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One of the most common questions I receive is, "Scott, what are the very best power-ups that I should be using with Trello?"

Well, one of the first questions that I ask in response is, "What exactly are you trying to do?"

And for many of you, you want to have some advanced reporting. For many of you, you want to be able to sync cards between different boards. And for many of you, you want to create sub-tasks or dependencies.

Well, often in the past, I've had to recommend several different power-ups to use, but today, I'm sharing with you one of the power-ups that I am recommending on almost a daily basis, and that is Placker, or more specifically, Projects by Placker.

In fact, Placker, I think, is perhaps the best all-in-one power-up.

So, let's dive in, and let me show you the features of Placker.

So, in today's example, I've got three different boards, creatively named TEST Board 1, TEST Board 2, and TEST Board 3.

And as you may notice, I have the exact same list across all three of these boards. You can envision these as maybe different teams or different departments or maybe just different people, right? They're all working on their own separate To-Do list.

But one of the things that we are often asked for, or wanting to do within Trello, is to be able to see things at a higher level. You know, you manage more than just one board. I'm almost assured of that.

How can you see multiple boards at a higher level?

Walkthrough

Well, by installing the Placker power-up, you can do just that. You can see here in the top right-hand corner, I've got three links to go directly to Placker Board, Placker Gantt, or the Placker Track view.

Let me just open up this Placker tab here, and I want to show you what things look like. Now, at first glance, you may say that this looks pretty much identical to TEST Board 1. It's the same cards, we have the labels, you can even see my face, which cards I'm assigned to here, but just wait for it because it gets so much better than this.

Yes, you could start managing your projects here within Placker. If I click on any one of these cards and I go over here to this preview pane on the right, I can change dates, I can add a checklist, I can do almost everything that I would regularly do within the Trello interface. But here's where things get really, really neat.

In the top left-hand corner, you see something that says Select Boards. Right now, I'm just viewing TEST Board 1, but what if I'd like to see how all of these boards are performing in a more concise view? Well, I'm gonna select this option, and I'm going to add TEST Board 2 and TEST Board 3. I'm gonna say Load Selected Boards, and now, what you will see is that I've got all three boards right here on the same page, right? So, I don't have to switch between tabs. I've got all three of my boards viewed in front of me.

But I think it gets better even yet, because you will notice that there is a combined boards setting. Remember, each of these boards has the exact same lists, To-Do, In Progress, and Complete. I'm gonna select Combine Boards, and look at this. Now, I've got everything in a concise, user-friendly single board. I've got all three of these boards condensed into one.

So, I can manage and move my cards around, I can change things here across three boards, but just in a single view. I love this, and many of my clients love it as well. That's why more and more of them are starting to use Placker.

Now, it gets better. On the right-hand side, you can see we can actually view this information in a few different layouts. So if I go over here and I just want to, you know, list it by member, I can select this option here, and I can quickly see just all of the things that are assigned to me right here, and the left-hand list is just all the things that are unassigned.

I can go down to, well, let's list it by label. Let's just filter everything else out by label. Of course, you can search and filter and do something similar within Trello, but not in this manner, right? Not by separate lists, not in the way that things are laid out here within Placker.

So, this feature alone, this ability to combine boards—let's go back to that default view for just a moment—I think is worth the subscription price to Placker alone, and I have more and more of my clients that are using it just for that reason.

Gantt View

But, let's keep moving on. Here, let's go to the Gantt view. And I know a lot of you prefer, or at least enjoy, having a Gantt view of your projects.

Now, this is just a sample project, so it may not make sense, all of the different tasks that I have laid out here, but you can see each one of these icons here or durations represent a task within Trello.

The great thing is, whatever you do here, it syncs automatically back to your original Trello board. Now, just for simplicity's sake, I'm actually going to remove two of these boards, just so I can go back and make sure that I'm interacting with the right tasks over here. So, I'm gonna remove those other two boards. We've just got TEST Board 1 here working, and let's look at Task 4.

Here, it's about to start, it's about to be finished around February 14th. Let's say there's a delay or something like that. So, Task 4, let's go back and make sure that it's synced up here. Task 4, February 14th, there you see it. But let's say I prefer this view, and I say, I really need to push that out. There's other things going on. I'm just gonna drag this out about a week from now. It's gonna be due right over here along the 22nd.

If I go back, Task 4, look at that. It's changed it automatically. February 22nd. An instant sync between the Gantt chart and my view here. Let's go one step further and say, you know, it's actually gonna take longer. It's gonna take more than a day. Let's set a duration, because that's what a Gantt chart is all about, right? Start time and end time.

Now, you're probably saying, well, you haven't changed the end time, Scott, so isn't it gonna just look the same within Trello? Well, you're right, it's gonna still show February 22nd as the due date here, but if I click on the card, you're gonna see something special under the covers, and that is the start date is February 15th, and we still have our due date of the 22nd. It even tells me the duration, one week and one day.

I can edit that either here if I want to, or I can edit that here within the Placker interface. For those who are wanting start dates and end dates, Placker can do that for you as well.

Now, just before we go back to the normal Trello view, I wanna show you some other enhancements, some other features that Placker adds to the Trello interface. I don't want to miss out on the Track view. So, Track is the third view here within Placker, and here you have so many different ways of viewing and looking at your cards.

For example, here we've got sort of a summary of the end dates here, where they are in this workflow, when they are due, and which ones are overdue. If I click on this, I'm gonna see exactly which of those two cards are overdue. If I click on it again, just like we saw before, I can go in here and edit almost everything that I would normally see in Trello. In fact, more and more often, I find that clients are using Placker as a day-to-day tool.

They're going less and less within the Trello interface and more and more here within Placker, because there's just so much power. There are so many different views and graphs. This is just a sample of some of the graphs you can see here. Here, you see all of the different widgets, and there's even a Card burndown, for example, if you want to see where you should estimate and where you should track.

There are too many to cover in just today's video. But you can have a lot of fun just looking at the different graphs and the different ways that you can view your data here within Placker.

But I do want to jump back to Trello to show you some of the other things that get added here within the Trello interface. So, here, under Power-Ups, you will notice that Placker actually adds a few additional buttons, including mirroring and adding a dependency. So, in this case, mirroring, you can think of as syncing with another card.

I want to give this card sort of a unique name here. Let's just go Task 423 just so we can see this show up in a different board. So, Task 423 here, as we see within the Trello TEST 1 Board, does not appear in TEST Board 2 or TEST Board 3.

So, I want to open this up, select Mirror, because let's say I do want to sync this with my second board. I just need to select that board. I can select the list and where I want it to be, and I'm gonna say, Add Mirror. It may take just a few seconds, not very long, though, and you can see there's even a little link here, saying that I can show that card. I can click here and go directly to it. I can edit the mirror as well.

I'm not gonna click either of those. I just want to go directly over to board number two. Boom, there it is, Task 423. I've got a sync between those two. So, no matter what I do, either on this side on this board, or within my original Trello one board, I'm going to get a true sync between the two. You don't need to use another power-up just for syncing capability. You can do that here within Placker as well.

The other great thing is that you can also have it sync movements. So, if I move this from In Progress to Complete, another nice thing you'll see here is that it's gonna automatically check it off, because I've told Placker when anything moves to Complete, I want you to say that it's checked off.

Now, I haven't done anything. I haven't even visited Trello board number two. I'm gonna click on it, and guess what's in my Complete list. That's right, Task 423. If I move this all the way back to To-Do here in TEST Board number two, it's gonna uncheck it, right? We're not complete anymore, we're still in the To-Do phase.

Let's go back to TEST Board number one. Look what's waiting for me. A true sync with this card across multiple boards. The last one, which I'm not gonna get into in as great of detail, is the Add dependency. So, if you need to complete a particular card before something else, you can do so.

For example, here you see that this card actually has a dependency. Task number one needs to be finished before task number two. That seems to only make sense, right, one before two.

But let's see what that looks like on a different card. Task number six, I don't think has a dependency, so let's say I'm gonna click on Add a dependency. It can either be a predecessor or a successor. Let's say, well, let's add a predecessor in this case, and let's say task number five. Gotta do task number five before we accomplish task number six, so you can see that here. You can see that identified here within the Trello card. It's also identified within the Placker interface as well.

So, whether you want to create a true sync, create dependencies, or sub-tasks, or like I mentioned before, I think just combining boards, selecting multiple boards and seeing them in a single view, is one of the best features of Placker.

I would encourage you to check it out for yourself. They do have a free trial so you can test out all of the features I've shown you here to see if Placker is the right solution for you. Thank you so much for watching today's video. I look forward to your questions about Placker or about any other Trello power-ups.

Don't forget to leave me a comment down below and be sure to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe right here to Simpletivity. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

 Groups, labels, Google Contacts. What is it all about and why should you be using labels? Well in today's video I want to show how you can save time by creating groups within Google Contacts. Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress

Why Use Groups

and when you create labels, formally known as groups within Google Contacts, you can save yourself so much time. If you have a team or particular group of people

that you contact on a regular basis, isn't it easy just to select one group here and then boom! All of their email addresses are input here on the to line. But this isn't the only place where you can use groups. You can use it in other Google applications as well.

Getting to Google Contacts

Now, let's get started by going back to Google Contacts. I want to show you two ways to get there because this is a question I get frequently.

Number one: If we go to the top right-hand corner, we have our Google Apps icon (the grid of dots). By clicking this, you should be able to find the Contacts icon. Now, if you don't see it up here, you may have to scroll down below. And let's not forget, you can drag these icons around. So, if you happen to find Contacts somewhere down below and want it in that top row, you can just drag it up and click it here.

But an even easier way to get into Google Contacts is to use a keyboard shortcut: simply type G C on your keyboard. This will immediately bring up Google Contacts—G for Google, C for Contacts.

Creating Labels

Alright, so let's talk about labels. You'll see labels over here on the left-hand side, and you can see that I've already created two labels: one from a Gmail example called "ABC Work Project," which includes four individuals, and another one called "Client Team," also with four individuals.

But let's start by creating a brand new label. You'll find this option at the bottom, indicated by a little plus sign. All you need to do is select a name for the label. I'm just going to keep it simple and name it "New Label," then click "Save."

Now, I've got my "New Label," but if I click on it, you'll notice that I don't have any contacts with this label yet. At this point, my only options are to either rename the label or delete it.

So, let's go back to my contacts. Let's say I want to select a few people to add to this new label. I'm just going to randomly select a few contacts—let's grab this one here and then select these three in a row as an example.

Applying Labels

So I've got these three selected and what I can do is I can come up here to the top

and when I click on manage labels, all I need to do is select the one that I want to apply it to so I'm gonna select New Label. Alright the check mark is there and I'm gonna select apply and now if we come over here you can see the New Label,

when I hover over it, I see these two icons but if I come over here you'll see there's a number three beside it. That's because, that's right, I've got those three people. They are now part of this group.

So when I use the New Label in Gmail and some other applications, all three of these individuals will be attached to it. Now it's very easy to remove people from a label as well. Very much similar as we did before.

If we check it, we can come up here and we can remove them from the label. I can uncheck such as that, apply, and now that person is no longer here.

Adding People to Labels

Now, Google actually gives you an additional way to add people to labels as well

and that would be if I grab someone like this, and I drag them into the label. You see that that is now gone from four to five because I've dragged that individual into this Client Team so you can drag people into labels as well.

And remember, you can change these and edit these at any time that you want.

If your Work Team changes over time, someone leaves the company, someone joins your team, you can change that on the fly. You don't have to change the name at all

and that's going to apply everywhere else.

Using Labels in Google Calendar

Now I've already shown you how you can use this in Gmail, right, you can just search.

You can just start typing just like you would any other name, any other contact name and that label should appear. But that's not the only place you need to go. There are other advantages of using such a label.

If we go into Google Calendar, we can also take advantage of Google Contacts. So let's say I want to invite the entire team to a new meeting. Let me just call this New Meeting 1. Give it a real simple name there.

I'm gonna select on more options and you're probably familiar with the add guests area. This is where you would typically start typing in the name or the email address of everyone that you want to attend. Well in this case, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start typing in the name of, there's my Client Team that I want to add to this. So there it is. It appears in this quick search.

I'm gonna select it and immediately I have all the members of my client team. All five members are now added to this invitation. Another tip that I like to share is that even if you are not always needing the entire team but maybe you need just three out of the five or four out of the five, it's often quicker to add the team and then now, I can select remove for the particular individuals that I don't want to attend this particular meeting.

It's a lot faster then me trying to type in four separate email addresses, right, one at a time. Might as well just add the whole team and then quickly remove that particular person. So, now I've got those people here. I can send this meeting off and invite the whole group.

Using Labels in Google Drive

Another place where you can make use of labels and groups within Google Contacts is within Drive as well and probably the most typical example is when you're sharing information.

So let's say I want to share this JPEG file here. I've got it selected. I'm gonna come up here and go to share. That will bring up the share with others dialog and here again, we are recommended to enter in a name or an email address, but when it comes to names, we can use our labels. Here I'm gonna type in ABC for my ABC Work Project. It even tells me how many contacts are in there. I can select it

and now all four are input here into this screen. I can hit send and share it with everyone immediately. Now, keep in mind, in my examples, I've only used a few small groups, right? Of only about four or five individuals.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no limit on the number of contacts you can put inside a label. So if you have a much larger group or a much larger team you can do so, but please no spam.

Don't put a hundred or a few thousand. I don't see the purpose or why you would need to manage that. There's probably much better tools such as MailChimp

for example if you are using it for a newsletter or email marketing. On that note, I do know that there is a limit of 25,000 contacts that you can keep within the contacts for a single Google account.

You probably could put all 25,000 into a label, but I do not see why you would ever want to do so. As always, I'd love to here from you next.

Which of the tips that I shared is most helpful to you and how do you plan to get more out of labels and creating groups here in Google Contacts? And as always, if you have other suggestions for future videos here on the Simpletivity channel, please let me know in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching. I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel. Give this video a thumbs up and don't forget to leave me a comment or a question down below.

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

Today's video is sponsored by Paymo. Paymo is the easy way to manage all of your projects and stay on top of your tasks.

Whether you work together as a team or perhaps you're a freelancer, Paymo has a task management solution for you. And they also have time tracking and time sheet reporting built right into the application, so you can always stay on top of all of your projects.

To find out more, see the link in the description below or visit PaymoApp.com.

When it comes to your work day, do you sometimes feel more like a firefighter putting out all of the fires and crises and emergencies that pop up during your day?

Well, in today's video we're gonna be talking about a weekly review, and how we can prevent these types of emergencies just by taking a little bit of time out of our week to not only plan ahead, but also look behind to make sure that we haven't forgotten anything.

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

And I honestly believe that the weekly review is the most important meeting that you will have all week.

Now you may have heard of a weekly review before. It was popularized in the book Getting Things Done by David Allen, however, David Allen's weekly review included 11 things on a checklist, and I think 11 things sounds like overkill.

It's too many things. So today I wanna give you an easy four-part checklist so you can have a very effective weekly review.

And you know what? I wanna remind you that if you're not the only one participating in this, it's simply not a weekly review. I think you deserve as little as 30 minutes a week just for yourself so you can set yourself up for success.

Mind Dump

So let's take a look at the checklist.

First off, you're gonna want to reserve a minimum of 30 minutes each week for your weekly review.

Now you can reserve a little bit of extra time if you'd like, but I think you can have a very effective weekly review in as little as 30 minutes.

Now at the end of today's video I'm gonna answer some frequently asked questions including when you should hold your weekly review, but let's dive into the checklist itself.

The very first thing I suggest is that you start with a five minute mind dump.

Now if you're not familiar with that term mind dump, sometimes it's referred to as a mind sweep or just think of it as a brainstorming session.

But this is your opportunity to get all of those ideas, all of those concerns, and all of those thoughts out of your head.

So you can either take out a blank piece of paper. You can use a whiteboard or a chalkboard, or you can take out your favorite note taking app, such as Google Keep or perhaps Evernote, and just write down all the things that are on your mind right now.

Now I suggest that you use a timer as a part of this process, because you might end up spending a lot more time than five minutes, in fact you might spend the entire 30 minutes just dumping everything out, but set a timer for about five minutes, and in most cases, the most urgent or the most pressing items will be the first things that come to mind.

You wanna make sure that you capture those ideas so that you can have a clear head as you go through the rest of the process.

Calendar Review

Now the next step I recommend you engage with is reviewing your calendar for the past week.

Now, what I do as a part of my review is that I will open up my calendar and literally take my mouse cursor and hover over top of every single event or appointment that I've had in the past week, and this is just a very brief mental jog of all of the things that I've been engaged with.

I'll hover over something and say, okay, I met with Lucy and we talked about that project. I met with the team and we talked about this.

But you know what? The real value in this is that without fail, there's at least one thing that I come across and I'll say to myself, you know what? I've forgotten to follow up with so and so about this item.

Or, you know what, I promised so and so that I would give them a call back 48 hours after the meeting.

This allows me to not forget those things in the past, but now I can do something about them.

I can add them to my to do list or I can add them to my project management tool, and in some cases I can do them as a part of my weekly review if it's something very, very quick, otherwise I'll add it to the appropriate area and do it later in the day.

But this often takes as little as two minutes just to review my last seven days or perhaps my last five business days just to make sure I have not forgotten anything in the past.

Future Review

After we're done looking in the past we wanna look into the future, and I recommend that you review your calendar for the next coming two weeks.

Now you can review further than just the next 14 days, but I recommend two weeks at a bare minimum.

This gives you enough time so that you can prevent those surprises and prevent walking into the office or opening up your laptop and saying, oh my goodness, was that today or is that meeting happening this morning?

That's exactly what you don't want happening next week or even tomorrow.

So as a part of your weekly review, just like we did in step two, we wanna take that cursor or just take your finger and just do a mental jog of every single commitment or meeting or event that you have on your calendar, make sure that you can prepare in advance.

Do you need to send a reminder to others about an upcoming meeting?

Do you need to prepare some travel time for perhaps a meeting or location that you're not familiar with?

Do you need to rearrange a meeting because you've double-booked yourself sometime in the next two weeks?

This relieves me of so much stress as I take again just a few minutes to look ahead and make sure I can either clear my calendar or adjust my calendar appropriately.

Now the last and final step in the weekly review checklist is to open up your project management tool or maybe you have some other place where you keep track of all of your goals, and you want to review all of the deadlines and all of your key commitments.

This is an opportunity not to actually do things or to get the work done, but just to review the status of everything within those projects.

Do you need to negotiate a new deadline depending on where you're at with that project or how other projects are going to affect your work?

Do you need to give people a status update of where things are at?

Whatever you need to do, this is an ideal time to get that high level view of all of your projects and key commitments.

When

Alright, so now some of the common questions that come up with a weekly review, I would say one of the most frequently asked questions I receive is when is the best time to perform a weekly review?

Which is the best day of the week and what's the best time of day?

Now, I typically recommend starting out and doing your weekly review on a Friday morning.

Not just because that's when I do my weekly review but for most of us, Friday is the last day of the work week, it's our last day before the weekend, and on top of that, we wanna do it early enough so that if we come across something that is urgent or that is very, very important, we've still given ourselves enough time to do something about it before the weekend, or before others leave work for the weekend as well.

It also makes it nice and clean when you're reviewing your calendar for the last week, you're basically just looking from Monday through Friday.

You're doing a mental jog of something that's still fairly recent. You're not going so far back in time or over a hump like a weekend. You can go back and review and remember what was going on in those meetings and events.

Now when it comes to looking forward, another nice thing of having your weekly review on a Friday is it sets you up fresh for Monday morning, and I know a lot of us sort of struggle with Monday morning and what's going on. We're thrown back into the whirlwind.

Well, the nice thing about doing your weekly review on Friday, you can set yourself up for a great start, and no surprises, remember, you're gonna look ahead at both Monday and Tuesday, see if there's anything really significant or big and scary, and make adjustments or plan ahead accordingly.

Now of course you can pick any day or time of the week that works best for you.

In fact, I'd love to hear from you if you're already performing a weekly review, when do you perform it? When do you schedule it into your calendar? And do you actually add it as a real event?

That would be my last tip for you is make sure you actually include this on your calendar.

If you don't add it, if you don't give it the priority it deserves, it simply won't happen.

So I wish you all the best as you perform your weekly review.

I want you to be so much more productive within Gmail, and I'm gonna show you how to do that by introducing you to some new Gmail extensions. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity,

Scott Friesen

helping you to get more done, and enjoy less stress.

And today I want to show you some extensions, some Gmail add-ons from CloudHQ. Now CloudHQ actually has nearly 40 different Gmail extensions to help you be more productive,

Vbut I want to share with you three of my favorites, and we're gonna get things started with Gmail Tabs.

Gmail Tabs

Here at the top of the screen you will see that I have a few different labels.

These are called Gmail Tabs, and once you have the extension installed, the first one you're gonna see is your default, your inbox, but you can now add additional tabs at the top of your inbox.

So a few weeks ago I showed you a very simple Gmail workflow using a couple of labels that I have here: Action Required and Waiting for Response.

But you'll probably recognize if you're a Gmail user that after you have about five or so labels, this can get really difficult to manage here. You're scrolling up and down, and you may even have some that are hidden down below. Where do you go to find those labels?

Well, why not have the ones that you use most frequently at your fingertips at the top of the screen?

If I select Action Required, it's just going to immediately go to all of those emails there. If I want to select Waiting for Response, it's immediately gonna show me any of the emails with that particular label.

So how do you use it?

Well, let's say I want this Completed label to be up top here as well. All I need to do is select these little three dots, which gives me some more options.

And once you have the extension installed, you'll see this little CloudHQ menu addition. In this case, I'm gonna select Add to Tabs, including Sublabels, and you can see immediately, I now have it at the top of my screen. I can click on it, and all of my emails that have that particular label will appear.

Now on the right-hand side, there's an Edit Tab function. If I want to clean things up, I can remove that asterisk. The only reason I added that asterisk is that I wanted this to sort at the top of my labels because I knew how difficult it was to manage labels over here.

So I'm gonna remove that asterisk. I'm gonna hit Save. Now it's a lot cleaner, and you can also rearrange these as well, right? I can rearrange the order of my tabs. So let's drag it.

I want to drag that all the way to the end. Let's move it over there. There we go.

So I can drag things around if I want to, hit Done, and now I've got my tabs here at the top.

But let me click over to the inbox for one more second. I want to show you an additional way to add a tab here because you don't have to have an existing label.

You don't have to use labels at all if you don't want to. I'm gonna type in BestBuy here in the search bar because I know I've got a bunch of emails here by BestBuy, and let's say this is something that I'd like to review or I'd like to take a look at on a regular basis.

Well, you'll notice I now have another option here called Add to Tabs. So I get to select that option, Add to Tabs, and immediately I've got this filter. So even if I get new BestBuy messages going forward, it's gonna show up underneath this tab.

And if I don't like the way that it looks there, let's go in here. I'm gonna hit Edit, and let's give it the proper capital B space, capital B, we'll hit Save, we're gonna hit Done.

So I've just immediately created this filter. It's not a particular label, but now I've added it to my tabs area.

So you might want to check out Gmail Tabs.

Alright, let's move on to extension number two. And this all has to do with saving time.

Gmail Snippets

when you are crafting a message within Gmail.

So here I am, I've opened up a brand new message, and I think perhaps the most common scenario for this particular add-on is gonna be when you're replying to someone, and think about some of the questions that you reply to very, very often, right? It's the same set of wording. It's the same sentences that you use time, and time again. Well, why not just save those phrases? Maybe you could even save an entire email, and then retrieve it with just a few clicks.

So at the bottom of the screen here, you'll see I have this little T-plus. That lets me know that I have Gmail Snippets installed, and all I have to do is select the backward slash on my keyboard, and it's gonna pop up this tiny menu here that is showing me all of these preloaded phrases, which either I've created, or the ones that we're looking at right now are some of the default ones. So I can either use my cursor, but probably what's easier is just to use the arrow keys, because I already typed something into my keyboard, and I can select this answer one, hit enter, boom, I've got that phrase right in there.

Let's hit backslash again, and I'm gonna say, thanks for using our app. Boom, there it is. Now those are two very, very short sentences. You can craft an entire email if you'd like to.

So let's go down to the settings here. I'm gonna click on this, and I'm gonna say you've got two options here. We can either create a new Snippet from this message. That's actually a really smart idea. If there's a particular email that you do quite frequently, or phrases that you use quite frequently, you can actually create it from the particular message. But let's select browse Snippets here, and here you can see all of the ones that we have installed so far, each has a shortcut itself, a name, and then the content itself. And of course you can always edit, and delete these ones as well.

I'm gonna select add just to show you how easy it is to add a new Snippet. Just gonna call this one Test. The name I'm gonna say Test as well, and I just gonna say this is a test Snippet from… Yup, CloudHQ. Alright, now remember again, you can add a lot more texts than just a single sentence. You can have paragraphs in here, you can have line spaces if you want, and at the bottom you can even add a few variables as well, including name, including email, or day of the week. I'll show you that in just a moment.

So I'm gonna save this one here. You can see that it's been added here to this list, and if you get a really long list, you can even search for all of your Snippets here as well. I'm gonna hit done, and I'm go back to my emails. I'm gonna go down a line, I get to hit backslash again, and I don't see test in this menu, right? It's only gonna show you about six here in this first preview, but if I start typing in T, well now I just get the thanks with T, and hey, Test. There's my test one. So I can input that one immediately.

Let me show you this other one that has this day of the week built right into it. I'm gonna go back slash, and this one. Oh, what is the day of the… And yeah, that's right. And have a fantastic, it's blank here, because it's gonna be built into this functionality. If I hit a return, and have a fantastic Tuesday, and that's right, it is Tuesday today. So no matter what day of the week it is, it's going to automatically input that into this particular phrase.

So you might want to check out Snippets, especially if you want to save time replying, and writing those very, very lengthy emails.

Alright, I'm gonna close up this message for just a second, but we're gonna get back into that for our third, and final Gmail extension. And that has to do with email tracking. And I want you to think of how many times have you sent

Email Tracker

an important email, or maybe you've reached out to a particular client, and you just, you wish you'd know when they opened up that email, because when can you follow up with a phone call? When can you follow up with another email? When would be the ideal time to check back in with them? You want to know when they have read the email. I don't mean reply, but when have they read the email.

So let me type in an email address to a test account that we're gonna use here. And I'm just gonna call this a test tracking in this case, and I'm not even include a message, I don't need a message for this, because we just want to track when this person has actually read this particular email.

So down below you can see there's a little, it almost looks like a wifi signal, but this is the icon for email tracking options. So if I click on this, I have a few different ways, a few different selections I can choose here, I can get it to automatically send me a reply, or send me an email if this person doesn't reply in a couple of days. But really what I'm after here is this, send me an email upon open. When they open it, I want to be notified of it. And then there's a few other options you can choose from here as well, including send me a text message, and get a text alert if you want. But I'm just gonna keep this one selected. Send me an email when this person opens this particular email.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go right ahead. I can get a select send. Alright, so just sends the email like a normal email. And then what we're gonna do is I'm gonna switch over to this, to that test account here. And of course, email is not always instantaneous, but let's see if I can… There it is. There's that email. This is this test tracking email. So of course it's unread at this state, right? I haven't clicked on it yet. So I'm going to click on this message. Of course now it has been read.

Let's see what happens if we go back to our original account. So let's go back to our Gmail account, and it may take a few seconds. I mean it may take up to a minute, or so. I might just, I'm gonna refresh my inbox here to see how quickly it's gonna actually come back, and notify me that that particular message has been read.

Alright, so there it is. Here at the top of my email, I've got an email from, it's given me a notification saying that this email address has just read, and here's the subject line. Now if I click on the message itself, it's gonna give me some more details. So and so has read your email less than a minute after it was sent. So it's gonna tell me how long it actually sat in their inbox before they read it. It's gonna give me details sent on read on location, if it can give it to me, and it's even gonna give me a small preview of the message down below. So if I'm curious like what? Like which email was that? What was that email about? It's gonna let me know here down below as well.

So regardless if this is a sales conversation, if you need to follow up with confirming a particular date, maybe now that you know that they've read it, you're gonna follow up with a different message. Are you gonna give them a phone call an hour from now?

So if you want a very useful, and free email tracking tool, you might want to check out the tracking tool from CloudHQ. I'll be sure to include a link to all of these tools so you can try them out yourself.

And I'd love to hear from you next. Which of these three are you most excited about? Which of these three are gonna be most helpful to your workday, or most helpful to your business? Be sure to let me know down in the comments below.

I want to thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you subscribe right here to Simpletivity. Please give this video a thumbs up, and don't forget to leave me a comment, or a question down below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

If you're not using the Trello mobile app as a part of your project management experience, you may be missing out. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And in today's video I'm gonna show you a number of tips so you can get really, really comfortable

with the mobile version of Trello.

Create a New Board

And we're gonna get things started off with remembering that we can create new boards directly here from within the app.

Now, I realize that most people do not start their journey with Trello in the mobile version. There's a good chance that you first signed up and use much of the Trello services and features from a desktop computer.

But when you need to start a new board, don't forget that you've got this green button here in the lower right-hand corner.

When you're viewing your boards, when you're in the default view here on the main page, you can select that green button and start by creating a new board. I'm just gonna call this one New Board 2 Sample there. I can select and I can assign it to a particular team if I want, or I can just say No Team and select Create. And there we go. We've got a brand-new board.

So when I've got a new project or I want to dump some notes into Trello, often I'll start off with a fresh board depending on what that project will entail.

Now, that brings me to my second tip here and that is the importance of selecting an appropriate background, and also starring our boards as well.

Let's start with by picking an appropriate background. As I scroll through my large collection of boards and you might have a large collection of boards as well, it's important that you pick either a color or a distinctive image so that you can easily access this.

So if I go back to this new board which I just created, I've got the default Trello blue here. But you know what, very quickly I'm gonna be adding a number of lists and a large number of cards. The blue background isn't going to matter so much.

But on this screen, it is going to matter when I want to go and find it.

Board Settings

So, when you're within your board in the top right-hand corner, we've got the three dots, which are gonna open up the menu, and about halfway down we want to select our board settings.

And here, about the fourth option down, we have background. So I'm gonna select Background and I can either choose a distinct color on the left, or I can select a stock photo. And in many cases I encourage people to select a stock photo.

Now, you can search for something up in the top right-hand corner. You can search for a particular image. In this example, I'm just gonna pick something. Now, this is kind of interesting here. What is this, jelly fish? I'm gonna select this jelly fish one here. And then I can go back. It will be applied here to my board.

Again, I'm probably not gonna see much of this image when I'm working on the board but when I come to the front here, it's gonna make it stand out a little bit more.

The second thing I want to encourage you to do is don't forget to star certain boards. When we go to our home screen here, here you can see I've got about seven boards that I've starred which essentially pins them to the top. So these are gonna be my most frequently used boards, the ones I want to be able to access all the time.

So when I open up this New Board 2 Sample, I'm gonna select Menu once again and just below Board settings we have Star board. I'm gonna select Star board and if we go back to the home screen, there you see New Board 2 Sample is now as a part of this collection.

So don't forget to star the boards that you need access to most quickly and picking a unique color or a unique image so that you can quickly and easily grab those boards. Just for example, you'll notice I've got a home improvement board here and the image I've chosen is a hand with a bunch of color swatches. It's pretty self-evident that that's a renovation or a home improvement board. I don't even have to look at the label anymore, I know which one I want to select.

Filtering Cards

All right, now let's go into another one of my sample boards here, and I want to give you a tip about searching and filtering cards on mobile because you can do the same things that you do on the desktop version here in mobile.

If I select the magnifying glass in the top portion of the screen, I can enter in a keyword, such as task, and now I can see all of the items that have task in their card title or somewhere within the card. It even helps me out by giving me a number to the left. So in this case it's telling me there are a total of three cards with the word task in them.

But you can also filter cards by other ways. One of the ways I'd like to do it is by member. So if I type in the at symbol here, in this case I'm the only one who is assigned to this board so I'm the only member that comes up. But if I had other members a part of this board, they would also come up as well and I can find them. So I'm gonna select myself in this case and I can see that there're seven assigned to me. Let me just hide my keyboard and I can scroll over. Now I'm only viewing the cards that are assigned to me.

So, I use this a lot filtering cards down so I can only focus on the things that I want to. Let me close that for a second or I should say cancel that particular filter.

The other one I use quite frequently is filtering by label. And to do that you want to enter in the number sign. And here everything, all of the labels that are applicable to this board are gonna be presented to me, and let's say I just want to look at urgent cards. I just want to work with urgent cards right now. I'm gonna select urgent. It's telling me that there's only five, I'm gonna hide my keyboard again, and now I am just dealing with those cards that have the urgent label attached.

So, beyond just a text search don't forget that you can also filter by members, you can also filter by labels. All right.

Attaching Images

Now, the next tip I want to show you is how to take a picture and attach it directly to a card.

Because let's be honest, our mobile phones tend to be more of a camera more so than anything else, and when you're away from the office, you're away from your desk, you still might want to take a picture or grab an image of something and put it within a Trello card.

So, I'm gonna open up an existing card. You can obviously add a picture to a new or an existing card. Once I'm within the card itself in the bottom right-hand corner we want to select the green button here.

And we're given two choices. We can either add a checklist at this point, or we can add an attachment. We want to select Attachment. And the very first option here is Take photo. We can do other things, such as attach a file from our phone, link it to things like Google Drive or another link, but in this case we want to say Take a photo.

I'm gonna select that option. It's gonna open up my camera. I'm just gonna pull back for a second, take a picture of my microphone, and Trello is gonna say hey, does this look okay or do you want to retry it? I'm gonna say that's fine. That's fine for this example. Let's say okay.

And now you can see it's attached that image directly to this card. If I want to tap on the attachment itself I can click on it and see a bit of a bigger image if I want. And if I have Card Covered Images enabled, you can see now that I'm in the board level view I can see that image on the front as well.

So don't forget that you can take pictures and add them directly to any card. It's quick and it's very, very simple.

Last but not least, I want to show you how to get information into Trello from another area of your phone, such as a web browser or maybe some other application that allows you to share information.

Sharing Cards

So let me just exit here for a second. I'm gonna open up my browser here. And let's say I've come across an article. I've come across a blog article and I'd like to reference this for later. I'd like to come back to this, so I'd like to add it to a particular Trello board.

Well, in the top right-hand corner of my browser, I've got three dots and it's gonna give me some other options. And the one that you're looking for is Share, whether it's a web browser or perhaps some other application. So here you see Share about halfway down. I'm gonna select that option and on my phone, it gives me a few different options. The first row are some of the people that I've texted with recently so maybe it assumes I want to share this with them. But I've got many other options down below including to share it via social media, Gmail, or a variety of other apps.

But the one we want of course is Add Card to Trello. I'm gonna select that option and what it's gonna do, it's gonna give me two choices here. It says well, first of all, which board do you want to add it to? And I want to add it to the one that we're in, my Scott's Tasks and Projects. And then the second dropdown is which list within that board do you want to add it to? And in this case I am going to say To Do.

And now, last but not least, I'm gonna select Create in the top right-hand corner. It's gonna bring me back to where I was, which is great, 'cause maybe I do want to read some of this article right now.

But let's go back to Trello and let's go back to that board, for example. And if I go to the bottom of my To Do list, there you will see that article, How to Find a Trustworthy VPN, and it's got the link there so I can click on the link and go directly to that webpage.

So yes, you can easily share and get information directly into a card, into a Trello board when you're browsing or doing other things within your mobile device. I hope you enjoyed today's tips on getting the most out of the Trello mobile app. But I'd love to hear from you next. What do you think? And how do you use the Trello app to be more productive? Be sure to leave your comments down below in the description.

I want to thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you subscribed right here to the Simpletivity channel. Give this video a thumbs-up, and don't forget to leave me a question or a comment down below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Let's get so much more out of using checklists within Google Keep. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Convert Notes to Checklists

And I know for many of you, using Google Keep is one of your preferred tools because it is so simple. It's quick and easy to get those ideas out of your head and put them in a place where you can review and you can organize them for later.

Well, in today's video, I want to show you how to get the most out of checklists here within Google Keep. And we're gonna start things off by taking a first note or an initial note, where maybe you're just writing down a bunch of things at a time, right. You're just a stream of consciousness. You're writing down a few ideas, just a few bullet points here and there.

And at some point you may be saying to yourself, you know what, I'd actually prefer if I could check these things off. Or if I could create a checklist. Uh oh, do I have to go back again? Do I have to close this one out or delete this note and start a new one by selecting new list?

No, no you certainly do not. Let's open up this initial one right here, and if we come down here, to the more options, the little three dots here, you can see that there's an option that says show check boxes. If I select this, it's going to instantly convert the notes that I have here into a checklist.

And so now I can start checking things off as I go down this list. I can revert them, I can bring them back. I can instantly change any text-based note into a checklist format.

Now if I change my mind, no worry, I simply go back here again down to the more, and I say hide check boxes. And now I'm just back to my regular text-based list. But if you're just quickly writing down a number of things and you want to quickly convert them into a checklist, don't forget, you can always do that. You can select show check boxes, and convert anything into a checkable list.

Start a New List

Now, the next thing I want to show you here is how to quickly start a new list.

Now I know it's already pretty quick if you just select new list here. It's gonna open up a new list for you to start with.

But let's say you're playing around, you're opening up this thing, you're opening up that thing, and suddenly it dawns on you, you know, I need a new list.

Well, there's actually a shortcut key on your computer, and that is L for list.

And if you select L on your keyboard, it's immediately going to open up a new note and the list mode is going to be enabled.

So let's say in this case, I want to start a shopping list.

I'm going to say I need to get some bread. I need to get some buns here. I need some fruit so I'm going to get some apples. And I'm going to get some bananas as well.

So I've got this list here but then it dawns on me, you know what, there's actually a few other things I need to get as well. Fish, let's get some fish and let's get some chicken.

You know what, I'd like to break these out into subcategories. You know it's something that a lot of us are needing or requesting that we can have sub-tasks within our task list or in our note-taking tool.

Well, Google Keep has you covered there as well.

In fact, it's even given you a helpful reminder here to indent, drag the items on your list, or use the shortcut control plus.

I'm just going to say got it to hide that for a second.

So in this case, I've got some things from a bakery, right?

So let me put in something, let's say bakery here. Let's say under this one, I'm going to put produce. Let's not forget the P.

And let's say down here I'm going to say meat.

So those are the different areas that I want to go in. But I still have just a single list.

Well, all I have to do is select this option here to the left of the checkbox and drag it over.

And not, oops I don't want to check it off, hit the checkbox there, I want to drag it over.

Now I've got a nice sub-list under bread.

I'm going to do the same thing for my fruit here, under produce. I'm going to put my fish and chicken, I'm going to nest it underneath meat.

So now you can have true sub-tasks or an indented checklist here within your Google Keep note.

And the great thing is that it will always keep it together.

Let's say that produce is first in my grocery store so I want to put it ahead of bread.

All I need to do is drag produce up to the top and it's going to keep everything that's nested within it together, right?

So it's not going to break things up. I can move meat here in front of bread. It's going to keep everything nice and together here.

Now, the way that the checkmark function works in this mode, if I check chicken, you can see chicken goes off, fish goes off, but if I check both of them it's still not going to check off the parent or the high-level checklist there.

This is only going to go away if I check this one off completely. However, I'm going to uncheck those for a second.

Let's say I have gotten these two items. All I need to do is select the top level and it's going to check everything off. Here you see that both fish and chicken were checked off.

So it does make it convenient in that respect as well so, play around with indenting your checklists here within Google Keep.

Don't forget the L shortcut on your keyboard if you want to start a brand new note, and of course, you can also convert your notes back and forth from a checklisted item, even if you want to go back to just a text-based item you can do so as well.

Well, I'd love to hear from you next.

What other tips or tricks would you like me to share here on the Simpletivity channel?

Be sure to let me know down in the comments.

I want to thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you subscribe right here to Simpletivity.

Give this video a thumbs up, and don't forget to leave me a comment or a question down below.

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

How to Share Drive Files with a Single Link

Do you need to share the same files or folder with a variety of different clients? Well, in today's video, I'm gonna show you how to do exactly that right here in Google Drive.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. Today, I'm going to show you exactly how I use Google Drive for my own business, how I can just share one single link with a variety of clients and make sure that they're always getting the most recent or most up-to-date files.

But first, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, Icecream PDF Editor. If you're looking for an easy way to edit your PDF documents, you should try Icecream PDF Editor. It's 100% free and it will allow you to edit your text, edit your objects, and perhaps one of my favorite features is rearranging and managing multiple PDF pages. So, if you'd like to try Icecream PDF Editor for yourself, be sure to click the link in the description below.

So, let me show you exactly how I use Google Drive to share certain files and folders with my clients.

Example of Why Sharing Publicly is Valuable

First, let me give you my use case. I'm a speaker, and a big portion of my business involves speaking at conferences, giving keynotes, and delivering workshops. After I engage with an event planner or someone who has hired me, I want to share particular documents with them.

If we go back to Google Drive, I've got this folder called "Folder for Client Resources," and when I click on that, I've got a few things that I share with everyone who hires me. I've got things like my headshot, a few pictures that they might want to include in their marketing. I've got my bio, which will usually be included in a printout, handout, or on their website. And maybe a few different things that I include in the workshops themselves, such as exercises that they may need to have access to so that they can print them off in advance.

This collection of information needs to be shared with a wide variety of people, but it's not exactly private. I really don't care if you have access to this or if someone else stumbles upon it. There's nothing secure or private here, but I don't like including this information on my website because I'd rather not have someone just stumble upon that site and wonder what it is and what its purpose is. I also don't want to manage an extra webpage on my website. So, instead, I've created this folder here within Google Drive.

Opening the Share Settings for a Drive Folder

Here is the text with the sentences separated:

Now, if we go up here to the folder name, we can right click and select share.

Now, you might be familiar with this pop-up that comes here and probably you're used to entering in a name or an email address of the people that you want to share with.

And of course, I could do this as well.

I could just keep a long list, just keep adding people who need access to these files, but that's gonna be very tedious.

I'm gonna have to come in here each and every time, find the email address and in many cases, I'm dealing with just one individual and they want to be able to share this with other members of their team, so then they need to ask for additional access and that type of thing.

So, in this case, instead of entering any email addresses,

How to use a Drive Shareable Link

Here is the text with the sentences separated:

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click up here and say get the shareable link.

And what that's gonna do is that anyone with the link, this is the default option that comes up, anyone with the link can view.

So, it's generated a unique link here.

All I have to do is copy that link.

I can copy that link, I can hit done down below.

Now, again, you wanna make sure that it says only can view.

We're not giving people access to edit.

The default choice is view, so let's make sure that we continue with that option there.

But I've got my link now.

I've copied it already, I'm gonna say done.

And then just to show you what the guest or what my client will receive, let me open up a new incognito window here and I'm gonna paste that link in the window, in the URL.

This is exactly what they will see on their end when they click on the link, they're gonna have access to these files and they can open them up, they can click on my bio, they can download it, they can print it out if they want.

Of course, they can't edit it, they can download my pictures.

Here are all the resources that I need.

And remember, I've just got the one link.

This is just the one link available here.

I just need to remember or copy this link and use it multiple times pretty much as how long.

Managing a Publicly Shared Folder in Drive

Here is the text with the sentences separated:

I would like to, for the next coming years, if I want to.

Now, the great thing is that whatever I do within this folder, it's going to automatically update and anyone who has access to this is gonna have the latest information.

For example, maybe I no longer want this file, for example, available.

I'm just gonna hit delete on that.

I'm gonna put that in the trash can and maybe in the future, I'm gonna update my headshot.

So, I don't have to go out and email a variety of people and say, by the way, could you please now use my updated headshot or can you put this in the program.

If they have this link that I've given to them in advance, they're always gonna have that updated information available.

4o

How to Share a Shareable Link in Email or Website

To them.

Now, you might be saying to yourself, Scott, I don't wanna share that big long nasty link.

That looks intimidating, it looks very ugly and yes, it is very, very long.

Well, no, I don't recommend that you share the link in its natural state either.

I'm gonna copy that link one more time, so when I'm dealing with a client, I might share it in the following way.

Here I am, I'm sending an email. Please use the link below to access my speaker resources and I'm just gonna call this Scott Freisen Folder, something like that.

All you need to do within Gmail or almost any other online editor is just highlight the text.

I'm gonna come down here to the bottom and select insert link and it's here that I'm gonna paste in that Google Drive link.

This is the folder that I'm gonna send them to.

I'm gonna hit okay and now I've got a nice clean looking link.

It looks straightforward, it tells them exactly what it is and when they click on this link, they can get all of my resources.

So, do you have a need for such an open shared folder?

Remember, I only recommend this for documents or for files that you really don't mind the rest of the world gaining access to.

Maybe there's a particular questionnaire that you send out to clients.

Maybe there's some other documents or data that you like to share and it's alright if other people have access to it, but they don't really need access to it, until they become a client or at some step in the relationship.

This is a great use for this type of shared folder within Google Drive.

Well, I'd love to hear from you next. What other tips would you like to learn how to do right here within Google Drive?

Be sure to tell me down below in the comments.

Thank you so much for watching today's video.

I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity Channel.

Give this video a thumbs up and don't forget to leave me a comment down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Todoist remains the most popular task manager on both the Google Play Store and also the Apple App Store. But, over the last two years it has faced a strong competitor in TickTick.

So today I'm gonna go over some of my favorite features within TickTick, the ways that TickTick differentiates itself from Todoist in both the desktop and mobile versions.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress, and I'm doing today's video precisely because you asked for it. So I'm gonna start off by asking you another question, what app would you like me to review next? What's something that you are currently using, or maybe something that you are thinking of using that you'd like me to feature here on the Simpletivity channel? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Alright, so let's get things kicked off here within the desktop version of TickTick.

So TickTick has decided to choose sort of a three-column format for displaying its information, and you know, at first glance it looks very, very similar to Todoist. On the left-hand side we've got different filters, if we just want to look at today, the next seven days, or maybe our inbox as a whole. Down below we can take a look at all of our lists, and of course we can add tags and do some other fun features which I'll get to in just a moment.

In the middle of the screen we have the tasks themselves. So we can easily, quickly add new tasks, we can edit and check things off. But what I really like is the third and final column that as I'm selecting and clicking on these different tasks, I get to see all of the details here on the right-hand side.

So here you see I've got an attachment, I've got a comment I can see immediately. And for someone who makes heavy use of the description area here, this is something that I really, really like, that I can see that at a glance. So here you see I've got some subtasks. Well, I want to see that immediately, I don't want to have to dive deeper into this particular task.

The other thing that I really like is that you can easily convert a subtask or a checklist like we see here back and forth. In fact, this is how I started to enter in these sort of bullet point notes, and then I decided why don't I just make this sort of a subtask of this build a new website? And you can do that here just by selecting this option here, immediately go into subtask mode. And it doesn't have to be part of a project like in Todoist in order for you to have this functionality.

Of course as I'm checking things off here, I can see my progress on the front as well. But let's go back, let's go back to sort of the first column here, the menu here. Now, lists is pretty straightforward, this would be similar to projects within Todoist. But here's another feature that Todoist does not have, at least not as of yet, is that you can have folders for your lists, or folders for your projects.

Here you see I've got both a personal and a business folder, I've got a few different lists in here, and I can have different lists in personal. So if I want to add a new list I can give it a name, choose a color, and then I can say do I want it to be in a folder? It can stand alone if I want, I can put it in one of my existing folders or I can create a new folder and I think that's something that a lot of you might be looking forward to as you organize your various lists. I hear quite often people complain about all of the lists, all the various projects, and they have one huge line that they have to scroll through. TickTick makes it nice and easy for you to minimize that by creating folders together.

Tags, pretty straightforward here. I've just got a few examples here, so I've created an errand tag and an email tag, if you happen to follow the GTD philosophy tags can be a great use for that, so no matter where that project, no matter where this task may be attached to, to various projects, you could have multiple projects here, you can quickly and easily use tags to focus down into these particular tasks.

Now down near the very end I want to show you something really interesting here, as someone who uses the Pomodoro technique or a Pomodoro timer, TickTick actually has one built in. You see there's a 25-minute timer here and I can just hit the play button and it's gonna go. It's gonna do its thing, I can go and do my work. And as long as you allow TickTick to send you desktop notifications, you will get an alarm when this timer is finished.

Now let me just stop it here for a second cuz of course you don't have to stick with the 25-minute default, you can check on your own Pomo Timer settings here and they've actually got quite a few options here as to the types of breaks and durations and the different goals that you may have in a particular day. So I really like that, you don't have to go search for another timer, you can use the one that's built right in here.

Now the last thing I want to show you before we head on over to the desktop version, sorry, the mobile version of TickTick is that some of the features that are still a premium feature in Todoist come built in with the freemium version here within TickTick. Most notably are attachments, as you can see here, and comments, so you can easily add comments and add attachments to your tasks. This is not an advanced feature, this is part of the free or the basic version within TickTick.

So now let's transition and take a look at some of the mobile features and functionality within TickTick.

So just before I open the app here on my mobile device, I want to take a look at widgets, and you'll see that I've got one widget installed right here. That's a frequent question I get when it comes to new apps, does it have a widget so I can see relevant information before getting into the app? And TickTick actually has nine different widgets for you to choose from. So in this case I can actually activate and look at some things here within this widget. If I just want to see today, I can do that. If I want to click and see my inbox, I can do that as well. And of course if I just select the widget itself, it's gonna take me right into TickTick.

Now on this initial screen, it's really hard to differentiate a lot of to do list apps because a lot of them look very much the same. You've got a smaller screen, so in most cases you're gonna be viewing them in sort of this vertical format as we see here. But one of the things that I want to show off here is some of the swipe features for individual tasks. This isn't anything new, Todoist has some swipe features as well, right?

So if I swipe here to the right I can quickly check this off, instead of hitting the checkbox maybe I prefer swipe functionality, I can check it off there, but watch this. If I pull it over even more I can actually change the priority. If I let go at this point, maybe I can make this a high priority. I like how you can have dual functionality here. Remember, halfway across or a third of the way across complete, all the way over, and I can change its priority. I'm gonna change it to low.

Now that means I've got two other swipe features if I want to swipe in the other direction. So about a third of the way across I can change the due date, and I can move this to any of the presets or pick my own date as you see here. But again, I've got additional functionality. If I go all the way over I can choose to move this to another list, and here you see the folders that we saw in the desktop version and I can pick where I want to put that particular task.

So I know swipe functionality isn't for everyone, but as we keep progressing we want to make it easier and easier so we don't have to actually click on the task and get into that view, that we can do more of the functionality right here from the main screen. So that is certainly one of the features that I love here in the mobile version of TickTick.

And even things like what we see down here at the bottom, you can see there is the search functionality, the task list view, we've got sort of this calendar view here which is something that I particularly use most often is seeing my calendar in combination, or the days of the week with how I'm planning out my tasks. You can choose which of these buttons you want to see or not, in fact there's quite a few features, that's the tab bar feature here, in terms of turning on what you want to see. Once again you can see we can turn on that Pomodoro timer if we want, if we want to have that at the bottom of the screen. There's actually quite a few adjustments you can make for the mobile version. I know a lot of times I'm disappointed that the mobile version has very few options that we can tweak, but not so much with TickTick.

So there you have it, some of my favorite features within TickTick. Now I'd love to hear from you next. Are you currently a TickTick user or are you a Todoist user, and which one are you going to stick with? Or maybe you have a story to share, some additional functionality that you'd like to highlight and share with others. If so, please be sure to include it in the comments below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video, I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel, give this video a thumbs up, and don't forget to leave me a comment down below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Finding the right time to meet with someone else can be so frustrating, all of the back and forth communication, finding an opening, finding the ideal time for you and others to meet.

Well in today's video I wanna share with you five of my favorite meeting schedulers to help make booking your next meeting so much easier.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And today I'm handing out a few awards in the following five categories, we're gonna look at everything from best public meeting scheduler, to best Gmail plugin, all the way to something extra special that uses artificial intelligence.

Public Meeting Scheduler

But let's get things kicked off right now, and we're gonna start with Calendly, my pick for the best public meeting scheduler.

So what exactly do I mean by that? Well I think the graphic that Calendly has on its homepage is very fitting. This is exactly what we're trying to avoid, all of this back and forth. Can you meet at this time? No, how about this? No, that doesn't work for me. Well, I can't meet on this date. Back and forth and back and forth it goes.

So what does Calendly do? Well, it does a number of things but what I think Calendly does best is it allows you to set up a few simple rules, you tell Calendly when you are available and it will allow you to share that time, either via link, via embedding it into your website. And that probably where you've seen or even used Calendly before, is where you've gone to someone's website and they say, "Yeah, I'd love to talk, want to set up a meeting with me, just click this link and I'll share with you my availability."

And of course, the great thing with this tool, and many of the others that we're looking at today, is that it will adjust the time zone accordingly. It doesn't matter where the other person is in the world, they can view it in their own local time zone. So this is ideal for coaches, this is ideal if you want to start a conversation. Maybe this is the first part of your sales funnel, and you want to allow people to book their own time. Again, dependent on your own rules. You tell it what hours or what days of the week that you would like to be available and Calendly makes it so much easier.

But maybe you need something with a few more features. Let's take a look next at Doodle, and Doodle, I'm gonna give the award for best group meeting scheduler.

You can see what I mean right here from this opening image on the Doodle website. Here you can see a variety of people have had the opportunity to vote for the days of the weeks or the times they would like to schedule a meeting together, and Doodle helps you find that out and then book the meeting for you. So this is ideal for those of you who maybe are working with a small team, whether you want to use this internally, or you can do it with other members externally, as well. If you want to give a variety of people an option to vote or select the ideal time.

So again, I think Doodle is best when you're working with multiple people, right, these are meetings with more than just the two of you, more than just yourself and one other person that you can allow them to schedule things and communicate that across multiple individuals.

Alright, next on my list is something I use personally, each and every day, and in fact, I would say that Assistant.to has become a pretty strategic, a pretty central component of my own business. And I'm gonna give Assistant.to the award for best Gmail plugin.

Now it is only for Gmail at this point in time, but the great thing is that it's free. And I don't just mean free to try, I mean absolutely free.

So how does Assistant.to work? Well as you can see from this screenshot here, in each and every one of your emails, once you install the Assistant plugin you're gonna see this little icon in the bottom right-hand corner of every email that you compose. And if you'd like to give the recipient some options as to when you can meet, you just simply select this little icon, and it's gonna allow you to pick the days of the week, the times that you would possibly like to meet with that individual.

And as you can see here, now this is just an example, there's quite a few times here in this three-day stretch, you can pick as many or as few as you like, and then the user receives this in their email and all they have to do is select which one that works for them. And that's the final step, it immediately books a meeting on your calendar and also their calendar. The only thing you have to do next is show up for the meeting.

You can include meeting details and just like we've seen before with Doodle and Calendly, you can view this in your own time zone, so it makes it very easy, very convenient for the user. One last thing I'll point out here with Assistant.to is that if none of these times work they can either say, show more times or say none of these times work, and offer their own suggestions. So they don't even have to have Assistant.to installed or be a user it can provide you with additional suggestions.

This has been again, very crucial for my own business, it's something that I use on a daily basis. Ideal for one-on-one meetings, although it can be used with multiple users, as well.

Now, maybe you need something a little more full-featured

Cutie Scheduling

than what we've seen so far, so the next award I'm gonna hand out here is for the best scheduler that also has a variety of payment options.

And for that title, I have to give it to Acuity Scheduling. Now Acuity has many of the same features that we've seen already with Calendly and Doodle. A lot of these features, in terms of one-touch scheduling, and appointment, and reducing "the drudgery," as Acuity says here, of going back and forth between individuals, but I think where Acuity stands out a little bit more than its competitors is the variety of additional features that it has.

And one of them has to do with payments. In fact, you can see here that you can sell gift certificates, subscriptions, set up packages, and even memberships within the Acuity system. Now you can accept payments with some of the other tools that we've already seen including Calendly and Doodle, but Acuity just gives you so many more options.

So if you need a few more advanced options, it also gives you a little more customization as well, within the interface, so if you need to match your website, match your branding, etc., Acuity does a very good job for that as well. So if you're needing something a little more full-featured you might be looking at Acuity.

Xdot AI

Now last but not least, I've maybe saved something very special for the end here, and that is making use of artificial intelligence.

And you're going to remember this one because it's right in the domain name, X.ai. It might be one of the shortest domains you've ever come across, X.ai. And I'd have to agree with them, that scheduling does suck. But they've done something pretty unique to help you avoid meetings being such a distraction, and such a time suck as you go back and forth with your prospective attendees.

So X.ai is artificial intelligence, and one of the bonuses of X.ai is that you can use it across multiple areas, so not just in email but you can use it within Slack. You can use it on your web page, we've seen that before as well, and of course it syncs with your calendar as well. But I know a number of you are Slack users, and that's the nice thing is that this does integrate directly with Slack, as well.

So how does it work? I'm gonna click on this little link here because there's a really good example that I think explains how it works. So here's a trial, or sorry, a hypothetical email here, and you've got sort of a back and forth going on that yes I'd like to set up a meeting. Well what X.ai does is that it has two AI assistants here and the default one is Amy. You can see that it's bolded here. So Anita, in this example, is a real person, right? I'm chatting or this person is chatting with Anita. I'd like to set up a meeting, and at the end of the email, he CCs amy@x.ai and says, "Amy, please schedule a 20-minute phone call with Anita sometime next week, and title it this, I'll call her."

Now again, this is just bolded so you can see the key points you do not have to bold this in your email, you can just write it naturally, right. You can say schedule a meeting next Monday with Anita, you don't have to say what the title is, that's not necessary, but they've decided to include it here as well. And again, Anita, this is the real person, has no idea that Amy is actually just artificial intelligence, it's not this person's assistant or secretary, but it might make you look like you've got a secretary or an assistant even if you don't have so as well.

So let's go on to step two here. So on step two, the person replies and says, or this is sorry, this is Amy now, this is the AI saying, "Hi, Anita, happy to find a time for you, will this work? But you know, Tyrik is also available at this time, what's the best number for him to call you at?"

And in step three the real person, remember this is Anita, says, "Oh, Tuesday at 2:00 works for me and my number is this." The very next step, Amy the AI agent, creates the calendar for both of you.

So from this first email nothing else was done from the originator, right, from Tyrik in this example. Nothing else was done, he let Amy, his artificial intelligence assistant, take care of everything else.

So this is maybe you could say, a little more advanced but something worth trying out, something that might pique your interest if you want an assistant to help you out schedule your meetings.

Well with that I would love to hear from you, number one do you use a meeting scheduler, and if so did I leave something off of this list? Is there something else I should have included? Maybe there's a whole other category that I should have included in this roundup of my top five.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you give this video a big thumbs up. Be sure to subscribe right here to Simpletivity and be sure to leave me a comment down below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

What you'll learn in this video

Can Google Calendar be used as an effective to-do list? Absolutely and in today's video, I'm gonna show you how.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And in today's video, I'm gonna show you how to set up Google Calendar to be a very effective to-do list.

I'm also gonna show you how to use this on the mobile version of Google Calendar and last but not least, I'm gonna cover the pros and cons of using Google Calendar as your to-do list but I think what you're gonna find out is that the pros far outweigh the cons.

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Let me show you three different ways on how you can set this up within your calendar.

How to use All Day Events as Tasks

The first one that we're looking at here is pretty basic and that is using the All-Day Events area to create new tasks.

So I'm just gonna create a simple sample task here. New task 1 and I'm just gonna hit save. It's going to appear here in my All Tasks area. I can see that I want to do this tomorrow on Tuesday, but I can quickly and easily drag it and move it to some other day.

What I love about this technique, about using it here on my calendar is I can see the relationship between this task and all of my tasks alongside my other appointments and where I need to be. So, for example, maybe I'm having a heavy day today. I'm not sure if I can get through all of these tasks and I'm saying to myself, "I don't want to really review this resume that I have to." I'd like to move that out to maybe Thursday or Friday. But then wait a minute, I'm actually interviewing someone on Wednesday. I can't push it out that far. Maybe I can put it out until Tuesday. I can see that relationship and make decisions based on that.

So, again, what we want to do is, using the all-day events area, simply click on that area and you can start adding a new task right away and whatever it is, it's going to appear in that all-day task area. And even if you think that you can't add all the same details as you would in another to-do list, well, hold on just a second. By hitting the edit button in any of these tasks, you can add not just a location, but of course, use this description area to add bullet points, to add an attachment. You can even change the color of this task if you want to highlight it in some other way.

How to use a separate calendar for tasks

That brings me to the second method that we can use for managing our tasks within the calendar, and that is creating a separate calendar just for your tasks.

So, here I've created one called "To-Do List." I'm going to enable that, and what you can see here is that I've added a few other tasks. For example, recording this new video, which I need to make sure happens Thursday morning. But here's another example that I have up above. It's labeled in this green shade or color, which I've selected, so I can separate out my tasks from everything else.

That's a second method if you want to keep your tasks on a separate calendar. Google Calendar makes this very easy to do. All you need to do is click "Add New Calendar," and then you can add as many calendars as you want. Of course, you can toggle through those calendars on the left-hand side to view or hide them as needed.

How to use Google Calendar Tasks feature

Now, the third way to implement a to-do list within Google Calendar is to use the built-in Tasks function.

You'll notice on the right-hand side of Google Calendar, there's a Tasks feature where you can create tasks and check them off directly from this side menu. To see these tasks on your calendar, just enable Tasks on the left-hand side.

For example, you might have a few tasks aligned with your week that appear on your calendar. If you drag a task to a different day, it will reflect the change on the right side as well. However, be aware that on the mobile version of Google Calendar, tasks do not integrate directly. You'll need to manage them within the Google Tasks app. So, keep this in mind when using the Tasks function across different devices.

How to use Reminders in Google Calendar

You may or may not like that as a part of your workflow.

Now one other thing that you can always add to enhance your to-do list here within Google Calendar is the reminders feature.

So I'm gonna enable the reminders feature and here you see I've got a couple that appear.

Now, what is the difference between reminders and tasks and the all day event tasks which we have created here?

Well, reminders will always carry over. So if I don't complete this particular reminder on Monday, it is going to carry over to Tuesday. I'm gonna have to address it eventually and check things off.

Reminders can be day specific or time specific, as you see down below here.

If you don't know how to create a reminder, let me show you how to do so.

If I wanna create a reminder here, let's say nine AM on Wednesday, all I need to do is click on that space and instead of starting to add the title of this event, I'm gonna first click reminder. You can see just below the title, event is the default selection, but I'm gonna select reminder.

So now, I can add in a new reminder here. I can just hit enter on my screen and there, I've got that reminder.

Now if I wanna change this reminder to an all day reminder, I can so so as well. All I need to do is select it, hit the Edit button, and now I can select the all day option.

Here you can see that that reminder now appears here at the top of my list.

Now, one caveat I'm gonna talk about a little bit later on in the video is one of the things that you need to watch for.

How to use to-do list on the mobile calendar app

Before I do that, let's jump to the mobile version of Google Calendar.

Alright, so here we are within Google Calendar on our mobile device.

As you can see, at the top of the screen, I have my all day tasks. Technically they're all day events, but I'm using them as tasks at the top of my screen.

What I love about this is that whether it's early in the morning or if I scroll all the way to the end of the day, those tasks always remain visible. They're always at the forefront.

If I scroll over here to the next day, you see I have a combination of tasks, appointments, and a couple of reminders as well.

So if you wanna add a new task within Google Calendar, we're gonna hit the plus button in the bottom right hand corner of the screen and we're gonna select event because remember, we're using all day events.

So here, I'm just gonna call this one Task 2. The only thing you need to keep in mind at this point is that we wanna hit the all day toggle. Unless you want this task to appear at a specific time, you wanna select all day and hit save. Now that task will appear at the top of your screen.

Now if we wanna add a reminder, again, we're gonna start with that plus button but this time we're gonna select the reminder option.

Let me just type in a quick reminder. Let's call this one Reminder 3. If I wanted it at a specific time, I can select that here. I can select this to be at 8:30, for example, or I can hit the all day option and again, it will be all day as well.

Now, don't forget, you may need to hit the down arrow here to reveal all of your tasks. Now, this will stay sticky, meaning that the last time you've selected it or chosen that option, it's gonna remain that way.

So, here you can see I have a few reminders that I need to look at along with all of my tasks.

Now this is one of the, I guess, both pro and con of using reminders. Here you can see that it will never combine your all day events. We can see them listed out individually but you will notice here that it has combined my reminders. I've got two here. If I select it, I can now read and see those two, but you cannot, by default, expand those reminders.

Pros & Cons of using Google Calendar as a To-Do List

Lastly, I wanna cover some of the pros and cons of using Google Calendar as your to-do list.

Now I've already highlighted the pros of seeing your tasks up above and always having them stay in the forefront as you go about your day.

But one of the things that you wanna watch out for is that of course, these all day events which we are using as tasks will not roll over. At the end of today, these two green tasks will not roll over to Tuesday like this reminder will.

Now, this is a con, but in some ways, psychologically, it is also a pro. What I mean by that is that it forces you to engage with your calendar and specifically with your to-do list. Too many of us don't engage with our to-do list often enough and then after a day or two, we end up deferring a large number of tasks to the never next day.

Well in this case, this sort of forces you at the end of your workday or at the very end of your day to review what is leftover and have it move over. Drag it over to a more appropriate day where you can accomplish that task.

I hope you enjoyed today's overview of using Google Calendar as a to-do list and I would love to hear your experience as well. So be sure to leave me a comment down below.

Thank you so much for watching. Make sure to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel, give this video a thumbs up, and don't forget to leave me a comment down below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.