Second Brain Project: Updates and Branching Brainwaves

Episode Notes

Transcript

Dennis Kennedy:  Before we get started, we’d like to thank our sponsors, Clio, 00:05 Company and Posh Virtual Receptionist.

[Music]

Intro:  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 Kennedy-Mile Report here on the LegalTalk Network.

Dennis Kennedy:  And welcome to Episode 311 of the Kennedy-Mile Report.  I’m Dennis Kennedy in Ann Arbor.

Tom Mighell:  And I’m Tom Mighell in Dallas.

Dennis Kennedy:  In our last episode, we shared some learnings about asynchronous and synchronous approaches and their role in collaboration, as we near the publication of the new Work from Home edition of our Collaboration Tools and Technologies book, which you can expect in summer.  In this episode, we want to revisit our Second Brain Projects and share our progress, learnings and challenges.  Tom, what’s all in our agenda for this episode?

Tom Mighell:  Well, Dennis in this Edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report, we will indeed be revisiting and giving our latest update on our Second Brain Projects.  If you want to learn more about what we’ve been doing to create and build our Second Brains, head over to the LegalTalk Network archives for this show.  We’ve done a lot of episodes on it, so there’s a lot of content there for you to listen to.  In our second segment, we’re going to ask the question, is it possible to have a monitor that is too big?  And as usual, finish up with our parting shots that one tip website, our observation that you can start to use the second that this podcast is over.  But first up, our Second Brain project.  Or probably better said, our Second Brain Projects because we’re finding and we’re realizing that we have somewhat different priorities and approaches to how we’re getting things set up.  Or maybe perhaps put more accurately, some of us have had more time to work on their Second Brain than others.  I know that I will also want to talk about knowledge management topics in general because some of you may not be all in on Notions.  Some of you may be looking at other things.  So I have some resources for you that I think will be useful.  But since we’re both using Notion as our respective Second Brains, we’ll probably be focusing on that as the tool with some general concepts and how it can be used during the segment.  So, Dennis, why don’t you start out why do you keep telling me that your Second Brain Project has been one of your biggest technology wins ever?

Dennis Kennedy:  Well, because that’s what I really think.  It’s really interesting.  I mean, I like the fact that you and I had this idea for the Second Brain project, and we started with a blank sheet of paper, basically, and we figured out what we needed the job to be done, what tools we want to use.  And I’m a little bit surprised because, you see how personal this type of project is that we landed on the same platform, which is Notion, and there are some similarities, but we’re starting to diverge as we go.  So what I’m pleased with is finding the tool, how I’ve gravitated to it, how it’s made sense to me.  I see the potential and how Notion fits me.  And as I’ve started to build the Second Brain, I’ve really incorporated it so much into what I’m doing, and I use it on a daily basis, and I just keep adding more to it.  And I want to learn more and more about Notion to the point where I’m probably going to invest in a class in Notion to get even better.  But now it just — I feel like I have an actual project where I say, here’s a roadmap and here’s a new set of features I’m adding to it, but I think it’s the dailiness of it and how great it is as a platform that allows me to do the things that I want to do.  So overall progress report, I’m like, really pleased and continuing to make steady progress and looking forward to what’s coming next.  So I’m bullish on what I’ve done.  So I’ll turn it over to you, Tom, because I think maybe I’ve gotten a little bit ahead of you in this race to the Second Brain.

Tom Mighell:  Well, before we talk about what I’ve done, talk about some of the things that you focused on initially that I can then bounce off kind of what I’ve been working on.

Dennis Kennedy:  So once I got the whole concept of this simple databases with sort of these underlying basic data sets that I pulled views of what’s called views in Notion.

(00:05:01)

So I could say I want to show these things and I want to sort them in this order and do these things.  And then I was able to create things, so I have a dashboard where I see the stuff that’s important to me that pulls from four underlying databases.  I have a daily reflections spot. I have a daily habit tracker on certain projects.  I’ve organized things in the Sprints and OKRs and I have a reference notebook in a place that I keep notes to myself.  So they’re all in one place.  And so I sort of — some of these things have I like to do more with them, but I’m just like, really, I think I have the right buckets and they work together in a way I want.  And I think this dashboard Notion of linking to databases and pulling onto a dashboard screen has been really interesting and has kind of powered my progress.

Tom Mighell:  So I wanted you to mention that because I think that is one of the differences that we have and I’ll start by off that saying I just haven’t had time.  It’s something that I really want and have a whole list of the things that I want to do.  I just haven’t had time to do it.  I’ve been working on some of it, but not, I think, to the extent that you have.  But here’s where I think our difference of opinion lies, and maybe if it’s not a difference of opinion, but I think that as you have started to use Notion, either you are using it as more than a Second Brain, or your definition of Second Brain has changed since we started talking about it.  Because of the things you mentioned, dashboard, daily reflections, daily habit tracker, sprints and OKRs, that’s not what we talked about in our opening episodes as being what do you want to capture for a Second Brain?  We talked about it being a knowledge vault, a place where we’d be able to capture all the notes and things that we took from the articles, the books we read, the podcasts that we listen to, to all of that stuff.  And you are doing it more as one of the people.

I listen to a lot of this August Bradley, who is a big Notion expert.  He would call your Life operating system, and he would say that you are setting up different pillars of your life and the different pipelines that you plan to match to meet those pillars.  And then you may have some vaults that contain information that connect to all of that.  But it’s not simply a place for the knowledge that you have that you want to keep.  You’re using it for more than that.  I think I am going to use it for more than that also.  But right now, I’m still really focusing because it’s the most dairy that I have the most comfort on as building out my knowledge vault.  So I have and we’ve talked about in previous episodes, I’ve got a list of well over 200 books, articles, podcasts, tweet threads, things that have gotten into my knowledge vault because I’ve highlighted them using the Readwise app, the read-it-later, not read-it-later, the Readwise app.  And I am now, what I’ve done is I am creating areas on specific topics.  So an area on Artificial Intelligence, an area on law practice management, an area on collaboration.  And I am starting to link all of those notes to specific topics.  So the idea being that once I’ve got all of that linking done, if I ever want to do an article on something or a blog post on something or I want to get back to what have I captured about this particular issue?  All I have to do is click to that area and it will show me all of the blog posts, all of the articles, all the book notes that I’ve got.  So I’m pleased with the progress that I’m slowly making towards that. But I get the feeling that that’s to me what I would consider to be the true Second Brain, and that what you’re describing is more than that.

Dennis Kennedy:  Yeah.  So I think that the Life operating system Notion is probably a good way of thinking about it.  I don’t think it’s the perfect metaphor, but I think it’s a good one.  I look and I say as I get older, one thing I notice from people around me, including myself, is that you don’t remember everything and you want to put your hands on things that you think that you know and then also you’re starting to look at checklists and other things like that.  So to me it’s like if I can have this in one place, that’s one piece of it.  We haven’t talked about the reference notebook because my reference notebook right now has hundreds of links and items.

(00:10:00)

And I do that on a, you know, then sort of automatically with the save to Notion tool and then it’s captured.  Right now, I haven’t built it out in the way that you’re talking about, because I question whether I really want to tag things to certain topics and we’ve talked about that in prior episodes.  That’s just sort of my approach being a little bit different than yours.  And I just use the search tool if I want to find things, because that’s a real even with hundreds of items, that’s a fairly small database to do a search on.  My next step in that reference notebook is definitely going to be tagging, so I’m not going to organize things into like the folders that you’re doing.  I’ll probably use tags for that and then use multiple tagging on different things to make that helpful and then do some excerpting and other things.  And then I guess what I found that was interesting to me and we’ve talked about this since we did the last podcast is that I really have a hard time taking notes from things.  And so for me it’s like I just have to be able to capture something in a way that I can go back to it or just copy a chunk out of it or do something like that.  Because unless I force myself to do notes, I’m not good at that.  That reference piece is that — so there’s that sort of research reference piece and then there’s this other thing that says, oh, here are I’m doing some inspiration boards.  I want to have certain the numbers, contacts, other like documents, those sorts of things that they might need to refer to all in one place as well.  And they may stay in the reference notebook.  They might go to something that’s more like an archive, but I’m looking along those lines, too.  So like I said, it’s just become really diverse because once I figured out the sort of simple database plus views and then having kind of these central repositories that you pull out of it’s really just opened my eyes to the many things I can do well.

Tom Mighell:  So I think another, I guess potential difference is, like you, I’m less good at taking notes than I used to be.  I used to be better at taking notes and now I’m better at just saving webpages or articles or just whole things.  And I’m really coming around to the idea and I’ll talk about this a little bit more at the end of the Notion between the note taker and the note maker is that being a note taker is I would argue that it’s a simpler process than being a note maker.  A note taker can be someone who just saves everything that they see and they take the scribble down a quick note, put it in your reference file, and you’ve got it.  The note maker is more deliberate and initially can put something down, but then comes back to it and revisits it and thinks more about it and refines it so that it’s something that once at the end of it, when you finally ended it, it’s something that you think will be truly useful to you when you move on.  I’m not sure I’m describing it that well at this point, but I’m intrigued by the idea and it’s something that I would like to try to get better at and I think Notion is a good tool to do that in.  But I will say one of the things that has changed since we did our last Second Brain Project, as Dennis mentioned, is the fact that they have made databases so much easier to use and manipulate and have views of it’s just so much easier to do.

And frankly, my big example, the thing that is easy for me is and let’s put aside for a moment questions of privacy and all sorts of stuff, but I’m using notion to keep track of my health care.  I want to be able to give my health history.  I want to be able to know what happens because up until the past couple of years, I really didn’t keep good track of that information.  And what I’m finding now and this is actually more around my father than around me, is keeping track of prescriptions is terrible because we’ve got lots of prescriptions we may have over a lifetime, but we’re only taking a certain amount at the present moment.  And so being able to have a full database of every drug that I’ve been prescribed for the last six or seven years is great and then I filter it to only what I’m taking right now.  So that I just went to a new doctor’s appointment this week.  I printed out what I needed.  I took it to them, I handed and said, here’s what I’m taking and boom, it was so simple.

(00:15:02)

It just makes it really easy to capture that kind of information and have it in the view that is useful to you and if you have multiple views, you can save it in multiple views.  So maybe you want to see what you’re taking now.  Maybe you want another view that shows what are the types of antibiotics that you’ve been on over history. I’m just giving examples from mine, but there are so many different ways to slice and dice it that it’s really quite a powerful tool.

Dennis Kennedy:  Yeah.  So I think that I think you’ve really stated it well.  So for me, what I realized was I was doing this thing with daily reflections or daily habit tracking, and I would get to the end of the month and I would say, oh, I need to copy that and say that’s January and do a new one for February.  And then I was starting to proliferate these things and I had this notion of archive.  And then I said, well, wait, now I understand it.  It’s sorting and it’s filtering.  And so all I need to do is create views that say, show me the last 30 days.  And then I just have one database that has those reflections or habit tracking, and I just see what it is I need to see, and then I could sort or filter it.  I can add a column that says, give it a one, two or three priority.  I can sort on that.  I can look at work that needs to be done.  And I think we’re going to talk a little bit about whether it’s taking the place of a to do list or not.  I have some thoughts on that.  And then I see some other things, like what we talked about, the reference manual, how do I put notes in there tagging.  And then actually what I see, my big thing I need to solve is not really a Second Brain issue.  It’s what I call the read-later problem where you save things that you think I’m going to read it later, I’m going to watch it later, I’m going to listen to it later, and then you don’t do that.  So I don’t think that’s second brain, the second brain that’s captured it’s, just that you haven’t figured out a good way to take action on that.

Tom Mighell:  Right.  And I don’t know, are you using notion as your read later source?

Dennis Kennedy:  Well, the idea is that I could because I could go in that reference manual, pull up some things that are tagged or that I watch, especially like videos and things like that.  And then say, I’m going to spend this is where I think I’m going to go to ultimately say I’m just going to dedicate some time, say like on a Sunday morning, and I’m just going to go and kind of work my way through some of that related stuff.  And then maybe that’s at the point that I will start to do, as you say, the note making, which I think is what I would like to do, is say, okay, I’ve looked at this, let me see what I’m going to take from that and put that somewhere, which we mean we sort of move from the reference manual where stuff is collected, that I would just go back into this thing I call notes to myself, which is more something where I say, here’s something I’m probably going to act on in the future.  And if I look at that list once at the beginning of the month and look at the last month of it or the last two months, then I’ve captured these ideas and say, do I turn those into actions.  Are they in the David Allen sense?  Are they in going to the someday maybe file?

Tom Mighell:  Well, so I think we have different approaches to that because for me and really part of what is the note maker is, I don’t want something I haven’t read in Notion.  I want to have read it ahead of time and highlighted what I found was important and then those highlights get automatically transferred into Notion, so that when I finally go into my knowledge vault and I see what I highlighted from that article, I know that it’s what I found important at the time and then I can start from that and start making my notes in that way.  So I’m doing it differently.  I’m taking that action before it gets to the Second Brain because I feel like if I use my Second Brain as read-it-later, I may never get to it and it may just sit there forever unprocessed.  So I’d rather only put in there what I know I want to keep and that’s kind of how I’m doing it a little bit differently.

Dennis Kennedy:  Yeah.  I was just going to say, but that’s a great distinction to make.  That you say I want to process before it goes into Second Brain.  I’m more comfortable saying the unprocessed stuff can go into Second Brain in one place, and then when I process it, it can move to something else.  And I think that’s the personal nature of Second Brain.

(00:20:00)

And for our listeners, to me, those are the things that you need to think through, and it’s important to realize that for us, what we found is that Notion can accommodate both those approaches.  The one thing I’ve struggled a bit with time that I think you’ve been trying in — I sort of go back and look in my whole life, I’ve never done journaling, so it’s like really hard to say I’m going to start it now.  So even doing this daily habit tracker is a little bit difficult for me.  But I think you’ve either started to experiment with journaling or want to do some things on journaling.

Tom Mighell:  Well, it’s funny that you mentioned that because on the work to be done area of our script, I listed one bullet point, and that was journaling.  And the reason for that is I have wanted to journal as well, and I haven’t found the right platform to do it.  I’m not sure that Notion is the platform for me that I like that way.  It is not exactly what I want.  To be honest, I was a big fan when I had my Mac of the Day One journal.  I think that’s one of the best journal products out there, and there are others that are similar, but none of them meet my criteria for a good app which is multi-platform.  I want to be able to do it on my phone or on my computer or in a standalone app or on the web and there just aren’t a lot of journaling apps that do that.  So I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole there because that’s a little bit crazy.  So I’m working on that.  I may use Notion as my journal, but I like how some of these dedicated Journal apps organize your entries and Notion, you have to do it yourself.  And I don’t know that I trust myself to set it up the same way that some of these other apps have done it a little bit better.

I want to work towards wrapping up this segment.  That’s part of my work to be done.  The other things that I want to work on, you mentioned earlier about task management.  I don’t want to use Notion as my task manager because I think it’s just too much work.  You’re creating it yourself where things like OmniFocus to-do list make it so much easier.  What I prefer to do is find a way to connect Notion to to-do list, so that if I have a task in a project, then it will automatically populate in to-do it and now with the API.  I think that’s possible.  I just haven’t explored it yet.  But that’s really what I’d prefer to do, because I’m comfortable using to-do list as my task manager.  I’d love to be able to do that.  The other thing that I’m working on is I’m working on review templates.  So I have basic outlines for templates for a daily review, a weekly review, maybe a monthly review, an annual review.  I’m creating a template for my Dennis Kennedy personal quarterly offsite review.  But I want to be able to use that review process to connect everything together, to say, here are the projects I worked on over this period of time.  Here’s what I’ve done, here’s what I haven’t done, here’s what I need to move, and I have it in a good place.  So that’s one thing that I plan to work on is to start building in that review process as part of the development of my new Second Brain.  What about you, Dennis?

Dennis Kennedy:  Yeah, I want to go back to this Notion of the task list and doing that separately.  And so I reread the checklist manifesto, which was actually quite a bit less impressive to me on this time through than the first time I read it.  But I’m intrigued by the whole notion of checklists and of breaking projects into a set of actions, then the task list component at least on a daily or short-term basis is actually might be a little different.  And I kind of prefer to use the Second Brain to say, here are the steps and here are the checklists and track those and to have the actual to-dos, like call somebody, do whatever those things separately.  So I’m still struggling with that because you do have the sense that you’re using two tools and maybe one will work.  So I have the things that I want to work on, so more turning things into action.  I have a couple of projects where it really makes sense to do inspiration boards, photos, and things I’m collecting some project management FAQs and fact(ph) list are the things I do on a regular basis that would be nice to just capture.  And then I think that — I realize I keep pushing back the whole notion of automating things.  So I don’t know whether that’ s even going to happen in 2022, but I see that still doing it down the line.  And then I’m looking at the dashboard, which I’m really happy with, but maybe making some improvements, and then I’m definitely going to do an Notion course.

(00:25:06)

So I don’t know what — you’re up to that, but it probably makes sense time to kind of go toward the end of the segment by talking, making recommendations for people who want to get started on their Second Brain Project.

Tom Mighell:  Yeah.  Well, I will say I did take a Notion course, and what I have not taken full advantage of, but what I’m really going to like is the fact that it also offers a community of people who are also using Notion, mentors who can help, people who can provide advice.  I plan to start using that and taking full advantage of it when I’m really working on it.  So if that’s ever of interest, there are several different courses out there to choose from.  But if you don’t want to take a course, if you want to learn other things, the recommendation I’m going to make is to visit something called a Second Brain Summit.  This was held a couple of weeks ago, and there was a little bit of the promotional nature to it to try to sell another course on building a Second Brain.  But what I liked about it was there were different sessions on different types of second brains because we’ve been going on and on and on about Notion, but there’s a lot of other tools that can be used.  So there’s a session on Notion.  There’s a session on Evernote.  There’s one on using OneNote.  There’s a session on Read-It-Later apps.  There’s one on using the networked thinking apps like Obsidian, like Roam Research.  I think that that’s a great place to start to get a lay of the land of the different options that you have and how you might create a Second Brain using one of these tools.  They’re all for free on YouTube.  I’ve put a link in the show notes.  Dennis, I think you’re going to recommend kind of just generally looking for Notion things on YouTube.  Anything more you want to add?

Dennis Kennedy:  Well, there are a couple of things I would say that when you’re doing your research and with the Second Brain Summit, I think people went into too many details and seeing how you could do this cool programming and stuff.  And I was talking to somebody who was watching that video the same time I was, and they were just getting lost.  And so I think that if you look at that and say, I just want to understand what they’ve accomplished and what it’s doing for them and not worry about the how as you watch it, I think that will be more useful.  And then just kind of sift through YouTube and say what is it that I want to do and look for the basic introductions and say, this is too technical, this is this, I like this person, I don’t like this person, just find somebody you like who can explain it simply.  And I think the whole will make sense but I think you want to find the right video to watch and if you feel overwhelmed by something, then I just switch and try something and see if there’s something that’s a little simpler or speaks to you a little better.

Tom Mighell:  All right.  Before we wrap it up, any last words?  I think we’ve got our marching orders on where we’re headed.  We’ll probably come back in a couple of months and do another update episode but anything to take us out, Dennis?

Dennis Kennedy:  I just find that if Notion works for you that the Second Brain approach because there are so many different things you can start with it and you can see benefits right away and it’s something you can use.  Like I said, for me, the key is something you can use on a daily basis, I think it’s a type of project where you can kind of see results and stick with it and really grow with it.  So if you’re looking for something to do in technology that I’ll that just helps you in your daily life is we all have so much going on all the time.  This is a great project and it makes more sense than trying to figure out how to do pivot tables or something that you might only use like once or twice a year.

Tom Mighell:  Agreed.  All right.  Before we move on to our next segment, let’s take a quick break for a message from our sponsors.

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

Dennis Kennedy:  And I’m Dennis Kennedy.  We’re taking a break from the hot or not format we usually use in this segment because Tom got a 49-inch monitor and I want to ask him about it.  So Tom will tell us about the new monitor and try to answer the question of the day, which is, can a monitor ever be too big or is he planning to go even bigger?  Tom, what is it like in the land of giant monitors?

Tom Mighell:  Okay, I have two primary thoughts.  One, I really love my 49 inch monitor.  Two, I really don’t need my 49-inch monitor.  I think is the conclusion that I’ve come to.  First, I am a very amateur gamer.  If there are any World of Warcraft fans out there, please let me know.  I would love to be friends.  I don’t have many friends on there.  I’d love to connect with you.  Playing Warcraft on this monitor is amazing.  It’s really how video games are meant to be played on the PC.  If you’re not playing with a massive TV, it’s just awesome being able to see 49 inches of your whole game area.  It’s really a wonderful experience.  That said, when it’s time to do work, I find and I would say that between the massive monitor and connecting two or three monitors together.  I still think this is vastly superior.  It’s all seamless.  It’s all together in the same place.  I’m not having to look between monitors there’s not having to move from one window to the next.  It’s all in one place.  So I very much prefer that.  But I preferred that with the 39-inch monitor as well.

When it’s time to do work, though, I find that I am positioning my windows closer to the center of the screen.  I think the problem are the left and the right edges to see what’s going over there.  I literally have to turn my head just a little bit to see what’s going on.  It’s not terrible, but it’s not great either.  And as we record this podcast, it’s great.  I have audacity in the left side of my screen.  I have Zoom in the middle third, and I have the script that we’re talking through here on the right side of the screen, and it’s great.  It’s easy to view.  I love to use it this way.  It’s working very well.  Love the monitor.  I didn’t absolutely need it though.

Dennis Kennedy:  Yeah.  You know, it’s interesting because you talked me going to I think it’s a 34-inch monitor that I have now from the 12-inch MacBook, which I loved.  I’m comfortable with this, although I would say some of the same things with progressive lenses that I too have to turn my head to get to the edge.  It’s not a big deal.  And it does seem like it takes up — it feels like I have less desk space is the way I would say it.  But it’s great because I typically have divided the screen into fourth and I have the things that I’m looking at and working on each taking up a fourth.  And I’m used to saying, oh, Twitter, I look in the upper right whenever I want to look at that email is in another place.  And then I can also just pull a Word document that I’m working on over the top of everything.  And so it just feels like there’s plenty of room.  So I do like that, but I don’t know, the 49-inch just seems like immense.  And then we’ve talked about when we’ve done video and we’re recording time is these big monitors throw off a lot of light and if they change a bit while you’re like on video, all of a sudden you’ll be bright and then you’ll be less bright.  So it’s kind of funny how they work.

Tom Mighell:  But look at me right now in the camera, I’m not terribly bright right now.  I mean, there’s not a lot of brightness there.

Dennis Kennedy:  Right.  But you do.  I think the bigger the monitor, you probably tend more towards using dark mode as opposed to light mode.  So there are some things you’ll work with.

(00:34:58)

I think probably again, I’m going to use the as I get older lead in here, but I think being able to blow up the fonts bigger and have room and all of that stuff is good.  I don’t know that I would go back to my twelve-inch monitor for work but I would also say that iPads and stuff are fine for other things that I do as long as I’m doing sort of one thing at a time or reading or whatever.  So personal choice but Tom, what’s the cost on a 49-inch monitor these days?

Tom Mighell:  I know you’d ask me that.  I think that the last time and when I purchased it because the monitor that I have is the Dell Ultra Sharp 49-inch monitor.  It’s been wavering somewhere between $1,200 $1400, so not cheap but not terrible either.  To be honest, I think the 39-inch was somewhere around 1000 to 1100 so it’s not too much more expensive to go up another ten inches in your monitor.

Dennis Kennedy:  So it’s really an interesting time I think my monitor because I probably, truth be told, would look even though it’s I think a bit more expensive, I would probably look at the new Mac 27-inch studio monitor as opposed to going to 49, but I probably want to try them both before making that decision before I did that kind of investment.  Now it’s time for our parting shots.  That one tip website or observation you can use the second 36:30 podcast in.  Tom, take it away.

Tom Mighell:  Okay, for my parting shot, I have a public service announcement, and that is for the love of all that’s Holy, do not use the AutoFit feature on PowerPoint.  I am so tired of getting PowerPoint decks where people have turned on AutoFit.  And for those of you who aren’t familiar with how it works, PowerPoint decided they would introduce this really useful new feature where if you are putting text into a text box on a slide, it will automatically fit the size of the text based on how much text you put in there.  So the more text you put in, the smaller it gets and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until you can’t read it anymore.  And it thinks it’s being helpful, it’s not.  I’ve included a link in the show notes on ways to disable this.  Just disable it and learn how to format the text boxes yourself, you will thank me.  You will thank everyone.  Auto Fit in PowerPoint is just the worst feature Microsoft ever introduced.  Dennis?

Dennis Kennedy:  It’s probably competition for that, as people would say.  But it is interesting because when you’re doing slides, you like to say, oh, I like to have a standard font with standard placement for everything that I do.  And then as you are working through your slides, you realize like, hey, on the slide, the font suddenly a little bit smaller and it’s because of this AutoFit thing.  So my parting shot is at Michigan State, we did supply chain loss seminar-webinar that was really great and really fun.  And there’s nothing that really caught all of our attention more in the last couple of years than the global supply chain and what’s going on with it.  So there’s a great new book by Christopher Mims, who’s the technology writer for The Wall Street Journal called Arriving Today, which I would recommend but even — I actually recommend very highly.  But even more than that, The Wall Street Journal created basically about a 55-minute video documentary based on the book, which is called Why Global Supply Chains May Never Be the Same.  It is fantastic.  And it takes a USB charger from when it’s basically made in Vietnam and files it on the big container ships and unloaded from the docks and on semi-trailers and all the way to the door and explaining everything that happens.  And it’s just amazing.  Great video, great shots of these big ships and stuff.  But it really explains all the issues of supply chain.  And it really does make you feel it’s kind of magic that we order something online and then the next day or two days later, it arrives at our door and how many things have to work together for that to happen.

Tom Mighell:  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 on the LegalTalk Networks’ page for the show.  If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or your favorite podcast app or on the LegalTalk Network site where you can find archives of all of our previous shows along with transcripts.  If you’d like to get in touch with us, remember you can always reach out to us on LinkedIn, on Twitter, or remember we love to get your voicemail.  Send us a voicemail at 720-441-6820.

(00:40:01)

So until the next podcast, I’m Tom Mighell.

Dennis Kennedy:  And I’m Dennis Kennedy and you’ve been listening to The Kennedy-Mighell Report, a podcast on legal technology with an internet focus.  If you like what you heard today, please rate us in Apple podcasts and we’ll see you next time for another episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report on the LegalTalk Network.

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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 use very other week for another edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report only on the LegalTalk Network.

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Sharon Nelson:  The digital Edge Podcast where the law and technology intersect.  I’m Sharon Nelson and together with Jim Calloway, we invite professionals from all fields to discuss the latest trends, tips and tools within the legal industry.  Stay up to date on the rapidly changing legal tech landscape with The Digital Edge on the LegalTalk Network.

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