It doesn't matter if you work remotely, if you work from home, or if you work from an office, chances are you are using video conferencing more and more often.

So in today's video, I wanna share with you seven of my favorite tips for getting the most out of Zoom meetings.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done, and enjoy less stress.

Mute all Zoom participants keyboard shortcut

And let's dive right in. Here I am within my Zoom meeting. And I'm sharing the screen here at the moment. But my very first tip for you has to do with one of my favorite shortcut keys.

So let me actually stop sharing for just a moment here. And I'm gonna open up my participants window here.

So often, I'm on a call with five, seven, 10, 20 or more people, and suddenly there's some background noise and it's interrupting either my presentation or something that I'm saying at the moment.

So one of my favorite shortcut keys is the ability to mute everyone, instantaneously.

Now yes, here, I can select that Mute All option, but I don't always have this window open, I may be in the middle of showing or doing something else. So all I need to do is select Alt+M on my keyboard, that's Alt+M, and that will immediately mute everyone else. Alt+M, of course, for PC, it is command control M, if you happen to be a Mac user. And if you just hit it again, of course, you're going to unmute everyone as well.

Now this can be really helpful, especially if someone else is working remotely, and you hear a dog barking or some other background noise on someone else's line. You'll notice here in the manage participants area that that microphone is moving when I'm talking. But it stops when I'm not talking. So this can be a clue for you to help find that individual if you just wanna mute that one person. But if you need to, or if you don't need the time, don't have the time to identify that individual, you can use Alt+M to mute everyone else.

So let's go into sharing my screen.

Hide floating Zoom control panel

I'm gonna share my entire desktop at the moment here. And one of my pet peeves for the longest time with using Zoom, when I'm sharing my screen, is that this little floating menu here, which is very helpful as I make different options here, it sort of hides many of my tabs.

You can see, I've got a tab open right here. You don't know how many times I've accidentally stopped sharing because I actually wanted to select this browser tab, but I hit Stop Sharing instead.

Well, there is a way that we can minimize this all together. And what you need to do is come over here to More, and come all the way down to Hide Floating Meeting Controls.

Now yes, there is a shortcut key Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H, I don't know how much of a shortcut that is, if you need four keys to do so. So I usually just select this manually. But if I select this, you can see that that floating Zoom menu is gone.

So now I can go here, I can click through all these tabs at ease. Nothing is in my way. And if I need to get back to that menu, all I need to do is select Escape on my keyboard. Very quickly, one more time Hide Floating Meeting Controls, it's telling me right here, press Escape. If I need to show it again, I can go about my presentation, I can use my computer the way I want. And then I can hit Escape to get that menu back and visible to me.

All right, let's go back at this time around.

Turn off Zoom video by default

I’m gonna stop sharing, and I’m actually gonna go into my settings here, my Zoom meeting settings. Let’s go back; here we are in the desktop app. Let me just move my picture here for a second.

And what we’re gonna do is hit this little gear icon, which is called Settings. Now, there’s an awful lot of settings that you can tweak and adjust here within Zoom, but I wanna focus on two important ones, or at least they’re very important to me.

The first one is under Video. Yes, you can preview your video, you can choose a different camera if you need to here as well. But the one that I always turn on is this one: Turn off my video when joining a meeting.

By default, whether I’m the host or whether I’m joining someone else’s Zoom meeting, I want my video to be turned off. Now the reasoning for this is that I wanna make sure that I initiate that video. I don’t want to click a link on something and then forget that, "Oh, yeah, that’s right, I’m on video, and what’s behind me or what’s going on? Do I have my mic set up?" All of this type of thing.

So by default, I wanna have my video turned off when I either host or join any type of Zoom meeting, and then I can initiate it, right? I can initiate it with a single click.

Virtual backgrounds for Zoom

The other tip that I wanna share with you here within settings has to do with video, but it concerns something called Virtual Background. This is a feature that Zoom has had for a while, but maybe you’ve never experimented with it before.

So here you can see I’ve got nothing in the background—just the background of my office. But what Zoom allows you to do is upload other images to use as your background, and you don’t need a green screen.

You can select from one of the default images, or you can upload your own images or even video backgrounds. For instance, here are some options like the Northern Lights and a tropical seaside. But the one I use most often is one that I created. It’s very simple—mostly black with my logo in the corner.

The reason I use this virtual background frequently is that it hides any distractions in the background. I might be working from a busy cafe or a kitchen island at home, and I don’t have to worry about what’s behind me, like a fridge or a dirty stove.

Another nice benefit is that it allows me to add some branding. You can see my logo in the top corner here. You can also add your full name, an icon, or your preferred colors. It’s a great way to keep things professional and consistent with your brand.

Zoom calendar add-on for Google & Outlook

And the next one on our list I wanna show you is actually something that I use every single day.

In fact, this is probably the most used feature that I use when it comes to Zoom.

And it has to do with scheduling your meetings.

So I'm gonna jump into Google Calendar, and I'm gonna open up this little fake meeting that I set up here, and I'm gonna go into the edit mode.

Whether you use Microsoft Outlook or whether you use Google Calendar, I implore you to download and use the add ons or extensions for your calendar.

So in this case, I have the Google Calendar, the Google Chrome extension installed.

You can see up here I've got that little icon, this allows me to schedule a meeting, if I want to, or I can start a meeting immediately.

It even gives me conveniently the option to start with video off, or start with video on.

But the other bonus, as you can see here, as I'm creating this meeting within Google calendars, I have an additional button, called Make it a Zoom Meeting.

So as I'm adding the title, and my guests, and maybe a few other details, with just a single click, I can say make it a zoom meeting.

And here I've got that meeting link here, under the location area.

And if I scroll down to the description, it's got all this other great information, which my guests are going to need, whether it's the link, I mean, they can click this link right away, but depending on where they are, they can use the one tap mobile option.

If they need to dial in by a phone, if they can't connect by audio, by their computer, they can choose one of these dial-in numbers as well, all in a single click.

And then when I come back in here, when it's time for this meeting, all I have to do is select Join the Zoom Meeting.

I don't have to click somewhere else, I don't have to go to the Zoom interface, I can just say Join the Zoom Meeting, and it's gonna launch it for me, and dive right in.

So whether you're an Outlook user, or a Google user, please, please download the extension

New Share and Pause Share when sharing Zoom screen

So that you can get even more out of this tool.

Now the other thing that I wanna show you, and we'll just stick on this dummy meeting invite here, is a couple of settings here, a couple of options, I should say, with this floating menu.

And the two in particular are New Share and Pause Share.

So at the moment, I'm sharing my screen right now, pretty common, pretty standard here within Zoom.

But a lot of people are not familiar with what these actually mean, or how they should be using them.

So in this case, if I wanna move from this, showing you my browser here, and I wanna go to say a Word document, all I need to do is select New Share, and now I can go and find that other document or that other place, that I would like to share.

So let's say it is a Word document, so I'm gonna click on this Word document.

Remember, no one in my meeting is seeing this window.

I'm seeing this because I'm the organizer and I'm wanting to share something at the moment.

As soon as I click on this, this Word document and select Share, I'm instantly taken to that Word document, and so is everyone else that is viewing this screen share.

So they don't see any of that me selecting it, they don't see me looking for a folder, nothing along those likes.

And if I wanna go back up here, and I say New Share, and I wanna go back to the web, I can select it and say Share, I'm instantaneously brought back here.

So you can remove all sort of that clunky feeling of minimizing, maximizing, finding the thing that you wanna share next, make it a really smooth transition for those people who are on the meeting with you.

The other one is Pause Share.

Now this can be used very similarly, if I want to say, you know, just pause, and here you can see your screen sharing is paused, and then I could go and find that document.

But the other great thing I find about the pause function is that, let's say I'm giving a presentation, I want to review some notes, or I want to go look something else up, but I don't want everyone else to know that I'm looking that up or I'm finding this special number or whatever the case may be, I can hit pause and they can remain on this screen, it's as if nothing else has happened.

I can go back and find some information, go reference a file, that type of thing.

And then when I'm ready, I can just say Resume Share, and here I am back on this screen.

I can hit pause, and I could go somewhere else as well if I want to, but take a look at both New Share and Pause Share to make your presentations and make your screen sharing just a little more polished.

How to annotate in Zoom

And then the last thing, the final tip today that I wanna share with you has to do with annotations.

Something that I think it's overlooked.

Here it is, it's the very last option before More, and yet it's so valuable.

If you click Annotate, there's a variety of different ways that you can highlight things on your screen.

A few of my favorites, one would be Spotlight.

Here, it adds a little red spotlight, so if people have trouble following your cursor, you wanna make sure people know exactly what you're talking about, they can follow you along with this little red spotlight.

There's also this little arrow, it's like an arrow stamp.

So if I want people to look at this Guests field, I can click over here, or I can highlight and then click.

Do you see this little white arrow, no one is seeing this, no one on my meeting is actually seeing this.

It's not until I click on it, it's gonna put this little stamp here with my name, so they know that I'm the one who placed it there.

Because remember, you can allow other people to annotate as well.

And if you want to undo or redo, you can always click these buttons here as well, or hit clear to clear all of your drawings.

You can draw, you can add text, you can add other stamps.

This arrow is a little bit different.

This allows you to keep permanent arrows.

So instead of one at a time, I can go down a variety of fields here.

And again, I can hit undo if I wanna go back, or just clear all my drawing.

So Annotate can be a really helpful one as well.

So I'd love to hear from you next.

Which of these seven tips were your favorite?

And did I miss anything?

Is there a special Zoom meeting tip that you love to use?

Make sure you share that with us, and with the rest of the Simpletivity community down below.

Thanks so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple!

There are over 100 different power-ups available for your Trello boards.

But have you ever gone through this list, thought that you found something perfect, only to discover that it had an additional cost?

Well, in today's video, I wanna show you five of my favorite Trello power-ups that are absolutely free.

But first, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, SaneBox.

SaneBox is the AI tool for your email inbox.

Whether you use Gmail, Office 365, or iCloud, SaneBox provides powerful filtering to allow you to get rid of all that email clutter and allow you to focus on the messages that are really important to you.

If you'd like to try SaneBox for yourself and receive a special offer, go to sanebox.com/simpletivity.

So let's get to our list, and the first one that I always recommend, no matter what type of board that you are using Trello for, is Custom Fields.

Custom Fields

Custom Fields is an absolute necessity, no matter what you're using Trello for.

Here, for example, if I open up this card, you can see that I have two different Custom Fields that I'm using.

I've created a dropdown here called priority, and here I have a start date as well.

This can be really, really helpful, especially in this priority list, because I know a lot of us may want to use and save these labels for other purposes, such as departments as you see here.

I can do that and create my priority level here that also can have color coding.

So if I need to demote this from high to medium, it can change to this yellow color here.

And, of course, I can turn this off altogether if I want to.

But let's turn it back to medium here for a second and show that it actually appears on the front of the card as well.

I know that start date is another custom field which is very helpful for many users because, of course, the due date, the primary due date, for any Trello card is what's going to trigger notifications and trigger other things that we are looking at on a day-to-day basis.

But sometimes, it can be helpful to record that start date.

Or maybe you'll have multiple dates that you'd like to record and reorder in any way that you like.

Number two on my list has to do with lists, and in particular with list limits.

List Limits

The second one on our list is actually called List Limits, and it can be a really powerful one to make sure that you don't have too many things going on in a particular list.

So let's take a look at this testing list, for example, and let's say that I really need to keep this to about a maximum of three. Otherwise, we're gonna have big issues, and we're gonna have a big backlog, and people are gonna be angry at us.

So what do I do? Do I just need to keep a count every once in a while? Do I need to just come in here and manually count up my cards? What if I have 100 different cards? What if you're dealing with a very, very long list?

Well, this is exactly where List Limits comes into place.

At the top, once you've enabled List Limits, at the top of your list, you will see an additional setting here called Set List Limit.

Now by default, of course, you're gonna have none on any of your lists because you don't have to apply this to every list. Maybe there's only specific lists that you'd like to add this to.

By selecting this option, I can say, let's have a maximum of three cards in this list. I'm gonna hit save, and now you can see at the top, I've got a number.

You might actually wanna use List Limits just for the purpose of seeing the number of how many cards you have in a given list.

But if I add another card, let's add, let's just call it New Card, okay?

So now I'm at three, I'm at three of three.

What if I move this card over here? What happens here if we go over that three?

Ho, we've got a color change, something visual, something that is hard to ignore!

Now I can see that yeah, we've got problems. We're four of three. We need to address this backlog.

So again, you can come in here, you can change and adjust these limits as necessary, and you certainly don't need to apply them for every single list on your board.

Maybe there's just one, or maybe there's just two key lists where this would come into play.

As soon as I move one of these cards over here and out of the way, I should say, into its next phase, hey, that's perfect. We're three of three. That color goes away.

So you might wanna check out List Limits.

Number three on my list has to do with cost and has to do with tracking financial figures, whether it's a budget, whether it's expenses, however you are managing or perhaps working with money here within Trello, and this power-up is called Costello.

Costello

Now what Costello does is that it gives you an additional field within all of your cards to add a cost.

So, for example, if I open up this card here, you can see on the power-up side below Custom Fields and this other power-up I've enabled, I've got something called Total Cost, and here it's labeled at 500.

One of the things that I like about the Costello power-up is that they actually haven't indicated a traditional dollar sign. So whether you're working in pounds, in euros, no matter what type of currency that you're working in, you don't have to worry about having something that maybe doesn't align (laughs) with that number.

So here, I can enter in a new cost. Actually, I underestimated it. It's not 500 anymore; it's actually 900. So here I have that Total Cost information right here within that card.

And you'll also see that it appears on the front of the cards as well. Here's one with a total cost of 300.

Why don't we add a cost to this one as well? Let's add a new cost here. I'm gonna say add total cost, and let's make this one $250, for example.

So that's great and all. I've tracked the cost, and I can see it at the front of my card, but it gets better. Here in the top of the right-hand corner of the screen, you can see that there's a Total Cost summary.

So what it's actually doing, it's actually summing up all of that cost data across the whole board. So no matter how many different cards, and especially how many different cards that have this cost data, you can see that total up here in the right-hand corner, making sure that you stay within budget or hit your targets, whatever that number means.

But it gets better. If I click on this, I can see the three different values here, and in my example, I've got three different cards for what that value is. But I can also summarize it by label or summarize it by column.

So if I click on Summary by Column, here you can see oh, yeah, I've got the most in the queue. I've got some in Development and Testing. And so if you want to be able to see a snapshot of where the cost data is, either by column or by label, you can do so with Costello.

Now the next one on my list is something that's relatively new to Trello. It's only been introduced in the past year, but it can really be used in so many different ways, and that is the Map power-up.

You can see here at the top of my screen, I already have it enabled. I can click on this and show a map of everything here that has a given location.

So, for example, if I click up here on this map, you can see that I've got a few different things here. I've got cards associated with areas in the Bay Area.

But before we dive into this map view, let's go back to the card level. So here you can see some of my cards have this little push pin icon because this map does integrate directly with Google Maps.

And if I click on this one, you can see I've got a small snapshot here, here of the Googleplex. Not only do I have this miniature map here, but if I want to, I can go in and change that address. If I click this location here, the great thing is is that it just gives me a search bar here, right?

So instead of having to know the exact address, I can just say, well, what about Facebook? Let's put that in there. And now I've got my new address. I just click on the results, and now I've got that new address located here.

And I can click on the map if I want to to get a larger view of what's going on there and then go back to the card, but the nice thing is is that, when I click this Map button at the top of the board, not only do I get this big snapshot here but I can actually click on these different push pins.

So, for example, I can click on this one here, click on the card, I can work within this card, and then go back out. And now I can click on this one down below, I can see what's going on with this card, I can click in it, I can make a few adjustments, make a few changes, and then come back out.

I can actually work within this Map view for a while if I want to.

So think about it. Could it be client visits? Could it be something you're doing? Maybe you're visiting a particular location. Perhaps you're involved in real estate in some manner. Whatever makes sense to you with location, this can be a great way of doing so.

So don't forget to check out the Map power-up.

Now the very last one on my list today is yes, just like the previous four, absolutely free, and it has to do with activity, in particular, tracking your activity.

Activity

And how long you are spending on particular cards.

Let's take a look at this Testing list a little bit closer. You can see on this first one here, I've got something with a stopwatch. It says 29 minutes, and then I've got another here with a slightly different stopwatch icon, and this one's all in red, and it says 14:14.

So what exactly is this telling me?

Before we dive in deeper, I wanna let you know that the Activity power-up uses a 24-hour clock. The reason why this says 14:14 is that it represents 2:14 PM, meaning that I started the timer on this card at 2:14. This one's still active, which is why it's displayed in red, while the other card shows I've spent 29 minutes on it, but the timer is not currently running.

Let's go to this active one. If I open up this card, you can see down below that 38 minutes have passed since I first initiated this timer. That's what's going on here. If I want to pause the timer, I just need to click it. When I click it, it turns green, so now the timer's no longer running.

Over here on the right-hand side, it shows me the total time spent on this card. If I click on it, it breaks down the activity among different board members. In my example, it's only myself, but if other team members were working on this card and initiated the timer, we could see the breakdown between multiple members.

If I want to start it again, it's as simple as clicking it, and now the timer will continue. You can see when I paused it, it gave me a few quick buttons. Maybe I started work on this and forgot to start the timer, so I can just add five minutes or add 15 minutes if I need to. It also has an edit icon, so I can update the total time or even reset the timer if I want to.

This Activity power-up, although simple, can be a great way to manage and track how long you've been spending on each of your cards.

Well, I'd love to hear from you next. Number one, what was your favorite of the five power-ups I showed you today? And number two, what did I leave off this list, or which Trello power-ups are helping you the most right now? Be sure to share that with me and with others because they'll find great value in the things that are benefiting you right now.

Thank you so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Are you looking for a CRM system that works directly with the tools that you already use?

Are you sick of clicking on too many tabs and working with too many applications when it comes to managing new leads and new deals?

Well in today's video I wanna talk about NetHunt CRM, and in particular, the new NetHunt CRM LinkedIn extension which allows you to work right here within LinkedIn, capture new leads and new deals without ever leaving this particular site.

NetHunt CRM

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And you're probably wondering why I'm starting out here within my Gmail inbox.

Well, this is the beauty of NetHunt CRM.

NetHunt CRM works exclusively with your Gmail account and other Google products as well.

But here you can see on the left-hand side when I click on Scott's business, I now have a full-fledged CRM system right here within my Gmail inbox.

So I never have to leave Gmail, I can add new contacts, I can manage my deals, I can see my pipeline here, I can even manage tasks which are directly related to my CRM activities right here from within Gmail.

Whenever I wanna go back, I just click on inbox, and I'm back to my regular inbox.

But I've got all this CRM information right here at my fingertips.

Now if you want a full review of the NetHunt CRM system, I'll leave a link in the description below, but let's move on to LinkedIn, because when it comes to capturing new leads,

LinkedIn CRM

And strengthening those relationships, there's a good chance that you're dealing with LinkedIn as you're finding new information and reaching out to new contacts.

Now for today's demo, I'm gonna be looking at employees exclusively to NetHunt CRM, because I didn't want to bother with having to blank out or blur out personal information.

So here I'm gonna take a look at some of their employees lists, and let's say that I've already had an initial conversation here with Olga, but I wanna add her to my CRM so I can continue that conversation and add a deal, and add other activities related to this potential deal that we've been working on together.

The first thing that you'll notice is that once you have the LinkedIn extension installed is that you have this little icon beside everyone's name.

This one's gonna change in just a second, because when it has the white background, it's telling me that this person, in fact, all these people are not in my CRM.

But all I have to do is click on it, and I can either search to see if she happens to be there, and it says, nope, no records found.

Well, that's not a problem. I'm just a single click away to auto-creating this record in my CRM account.

Now you can see that this little icon has turned blue, that's telling me that they are part of my CRM.

So now no matter where I go in LinkedIn, I can see if someone is or is not a part of my CRM system already.

Now if I go back here to Gmail, here you can see instantaneously, I've got Olga now added here as a part of my record.

But let's click on her LinkedIn account to get some more details.

And the first thing that you're gonna notice here on the right-hand side is that we have this additional side of information.

So now everything that Olga has provided as a part of her LinkedIn account, such as her name, title, email, Skype address, whatever she has included here on LinkedIn is now gonna be available to me within my CRM system.

And if I need to edit any of this information, I can do so right here within LinkedIn.

It looks like we don't have a phone number here, well let's say I already know the phone number, so I'm just going to add a quick fake phone number here, I'm gonna hit enter, and so now I can use this phone number, I can even make a call directly from here within LinkedIn.

Again if I go back, if I click on Olga's record, boom, there we go, I've got her number as a part of my record going forward within that CRM.

If I continue to scroll all the way to the bottom here, you can see that there is a related records section, and as of right now there are no deals associated.

Well let's hit that plus button, let's say that Olga and I have already been talking about this coffee mug deal.

Here's a deal, here's actually a couple of deals that I've already created within the CRM system, all I have to do is click on the one that's appropriate for her, and now this deal is attached to her records.

So whenever I'm looking at this deal within my CRM, I'm gonna have her attached to that record.

Let's go one step further there, and there's another tab here called timeline, and I think this is fantastic.

Here within the timeline, I can see a history of everything that I've been doing with Olga.

Whether that's a phone call or a meeting or emails, et cetera.

I can even write little notes to myself, so I can say check in with her in about a week's time.

So that's the little note for myself.

And if I work with a team, you can use NetHunt CRM of course with a team, other people can have access to this note as well.

So everyone can know where I am at and what the status is of this particular account, but the other thing that I really like here is I can create calendar events directly from within LinkedIn.

Again, I don't have to switch tabs, I don't have to go somewhere else, I don't even have to open up Google Calendar.

I'm gonna create a calendar event here, and in this case, I'm gonna make it an all-day event, and I'm gonna say you know what, this is gonna be a reminder for me.

I'm not gonna invite Olga to this, but I'm gonna remind myself to call Olga, let's leave it as simple as that, I'm just gonna say call Olga.

I can add a further description if I want to here, and I'm going to hit save.

So you may not see a lot of details here in terms of what's happened within the LinkedIn account, but let's open up Google Calendar and find out if I go to today, look at that, it's immediately synced.

It's appearing here on my Google Calendar, and if I open up this record, you can see that Olga is attached, so I know exactly who it's from, I can even hover over this and use one of these quick links to initiate the phone call or a Skype call, et cetera.

But check this out, if I go to edit this calendar event, I've got this great information at my fingertips again, including the deal, including additional information here, I've even got that timeline, so as we're having this phone conversation, I can add my notes directly here within this window.

Again, I don't have to leave Google Calendar, I don't have to leave my Gmail account if we happen to be conversing via email, or there's an important email that I'm looking up.

Google Calendar, Gmail, LinkedIn, for many of us, we spend a lot of our time within these three locations.

So why add a fourth one, or a fifth one when it comes to a CRM system or managing all of our deals?

If you'd like to learn more about NetHunt CRM, I will leave a link in the description below.

You can go to NetHunt.com, and of course, I'd always love to hear from you.

What do you think of this new integration with LinkedIn?

And is this something exciting that you might think of using as a part of your own business?

Thank you so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

(subtle electronic music) Do you know how to use filters and labels within Gmail? Even if you're only a novice, I'm going to show you three new ways so you can get the most out of your inbox.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And in today's video, I want to show you how to automatically label certain emails, particularly if it's marketing, or perhaps newsletters that you subscribe to.

I also want to show you how to move emails from specific senders, so that they don't always show up in your inbox, and you can have a special location to review those emails. And last but not least, I want to show you how to build a to-do list queue right here within Gmail, especially if you find value in emailing yourself tasks or reminders, you can have your own queue to review those specific emails.

So let's start with our first tip,

Tip 1 Create a Filter

and we are going to automatically move most of our newsletters and marketing material out of our inbox into a specific label. Specifically, we're going to have this happen automatically as they arrive. So the first thing that we're going to need to do

is create a new label. To do that, we need to come down to the very bottom here on the left and select More, keep scrolling down and select Create new label, and here I'm going to add a new label called Newsletters. You can call it whatever you want.

I'm going to select newsletters because we're going to try and catch as many of these as possible. I'm going to select Create, and if we scroll back up there, you can see my Newsletters.

I'm going to click on these three dots and I'm going to change the color, just so it stands out a bit. I'm going to give it a blue label color. And if I select it, we haven't given anything this Newsletter label but that's going to change in a little while. Now that we have the label,

What we want to do is come up here to the search bar, select the "Show search options."

Now remember, this is our first step in creating a filter.

Yes, we could fill out some information here and just do a search on our existing email.

But we are going to create a filter that will be applied to future incoming messages.

And it's all going to start here with "has the words," and there's one word that I can almost guarantee all of your marketing material has within it, and that is the word "unsubscribe."

Whether you signed up yourself or, unfortunately, if someone sold your email address to someone else, I can almost guarantee that they're going to have an "unsubscribe" link or "unsubscribe" somewhere in the body of the email.

We're not looking at the subject here; we're looking at "has the words unsubscribe."

Now you can review the other information here as well, but this is really all I'm going to add for this particular filter.

Instead of hitting "Search," I'm going to select "Create filter."

Now on the next screen, or the next little window that we receive here, we get to decide what happens with that email.

So what we're going to do here is, number one, we're going to say "skip the inbox," in brackets, archive it.

Remember, that's very different from deleting it, we're just going to archive it, meaning it's going to not arrive; it's not going to start its life here in our inbox.

But there's a second thing that we want to do, and that is that we want to apply that "Newsletter" label.

So we're going to come down, here's all of our labels.

We're going to select "Newsletters."

So now what's going to happen, again, it's pretty straightforward.

Whenever an email arrives in my inbox, is sent to me, if it has the words "unsubscribe," it is going to get this label "Newsletters," and it's not going to show up in my inbox.

I'm going to say "Create filter."

Now you're actually not going to see anything happen live in the moment unless I happen to receive one of those emails in the next few seconds here.

If I click on "Newsletters," I'm still not going to see anything here because I didn't tell it to move all of my "unsubscribe" or marketing emails yet.

But going forward, starting right now, any new messages with "unsubscribe" are not going to appear here in my Inbox; they're going to appear here in "Newsletters," so I can go and review them when I want to.

And it's not going to clutter up all of my other information here in my inbox.

All right, let's take a look at a second one here.

And this next filter has to do with moving emails from a specific sender.

So, for example, maybe you want emails that are coming from a particular domain name, like a particular organization, for example.

Or maybe it's someone extra important, right?

It could be a boss, or it could be a client, something along those lines.

So what we're going to do to create this filter, again, we're going to come up here and select that down arrow, and we've got a few different choices that we can use here.

This time around, we're going to use the "From" field, and I'm just going to give you a couple of examples in this particular case.

So one of the things that I often...

Of course, I could put in a direct email address, I can put someone's specific email addresses, and I could separate them by a comma if I wanted to add a bunch.

But let's say that there was a particular domain that I wanted to be sent somewhere else, I wanted to filter it out somewhere else.

What I can do is I can use my asterisk as a wildcard and say "at," and then all you need to do is put in...

I'm just going to use "domain.com" as my example...

All you need to do is put in that domain.

So whether it's cnn.com, whether it's bestbuy.com, I mean, whatever makes sense to you.

Again, it could be your own organization or someone else.

You can put this, but anyone, again, it doesn't matter what the beginning of that email address is going to be.

It's going to catch everything here.

Now, what we can do is we can continue to fill up other pieces of information if we want to, and then go ahead and create that filter.

But there's something else that I wanted to add here as well.

What if you wanted to filter everything but a particular domain?

What if I wanted to say, you know what, let's go back to that unsubscribe example.

Let's say, I want to continue to filter out, or I want to tweak that previous filter that we had.

I want to filter out everything that has "unsubscribe."

However, I don't want to see if Simpletivity stuff gets through.

I'm hoping that you enjoy my weekly newsletter.

And so maybe you want to allow anything that's from @simpletivity to come through.

Well, all you need to do here is instead of just putting my email address, which would, of course, do that in this particular example, I'm going to put some brackets around it.

And what I'm going to do is put in front of it, I'm going to put the minus sign.

So what this is saying here...

Tip 3 Different Operators

Is that it is going to move everything that has "subscribe," anything that has "subscribe" in the body of the email will filter out as I continue through with this filter.

However, if it has simpletivity.com, if that's the domain name that it's coming from, because of the way that I've written this out with the minus sign in front, it is not going to apply to this particular domain.

So make sure that you understand that there are a number of different operators.

We could also use the OR operator if it has the words "unsubscribe," or another common one is "view in browser," for example, right?

In fact, we might want to use quotation marks for this, quotation marks, so it's looking for that phrase, because that's a very common one for newsletters, right?

Or maybe there's another word that you often see in a particular email.

So whether it's the minus sign, whether it's an asterisk, whether it's the OR operator, remember, you can make some fairly complex filters here, depending on your specific needs.

Now, the last one that I want to show you here today...

Tip 4 Create a ToDo List

has to do with creating a to-do list within your email.

Now, I don't necessarily recommend this from a productivity coaching or productivity consulting standpoint because I don't think your email is really the best place to keep a to-do list.

But yet I understand that we all work a little differently, and if you find great value in emailing yourself a to-do list or emailing yourself important emails or reminders, well, this may be helpful to you.

What we're going to need to do here is, again, we're going to create a new label.

So let's just quickly create a new label.

I'm going to just call this, let's just call this To Do List, make it nice and simple.

We'll come up here, here's our to-do list, should we give it a different color? Yeah, quickly, let's give it maybe an orange color there.

So we've got our to-do list label.

Next thing, what we need to do is create a new filter.

So if I come up here, let me clear out the information that we had here before in our previous example.

So we've got a blank slate here.

So what we want to be able to do is to move things, or to bring things into that to-do list that is coming from us.

So for example, I could go up here and say, well, I'm going to put anything from scott@sample.com, anything from this email address, I want it to move over here.

Now if I put in a comma, what I could do is I could add other email addresses as well.

Maybe it's my boss, maybe it's my wife, for example, I could put in other specific email addresses as well, so that it's more than just one specific one.

But in this example, I'm just going to use this dummy email scott@sample.com.

Next up, I'm going to say Create filter.

And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to say yes, once again, skip the inbox, I'm going to archive it and apply the To Do List label.

So just like we saw with the Newsletters, when anything comes from this email address, it's going to skip the inbox and go over here to my to-do list.

Now, of course, I don't have to have it skip the inbox.

If you think it's that important, and you don't want to miss out on it, well, maybe I would uncheck this and just say Apply this label, so I can quickly and easily see all of these orange labels.

You've got a lot of different options available to you here.

But in some cases, to keep a nice and clean inbox, sometimes it's nice to have things move directly over here to this label.

So I can say create that filter.

Now going forward, if I'm busy, if I'm somewhere away, and I just want to send myself a quick email, it's going to show up here, and I can review this when I want to.

And remember, just like these other labels, you can see the numbers beside them.

So you'll be able to see the number of unread emails that are waiting for you there as well.

I hope you enjoyed today's video, and I'd love to hear from you next.

Which of these three filters and labels combinations did you enjoy the most?

Which one are you thinking of applying to your own Gmail system or your own Gmail setup?

I would love to hear from you along with any other suggestions that you have right here for the Simpletivity channel.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.‍

(energetic electronic music) Is your calendar the best place to manage all of your to-dos? Can you turn Microsoft Outlook into an even better productivity tool? Well, in today's video, I want to show you how to manage all of your tasks using the calendar area within Microsoft Outlook.

Overview

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And in today's video, I'm going to show you how to set up your calendar in Microsoft Outlook to be a very effective to-do list.

I'm also going to show you how this works and how this looks like within the Outlook mobile app.

And last, but not least, I'm going to show you both the advantages and the disadvantages of using your to-do list in this manner.

But I think what you're going to find out is that the pros far outweigh the cons.

Outlook Calendar

So let's dive in.

Let's get started here within our Outlook calendar.

And no, we're not talking about the Tasks area.

Yes, of course, Outlook has tasks built right into it.

But I find for many people, it's a little clunky.

People don't enjoy managing their tasks experience here.

And yes, you can change a few different views and that type of thing.

But we want to focus on the calendar, why?

Because this is probably where you are spending a great part of your day.

You've got so many different appointments and commitments that you need to know where you need to be.

So why don't we put our tasks here as well, so we don't forget where we should be putting our attention.

AllDay Event

One of the biggest problems with using a to-do list manager outside of our calendar is that we have to switch back and forth, we have to remember to open up another tab or open up another application.

But as you can see here in my example, I've actually got my tasks listed here, right at the top of each and every day.

So what's happening here?

Well, what I'm doing is I'm using the all-day event area.

And you may be using this area already, right?

If you want to block out an all-day event, or a holiday, or a birthday, or maybe a day that you're going to be away from work.

But I find what makes this area so much more powerful is if we put in our tasks.

So here you can see I've got a number of tasks here on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

And the great thing is, is that as I scroll up and down, no matter where I am within my day, those tasks will always remain front and center.

So it's hard to get rid of them, right?

I can't ignore them when I've put my to-do list here at the very top of the list.

Deferring Tasks

The other great thing about this setup is that you can see the relationship between your tasks and the other commitments, the other things that you have to do as a part of the day.

Let me give you an example.

How many times have you been using a to-do list app and you get near the end of the day and you just say, I haven't gotten to these three things, so I better just defer them all, let's just defer all of these three things till the next day, right?

That's just sort of the default.

In fact, many of our to-do list apps make it easy to defer a large quantity of to-dos.

But let's take a look at this first one, call Jane to confirm lunch.

Well, because I can see it on the same screen, I can see that oh, that lunch is coming up tomorrow.

I can't really defer this.

I've got to do this task today, because I can see the relationship here.

Here's another good example.

Maybe I get to the end of my Wednesday and I say, you know what, I just don't have enough time for these things, I better just defer this one, prepare these HR interview questions.

I know that the interview is not till Friday, so I'll just put it to you on Thursday.

Wait a minute, I'm going to be involved in a very intensive all-day conference downtown.

I don't think I'm going to have time to prepare these particular interview questions.

So no, I'd have to keep that one there on Wednesday, so I can be ready for this interview which is happening on Friday.

Seeing that relationship between the individual tasks and to-dos and your meeting appointments can be so valuable in making sure that you're not just deferring things aimlessly, that you're doing the things that you should be doing to prepare for certain meetings and certain events.

All-Day Events

So how do you use this all-day event area?

Well, you can do it in one of two ways.

You can double-click on this area, of course, to open up a new tab here and let's just call this one new task.

And by default, when you click on the all-day event area, it's going to make it an all-day event.

I'm just going to turn off the reminder here, but you can adjust these reminders as need be, and I'm going to Save and Close.

So there we go, I've got a new task here.

Now a couple of things that you may want to do.

I'm going to open this one back up is that you may want to give it a particular color, for example.

Maybe you want to give all of your tasks an orange color, just to set them apart from your actual meetings and your actual appointments, that is absolutely fine.

Another thing that you can do with these colors, because I know for some people, it's important that you check things off, so what you can do is you could specify, you could create one of these categories or one of these labels to say that blue means it's checked off, right?

So maybe when things are finished, they turn to blue.

And so you want to turn everything that you have listed up here from green to blue in this example.

Your last option that you have here would be just to simply delete it, in fact, actually, that's my personal preference, I never feel the need to keep my tasks around.

So once I've completed a particular task, I just delete it.

My goal at the end of the day is to get all of these tasks done and cleared out as a part of my day.

Now the other way that you can add a new task here is just to click on the New Appointment area here.

And again, by default, it's going to make it an all-day event.

Once again, in this example, I'm just going to turn off the None reminder, you can actually change this default if you want to.

I also want to point out that an all-day event, by default, is going to show up as free.

So it's not going to block out your time, you don't have to worry that this is going to make yourself unavailable for appointments or other people to add you to a particular appointment.

So let's say this is another new task that I'm going to add here, I'm going to keep this one on Wednesday, but I can change the date here.

You can also use all of this area down below to add notes, you can add attachments, you can add true formatting here down below.

So if you want to add further details like a meeting agenda, or those interview notes that I mentioned earlier, you can do that all here as well.

In fact, if I open up that interview question, and I think I added a note here, yeah, don't forget to ask them about this security question or policy changes, it's going to be right there when I go to tackle this particular task.

So again, some great advantages for using this here, and seeing all of your tasks in the same window, in the same view as all of your commitments.

Let's switch over now to the mobile view and see how this looks like on the Outlook app.

Mobile View

So here we are on my Outlook mobile app.

And as you can see, no matter how I scroll, all the way to the early morning of the day, all the way to late at evening, my tasks are always going to show up at the top of that list.

And that's just so key to make sure that I am seeing them, that they're at the forefront, that they don't get lost as a part of all of my busy meetings.

And as I scroll over to the next day, there, I've got my tasks waiting for me, I can see what else I have planned for tomorrow, in addition to all of my appointments.

And don't forget that when you click on your individual tasks, you will still get your notes and attachments and everything else that you've added.

Here again, is that HR interview question, I've got that little note for me here.

I can add even further notes as well.

So no matter where you go, no matter what you're doing within the mobile app, as you scroll up and down, those tasks are going to be front and center so you don't forget where you should be putting your attention.

Disadvantages

Lastly, I just want to highlight some of the advantages and disadvantages of using this method.

Now, of course, I've already highlighted the benefit of seeing all of your tasks on the same screen as your actual events and seeing the relationship between the two.

But one of the things that you may want to be careful with is that because these are technically all-day events, none of them will move over to the coming day.

When Tuesday is over, and I wake up and start my Wednesday, none of these will move over automatically unless I do it myself.

Now, that may sound like a pretty big negative, but I think that there's a silver lining.

Because nothing's going to happen automatically, it's going to encourage you and force you to be that much more engaged with all of your tasks and to-do.

So when I get to the end of my day, if I have not completed all of these tasks, not only will I just move them over, I won't just move them over, I'm going to take a look at those relationships.

I'm going to see where is it most appropriate to move some of these tasks?

Or, are some of these tasks even worthwhile anymore?

Maybe I can just get rid of them completely.

Sometimes I know when we're managing them in outside to-do list apps, it's just so easy to say defer all, if you've got seven, or 10, or whatever that number is.

This encourages you, it forces you to engage that much more with your to-do list.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's video and I would love to hear from you.

What is your thoughts? What is your feedback?

Perhaps you've used a similar method like this before in the past, be sure to leave me a comment down below.

Thank you so much for watching, and I hope you subscribe, right here to the Simpletivity channel.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

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Have you ever been working within Google Sheets?

Overview

And having multiple sheets of data and wishing that you could sum them all up together in a separate sheet?

Well, in today's video, I'm gonna show you how to do just that.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And you know, sometimes there's good reason why we have multiple sheets for different pieces of information.

Maybe this represents different managers or members of your team.

Maybe this represents different sales areas or sales regions, for example.

So you may want to keep them separate because people are entering information just for their area, but you'd like to total them all up in a separate sheet.

Now it's true, I could take the information for example, from B and C, I could cut or copy it and bring it over here to A, but I wanna show you a much better way of doing this, especially if you are gonna be adding more information in the future.

So here I've got a tab, a sheet called Total.

Tutorial

And the first thing that we need to do is we wanna make sure that we have our headings that are exactly the same as the other sheets that we are gonna combine.

So I'm just gonna copy and paste that over here.

Now the next step that we are gonna add here is we're gonna add a formula.

So in the very first cell, just below date, I'm gonna hit that equal sign.

And what we're gonna do is we're gonna add a brace or sometimes better referred to as a squiggly bracket, not just a regular bracket, a squiggly bracket.

And we're gonna come over here to Team A, and we're just gonna select all of the data that we want.

Now we're gonna hit our semi-colon button on our keyboard, we're gonna go to Team B, and do the exact same thing, we're gonna select sorry, all the information that we want from this sheet, we're gonna hit semi-colon once more, go to Team C and once again, we're gonna select all of that information as well.

We're gonna close things off by hitting that squiggly bracket once again, at the end of our formula there, hit Enter and now here on our total sheet, we have everything from A, B and C.

If we look down here, says we've got 30 rows, now let's subtract one, right? Because we've got our header up here.

So we really have 29 rows.

So if we go back here to Team A, remember to subtract one, we've got 12 plus six, that's 18 plus 11.

Yeah, that adds up to 29.

So we've got all of that information here on this particular tab.

So that's great, it looks like we're finished right?

Well, maybe there's one problem.

Maybe this is all you need for right now.

But what if you are planning to add more information to you know, one of these sheets over here or other members of your team?

Let's say I'm here on Team B, and I'm gonna add a new entry here.

Okay?

I'm gonna add, let's add myself, just so it stands out from the rest of the list here.

Let's give ourselves a state, let's say I'm selling binders and let's say I am an absolutely horrible sales executive.

All right?

So I've added my new data here, perfect Team B.

If I go over to my total area, if I scan down and I'm not seeing any zeros here, I don't see my name here, that's a bit of a problem, right?

Because I want to be able to add information over there and have it show here but it's not happening.

I've made that new entry, and it's not showing up here.

So let's see how we can tweak our formula up here so we can do just that.

So a couple of things at first, we're gonna come in here and we're gonna look at the cells that we're referencing.

One of the problems is that we are saying to finish at E13.

We wanna finish at that row but of course, as we're adding things, we're gonna be going well beyond that.

So the first thing that we wanna do is come in here and actually remove the row number.

We wanna leave the column of course, column E, but we wanna come in here and remove the row number.

So E7 becomes E and over here E12 just becomes E as well.

But watch what happens when I hit Enter and change this formula.

So, what happened here?

So this is team A, right?

That looks like Team A has come over and you may be saying it didn't even bring over Team B and Team C.

Well, actually, you'd be wrong.

But here's the problem, I have to scroll all the way down to I think about the thousands, somewhere around there and yeah, look at that.

There's Team B.

And if we scroll down 1000 more, we would get to around Team C.

It is grabbing all of those empty or no cells.

Well, that's a problem, right?

That's certainly not what we want.

So let's go back in here and alter our formula once again.

We're gonna leave those Es that the way they are, but what we wanna do is add a query.

So at the very beginning of our formula, we are gonna type in the word query and an open bracket, all right?

So an open bracket here is gonna allow us to have this query.

We're gonna keep everything that we left in there, everything that we left from that original formula minus the row number and we're gonna come to the end here and hit comma.

Now we're gonna hit our quotation marks and we are going to enter in the following, we're gonna say select, this is how we're gonna make sure that we're only getting information that contains values.

We're gonna say select asterisk, that's sort of our wildcard, right? The star.

Select where column one, and that's capital C-O-L one, that's looking at column one or column A, in all of those different sheets that we're referencing, select star where column one is, oops, Did I put in another space? Is not null.

Okay?

So whenever it's gonna go back and take a look it's only gonna bring in information where there are things where there is information in that date column.

And lastly, we wanna hit our quotation marks to close that off, and one more we're gonna do our bracket to close off the full equation, let's hit Enter and hope that this works.

Okay, looks like we've got a lot more information here.

Do we have all the same information we had before?

We have all the same information and then some, hey, there's me, there's my poor sales job of selling absolutely nothing.

So there's that new entry we made, now it went and grabbed that information from Team B.

Let's do one more quick check test just to make sure that this works.

I'm gonna put in a new entry here on Team C, this time, let's say, let's call this one Jenny Sample also from Washington, let's say, and she's selling art and she is an amazing salesperson.

Sold $45,000 worth of art the other day.

So if I go back to total now, hey, look what's showing up at the very bottom.

So now with that new formula that we put in on this total sheet, we can continue to add new lines, new information to these sheets and they will total up perfectly here on this final sheet.

Well, I hope that you found today's video helpful and I would love to hear from you next.

What other tips would you like to learn about Google Sheets here on the Simpletivity Channel?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

(machine whirring)
(logo whooshing)

There are many productivity apps and project management solutions, which claim to be an all-in-one solution, but in my experience, there are very, very few that can live up to that claim.

So when I first heard of Notion, I was a little skeptical, but they truly are an all-in-one productivity platform, and in today's video, I wanna show you why, I wanna show you the various different things that you can create and build and link together within Notion and why you should take a serious look at this very cool tool.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here, at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And let's start out by showing you just a few examples which I've created here within Notion,and I'm gonna start by clicking on this one called Scott's Notes.

Now one of the first things that I love about Notion is that absolutely everything is customizable. Everything from this banner image you see up here to being able to add a logo or emojis to different aspects of the things that you're creating, and yes, it's so much more than just a note-taking tool.

Now here you can see I've got a few simple noteswhich I've created here, but it gets so much better than this because when I click on any one of these notes, let's click on this website re-design one, here you can see I can add almost anything within a note.

Not only is it gonna keep track of everythingthat I've been doing here and I can add tags, I can add other properties here. I can add whatever other property that I like, but look at this beautiful link to the website,the little previews that you can add.

If I come down here I've got almost an unlimited supply of different blocks, Notion refers to these as blocks, and it's so much more than just text and a to-do list. I can embed other pages and other notes which I create here within Notion.

Come down here I can mention other people and assign people to different notes and things. I love how it gives you an actual preview, before you add something. Let's say I wanna add like a little board in line here. If I click on it, look at that, I can actually have a Kanban board within a note, if that makes sense, or if that's useful to me, I can break it out laterif I wanna make this my own project management tool, but it's all here within this note.

And even within the notes view here, I can add different views. Let me jump here to a task list which I created earlier, and here you can see, I've got sort of a simple Kanban format here and we've seen this before, right? With other tools that we've used, I can simply drag things over to change their statuses.

If I click on them, again, I've got this beautiful workspace where I can add any additional element, any other additional details that I would like, but what if I don't like the board view or what if I want a few different views? No problem, how about if I just add a few different views.

So I've already added these two already, if I wanna calendar view of my boards and all of my tasks, I can do so. If I want a more traditional list view, I can do that as well, is that not enough? Let's add a view, look at all these additional views that we can add, including a gallery view, as well.

So if you don't need all of them, that's fine. Don't add it to that particular page or to that particular workspace, but so much flexibility here within Notion.

Another one that I wanna show you here is the Weekly Agenda. And what's great about this one, or sorry, not the Weekly Agenda, it's my homepage, my team homepage.

What's great about this is that you can create your own custom dashboard. So here you can see there's a few different areas, right? Company, Operations and Meetings, and this is more than just notes because if I click on the office calendar, that's gonna take me directly to the office calendar, and I've even got a nice breadcrumb system here at the top left of the page.

So if I go back here and I wanna see what's happening with Requested Time off, I can see that, I can see what's listed here in that space.

But the other great thing is that you can create your own templates, so let me give you a quick example. Here under Meetings, maybe I want myself and my team to follow sort of a preset meeting agenda. I want the Date up front, and I want the Agenda items, plus some Follow-Up and some Reference Material that I would like to be added to each and every one of our meeting agendas.

Well, this is something that already took place in the past, but what if I'm setting up a new meeting? Well, here I've created a template, all I'm gonna selectis Create a Meeting Agenda, and this is gonna launch a new meeting agenda,just waiting for me to input the information that I need.

So it's already here you can already pre load it or pre format it the way that you like and of course I can edit this later on.

If we jump down here to Templates, Notion makes it so easy for you to get started, you can see that they've grouped it by industry, or the type of work that you are thinking of doing or wanting to do, whether that's design,human resources, product management sales, and if you click on them, each of them have several examples.

So before you choose to start using one of these templates, you can actually see what it looks like. If I go into Personal here, and if I wanna look at well what does the reading list exactly look like? How would that oh, cool, it's kind of like a database, like a spreadsheet format here where you can add your own rating system, you can sort this any way that you want. You can customize this table, but it's a great launching off point, right? If you don't wanna build something from scratch, you can come in here and start with a beautiful template.

Now another big advantage that Notion has over many competitors is the ability to create a database or a spreadsheet format right here from within the system.

Now here you can see I've got a fairly simple one setup, but the great thing about this is that I can manipulate and I can filter this data in so many different ways.

Now when it comes to this simple example, I could start by filling out a new entry here and just go column by column, but what I find a lot more effective is as I go up here to the right hand corner, and if I select New, I can start with my new entry.

So let's say this is my new entry, and I can just follow this, almost like filling out a form. I can say this is okay, this is an Onboarding Flow. The status is it's scheduled, it's scheduled for later this week, email, you gonna leave that empty, I'm gonna be the interviewer, so I'm gonna select that, and completion time, we're gonna say 14 days.

And then if I wanna add further comments, I can do so, and when I come back to the main view, there we have it. There's my new entry with all that information that I filled in.

So even if this is a very lengthy or complex database which you have created, it's so much easier just to fill that in using the new and if I wanna open this back up, here I can go and change those settings, I can add that further information down below.

So there is your quick taste, your overview of Notion and I would love to hear from you next.

From everything that you've seen here, what excites you the most about Notion? What are you thinking of using Notion for? I'd love to hear from you, so be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

And if you'd like to try Notion for yourself, you can use it absolutely free, just click the link in the description.

Thank you so much for watching today's video and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

(electronic whirring)

Are you needing a better way to manage all of your tasks?

Are you needing a to-do list solution that really works for you?

Well, in today's video I'm gonna show you five different ways to create a custom to-do list right here within Trello.

And we're gonna start simple and we're gonna work our way up to something that I call the Ultimate To-Do List for Trello.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And we're gonna start with the default here.

Default

When you open up or start a brand new board in Trello, most likely you'll have these three lists waiting for you: To Do, Doing and Done.

And that gives us a great way to work through sort of a Kanban style method of dragging things through the process until they are complete.

Now you can add due dates if you want to keep yourself on task but, you know, a pretty simple way to get started here with managing your tasks within Trello.

Why don't we turn it up a notch and go to level two.

Grouping

Those of you who may be familiar with the book Getting Things Done, also known as GTD, know that it can be helpful to group certain tasks together.

So, for example, if I've got something here like Review customer feedback survey.

Let's say that's something that I'm gonna do at my computer. I'm gonna add a label. I'm gonna add a label called Computer.

And you can see here that I've already pre-created a number of labels. I've got about five here: Email, Phone, Errand, Meeting, and Computer because what I wanna be able to do is quickly identify things that are, for example, all of my phone calls, so I can get them all done in roughly the same time within the same batch of time and then move on to something else.

Search Cards

So let's group a few of these here.

Workout at the gym, well, that's certainly an errand. I'm not doing that at the office.

Hire new staff, that's gonna be a phone interview, so I'm going to say two there.

Decide on a website budget, that's a computer related.

Redesign website.

Call long-lost friend. Yeah, that's definitely a phone call so I'm gonna put that as a phone call there.

So the nice thing here is that as I go up to show Menu, I can choose the Search Cards option.

And let's say I just want to work on the things that are at my Computer. I can select that label and now everything else is hidden.

So for the next half hour or next hour, whatever that bulk of time happens to be, I can just focus on these three areas.

If I'm done with that, I can go back here and let's say, hey, I've got a few minutes to make a few phone calls. Let's go to the Phone and now I can focus on just these tasks.

So the combination of adding different labels and then using the Search Cards option to filter things out can be a great way to up your productivity.

Subtasks

Now I'm just gonna reduce these labels. I'm gonna minimize these labels, if I click on them, just so we can focus more on the tasks.

Why don't we step it up a notch once again and something that you may need within your To-Do List system is the ability to add sub-tasks, right?

So, for example, Review customer feedback survey. Maybe there's a few different things that I need to get done here.

Well, if I open up this card, a great way to add sub-tasks is to add a checklist.

So if I add a checklist in here and I'm just gonna call this one Sub-Tasks for our example. I'm going to say Add.

Now what I can do is I can add a bunch of smaller tasks within this. I'm just gonna use a few examples, just so that we have a few to look at here.

So let's say that there are three sub-tasks that I need to complete for this particular task. I can come in here, I can list them and I can start checking them off.

And the great thing is is that on the front of the card, you get a nice little icon that shows me, hey, I'm 2/3 of the way done.

When I'm, you know, all three done here, I can then move this over to the Done list but I'm still not quite finished here.

If I go back in here and I finished task number three. Hey, that's great! I get that little green label and now I can move it over here to Done.

But let me show you one other thing that you want to keep in mind with using the task or the checklist function.

Let's say as I'm working out these tasks I realize that task number three is actually a bit bigger than I thought. This might have some of its own sub-tasks as well.

Well, don't forget that you can break out anything within a checklist. So if I come over here and select the three dots, I can say Convert to Card.

And so now when I go outside of this card, here you can see task number three is now its own task, its own card within this list.

So some things that can start within a checklist if it's a sub-task, for example, you can break it out to its own task if necessary.

Projects

All right well so far we've only been working with three different lists here but why don't we add something else, which I think is very valuable, and that is a Projects list.

So I'm gonna add a new list and I'm going to bring it all the way over here to the left-hand side.

And something that is often missing is that as we go about planning our day, we start to analyze and prioritize all the things that we would like to get done here.

However, often what we get done or where we focus our attention is not necessarily in line with the projects, the big goals that we should be accomplishing.

So let me just add a few here. I'm going to say Project 1 and Project 2, just for example here.

So not only am I gonna have them listed here in my Projects list, and, yes, you will definitely have more than two projects on the go at any given time.

Not only can I just reference it and look at it. So when I'm looking at the things that I wanna be doing today or that I should be doing this week, not only can I look over here but we wanna go one step further and actually connect some of these tasks to these projects.

So I'm going to open up Project 1.

And let's say that some of the things that are already in my to-do list are related to Project 1.

What I can do is go over here and select Attachment.

I'm gonna select Trello.

And you can see that it actually has some of the most recent cards that I have selected or viewed.

So let's say Review customer feedback survey is one of those tasks. Hey, now it appears here within this project.

Let's do it one more time because there's probably more than one thing that is related to this project.

Now I'm gonna go over here and I'm going to say, "Well that new book is also related to project number one."

So now I have both of those tasks listed here. You can see on the front of that card, on the front of my project card, you can see that there's two things.

I can see that there are two tasks assigned or related here, and when I open it up, not only do I see a nice preview of these two but if I click on them, it takes me directly to that card, directly to that task.

So it's a great way to create those relationships between your daily tasks or your actionable tasks and the overarching project.

And keeping track which one of those are related to this given project. All right so we added one more list here.

Notes Ideas

but I'm gonna actually convert this one last time.

We're gonna add two more lists, and we're gonna see if that's gonna help us be that much more efficient.

So the first one that I'm gonna add is called Notes. Sometimes I call it Notes/Ideas.

And I gotta add one more here and it's called Waiting For.

Okay, I'm gonna put them in a few different places here. The Notes, I'm gonna bring all the way over to the left, just to the left of Projects.

And my Waiting For, I'm gonna put here between Doing and Done.

So let's start with the Notes/Ideas. Often we don't think of Trello as a good note-taking tool but remember all of these cards.

Let's just put in a test card here, for example.

All of these cards give you the ability to attach documents, to attach images, to have full comments, and if there's other people involved, such as a meeting agenda, you can include that here as well, whether it's checklists and due dates, it's a great place to add all of those notes, especially here in the Description area.

And remember many of the notes that you take will never become a task or become a project but if they do, how easy is it to just drag it over into the Projects list.

Or if it's a task to just drag it over into your to-do list. You've already got all of that information, you've got everything that you need within that given card.

And remember you can also forward your emails directly to this list.

So if you come across other ideas or valuable pieces of information, you can forward that directly here into your Trello board.

So I think having a Notes or an Ideas list is a great idea.

Now moving over to our Waiting For list, I'd like to have a Waiting For or a Pending list, it could be called Pending if you like, somewhere between the Doing and Done list, because, let's be honest, sometimes you're working on something and it's simply out of your hands for a period of time.

So let's say Hire new staff.

Let's say you're still waiting for more applications to come in. There's really nothing you can do at this given point. There's nothing you can actually do except for maybe just wait 'til the end of the week or whatever that timeframe is for those applications to come in.

So I think it's nice to have that separation between things that you can actionably do here and things that you can review maybe at the end of the day or from time to time, see if you need to give someone a nudge, maybe you're waiting to hear back from someone, that's a great thing to put in a Waiting For list.

And either it may return back to the Doing list or when it's finished you can move it over to Done.

So I think the Waiting For list is a great one as well.

The List

The list or I should say the board that you see here is something that I refer to as the Ultimate To-Do List for Trello.

And if you don't want to waste your time building out this list yourselves, you can make a copy of it.

Please see the link in the description below, so that you can create your very own copy of this Trello board, and then you can do whatever you want with it.

You can add other lists, you can change the labels, you can do whatever you want to help you stay more productive.

Well, thank you so much for watching today's video.

I hope that you leave me a comment and if you have any further questions, let me know down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Are you ever frustrated trying to find the file or folder that you are looking for within your system?

Have you ever gone down a long tree branch of files and subfolders to find out that no, it wasn't there either?

Well, in today's video, I wanna show you a very simple, but most effective way of managing all of your personal files and folders.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And, you know what? I used to be frustrated too, until I came across the ABC Method, so I'm going to show you everything you need to know about this method so you can spend less time searching for your files, and more time getting your work done.

Now, number 1, just a few caveats to get things going, this system is designed for things that you manage.

The ABC Method is not designed for a shared folder, or some shared resource where you have multiple team members or colleagues accessing and renaming folders and that type of thing.

This is for the things that you control, where you are labeling both your files and your folders.

You can obviously share individual files and folders, but this is for a space that you manage and control.

Number 2, the ABC Method can be used absolutely anywhere.

It doesn't matter if you use Windows, a Mac, if you're using Drive, like the example I'm sharing with you today, or some other resource, you can even set up this system for your physical files, your actual paper documents as well.

And third, last but not least, if you deal with a large quantity of media such as photos, videos, or audio, this system is probably not designed for you either.

Hopefully you have your own resources or maybe your own Drive folder or some other shared folder where you can manage that, or something that's dedicated for large quantities of media.

But for everything else, the ABC Method is going to work for you.

So to get things started, you will see that my top-level file folder structure here on the left-hand side is nothing more than an alphabeticalized list.

I've got one folder for each and every letter of the alphabet, and that's by design because I want to be able to easily and quickly get to the information that I'm looking for.

If I'm looking for something that starts with S such as my Sales Numbers or Sample files or this is some SheetGo examples, I want to get there in one click.

I don't want to have to scroll through a massively long list of files and folders.

You're probably saying to yourself, "Scott, well, isn't it going to list it in alphabetical order anyhow?"

And you would be correct, but do you really want to be scrolling through hundreds, if not thousands of folders to find the file that you're looking for?

So by starting with this top-level design, A, B, C, D, all the way down to Z, you're going to be able to quickly open up something with an F, boom, I'm one click away and I'm immediately at that file level.

Now, you'll notice, of course, every folder within that respective alphabet file folder is going to be with the same name.

I've got File Naming Examples, I've got Financial Statements under F here.

But here's the next rule: it's that we're only going to have folders at this next level.

If I click on this F folder just to open it up here, you can see I have no other files here.

Let's go back to that S example as well, if I open up S, there are no other individual files, the next level down is only for folders.

And then that leads us to the third rule here: if I open up one of these folders, I only have files.

We are not going to branch off beyond that next level.

We've got the alphabet folder, we've got the folder that starts with that letter.

And again, you may have a large number in some of these letters, you might only have a handful or, maybe if it's X, you might have absolutely zero in that folder or some of the other letters.

But the very next level down is going to be the files themselves.

And why that's important, why that can help you with your productivity and being more efficient in finding and also saving the files that you're creating is that you're never more than two clicks away from the area you want to be in.

If I go up here to C, for example, I click once on the C drive, and there is my Client Resources Example folder.

That's it, two clicks away, and I'm into those files, or I can save additional files.

I'm never more than two clicks away from finding the information that I'm looking at.

Now, a few things that have come up over the years.

Number 1: some people will say, "Well, Scott, can't I just search for these files and folders?"

Absolutely, and if you're confident with your searching capabilities, by all means, use search.

But chances are you have a number of things that are similarly-labeled or may not be labeled very well in the first place.

Sometimes I find it's just so much easier to be able to click down here, click on the resources that I'm looking for.

So what are your thoughts on the ABC Folder Method?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below, and if you'd like to learn even more ways to be productive and efficient, be sure to click on the videos here.

Thank you so much for watching, and remember: being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

(whirring noise)

Website blockers can be so effective in helping you reduce distractions and interruptions throughout your day, but one of the drawbacks of many website blockers is that they only work on one device.

For example, if I'm browsing here on Amazon and spending too much time looking and shopping, I could block myself here, but what do I do when I go to my phone?

And let's be honest, our smartphones are often the source of most of our distractions.

Well, today, I wanna introduce you to BlockSite, which is available and syncs between your desktop computer and your mobile device, so you can block out and prevent certain distractions no matter where you are.

Mobile App

So, let's jump into the mobile version here and give you a quick look at what's going on.

Here, you can see I've got the BlockSite app installed. It's a very simple, very clean interface.

So, here are some of the sites that I've already added, including social media and a few other websites that I might spend too much time on during the day.

But the other great thing that you'll see here is that you can block particular apps. It's beyond just websites because, of course, on your phone, it's probably certain apps that are distracting you as well.

So, I've added YouTube in this case. Let's say I'm in the middle of my workday, and I want to watch some videos. I click on YouTube—forget about it. This app is blocked by BlockSite, so I can't access it right now because I've added it to my block list.

If I go back into the app, you'll see that my BlockSites are on. All of these websites and apps will be blocked if I try to access them.

Now, it's very easy to add websites or apps. You can hit the plus button, add a web address, and even choose to always block the site and ignore the schedule.

If I select the app tab, I can also scroll through or search any of the apps on my phone and add them to my list as well.

Another great feature is the recurring schedule option. You can set specific times when certain apps and websites are blocked.

For example, I set a schedule here so that between 9 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., Monday through Friday, all those websites and apps will be blocked.

You don't have to set this manually each day. It's automatically done for you.

However, we all work a little differently, so BlockSite also offers a Work Mode.

You can have a different BlockList for specific times of the day or week versus when you're actually working.

It can be the same list or completely different. For example, I have a different mix of websites and apps here.

You also have a timer option, similar to the Pomodoro Technique. You can set a custom interval, say 25 minutes, where you're focused on work.

During this time, you won't be able to access the blocked apps.

For instance, if I try to access the Play Store, it won't let me because I'm supposed to be working.

The timer will keep counting down, and when it's up, I'll be able to access those sites again.

Depending on your preference and what you find most effective, you can customize BlockSite to work best for you.

Another option on the mobile site is the Adult Block option, which ensures you're blocking mature content intended for 18-plus.

One of the great things about BlockSite is that it syncs between both desktop and mobile versions.

So, let's jump back over to the desktop. All right, so here we are back on my desktop...

Desktop App

And let's say I have a tendency to browse and perhaps do too much shopping throughout my workday.

With the BlockSite browser extension installed, all I have to do is come up here and immediately block this site.

I don't have to type anything in; if I find myself visiting a website too frequently, I can just click "block this site" and add it to my block list.

You can see that this browser interface is very similar to the mobile version. We've got our BlockSites, our Work Mode to start that timer, and the Adult Block.

But let's dive into the settings because there are a few additional options we can do here.

We can, of course, type and add new web addresses directly, but what's nice on the desktop version is that you can both export and, more importantly, import a list of websites you'd like to block.

Maybe you already have such a list, or you can find great pre-existing lists on the web. For example, you might find a list of the 100 most distracting websites, which could include a mix of social media, news sites, and funny websites.

You can import it directly into your list here.

You can also create a redirect. So, if there's a particular web address you'd like to be redirected to when you attempt to visit one of your BlockSites, maybe it's your own website or your Gmail account, you can do that as well.

And we already looked at the schedule, but what's nice about the desktop view is that you can add multiple intervals.

For instance, you can block websites from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., allow access during lunch from 12 to 1 p.m., and then block them again from 1 to 2 p.m. You can set up a more complex schedule here on the desktop version of BlockSite.

We still have Work Mode, and you can password protect your settings. You can even block websites by certain words, which is an interesting feature if you find yourself visiting specific URLs based on certain keywords.

Everything here is perfectly synced with the mobile version. You're not going to see the apps here because, of course, your desktop apps are different from those on your mobile device, but all the websites we blocked on mobile are synced here as well.

If we jump back into the mobile version, we'll see that Amazon.com is blocked there too.

So, if you find yourself being distracted or tempted to visit certain websites or apps during your workday, I recommend checking out BlockSite.

BlockSite is available for both Android and iOS devices.

If you have further questions or comments about site blocking, I'd love to hear from you, so be sure to leave a question in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video, and remember: being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.