, and I think it has potentially the same benefits of any vacation.

And you can using technology still talk to people, still be out in nature, do all those sorts of things, technology doesn’t take that away from you. So it’s just to help you get the right balance.

Tom Mighell: Okay. So again, we agree. Before we move on to our next segment, let’s take a quick break for a message from our sponsor.

Advertiser: Looking for a process server you can trust, Serve-Now.com is a nationwide network of local, prescreened process servers. ServeNow works with the most professional process servers in the industry, connecting your firm with process servers who embrace technology, have experience with high volume serves, and understand the litigation process and rules of properly effectuating service. Find a prescreened process server today. Visit  HYPERLINK “www.serve-now.com” www.serve-now.com.

Tom Mighell: And now let’s get back to The Kennedy-Mighell Report. I am Tom Mighell.

Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy. And I looking at the script realized I have a shockingly long introduction here, so Tom, stay with me here.

I really like Kevin Kelly’s new book called the ‘The Inevitable’, which is about 12 aspects of technology that he calls inevitable in the sense that they will occur no matter what we do or don’t do. So these are sort of big technology themes. I think it’s required reading these days for anybody interested in technology.

So, one of his 12 inevitabilities is tracking. So he says anything these days that can be tracked will be tracked. And that made me think, because I think it is right, so the fact that tracking — that we are being tracked won’t change, but how we deal with tracking is what matters.

So there is closed-circuit TV, fitness trackers, location trackers, all sorts of things. So I am usually really hesitant about enabling tracking say for fitness and a few other things. And on my recent vacation I observed that not enabling location had what I thought was a negative impact on search results and app performance.

(00:25:00)

So Tom, you were an early Foursquare user and I see you check in at restaurants and other locations on a regular basis. Should I accept that tracking is inevitable and from now on just start to enable much more tracking of myself?

Tom Mighell: So this is where I promised to ask a question to you that you brought up in the first segment and that is, that you don’t post on social media where you are, especially when you are on vacation. And so, here’s the question, I remember the days when Twitter was relatively new and everybody was checking — like when I would check in, it would automatically post to Twitter that I am at so and so, and there was a service that was gathering all of these tweets where people said, I am checked in here and I have checked in there, and they named the site Please Rob Me, because it was basically you announcing to the world because your Twitter feed was public for the most part, you announcing to the world that you were not at home.

But I will ask, I have been able or I have decided to limit whatever check-ins I have to my close network of friends on Facebook. The app that I use to check things in is limited to maybe 20 people or less, and I guess it’s shame on me if the service is giving that information to other people, and that’s a problem. Shame on me if I friend people who are going to rob me. But I guess my question back to you is, is that if you limit yourself to that, what’s the concern, is there still a concern there about being tracked when you are out of town or is there something I am missing?

Dennis Kennedy: Well, I think that’s really Kevin Kelly’s point is that if this tracking is going to happen, so I look and I go, oh, my Apple Watch is doing all sorts of tracking. Somebody showed me something the other day, I had no idea, that was tracking in the health apps and it was interesting to me.

But I think to the extent that we are able to kind of set the framework for and to set the control, so I think that, as you say, you are okay with check in as long as it’s going out to your friends, who like to know what restaurants you go to and things like that. You are less so if you say, it’s going to a group of organized crime members or kidnappers or whatever you happen to be afraid of, and there could be other things.

But I think the issue is more control, and to say, okay, this tracking is going to happen, and it’s going to happen more and more in ways, just because by the nature of technology it’s so easy to track things. And the benefits of tracking will become greater and greater, or at least we hope, especially in the health area.

And I really noticed, like I said that, Google searches and other things, I feel that it’s not as good for me because I don’t allow it to have certain information and I don’t do that sort of tracking. So the recommendations can’t be as good, other things don’t — alerts don’t come to me in certain ways, so I am not as personalized.

So I think as we go to augmented reality, virtual reality, those sorts of things, that tracking and what people can do with that for you is going to be really a great thing and you need to kind of keep up with it to kind of be in the world in ways that other people are.

So I think the issue becomes like what’s the contract, what’s the social contract, what kind of control do we have? Can we have like a slider that will say, on the basis of privacy, not privacy, tracking versus not racking, we can kind of move it to the place that we are most comfortable with.

And that’s appealing to me, although I know that Kevin Kelly has said that when you kind of pose that to people the tendency — most people do is to push the slider to say track everything, which doesn’t feel right to me, but I can see over time the benefits could come that way.

So I think it’s a fascinating issue and I guess I am hearing myself say, I need to enable more tracking, but I don’t know, Tom, are you ready to kind of open up even more, or are you sort of comfortable where you are with being tracked?

Tom Mighell: Well, I mean, I think that inevitability doesn’t mean you have to give yourself over to it. I think that the control — the fact that we do have control to a certain extent is a good thing, and if you don’t like being tracked, then do your best to limit that, and I know a lot of people who do that. I know a lot of people who aren’t even remotely on social media because they felt like it’s tracking.

I will tell you, one of the worst examples of tracking that I have seen lately is the fact that I can do a search on Google and search for something — for a technology tool that I want to get or some other thing that I want to do, and I will then go on to Facebook and there’s an ad in Facebook for the exact thing that I was just searching for. And I don’t know how that information got to Facebook from Google, and I don’t know that I want to know that, but that’s an issue, that seems invasive to me. I would love to control that a little bit more, but then again, it doesn’t seem like I am giving any personal information away; it just feels like they know what I am doing.

(00:30:00)

Now, on the other hand, take a look at Google. Google now has a hub that’s called My Account, where you can see every single thing that Google knows about you, every single thing that you have done, your entire search history is right there, all of the voice commands that you have given to Google; okay, Google, do that, it will come up.

So on the one hand this shows that Google is tracking a heck of a lot of stuff about you, but on the other hand they are also being completely transparent about it, they are not hiding anything, and so you can make the decision on what’s too much and where to dial it down and where to control it.

And so my personal approach is that I don’t mind being tracked when I have that sense of comfort, when I have that sense of control, and I am able to limit it to beyond what I think is reasonable. And if my confidence in that ever changes I like the fact, and I hope that continues, I like the fact that I can reevaluate that and change that level of control, but I think that it’s good that I have that option one way or the other.

Dennis Kennedy: The thing about the Facebook ads you were mentioning, there is actually a setting that you can change in that, but I have forgotten how to do it.

Tom Mighell: Yeah, I know, it’s in there somewhere.

Dennis Kennedy: So I have to look it up, maybe we can put that into a parting shot in a future episode.

But it is time for our Parting Shots, that one tip, website, or observation you can use the second this podcast ends. Tom, take it away.

Tom Mighell: So a lot of my Mac friends this past week have been overjoyed at the release of Scrivener for iPads. Scrivener is a writing app that is available both on Mac and on Windows. It’s the app that I use — the application I use to write all of my iPad books, because it makes writing long documents, books; I know people use it to write screenplays, but if you have to do a lot of research for something, it’s a great way to organize in kind of a Cork Board format and put it on cards and then organize those cards together and then put everything together into a manuscript.

For a long time those who wanted to be able to write on the iPad as well as on their Mac or Windows computer have been bereft, have been sad, but that sadness is there no longer, the iPad app is out, and from all initial accounts it is a great app.

So if you are not using Scrivener, I encourage you to take a look at it. It’s a great writing tool. If you are already using it for Mac or Windows, you can now use it on your iPad.

Dennis Kennedy: Worth mentioning, I think it comes for the shockingly high price of $19, so keep that in mind.

Tom Mighell: So it’s a crazy expensive.

Dennis Kennedy: So my parting shot is something I am going to be working on, so I live in a suburb of St. Louis that’s known as like Tree City USA or something like that, probably one of hundreds or thousands of cities with that nickname. Well, what that means is when big storms go through trees fall and electricity goes out, and so three days without power and then a little intermittent power, and this happens on a more regular basis than I would like, but I like the trees too, so it’s a tradeoff.

So I am thinking about putting together what I call the Power Vultures Toolkit, so just kind of putting together all these things in one place that are useful to me. I mean, not just flashlights, but in those situations you are going to be at places where you need power these days, especially for your phone, so extension cords, spare batteries; I am even looking at solar chargers as a way to do it, extra adapters and just kind of having everything in one place as like — I am thinking of calling it, as I said, the Power Vultures Toolkit, but basically how can I do charging when I happen to be at a place where I am around power, where the main place that I am at I don’t have power and then how do I conserve power. So one of my little projects for the summer.

Tom Mighell: Wow! So that wraps it up for this edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. You can find show notes for this episode at  HYPERLINK “http://www.tkmreport.com” tkmreport.com.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or on the Legal Talk Network site, where you can find archives of all of our previous podcasts.

If you would like to get in touch with us, please email us at  HYPERLINK “http://[email protected]” http://[email protected] or send us a tweet. I am @TomMighell and Dennis is @denniskennedy. So until the next podcast, I am Tom Mighell.

Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy, and you have been listening to The Kennedy-Mighell Report, a Podcast on Legal Technology with an Internet focus. Help us out by telling a couple of your friends and colleagues about the podcast.

Outro: Thanks for listening to The Kennedy-Mighell Report. Check out Dennis and Tom’s book, ‘The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together’ from ABA Books or Amazon, and join us every other week for another edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, only on the Legal Talk Network.