There’s plenty of chatter and research surrounding the so-called “laws” of productivity, but even the laws we use to govern other areas of our lives can be applicable when there are things that need to get done. Newton’s Laws of Motion can be adapted to productivity, especially the first one.

What’s Newton’s first law all about?

Newton’s first law of motion is this: “An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force.”

Obviously, he was talking about physics here, but in productivity spaces around the web, people who spend their time thinking about more efficient ways to get things done have started applying his wisdom to people. It makes sense: When you’re on a roll, say, cleaning your house, you kind of get into the zone and keep going. When you’re sitting on the couch dreading and putting off starting to work, it’s really easy to stay there and do nothing. 

The thinking reminds me of the productivity approach I fall back on most often, which I call the “one more” trick. Using it, you don’t schedule out how long you’ll work on a given task so much as you commit to getting started, then continually ask yourself, “Could I do one more?” with the “one” being any individual part of the overall task. The more you get done, the more motivated you are, and the more likely the answer to that question will be “yes.” After years of failed attempts to follow other approaches, this is what I use when I’m cleaning, but it works for a variety of things, from doing reps at the gym to responding to emails.

How can Newton’s law be applied to productivity? 

Research has looked into how adapting a mindset of getting into and staying in motion can help you be more productive. One review of its use by healthcare workers in a nuclear medicine department found it “novel,” but also able to “have a positive impact on productivity,” for instance. 

The trick isn’t staying in motion, but getting into it, so here’s where you should start. Try adhering to the two-minute rule, or the practice of immediately doing something if it will take two minutes or less. I use this in conjunction with the “one more” trick constantly, trying to do something the moment I think of it, or as soon as motivation or inspiration strikes. If an email comes in, respond to it right away. If you need to take the trash out, do it the minute you notice. If you have to cancel an appointment, call that second. Getting in the habit of doing smaller tasks immediately can help you build momentum. When I do pre-plan what I have to work on, I capitalize on the two-minute rule by frontloading my to-do list with simple tasks instead of opting for the “eat the frog” approach, which calls on you to do your biggest, most demanding duties first.

One day when I was first starting to use this trick, for instance, I had to confirm a ticket order, fill out a W9, order my graduation attire, clean out my entire clothing rack, and do a 12-page paper. By doing the three smaller things first, I built up some positivity and momentum, which helped push me to do the more daunting stuff later in the day. It’s rewarding to see checkmarks fill up your to-do list, so knock out whatever you can in the moment to get that rush and make you want to secure the checkmarks on the bigger items. (I quite literally jot my to-dos down in my notes app and check them off as I get them done, just for the boost.) If you’re using a 1-3-5 to-do list (and you should be!) try flipping your day so you tackle the five small tasks before the three medium-sized ones and large one so you can harness the power of Newton’s law yourself. 

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor Antony Blinken’s decision to adopt Calibri a “wasteful” diversity move, according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters. The department under Blinken in early January 2023 had switched to Calibri, a modern sans-serif font, saying this was a more accessible font for people with disabilities because it did not have the decorative angular features and was the default in Microsoft products.

A cable dated December 9 sent to all U.S. diplomatic posts said that typography shapes the professionalism of an official document and Calibri is informal compared to serif typefaces.
“To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface,” the cable said. “This formatting standard aligns with the President’s One Voice for America’s Foreign Relations directive, underscoring the Department’s responsibility to present a unified, professional voice in all communications,” it added.

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For many of us at Engadget, a big part of our jobs is testing out new tech on a regular basis. Our desks are cluttered with new smartphones, power banks, gaming accessories and more pretty much all the time, and there are plenty of winners and losers amongst them. Similarly, there are winners and losers in the things we buy for ourselves throughout the year, and we like to sing their praises just as much as we do for the best new tech that (professionally) comes across our desks. These are the best things Engadget staffers purchased in 2025 that will continue to get lots of use in the new year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-things-engadget-editors-bought-in-2025-130000576.html?src=rss

Back in October, OpenAI announced apps like Spotify and Canva would be accessible in ChatGPT. At the time, the company said more software was on the way, and now one of the most popular professional applications is available through the chatbot.    

Starting today, you can access Photoshop, Acrobat and Adobe Express inside of ChatGPT. All the apps are free to use through OpenAI’s website, though before you can begin generating PDFs and illustrations using Acrobat and Adobe Express, you’ll need to sign into your Adobe account. To use any of the apps in ChatGPT, either name them in your prompt or select them from the plus menu.

Of the three apps, the way OpenAI’s chatbot connects to Photoshop is probably the most interesting. Depending on the prompt, the interface will change to display the sliders most relevant to your request. For example, if you want to brighten an image, you’ll see one slider allowing you to adjust the exposure, alongside other ones for the shadows and highlights. By comparison, if you want to add an effect to an image, ChatGPT might display options related to dithering and tri-tone, among others. 

What’s interesting about all this is the way ChatGPT is interacting with Adobe’s tools, through an MCP server, to offer a slice of the company’s apps. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found Adobe software to be far too complicated, with often one too many ways to accomplish the same task. Granted, what I saw was a hands-off demo, but the routing Adobe created worked well. 

Adobe

“We build the Lego blocks, which are the MCP tools, and we create detailed instructions, and then ChatGPT figures out what it wants to do,” Aubrey Cattell, vice-president of developer platform and partner ecosystem at Adobe, explains. “Sometimes it does what we want it, and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s the nature of it being non-deterministic, and we’re continuing to hone as much as we can from users’ intent and natural language to give them the result that they’re looking for.”

Of course, if you ever want more control, the web versions of Photoshop, Acrobat and Adobe Express are a click away.         

For OpenAI, this is easily the biggest coup to date of its push to reshape ChatGPT into an operating system for all the apps its more than 800 million users depend on daily. For Adobe, it feels like the company is partnering with an entity out to eat its lunch. After all, OpenAI offers its own image generation. However, Cattell said Adobe doesn’t see it that way. 

“A couple weeks back, OpenAI dropped Apps SDK as a new paradigm for accessing ChatGPT, we saw there was a natural fit in the work we were doing with our applications,” he said. “Essentially, they gave us an operating system we were able to leverage to bring our applications to their surface. There’s a lot of natural affinity there between the workflows OpenAI is trying to enable and Adobe’s best in class capabilities.”  

Cattell promised Adobe would continue to explore what it could offer inside of ChatGPT, but added the company’s apps will continue to be the place users can go if they want more power, precision and control.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/adobe-brings-photoshop-acrobat-and-adobe-express-to-chatgpt-130000389.html?src=rss

A Virginia startup calling itself “Operation Bluebird” announced this week that it has filed a formal petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office, asking the federal agency to cancel X Corporation’s trademarks of the words “Twitter” and “tweet” since X has allegedly abandoned them.

“The TWITTER and TWEET brands have been eradicated from X Corp.’s products, services, and marketing, effectively abandoning the storied brand, with no intention to resume use of the mark,” the petition states. “The TWITTER bird was grounded.”

If successful, two leaders of the group tell Ars, Operation Bluebird would launch a social network under the name Twitter.new, possibly as early as late next year. (Twitter.new has created a working prototype and is already inviting users to reserve handles.)

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It’s once again that special time of year when we give you a chance to do well by doing good. That’s right—it’s the 2025 edition of our annual Charity Drive!

Every year since 2007, we’ve encouraged readers to give to Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity, which provides toys and games to kids being treated in hospitals around the world. In recent years, we’ve added the Electronic Frontier Foundation to our charity push, aiding in their efforts to defend Internet freedom. This year, as always, we’re providing some extra incentive for those donations by offering donors a chance to win pieces of our big pile of vendor-provided swag. We can’t keep it, and we don’t want it clogging up our offices, so it’s now yours to win.

This year’s swag pile is full of high-value geek goodies. We have over a dozen prizes valued at nearly $5,000 total, including gaming hardware and collectibles, apparel, and more. In 2023, Ars readers raised nearly $40,000 for charity, contributing to a total haul of more than $542,000 since 2007. We want to raise even more this year, and we can do it if readers dig deep.

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alternative_right quotes a report from Phys.org: To teach robots how to become tomato pickers, Osaka Metropolitan University Assistant Professor Takuya Fujinaga, Graduate School of Engineering, programmed them to evaluate the ease of harvesting for each tomato before attempting to pick it. Fujinaga’s new model uses image recognition paired with statistical analysis to evaluate the optimal approach direction for each fruit. The system involves image processing/vision of the fruit, its stems, and whether it is concealed behind another part of the plant. These factors inform robot control decisions and help it choose the best approach.

The model represents a shift in focus from the traditional ‘detection/recognition’ model to what Fujinaga calls a ‘harvest-ease estimation.’ “This moves beyond simply asking ‘can a robot pick a tomato?’ to thinking about ‘how likely is a successful pick?’, which is more meaningful for real-world farming,” he explained. When tested, Fujinaga’s new model demonstrated an 81% success rate, far above predictions. Notably, about a quarter of the successes were tomatoes that were successfully harvested from the right or left side that had previously failed to be harvested by a front approach. This suggested that the robot changed its approach direction when it initially struggled to pick the fruit. “This is expected to usher in a new form of agriculture where robots and humans collaborate,” said Fujinaga. “Robots will automatically harvest tomatoes that are easy to pick, while humans will handle the more challenging fruits.”

The findings are published in Smart Agricultural Technology.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.