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What is all the commotion about Notion and how do you create a template within the Notion application? Well, in today's video, I'm gonna show you just that. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done, and enjoy less stress,

Notion

and without question, Notion has gotten an awful lot of attention over the past year.

Now, if you haven't tried out Notion, I encourage you to do so. Notion advertises itself as being a bit of a, all in one productivity system, and here you can see I've opened up their template gallery. They've got a notes and document section here. They've got a knowledge base section here.

They also tote themselves as being an excellent project management tool, and even a light database, or spreadsheet tool, and I'm just sort of sifting through a couple of their examples here, which are all editable.

These are all templates, or you can start from scratch. Now I think Notion can be an excellent personal, or team note-taking tool. I also think it's gonna function as a fantastic knowledge base. I'm not exactly sold how great it is as a project management tool, or a light database, or a spreadsheet,

Templates

But today we're gonna take a look at how we can use it to create templates.

So let me get over to my team home screen here, and of course, one of the great things about Notion is that you can edit absolutely anything on your page. If I want to change the cover here, I'm just a click away. If I want to change the title of this team homepage, I can do so.

So here I've got a very, very simple template. I've got some basic information about the company here, and Notion works under the premise of subpages. I can always go back to the high level here. I've got an office calendar, actually a pretty powerful calendar here within Notion, but you always have this breadcrumb trail up at the top of the screen.

But what I want to focus on is a section I've created called "Meetings," and you can see here I've got a couple of meeting agendas for upcoming meetings. Let's say that I would like my team to follow a standard format.

So what I've created is a "Create a Meeting Agenda" button, and this is a template I'm gonna show you how to use. We're using the meeting agenda as our example, but you can create a template for absolutely anything within Notion. So let's quickly first take a look at this example.

Let's say I want people to create their own agenda and follow a few different guidelines immediately, right? I have a certain way that I want the team to conduct their meetings. I also want to give them a few reference tools as they're planning ahead. So with just a single click, it's going to create this meeting agenda here. Like I said, I've got some checklisted items—here are some things I want them to always do—and here they can quickly type in that we're going to talk about a new product at that meeting, and we're also going to talk about late payments from customers. Whatever it is. If I just hit enter, I get a nice new checklist here. I can keep adding to this meeting agenda.

You can edit almost anything in this list here. Maybe one of the first things I'll want my team to do is to add a date or maybe to add what we are talking about in this particular agenda. I'm just gonna add a date in this particular case.

But the other great thing is that you can have subpages within subpages. So here I've got a section called "Follow-Up." Perhaps as we're going through this particular meeting, right? As we're going through these agenda items, we've got some action items. Well, to keep it nice and clean and separate from this page, I can click on "Action Items," and you can list them out here. I can keep that on a separate page.

Let's go back to the meeting agenda. I've got another one called "Remaining Questions." Maybe there are some things that we don't have assigned, but we've got some questions from this meeting. I can keep that nice and clean and separate on another page.

Last but not least, you can add links to any page within Notion. Maybe for some new members of my team who aren't exactly sure why we're using this format, or how they can make their meetings more effective, I've got some live links here down below to some articles I think will be helpful to them.

Now if I go back to my team home, this is my top level. You can see here is the meeting agenda that we just created, so now the entire team can have access to it. I can share it. I can add more notes or add more details to this as well.

But how exactly did I create this template button? Well, let's do this together. I'm gonna use the "Operations" section here just for our example, and all you need to do is hit this plus button here. This plus button is going to allow you to add a variety of things, and if you haven't toyed with Notion, if you haven't tested it out, this may feel a little overwhelming, but this is the full list of all the types of content you can add to a Notion page.

Now we want to go all the way down to the bottom here, and select "Template Button." But just before I do so, I forgot something. I wanted to actually change the template for this new example, so I'm gonna go into this meeting agenda here because we had to use this as our template, and just so we can identify it easily, I'm going to call it "Template." There we go. Okay, so now we've got this. It's got all the action items, everything that I want to see here. The reason why I came in here is I wanted to remove a little date field that I had, and I didn't want that in my new template button or my template agenda.

So let's go back to the team home, and again we're gonna hit the plus button, and we're gonna scroll all the way down to this list, and select "Template Button." Now here, this may sound or look a little intimidating, but all you need to do is first, start off by selecting the button name. That's what I suggest. What are you going to do? And let's say we said "create" last time. Let's say "Add a Meeting Agenda" in this case. Where'd my cursor go? "Add Meeting Agenda." That's what we're gonna call this button.

And down below, what they'll usually do is input what was above, or in this case, they've just input like a to-do list. But we don't want that. So I'm gonna select this option here, the little six dots, and we can say "Delete." So now we've got a blank space here where we can drop in a block or drop in another page. So let's go all the way over here to the left-hand side, and under "Team Home," this is where I have my meeting agendas, and here you can see the templated one, right? This is the one that we just renamed. I'm just gonna click and drag, and I'm gonna drop it right here.

Okay, I'm gonna drop it right here. So when we click this button, we are going to create this meeting agenda. I can click anywhere that I want outside. Now, I could add more things if I wanted to. I'm gonna hit the close button here.

Okay, so now we've got this button. It's gonna function essentially the same as what we did here, but I just created this one so you could see how it was done. So when I select it, when I click this option, it's just like we saw before: here is this new meeting agenda template. And now I can come in here and say this is our "Sales Meeting for Q2," let's say that's what we're gonna call it. And again, I can go in and add the action items that I want, the things that we want to talk about. I can review some of the things here if I want to get some hints on how to run a more effective meeting.

And when I go back to the team home, there is my new meeting agenda, which I can reference, pull up, and use. And again, I can use this template over and over again. Make sure that other people within my team are using it.

And that's just one example. In this case, a meeting agenda example, but you could use this for a calendar. You could use it for a to-do list. If you want someone, you know, under "Office Health and Benefits," to submit a particular form, or to answer a certain set of questions, you could create a template button for that as well. This was just a sliver of some of the functionality here within Notion, but again, if you haven't tested or tried out Notion, I would encourage you to do so and explore. There are many different templates to help you get started.

Now, I'd love to hear from you next. Are you already a Notion user, and if so, what are you using Notion for? I would love to know how you are using Notion, and what you think Notion is best suited for. Be sure to leave your answer 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.

Oh my goodness, so many emails in my Inbox. How am I gonna get this under control? Well, in today's video I wanna show you a simple, yet very powerful and effective way to help you get all of your emails under control within Gmail.

Overview

Hello, everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And today, I want to show you a technique using labels so you can easily identify which emails you should be dealing with right now. So let's get started.

On the left-hand side of my screen, you will see the labels area. We've got a few different folders—standard ones like Inbox, Snoozed, Sent, and Drafts—but you will notice I have three color-coded labels: Action Required, Complete, and Waiting for Response. This is really the key to this system—using a few particular labels to help you identify which emails you should be dealing with.

Sometimes, as we're perusing through our Inbox, we have a mix of both read and unread emails, and we're wondering, "Which ones do I need to reply to? Which ones have I dealt with already?" These labels are going to help us keep on track.

Now, two things I want to point out here. First, I'm not going to get into the details of how you create labels within Gmail. If you'd like to learn more, I'm going to leave a link to my video showing you everything you need to know about labels and filters within Gmail.

But here you will see that I've got an asterisk at the beginning of these labels. Now, this could be very important. The reason being is that we want these labels to show up at the top of our label list. We don't want them to get missed or lost, especially if you're using a large collection of labels or other labels as part of your email system.

Example

Let me just open up this email as an example.

So if I go up to the top and I select the labels, here you can see my three Action Required, Complete, and Waiting for Response are always gonna show up at the top, even though I've got a variety of other labels that I can apply down below.

Now, you don't have to use an asterisk, you could use a period, you could use some other special character or even add numbers, but I just like the asterisks because it sort of stands out and it looks like a bit of a star here.

So more on that in just a second.

The second thing you will notice is that I've added some particular colors. And this is important as well, because I wanna be able to easily see when I'm in my Inbox, when I see a variety of emails, which ones, which label is corresponding to these particular titles.

Alright, so here I am in an email, and let's just say for this example that I need to do something with this, maybe I need to go and shop here, maybe I need to ask someone about this.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go up to my labels, and I'm gonna say Action Required, I'm gonna apply that label.

So now when I go back to my Inbox, it's very, very easy for me to see that I need to do something with this particular email.

Now, you don't have to go into every email to do this, sometimes when you're scanning you already know that okay maybe I need to do something with that, and I need to do something with that, and, oh, I need to do something with this as well.

Remember, you can always apply multiple labels at a time.

So now I've got all three of those labels, or sorry, the same label applied to three additional emails.

Now, you're probably thinking, okay, this is a little bit helpful, I can see these emails among my vast amount of additional emails here.

But it gets even better.

If I go over here to the left-hand side and select Action Required, now all I see are those four emails.

I know that these are my Action Required emails, so I can sort of hide my Inbox for a few minutes and just focus on the emails that I need to do.

Now, how do the other two labels come into play?

Well, let's start with Waiting for Response.

I'm gonna go back to my Inbox here.

And let's say this very first message here, I've actually forwarded it on to someone else, I'd like to get their input on it, so I'm asking them a question, "Do you agree with this article?"

Now, if I just leave it as is, this might get lost in the mix here.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to apply the Waiting for Response label.

Now there's one additional thing I wanna show you here, and that is you don't always have to be clicking the label here.

If you select L on your keyboard, that's going to immediately bring up the label list.

So I can select Waiting for Response, I've applied that label, I can go back to my Inbox, and now I can easily see that I am waiting for a reply on that email.

And just as we saw before, if I select Waiting for Response here, you might have a collection of seven, or 10, or maybe more emails that you're waiting for a reply.

You can quickly and easily see which of those emails should you maybe need to poke them again, give them another gentle reminder if they haven't answered you in a certain period of time.

And that L shortcut that I mentioned, that actually applies to your main Inbox view here as well.

So let's say I've got a few more that I'm waiting for, I'm gonna select just three here.

I've selected three, I'm gonna hit L on my keyboard, and, again, that's gonna immediately bring up my label, I can select Waiting for Response, and now I've applied it to multiple emails here.

Now, the last label that I've included in this system is called Complete.

And this may not necessarily, this may not be necessary for everyone, but if you don't have the habit of archiving your emails or moving them out of your Inbox, this may be helpful to you.

So let's say that I open up this one again, this one that said Action Required.

And let's say that I've done the action on this.

I've replied, or I've purchased, whatever it is, I'm gonna go back to my labels, I am gonna uncheck Action Required, and I'm gonna select Complete.

So now I've got my red Complete label.

When I go back to my Inbox, it's easy for me to see that that is done with.

I no longer need to open this up or come back to it, this particular email is complete.

Like I said, I generally recommend that you use the Archive function within your email, that's this little icon here, instead of the label, because archiving it is gonna take it right outside of your Inbox, so you don't have to see it here in your Inbox at all.

But I know everyone works a little bit differently, so you may prefer using the Complete label.

Now, just before we wrap up today's video, I wanna give you one additional tip that sometimes gets overlooked here within Gmail, and this feature has only been added within the last year, and that is the ability to snooze a message.

This is very powerful when you're trying to get your Inbox under control as well.

So let me open up this email here that doesn't have a label on it, and let's say that you know what, I need to do something with this or I'd like to review this email again, I just don't wanna deal with it now, and I don't want it clogging up my Inbox.

Well, what you can do is select this little clock icon, which is the Snooze icon, and when you select that, it has a few different defaults here, right?

I can say Snooze Later today, Tomorrow, Later this week, This weekend, Next weekend, or I can pick a particular time.

I can be very specific as to when I want it to come back.

Let's just say that I don't wanna deal with it today, so I'm gonna select Tomorrow.

I'm gonna select Tomorrow, it brings me back to my Inbox and that email is gone.

It's not here anymore, but it will return tomorrow.

It will return tomorrow, 'cause I told it to.

Gmail's gonna bring it back and I can deal with it then.

Now, if I wanna go and look at all of these emails that are snoozed, I can simply select that label here on the left-hand side, and I can quickly and easily see it, I can reply to it, I can do whatever I want with it here, even when it's in that snoozed state, but if I leave it alone, it's gonna come back to me tomorrow.

In fact, it's even telling me it has the date there in red, January 22nd, that is when it's gonna return to my Inbox.

I hope you found this video helpful.

I would love to know how do you better manage your emails, specifically your emails here within Gmail.

Be sure to let me know 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.

Google Keep is one of my favorite tools to help me stay on track. It's such an easy app to capture those quick notes, those ideas, all those things that bounce around

in your head each and everyday. Now here on the Simpletivity Channel, I usually focus most of my videos on the desktop version of Keep, but today I wanted to focus on five of my favorite mobile tips when using Google Keep. So, let's dive in, and we're gonna start with images. Now, you can add an image to an existing note,

Adding Images & Pictures

or you can even start off with an image. If you have an existing note, like this blank one that I'm starting, you can always hit the plus button down below and choose

take photo or choose image, but even when you're not within a note, in the the bottom right hand corner you have the little picture icon and again, you can choose to take a photo. I can grab a photo right here on my phone, or I can choose that option again, and choose an image, and in this case, it's gonna open up your gallery.

I'm gonna choose this one here, and now I've got my image ready to go. I can add multiple images if I want. They're always going to appear at the top of your note.

But that leads me to my second tip, or the second thing that I love to do on my mobile app, and that is annotating images, something that often gets overlooked.

Annotating Images

So if I click on the image itself, it's gonna open up a new screen, and you'll see in the top right-hand corner I've got a little paintbrush icon.

When I select that paintbrush icon, what I can do is start to make drawings, little swirly things on my image.

Now, I've got a few options down below. That was sort of the pen option. I've got one here that's more of a marker, and the one on the far right is like a highlighter option, but the great thing is that you've got a lot more options if you actually click and hold.

So, if I click and hold for a second on the pen, I can change the color of the pen. I can change the width of that pen. So, now I've got a red, it's slightly narrower than the one I had before, and you can do that with all of these options, including the highlighter.

If I hold on that for just a second, I'll just hold on that, it's gonna bring up more options down below.

Now, if I choose the eraser, one of the things that I like here is that I don't have to drag my finger across the screen, I can just select the different annotations that I want to erase, and in fact, if I hold down on the eraser option, I even have the choice to clear the canvas.

So if I had other annotations, let me just show you an example of that. If I draw here, if I draw there, if I go here and say, hold down on it, and say clear canvas, it's gonna get rid of absolutely everything.

The last one I wanted to show you here, let me just put a little red S on my image, is the selection tool.

So what this allows me to do is I can select that annotation, and I can drag it. It keeps the annotation, the exact size and color and everything, and I can put it where I want it to be.

So, actually a lot more options here when it comes to annotating your images than you may have already thought.

And of course, those annotations are going to save. You can even see it here on the front screen, on the preview screen. So you can keep those annotations. You can continue to edit them as you go.

Now let's stick with images for just one more second for my next tip, and that has to do with converting images into text.

Convert Image to Text

So, here I've got a note which is actually an image. It's something that I've captured from my website, but let's say I'd like to extract that text. Let's say you've taken a picture of a poster, or a label or anything with text. Again, we're gonna select the image itself. That's gonna bring up this view where we see the little paintbrush icon,

but this time we're gonna select those little three dots, and you can see our very first option here is to grab image text. If I select that option, almost immediately down

below it has grabbed all of the text in this image, and it's brought it into the note itself.

Now I can cut and paste this into an email, into a document, wherever I would like to use this text. Now, it's not always perfect. You can see down here, I've got like a capital S on the end of less, but the rest of it looks pretty good to me; it almost looks like it's got it almost perfect from what it is above. And sometimes it may even keep the layout, the spacing, so you might need to adjust that,

depending on sentence structure, but a great way to grab text, if you're taking a picture of something, you can immediately pull it into your note. Now the next tip I want to share with you has to do with a feature that I use quite a bit here on the mobile version. When I'm out running around, sometimes I want to take an audio note. That is often the quickest way that I can

Record & Transpose Audio

Get my thoughts and ideas into Google Keep, but I don't just want an audio recording, I want a transcript of what I had to say.

On the bottom right-hand corner, you can see that there is a microphone app. When you select that, immediately you can start recording what you are saying, and Google Keep will do its very best to convert your text into words so you can use them later.

Alright, so here you can see it immediately started to record everything that I just said, and it did a very, very good job of doing so, as well.

But what I love about this feature is that it is twofold. Not only has it converted my words into text so I can copy and paste this somewhere else, but it's actually also kept the audio file. You see there's a little play button there, so I can actually listen to it.

Now I really use this feature, but maybe you would like to use it. You know, maybe you're practicing a part, maybe you want to practice how you're delivering a speech or something like that. Maybe it's important that you get the different cadences and the volume for your recording.

So, what you can do is you can keep both the audio and the text itself.

Now, sometimes you don't need both. You'll see there's a little X button here. So, I can actually delete the voice recording. I can delete that but I've kept all of that good text which I can use later.

So, if you haven't tried it out, be sure to check out the recording audio notes feature.

Now, the very last tip I want to give you today with the mobile version of Keep has to do with reminders. Now you may be familiar with reminders already.

Time & Place Reminders

Let's see here, I've got a simple checklist.

Let's suppose that this is a grocery list here and so I want to remind myself to pick up those groceries before I run out of milk.

So, here in the top right-hand corner, you'll notice that there's a little bell icon. If I select that, I can select the exact time, maybe I'm gonna choose tomorrow during my lunch break, and I can choose if I want this reminder to repeat or not, which can be very, very helpful.

If I hit save, there you can see it's gonna show me when the reminder is set. I can still see that on the front of the note, and the additional bonus is that this will also appear on my Google Calendar. So, I can see this, I can even access this directly from Google Calendar.

But what I wanna do is I wanna show you the alternative way of setting a reminder which can be very powerful, and that is a location-based reminder.

So, at the top, you see by default time is selected, but I can select place. So, in this case, I can either enter in a specific address or a specific store or location.

So in this case, again, let's suppose that this is a grocery list, so I'm gonna select a local grocery store. It's gonna input the name but it's already saved that specific location that I just chose.

I'm gonna hit save, there I can see what that location is and how this is going to work is that when I'm in close proximity to that particular location, I'm gonna get a notification. I'm gonna get a reminder.

Now, I'm not exactly sure of the distance or the proximity, I'm not sure if it's a half mile, if it's a full mile, I'm not exactly sure what the proximity is, but when I'm nearby, it's gonna give me an alert telling me that, hey, maybe you should check this one off of your to-do list, or pick up these items because you're nearby.

So, something that can be really, really powerful. I mean, how many times have you driven past a store that you needed to get something from, but you just weren't thinking about it at that time. Now you can have Google Keep give you that reminder when you are walking or when you are driving by.

So, there you have it, my five favorite tips for the mobile version of Google Keep.

Now what I'd love to hear next is which one of these five were your favorites, or did I miss something completely. Do you have an additional tip that you would like to share with others? Be sure to leave your answers, and include your comments down below.

Thank you so much, everyone, for watching today's video. I hope you give this video a like, and if you haven't yet subscribed, be sure to do so. We release new videos each and every week.

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

How should you set up a brand new Trello board?

Well in today's video I'm gonna give you a seven-part checklist, the seven things that I do for almost each and every Trello board.

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

Today I thought I would take you through a full walk-through from a brand new board.

Here I've created a new board setup.

I haven't done anything with this board just yet and I want to walk you through the different steps that I take to set up a board, to not only set myself up for success but especially if I'm gonna be collaborating with others.

Changing the Trello Board Background

So let's dive in and start with something that you may be surprised with, and that is the board background.

Now of course the board background is so much more than just what you see here in the background, and you want something that represents the board that you're using.

But the reason why I think selecting an appropriate board background is so important is that it makes it easier, so much easier, for yourself but also other people as they go and look and find that board.

Here you can see a collection of some of the recent boards which I have been using, and look at this one with this sort of pinkish color, how it just sort of stands out, it sort of jumps out; and the ones that I have images on, that might make it that much easier for me to find that board in the future, especially if I have a number of boards which are named in a similar fashion.

Or maybe I want to purposely use the same color or the same background for multiple boards.

And remember, this is even more apparent when you start using Trello on your mobile device such as your phone.

So make sure that you choose an appropriate background.

From the menu we can select change background.

We can either choose a static color, we can choose one of the photos which Trello provides, or if you are a business class user you can upload your own picture, your own custom background.

So be sure to start with the background.

Create your Trello Lists

Alright, next up we want to get into our lists, and of course, this is going to vary depending on what you want your board to do.

I'm just gonna create a very, very simple workflow here.

Idea, confirmed, let's say doing, and then complete.

Compete? No, we're not gonna compete. (laughs) Complete, alright.

So just a very, very simple, straightforward, we're gonna move things from the left to the right.

Of course, that's not the only way in which you can use Trello, but in most cases, people are using a Kanban method, moving from left to right.

But before you start adding any cards, make sure that you take the appropriate time to make sure that you have enough lists for your particular workflow, that things make sense before you start adding pieces of information.

Now at this phase, you may be thinking...

Add List description cards in Trello

that I'm probably gonna start adding cards immediately.

Well, I am going to start adding cards, but maybe not in the way that you think.

Something that often gets overlooked is that as we share this board with others, are they gonna understand the differences between these lists and how they should be using them?

Now, in today's example, this is pretty straightforward, but you may have a process that has 10 lists involved in it, and maybe some of the lists are very, very similar.

So what I often recommend is that the very first card is a description card where you actually take the time, and I don't mean just write the word description, but you write a little bit of detail such as "place tasks which we have committed to doing this quarter."

Alright, so that you've actually got something to tell people what should be going on within this particular card.

You can add this for each and every one here. Now again, complete might be pretty straightforward and doing, but you can add just a very short paragraph at the top of every one of your lists.

Now Trello doesn't give you the opportunity to pin this card at the very top; it's true, someone could drag it down somewhere else within this list.

But what I usually recommend is that you pick a particular colored label. Now I like blue for a couple of reasons, not only is it the Trello default color in terms of the Trello blue, but it's also the last one in this list, so I find often we don't use this color as often as the other ones above.

So I'll often pick something like blue, and I'll put that for each and every one of the top cards here; so if I'm adding a description at the very beginning of each of my lists.

And remember, this can be a full paragraph, it can be a lot longer than just what we see here. Again, let's go into maybe a little bit more detail here.

For description, I can say "add a detailed description of what you want to do." Alright, that adds a little more detail there.

Doing, "place tasks which you (laughs) are engaged with currently," how about that?

Okay, and then "cards that have been finished" or something along those lines. Again, what I'm gonna do here is I'm just gonna add that blue label to each of these areas here.

So again, these are intended to be things that remain here, they're just adding a little bit of further description to what's going on in this list.

As we start adding other things within these lists, everything down below is going to adjust, are going to move, are going to move between lists, and they might be dragged up or down in that particular list.

But the idea here is that this label always remains at the very top.

It looks like I had the expanded function on there. If you click on the label, for those who don't know, you can get not just a bigger view, but you can actually start to see the text which is very next in my checklist.

Define your Trello Labels

Once I've designed my list, once I've added some descriptions, even before I start adding my cards, the very next step I will do is start editing those labels.

So what I mean by that is actually adding some text examples here.

For example, for the blue that we just created as the description, I might just add that in, right?

I might just say, well, that's a description label so people realize why I chose that color.

Green may mean approved, green may mean that things are good, green may mean go in this particular example. So I'm gonna start adding that label.

Yellow may mean wait for approval, for example, in this particular case; and red means, let's say it means urgent in this particular case.

You're not limited to just these six colors. You can have more labels and actually duplicate these colors; so you can have multiple green for example, and each of them can have a different label.

I think this is especially important before you start adding team members or before you start adding other individuals to this board that you have designed the labels appropriately.

Again, you're giving them that much more information so as they start engaging with this board, they know what the labels mean and how to start using those labels.

So don't forget to take a look at the labels.

Review Email Settings for Trello Board

Next on my list has to do with email, and something that I may not do for every single one of my boards, but especially if it's a board that is crucial to my work, if it's something I'm gonna be using on a daily basis, I want to take a look at the email to board settings.

Now in order to do that, you want to select menu and then select more, and about halfway down we have our email to board settings. I'm gonna click this and what you can see is that I have this unique email address for this board.

Now, probably one of the easiest things you can do is select this option to email that address to you so you immediately will have it in your inbox, and for many cases many of our email clients will automatically add it to our contact list. Then of course, you can give it a more appropriate name such as maybe Trello New Board Setup or whatever the name of this board is.

But the next important step here is to determine when you forward or send an email to this particular address where do you want it to appear?

Now in many cases it's often the first list, so yeah, I'm gonna stick with idea, that's where I want it to be; but maybe I don't want it to be at the bottom of the list, maybe I want it to be at the top of the list.

Now, I want to be careful because with these description cards here, of course, a new card is gonna go above it there, so you know what? On second thought, I'm gonna say bottom in this case.

But remember, the choice is yours. You can determine which list these emails go to and what position, whether it's going to be top or bottom.

Enable Trello Power-Ups

Now while we're here in the menu settings, the next thing on my checklist is power-ups, and I am never complete, I am never finished setting up a Trello board without looking at power-ups. Now depending on which version of Trello you have,

whether you have the basic version, whether you have business class, for example,

you may be limited on how many power-ups you can use at a time.

But there is one that I use almost every single board, on every single board, and that is the custom fields power-up so I'm gonna add that right away here. This is a great opportunity for me to go in here and what I can do, if I select edit power-up settings,

is I can start adding my fields, right? So maybe there's a checkbox here and I want to

just give it a name here, so I'm gonna start adding a checkbox. Maybe there's a start date, I don't just want the due date which is default. A variety of options here in custom fields. I'm not gonna go into the details, if you'd like to learn more about Trello custom fields I'll leave a link to another one of my videos in the description below.

But whether it's custom fields, whether it's calendar, whether it's some other integration that you need, now is the time to set that up, especially before you start inviting other members to your board.

Invite Team Members to Trello Board

So, once we've set up our appropriate background, we've designed our lists, we've added a few descriptions, a few helpful pieces of information at the top of the cards, we've decided what labels we are going to use, our email settings, and yes, our power-ups.

And if you don't want to see, oh, there's my custom fields button right there so there's my power-ups.

The very last thing is to start inviting other people to participate with us.

The quickest and easiest way to do that is to use this invite to board link at the top of the screen. You can either paste in email addresses or use their Trello username, but perhaps the easiest one of all, especially if you're adding a large group of people, is just to send them a link, and you can select this create link button.

Here I can copy this link that they're giving me and then I can just paste that into an email. I can just send that directly to the 12 or the 20 or whoever it is that I want to join and participate here in this board.

Well, there you have it, my checklist of how I set up a brand new Trello board from scratch.

I would love to hear from you next. Are there certain things that you do when you first set up a Trello board? Was there something that was missing from my particular list?

Please be sure to leave your answer in the comments below.

Thank you so much for watching, I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel. Be sure to give this video a thumbs up and leave me a question or a comment down below.

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

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

Todoist is arguably the most popular to-do list app in the world right now, and actually, I would say it's probably the very best pure task manager that is available. So then why on earth don't I use it? That's a common question that I receive, and so today I wanted to give you a few reasons why.

Now up front I wanna tell you this video's not intended to try and convince you to not use Todoist, especially if you currently are a Todoist user or you're thinking of using Todoist. I simply want to explain why I choose not to use Todoist as my primary task manager.

So, first and foremost, whenever I am thinking of adding a new system or app or workflow, I'm very cautious of how many additional tools I am bringing or including in my productivity system. If you're a longtime subscriber here to the Simpletivity channel, you will know that my primary way of managing my tasks is within my calendar. I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail in this video. You can see some of my other videos, and I'll leave links to those in the description below, but I think it's key, I think it's crucial, that you see your tasks on the same screen as your meetings and events and other things that you have going on in your calendar.

Now, it's not to say that Todoist doesn't have an integration with online calendars. In fact, right here you can see these little orange tasks at the top are actually synced with this particular Todoist account. So I can see all of these tasks within my calendar. I can move them around as well if I want to, and the sync is actually pretty good in terms of changing those tasks, and sometimes it can take a few seconds or maybe even a couple of minutes, but you can make those changes. There you go. There you can see that that one was moved back to December 17th.

Still, if I want to get the full feature and functionality out of Todoist, such as using labels and adding comments, I have to come back here. I can't do that within my calendar. I can see the task, I can see what date it's on, but if I want to change those details I need to come back here into Todoist. So that is one of the key reasons why I don't just use Todoist. I don't use other dedicated task list managers because of the lack of seeing my events, seeing my calendar on the same screen.

Now a couple of other reasons why I choose not to use Todoist is that sometimes I find the AI features and some of the features that are meant to be helpful, I find can actually have a negative effect on our productivity.

So let me give you just a couple of examples. If you select the three dots here on the right-hand side of any task you get a number of options available to you here, and near the top we have some scheduling options here. Now the first one here is a suggested date as to when you should complete this task. Now I don't know all the factors that are going into the selection that Todoist is making. Now in this case, it's saying that this task is overdue. So this is probably a pretty straightforward one, right? That the suggested date should be today because it's no longer December 17th.

Let's click down to something else. Let's see if it gives us a different date. So this one it's saying not today. Even though it's due today, it's suggesting tomorrow. Maybe because it's a blog article about cute kitty cats. Maybe it's looking at the text and making that assessment here. Here's this proposal for a Florida client. It's saying today. So I'm sure there's some smart function going on here looking at things like maybe proposal and client, and here it saw that there was cats in the title, and that's why it's saying we would postpone that one a little further off into the future.

But again, when we start to rely on this, we start to often think that the computer or the artificial intelligence is smarter or knows something that we don't, and that's why I'm often cautious with this type of technology.

But there's something else I wanna point out here, and that's these two features here. The one is postpone to tomorrow, and the next one is next week as in postponing to next week. Now these are meant to make our lives easier. That in just a single click I can postpone this to the coming Monday, and I can postpone this to tomorrow, and of course, I can actually do this to multiple tasks at a time, especially if I have a bunch of things that I didn't get to yesterday. I can quickly bring everything to today or postpone them all to next week.

Well, that is precisely what I think is the problem. When we make it so easy to defer or postpone something, what I often find is that we no longer think clearly enough or carefully enough about the task itself, and I think, when it comes to deferring and moving our tasks around, you need to be careful. You need to put in some careful thought as to, you know what? Maybe I'm not gonna get to this today, but should I really defer it till next week? Just because it's so easy for me to do so. No, let me think more carefully about this. Maybe I need to actually block out some specific time because this particular task is so important.

I think there's something to be said to actually putting in a little bit more manual effort so that you're not so quick to defer things on your to-do list.

Now, like I said, I want to be very clear. My intention of today's video is not to try and convince you to stop using Todoist or to not use Todoist at all. I simply wanted to answer some of the most common questions available. I think there's a very good reason why Todoist is one of the most popular apps. If you go to the Google Play Store, the Apple App Store, there's a reason why Todoist is always near the top of the productivity category.

But these are just some of the reasons why I choose not to do Todoist. With that, I'd love to hear from you next. Two things. Number one, if you are a Todoist user what do you love about Todoist? What are some of the features that you absolutely love? What are some of the reasons why you think others should consider Todoist? And I'd also love to hear the opposite. Are there some additional reasons why you don't use Todoist? And if not, what do you use as an alternative?

I would love to hear your answers in the comments below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel. Be sure to give this video a thumbs up, and don't forget to leave me a comment below.

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

What is the best way to name your files? Let's find out in today's video.

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

You probably already know that the way that you structure your folders is important, but what's so much more important is how you name your individual files so you can go and find them and retrieve them when you need to.

So in today's video, I'm gonna show you three different components that you should include in each of your filenames.

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When it comes to naming your files, there are many different approaches that you can take, but I think you only need three key components, a date, a file subject name, and a unique identifier or some other special code.

So let's take a look at all three of these components, see why they are important, and also look at the different ways in which we can order them.

Here you can see in this example I have a few files that have a date at the beginning and this is great if you are managing files that need to be sorted by a particular date.

Now it's true almost every file system will include a last modified date and also you'll be able to find when that file was first created.

It doesn't matter if you're in Drive like the example I'm showing you here or if you are on a Windows or a Mac computer.

But in many cases, the last time that the file was edited or when it was created is not the most important date so you may want to include something more specific.

I'll give you an example. I give a lot of presentations and so for me I don't care so much as to when it was last modified or when I first created that file.

What I'd like to know is when did I last present that file. When did I actually deliver that as part of a speech or as part of a live workshop?

So I will often include a date at the beginning of those files.

Now we wanna go one step further and make sure that we list our dates in a proper order.

Here you will see I have things listed in year, month and then day order and we're using two digits for both month and day. Now this is really, really important.

This has nothing to do with where I live in the world or the country, whatever date format that your country follows, the reason why we want to follow year, month, day is because it will always sort properly.

As you can see in these first four files here, I'm starting in 2017 and things are sorting properly down to 2018 including at the month and the date level.

And that's always going to be the case if we follow this format.

Now I've seen some people who omit this little dash in between so the numbers are all together. You've got an eight-digit number.

I prefer to have a small dash in between. I just find it that much easier for me to read.

But as I'll be showing you a little bit later on in today's video, you don't necessarily need to start with the date. We'll look at the pros and cons of having that at the beginning of your filename.

Now the second component of this filename includes a subject line and I'm gonna spend very little time here because this really depends on so many different factors as to what does this file include, what's the purpose of this file.

I think the key thing here is that you should be adding a few keywords letting you know and perhaps other people that you may be sharing this file with what exactly should they expect when they open up this file.

In this case, I have labeled this Client_Email_List and you'll also notice that I've added underscores between the spaces within that filename, but also between the date and the unique code or identifier at the end.

This makes it a bit easier to read rather than this one down below where I've had no spaces and I've just got VendorTrainingContract all smashed together.

The reason why underscores are still important in this day and age is that there are some file systems who may replace a space with a funny character.

You may have come across a situation where a filing system has thrown in a percentage sign in between any original spaces or they will try and put in underscores themselves, but if they can't, sometimes they will simply collapse those spaces and the entire thing will end up looking like this with everything jammed together.

So you may want to get used to adding underscores to your filenames. Not only does it make it easier to read here, but as you share your file with others or as other people share them with you, you can keep that proper spacing in between.

And remember, you don't know what type of system where you are sending this file to. You don't know what they are using and so how it may convert the name of your file.

Now the last component here is what I call a unique identifier or a special code. And I've got a few different examples here.

I've got this one which I've labeled draft letting us know that this is the draft version of this particular file.

In the next two, I've added some initials. So here SDF I can see that I am the author or the creator or maybe I was the last person to touch this file so I've got my initials at the end.

Here I've got someone else's initials signifying that perhaps they are the author.

And then I've got one last example here. This one is VER2 as in version two letting me know the version status of this file.

And as you can notice, I've put everything here, this last component in all capitals unlike the subject name itself which is just in regular text.

This makes it stand out that much more that I've put this in all capitals. I can tell that this is a different component or an add-on of that filename.

Now again, you need to decide what it best for you in terms of what makes the most sense. Does putting a version number make more sense to you?

Does having the initials of yourself or someone else, does that make more sense?

Let's take a look at a few other examples down below here. Here you can see I've put the subject name first, then the unique identifier and then the date at the end.

Now the nice thing about this format is that if I have a bunch of contract templates or maybe I have a number of different things that start with contract, maybe this next one is a contract email template and maybe this is a contract paper template, something like that, I know that everything is going to sort properly with contract first within this folder and that may be most important to me.

Here you can see I've got the different version numbers showing up next and then I have the date at the end.

Last but not least, I've got one last revision or different ordering of these three components. In this case, I have the code or unique identifier at the beginning.

I've got the subject name in the middle and then again I've got the date at the end.

And again, this can be great for sorting purposes. In this case, I've got some purchase order numbers and maybe that's what's most important to me or to my team is that we sort in the order of purchase numbers.

So in this case by starting with that code or that unique identifier, it's always going to sort properly here and I still have my other information to the right.

So no matter what you do as a part of your business, maybe you're an educator, maybe these are just your personal files, I would encourage you to include these three components, a date and don't forget that order, the subject name or the filename with some descriptive keywords and then a code or a unique identifier as you can see here at the end or in our examples here at the beginning of the filename.

As it pertains to the precise order, well that's up to you and it may also depend on the folder that you're keeping these files in.

I hope you enjoyed today's video and I would love to learn from you.

What do you think of these three components and do you have some additional ways in which you order your files?

I'd love to hear from you so be sure to leave your answer in the comments below.

I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity YouTube channel. Please give this video a thumbs up and don't forget to leave me a message in the comments below.

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

Does the Pomodoro technique actually help you to be more productive? Let's find out.

The very first video here on the Simpletivity channel was all about the Pomodoro technique, but I actually haven't talked much about it since that time.

It's been nearly three years. So in today's video, I want to go over what exactly the Pomodoro technique is, how you can implement it, and does it actually work.

Is it gonna help you to be more productive? Alright, so first thing first.

What is the Pomodoro technique, and where does that name come from?

Well, pomodoro is the Italian word for tomato. And in Italy, a very popular type of kitchen timer is in the shape of a tomato.

That's the history or the origin of the name. Now the Pomodoro technique really involves some very simple steps.

It basically involves grabbing a timer, and you could use something as simple as your smartphone, setting a determined period of time in which you are going to focus.

You are going to focus exclusively on one task or one project.

And then when that timer goes off, you take a short break.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to say goodbye to that task, but at least re-evaluate where you are in your day.

Does that particular project need a little more time? Or should you be moving onto something else?

And the great thing about the Pomodoro technique is that you can use it for almost anything.

It's more than just project work. You can use the Pomodoro technique when you're dealing with emails, something that I use the Pomodoro technique with quite often.

Let me give you an example. A lot of us say that hey I'm gonna spend a little bit of time with email.

But there's a big difference between spending 20 minutes with email and 20 focused minutes with email, when you're gonna do nothing but email and processing your inbox.

And to make sure that I don't spend most of my day in my inbox, I will use a timer to set a limit.

Now a traditional Pomodoro duration is 25 minutes. Setting a timer for 25 minutes and working exclusively until the timer goes off.

But you don't have to restrict yourself to just 25 minutes. In my own work day, I will often set the timer for twice that length, 50 minutes, especially when I'm working in the morning.

During the morning hours is when I have a greater amount of energy and I want to accomplish a lot more before I break for lunch.

So I'll often set my timer for 50 minutes and then also follow that by taking a somewhat longer break.

But you may want to experiment with what is the ideal time for you, and also adjust that time depending on the activity or the project that you're engaged with.

But perhaps you don't want to use your smartphone because when you're doing focused work, you like to put this on mute or maybe put it away completely.

And perhaps you don't want to install another application on your desktop computer. Well, there are other devices that you may find helpful.

Right here on my desk, I have something called the GetProductive Alpha. Now this is a brand new product which is designed specifically for those who want to make use of the Pomodoro technique.

Now one of the nice advantages of using an external timer such as the GetProductive Alpha is that that is all it does.

You don't have to be searching for a separate app or doing something additional on your computer.

Yes, it does make it a bit of a uni-tasker. It is basically only a timer and a stopwatch, but once you've found the duration that works for you, all you have to do is press a single button.

And the GetProductive Alpha will tell you when your time is up.

Now this product is so new, it's actually in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign.

So if you'd like to learn more and perhaps be one of the first people to own a GetProductive Alpha, be sure to check out the link in the description below.

So I want to hear from you next. What do you think about the Pomodoro productivity technique?

Have you used it before? And if so, what types of activities are you using a timer for?

The Pomodoro technique is not really ideal for every single thing you do, but when you need that focus, when you need to block out other distractions, that's where the Pomodoro technique can be so helpful.

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.

Google Tasks, Google's version of a to-do list app and today's video, I'm gonna show you what it is, where to find it and I also wanna highlight the pros and cons of using this tool.

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

And in today's video, I wanna give you a full tour.

We're gonna start with the web based version of Tasks and then move on to the mobile version so you know where to find things and also some of the things that you might wanna watch out for.

Google Calendar

So let's get things started here in Google Calendar.

Why the calendar? Because probably this is where you may have first been introduced to Google Tasks or seen the icon.

In the right hand side of the bar, this little side menu, you can gain access to Google Tasks.

And this is going to expand this little menu.

Now of course, you can access other things such as Google Keep, and when you're in other Google applications such as Gmail, you can even access the calendar.

But of course, today we are talking about Tasks, a very simple to-do list manager but that may be exactly what you're looking for here.

So here I have a couple of sample tasks, which I've added already.

In order to add a task, it's very, very simple.

Just click the plus or this field at the top of the bar.

I need to give Bill a call today.

I can hit enter on my keyboard and immediately, I can start adding an additional task as well, about that meeting, yeah, later today.

Now, there's more than just this simple one word task.

As you can see, to the right there is an edit details icon.

And here I can add a brief description of what I'd like to see, some further details that I'd like to add to this particular task.

I'll show you how that looks on the previous screen in just a moment.

You can also have multiple lists.

So here is a dropdown. I'm currently in my My Tasks but I actually have another list called A New Project.

Now I really like this feature so you can have more than just one task list that you're working with.

I'm gonna keep this one in My Tasks.

Below that, I can add a date. Let's put that to a couple of days out.

And then last but not least, something which is crucial for most of us, is the ability to add subtasks.

So I'm gonna keep this really simple here.

I'm gonna say sub one and, let's say, sub two.

Really, really simple stuff here at the bottom.

Now, the other nice thing here is that you can keep going on if you want to have more and more subtasks but let me show you how this looks on the previous screen.

So now that I'm done adding some further details, I'm gonna go back here.

So here you can see the brief description.

It's nice and visible.

We have the due date here, which is also pretty visible and we can see our subtasks down below.

But the one thing that I wanna point out when it comes to subtasks, and this may be either a pro or con, depending on how you view these things, is how you want to view your tasks here.

So if we go up to the more option, right beside the add a task, we can either choose to view it by my personal order, right, the order that I would like to see them in, or by date.

So I'm gonna select date for just a moment here.

So let's see.

There's that give Bill a call option and you can see there's some separation.

We've got my subtasks here down below with no date, right, because I didn't add a date for these items.

I can go in and add their dates as well.

If I change this back to my order, now you can see my subtasks are nicely nested beneath this one.

If I drag this one down, those subtasks are gonna go with it.

Of course, you may have, if you sort this by date, I guess that makes sense if you have a different date for these subtasks, then you would want them sorted that way as well.

So if I hit the icon button here, again, I can add further details for those subtasks.

I couldn't do that when I first added them but once they're created, I can give them an additional due date.

I can even have them assigned to a different task list.

All right, a couple of things I want to point out here within the task.

Let's create a new list.

So here you can switch back between different types of lists.

I'm gonna go to my New Project list for just a moment here.

So this is a completely different set of tasks.

And as you're checking things off it's pretty simple, just hover over these circled bars here.

I can check this one off.

This one, you can see, as I hover over, I have a couple of other things down below which are also being ready to be checked off.

That's because, those ones, are the subtasks of this one down below.

This is the parent task, the one that is up above.

If I click on edit details, you can see that this is the highest level one and I've got two things down below.

But if I check the parent off, everything else below it will be checked off as well.

At the very bottom of the screen, you can see that there is a completed list.

And why don't I just check something else off here just to add a few more things to that completed list.

So this is where everything goes in your completed list and you can expand this, see what's going on down below.

If I want to undo a task, I simply need to check this or select this check box and it's gonna bring it back to my list up above.

If I go back, this relates to that completed list, I can go down here and say delete all completed tasks.

So as that completed list racks up with a number of tasks, and there's too many to review or you don't need them anymore, you can always go in here and delete all of those tasks.

But there's one other key thing I wanna share with you here in the calendar and that is when I added that first task…

Let's go back to my My Tasks.

This, uh… Bill, give Bill a call.

That's the one I added here.

You'll notice that something was added to the calendar as well.

And this is a really nice feature is that you don't necessarily have to have your task list open at all times but you can access or see those tasks here at the top of your calendar.

As long as your tasks calendar is visible, here's the little check box here under your My Calendars, you can see those tasks directly on your calendar.

I can open it up.

I can even mark it as complete, directly from My Calendars.

So it's nice to see that association between the two.

But here is a big warning.

And I'm gonna get to this again when we look at the mobile view, is that tasks do not yet show up in the mobile version of Google Calendar.

Reminders certainly do but when it comes to tasks, you're gonna have to use the Tasks app.

And we're gonna get to that in just a moment.

Gmail

Now I'm gonna quickly jump over to Gmail for just a second because as I mentioned, you can access tasks in a variety of Google programs.

Everything here is exactly the same.

I'm just accessing it from Gmail.

But what I did want to point out is that when you are dealing with email within Gmail, you can immediately add that email as a task.

So let's say that I've got this email and I need to reply to it or I want to reply to it later, I wanna create a task.

So simply by selecting the options here, the little three dots, I can select add to tasks.

And over here on the right, you can see it's just gonna copy the subject line over here but I've also got a direct link to that email.

Now I can always go in and change that title, right, if that subject doesn't make a lot of sense.

But the great thing is that it creates that link to that particular email.

So if I am back in the calendar, for example, or how about this, even other Google applications such as Google Drive, if I'm here in Google Drive and I wanna access that email, all I have to do is click on this little icon and I will go directly back to this email.

All right, let's take a tour now of Tasks on our mobile device.

Mobile App

All right, so here we are in Google Tasks on my mobile device.

And you can see it looks almost identical to what we saw in the web based version.

And I love when Google or any developer does this.

It makes it so much easier to navigate when you don't have to think differently or go to new places to find out what you're looking for in that mobile version.

Even that first task that we see there.

You can see that I still have that link to that email, all the same functionality exists here.

Now in order to add a new task, you want to go to the bottom of the screen and select add new task, that blue button.

They keep it very simple here as well.

If you wanna add something really quickly here.

You can just do the text based version and hit save or I can hit this plus button and I can add that description or due date.

You see how that slides out there.

But if you don't need that additional detail, I can just hit this new task and immediately it's gonna be added to My Task list.

There it is, at the top of the list.

In the bottom right hand screen, this is where you'll find the ability to sort by order, date, you can rename your list or delete all completed tasks.

So all the same functionality that you need is available to you right here within the mobile app.

Well, with that, I would love to hear from you.

Are you a Google Tasks user?

And if so, what do you think?

What has your experience been with Google Tasks?

If not, have I convinced you to use it or I'd like to know, what's your preferred to-do list manager?

Be sure to leave a comment and your answers down 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.

Many of you've been asking, "Scott, what do you have on your phone "and what are some of your favorite apps "on your Android device?" Well today, I'm gonna share with you just that.

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

Google Keep

And today, I want to share with you seven of my favorite apps, seven apps that I use on a daily basis.

Now we're gonna get things started today with surprise, surprise, Keep Notes, formerly known as Google Keep.

Yes, even I'm having a difficult time reminding myself to call it Keep Notes.

But when I have an idea, when I have a thought, I need some place to quickly capture it.

I find that there's very few apps that are quicker at capturing those notes, whether I want to type them in on my thumbs or whether I want to use the recording ability and actually narrate that note, this is the place where I go and do it within Google Keep.

The functionality is very much the same as you would expect on the web version of Google Keep, or sorry, Keep Notes.

Search functionality, everything else looks very very similar, and that's something that I love about some of my used apps.

Trello

So next up, let's go to number two and yeah, this isn't gonna come as a big surprise, but that would be my Trello app, something that I use very very frequently.

What I love about the mobile version of Trello is that it looks and in many ways feels just like the regular version or the web-based version of Trello.

So whether it's the location of things, such as labels, descriptions.

You can add checklists, you can access your attachments.

Everything looks and feels very very similar to Trello, and I can't say the same thing about a lot of other apps.

You know, the drag and drop functionality just like you would expect on your boards within Trello.

When it comes to many other project management tools, I find that they dumb it down too much and it doesn't even feel like the same app.

But not the case when it comes to Trello.

So certainly, a deserving place at number two on my list.

Habit Bowl

Alright, let's explore some more.

The next one I want to share with you I've been using for only about six months, but I absolutely love it and it's called Habit Bull.

It's this purple one here with the bull on the front.

Habit Bull is all about keeping track of your goals and helping you get the data that you need in order to track those goals.

So here I've got an example to share with you here, and it's super simple to use.

You've got a basic calendar here in front of you.

The things that are shaded in green mean the days in which I've accomplished this particular task.

And you can see today's November 21st.

So if I just tap it with my thumb, it's gonna add that green color there letting me know that I have completed that goal whether it's a run, whether it's doing some reading, whatever your goal may be.

If I tap it again, it's gonna change it to pinkish which means I failed on that day.

Now you can choose to use this option or not.

And if I click it one more time, then it gonna disappear as if I didn't click anything at all.

One of the things that I like about Habit Bull compared to many other simple app goal trackers is that I can go back and select dates previously.

I've used goal trackers before which only limit you to the day that you're on.

Perhaps what I like the most is the snapshot data that it gives me.

So here I can see my daily streak progress, but also at the bottom, it gives me some other great averages which is really what I was looking for.

If you look down here at the bottom, you can see my current total, current month, but I love this average per week, for example.

So if you've got a goal to go for a run or exercise three times a week, you can see how you're doing.

Not just look at the calendar and count the number of days, but see if you can maybe up it one week if you're failing in that particular goal the previous week.

The other great thing about Habit Bull is that you can keep not only just multiple habits, but it will keep you a percentage of all your habits as you see here as well.

So again, something that I haven't used quite as long as many of the other apps that you'll see in today's video, but I've really enjoyed using Habit Bull.

Clock

Alright, now the next app on this list is actually something that came stock with my phone.

I'm sure it probably came stock with your Android phone as well, and that is the Clock app.

And I know many of you are probably saying, well Scott, you didn't have to install it. How is this a favorite app of yours?

Well, I use a timer on a regular basis.

So the timer functionality is something that I'm using quite frequently.

Whether I'm focusing on a piece of work for a specific period of time, I'm gonna maybe set it for I don't know 45 minutes or something like that, and start working on a particular task.

But I love that you can add presets.

And down below, I have some of my favorite presets, whether I'm taking a quick break, whether I'm taking a power nap in the afternoon.

So if there are some favorite intervals that you want to use on a regular basis, you can just create those, and that's just a single tab to get you there and then you can start the timer.

Of course, if you're not familiar with your own clock app, I would encourage you to explore it a little bit.

You can obviously set multiple alarms.

Here I have my wake-up schedule for both the weekday and weekend.

Yes, no I'm not just trying to impress anyone, I really do wake up at five in the morning Monday through Friday.

But an app that I wanted to include on this list just because I do actually use it so frequently.

Stow Card

Alright, next up that keeps me productive when it comes to my daily tasks, not necessarily with my business, but especially when I'm out and perhaps I'm shopping or needing access to a loyalty card, I use Stocard.

That's up here in the top left hand corner.

Now I only have a few things here.

You can see that I've got a couple of library cards and then I've got a grocery store loyalty card here as well.

So if you hate collecting so many different cards with you and would rather just have that barcode, would rather just have that available to you here, yes I guess some of you may have access to my library now if you know this card, but hopefully you don't know my library location.

Anyhow, what Stocard does, it allows you to quickly and easily take a picture of your loyalty cards and it will grab that barcode so anything, absolutely anything that has a barcode, you can grab and then just scan it at the store.

Here you'll see that I actually have myself and my wife's library card because you know sometimes she puts things on hold and she'd like me to pick it up for her.

But I can't do that without her card. Well now I've always got her card with me.

You may have the same thing if you have children's library cards or you have other membership cards related to your family or maybe even members of your business.

So Stocard, I am barely scratching the surface with the features that are available here, but even for the small number of cards, I find it very very valuable.

Speech Timer

Now the next one is very particular to my business and the type of work of which I'm engaged in, and that is giving speeches.

Giving either keynote speeches or perhaps delivering a workshop, and that's the one just below Stocard called Speech Timer.

Now this is a very very simple app, but it's something that I use not only live when I'm a delivering a speech or running a live workshop, but it's something that I'll use to practice as well.

In fact, if any of you have joined me on a Ask Scott Anything live webinar or perhaps you've been a participant in a productivity bootcamp, I actually use this timer beside me as well to keep me on track.

So very basic.

Let me give you a quick snapshot here.

You see at the top of the screen, we've got green, yellow, red.

So you get to determine when do you want the timer turned to green which often means you've met the minimum amount of time, or maybe that's your first warning.

Yellow, letting you know that hey, you better start wrapping things up here. You're getting near the end.

And then red, in terms of when you really need to wrap things up here.

I don't think I have a very short example here.

I'm not gonna be talking for a full minute further on this, but if I just hit the start button, you'll see that it's gonna stay in this mode, but once it reaches that one minute mark because that's what I've set in this particular example, the entire screen will turn green.

And then yellow and red at the upcoming intervals.

This is really really valuable to me because when I'm live in a large conference room or something like that, I can easily see this.

Even if I'm several feet away from the podium or perhaps the platform that I'm delivering my speech from.

So even if it's in a meeting for example, this is something that you could use beside you if you so wish.

And of course you can program all these different intervals if you want below.

Stretching Exercise

Alright, last but not least, I did want to include something directly related to health, and in this case, exercise.

I've got an app that I use every morning called Stretching Exercises, and this is something that keeps me really honest and true with my stretching, making sure that I don't pull a limb, making sure that I still do those stretches, especially after my run.

So Stretching Exercises not only will it keep a simple report of what you've done and allow you to keep track of your goals, but I love that it has these preset stretching exercises, right.

So it's got everything from some morning warmups or a sleepy time stretch to this one here, this post run cool down is actually the one that I use most often after my runs.

It's got a number of other selections or stretching playlists that you can pull down and run through as a part of your day.

So just showing you very quickly here, this is my post run cool down, and I haven't put this together, they put it together for me.

So it's only five minutes, 12 different stretches, and it goes through.

Most of them are 30 to 20 seconds.

They show you how to do it.

There's even audio guides so I don't have to be looking at the screen if I'm lying on the floor doing one of these stretches.

But something that, again, if I didn't have an app, if I didn't have a tool like this with me, some days I would just say, ah, I don't really need to stretch.

But of course no matter what type of exercise you're involved in, you do need to stretch.

And so an app like this really really helps me out.

Conclusion

Alright, well there you have it. Seven of my favorite apps for Android.

I'll include a link to all of them down below so if you'd like to install or try them out yourself, you can do so.

But I'd love to hear from you next. What are your favorite apps?

What are the favorite tools on your phone, whether it's Android or iOS, that you absolutely can't live without?

Be sure to share them down below in the comments.

Thank you again for watching.

I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Ultimate Guide to Google Calendar Settings Google Calendar is where I spend an awful lot of my time, and there's a good chance that you spend an awful lot of time here, organizing your day, setting up your meetings, and seeing all the things, and places, where you need to be.

Well, in today's video I want to show you everything you need to know about settings within Google Calendar. We're talking about notifications, we're talking about defaults.

I want to show you how to get that daily agenda as well, which can certainly help you with your productivity. Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress, and after today's video, I don't want you to have any questions about settings in Google Calendar.

Well, maybe I'm just kidding. If you've got questions, please include them down in the comments below.

I always love hearing your feedback, and I'm curious what other questions you have for me after watching today's video. So, let's get things started by clicking the Settings icon, but just before we select the settings option, I want to go over the other options that we have here, just in case you're not sure where to find these options.

So, the first one is Trash. Anything that you delete here within Google Calendar, as long as it has been deleted within the last 30 days, will show up here, so if you need to review something

which has been removed from your calendar, and if you'd like to restore it, you can do so here. This is especially helpful if you happen to use some of your events as tasks, and perhaps instead of crossing them off or using some other method, you just delete them, you can always go back here and review them as well.

So, that's where you'll find them, in the Trash. Now, you also have the option to change some of the density and color.

So, this is the default set here, modern with white text. You can always change that to classic with black text.

Now, you can also get into a lot more detail if you want at an individual calendar level, but these are just your defaults for your main calendar, and lastly, your second option here is if you want a responsive design, so as you minimize or adjust the size of this window, everything will be responsive, or you can go back to the compact design, which sort of squishes things together a little bit more so, but I prefer the responsive design here.

Addons Last but not least in this particular list, I want to get to the Get add-ons section. A lot of people don't realize that almost every Google app has the ability to add some additional features to it, so if you happen to use Cisco Webex or GoToMeeting, for example, for your video conference calls, you can actually add them directly here, and now you know where to find them.

General Settings All right, well, let's jump into settings, and let's start with the general settings. Basically I'm gonna be going over two different areas here within the Settings window.

General settings, which apply to all of your calendars, and then I want to show you the settings that are particular to individual calendars down below, but let's start with General. Language and region, pretty straightforward.

Language, country, time format, if you prefer military time or 24-hour time, you can make that change here. Time zone, also pretty straightforward.

You want to have this first one set to your local time zone, and this is probably coming from your Google account, when you first set up your Google account, but a lot of people don't realize that you can set up a secondary time zone, so I'm gonna check this box for an example here, and I had previously selected New York, Eastern Time here, so you can see that displayed down below. So, perhaps you work with colleagues, or perhaps you travel back and forth

between two different time zones. This can be helpful to show a different time zone

in addition to the one that you're currently in, and you can also add some labels here as well. So, perhaps I want to call this one Home.

These are custom labels, and this one I'm just gonna put NY for New York. Now, everything is saved automatically, which is nice, I don't have to go finding a Save button like in Gmail.

So, let's go back to our calendar to see what that looks like. So, here you can see on the left hand side of the screen I've got my Home time, the default time, but now I've got New York time beside it.

Now, this is really the only place where you're going to see that. When I open up an event here, I'm not going to see additional times.

If I go to edit it or change the time it's not gonna show me that Eastern Time, but it can be helpful to see that here on the left hand side of the screen.

So, let's jump back into settings here. I'm gonna leave that one on for now, but I do like that you can change these labels.

They even give you a nice button here if you want to swap those time zones. All right, the last little checkbox, Ask to update my primary time zone to current location.

This can be important when you're traveling, right? So, instead of using this as the primary all the time, it is going to make changes when

you're traveling across time zones, and you can read the details by clicking this link here. So, in the next section down below we've got some more world clock options,

and this is one that I was not terribly familiar with, but again, depending on who you are working with, other countries or other time zones that you need to deal with regularly, this world clock may be very helpful. By checking this box, you can add a number of additional time zones, I'm not sure about the limit.

You could probably add as many as you like, but if I go back to my calendar, you will see here, below the mini calendar here, I have the three time zones that I selected, so I've got some UK time, I've got Anchorage here, and I've got New York as well. So, this is the current time, so as I'm working, as I'm going about my day, I can glance over here and know exactly what time it is in these other time zones.

Now, again, by default this is turned off, so if you want to uncheck it, you can do so here.

I'm gonna turn it back on just for today's example. We'll see that on the left hand side of the screen.

Events Now, the next one is a pretty important one. This has to do with events, and the defaults for your events.

Now, all of these things, almost all of these things can be changed when you're creating an event, but in order for you to work at your productive best, I think it's important that you are setting default settings that make the most sense to you, so you don't have to waste time clicking other boxes or selecting other dropdowns.

So, the first one is default duration, and it's important to take a few minutes to decide what is best for you. Is a 60-minute meeting, is that typically the type, or the length of event that you're creating, or are you typically creating 30-minute meetings?

Remember, every new event-- If I set this to 30 minutes, what's gonna happen is I go over here and I'm gonna click on Friday, you can see immediately by default it's saying 9:00 to 9:30. Of course, I can change that, I can make it to a full hour, but I think it's important within Settings that you pick the duration of time which is most common to you.

I'm gonna leave it at 60 for now, and down below we have this Speedy meetings checkbox, what on earth does that mean? Well, there's actually a brief description here.

If you turn Speedy meetings on, 30-minute meetings will be five minutes less, and longer meetings, 10 minutes earlier. So, you remember I had selected 60 minutes, but now it's set for 50 minutes, so if I open up this dropdown,

everything is just somewhat reduced. 15, 25, instead of 30, 40 instead of 45.

You sort of get the idea here. The idea, really, is to encourage you, and maybe more importantly, other people who you've invited to that meeting, that hey, let's wrap this up before the top of the hour.

Let's give everybody a little bit of time to get to our next meeting, or to get to something else.

I'm not exactly sure how effective this is, but even psychologically, if you were to receive a meeting like this, it might help you to be more, a little more efficient, make sure that you're making the best use of your time.

So, really up to you, your personal preference if you'd like to choose Speedy meetings. Now, the next three dropdowns, the first one is Default guest permissions, so when you are creating an event, what do you want to allow others who you've invited to do?

Can they modify the event, can they invite others, and can they see the guest list?

Remember, you edit all of this within the individual event, but what is most typical? What in the average situation when you create a new event, what do you want to allow guests to do or not to do?

So, you can make those changes here. The next one has to do with automatically adding invitations.

Three options here: Yes; Yes, but don't send event notifications unless I have responded "Yes" or "Maybe"; No, only show invitations to which I have responded. Essentially what this is doing, and you can hover over this question mark to give you a further definition, or description, is that when you receive an invitation, do you want to see it on your calendar?

Not that you've accepted it, but do you want to see it there? I, personally, like this option because I want to see if someone… Maybe I haven't gone to my email first, and so, the first time I'm seeing it is on my calendar,

and I can choose right there within my calendar if I want to accept it or not, and it will be shaded in a different color. You'll be able to tell if you have not accepted that invitation or not, and the last one here has to do with notifications, what types of notifications would you like to receive?

Do you want Alerts, do you want Desktop notifications, or do you want them turned Off altogether? I choose to have alerts for my default here, because in most cases I do want to be reminded of those options.

I think if I choose Desktop notifications, that's where this Play notification sound will turn on. I can talk about On or Off, but I'm just gonna leave this one at Alerts, Video Calls and the last option in this area is Automatically add video calls to events I create.

Let me show you how this works, so if I select this box, I'm gonna check it, and I'm gonna go over here, and let's say I'm gonna create a a new event.

I'm gonna say MORE OPTIONS, you will see that automatically they have added Hangouts, Google Hangouts, to this invitation. Now, I can say No conferencing if I want, but remember, we're just talking about defaults here.

Now, for those of you asking about this button up above, I already have Zoom Meeting, the Zoom Meeting Chrome extension installed, so that's why you're seeing this here. It has nothing to do with the option that I just selected.

It really has to do with this one down below, so if you want a Hangouts meeting to be added automatically be default, you can have that checked. In my particular case, I have that unchecked, not only because I use Zoom, but I usually make the distinction if I'm going

to be inviting someone to a video meeting or not. View Options We're almost near the end of this list.

Here we are into View options. A lot of this is pretty straightforward.

Do you want to Show weekends, do you want to Show declined events, things that you have turned down, week numbers, you can Reduce the brightness of past events. This can sometimes be helpful just to see what you've done and be able to clearly see the day that you're on, especially if you're looking at the Week View or Month View.

View calendar side by side in Day View, and a couple of other default view options. Which day of the week do you want to start it on, how many days out do you want for your custom view?

I don't really use the custom view, but if you do, this is where you go to change it, and if you want to show some alternate calendars. Last but not least, we have an area here to automatically add events from Gmail to my calendar, so that's going back to receiving that invitation via Gmail, and if you want to enable keyboard shortcuts you can turn this on or off, and let me just show you by hitting the question mark, here is your full list.

Just by hitting the question mark key you can get a full list of all of the shortcuts here within Google calendar.

I'm not gonna go over these, but if you want to see them and review them for yourself, just make sure that this option at the bottom is checked, and then you can select the question mark. Individual Calendar All right, we're gonna jump down now to an individual calendar, and in this case mine is called Scott Test Calendar, and there's some really important stuff here.

There's some really great stuff to help you be more productive and efficient with all of your events, and whether else you're keeping track of here within your calendar, so of course you can change the name of your calendar, and you can add a description. I'd say the description is probably only helpful if you're going to make this calendar public, if you want to share some further

information about this calendar. Otherwise, I typically leave this blank.

You can change the primary time zone for that calendar, and just some basic Google information as to who is the owner. Here is where you can make that calendar public,

and you'll see when I check this box you actually get a warning because if you make it public, everything will be visible to the world, including via Google search, are you sure?

You want to make sure that you're sharing this with the world. This can be very valuable if you are sharing a calendar that is intended for the public, like a community calendar, something that you want to make available to everyone else, but this is where you go to enable that.

If we want to share this calendar with specific people we simply select this option and invite them to have access and to share this calendar with them.

Event Notifications The next three sections, though, are where I want to spend a lot more focus, because this is where a lot of the great stuff is. So, Event notifications, how often in advance do you want to be notified of events on your calendar?

Now, the default here, I believe, is 30 minutes. I don't believe I've changed this since coming in here, but there is a bit of a distinction.

We've got Notification, and then we've got Email, so a notification would give you an alert here within the browser, or an alert on your mobile phone, and then of course, you can select how far out you would like that time, so maybe I'd like it to be a little bit closer to the event, so I'm gonna change that to 10 minutes. Of course, you can change this to hours, days, or weeks, but keep in mind you can add multiple notifications.

What if you want a notification and an email? This is not an either/or option.

If I also want an email notification, I just need to select ADD NOTIFICATION, and here I will now get an email notification, and maybe this one I want a little further out, like 30 minutes, so for the same event, remember, this is gonna be the default, for the same event I'm gonna get an email notification 30 minutes out, and then I'm get an alert either on the desktop or on my mobile phone 10 minutes out.

Once again, you can change this at the individual event level, like if there's a particular event you don't want notifications for, you can turn that off when you create that event, but this can be very helpful if you want to discern the difference between an alert or a notification versus an email, and again, you can go further out. You can say, "Well, I also want a

"notification two days before," and so on. Just clicking the X here will remove that notification.

All-day event notifications, by default they're turned off, right, if you have something listed as an all-day event. Some of you may know that here at Simpletivity, I recommend that you use that all-day event area for your most important tasks, and so therefore you may not want a notification of all the things that you have stored there, or maybe you want to be known the day before.

The nice thing about the all-day event notifications is that you get to choose the time, all right, in terms of when you'd like to receive those notifications, but again, you don't have to turn this on if you don't wish to. The next section here has to do with General notifications, and there's a lot of goodies here, but there's also a few things that

you may wish to toggle or turn off. New events, do you want to be alerted when someone sends you an invitation to event?

I recommend that you keep that on. Changed events, someone changes an event.

Again, probably worthwhile, right? You don't want to be showing up too early or miss the event, so you probably want an email notification for that.

Canceled events, probably goes for the same thing. All of these choices, almost all these choices are either None or Email.

Event responses is maybe a little bit different, when guests respond to events for which you can see the guest list. So, do you want to know when someone has accepted your event?

And this can be a little bit different depending if you have a long list of invitees. Do you want a notification for every time someone accepts, or do you want to check in on your own?

But the last one here, Daily agenda, can be so helpful, and sometimes people forget that this is an option, or forget where to find it. The daily agenda, if you have this turned on, Daily Agenda you will receive an email with your agenda everyday at 5:00AM in your current time zone.

Let me show you what that looks like, so here I am in my Gmail. Here's the subject line: Daily Agenda for Scott Test1 as of 5am.

It's important to know that you can't change this time. This will be attached to your calendar's primary time zone, so you can't make it any earlier or later, but I think for most of us, 5:00AM is a fairly safe time.

So, down below you can see my entire agenda for that day. I've got my travel itinerary, which I had listed as an all-day event, so that appears up top, and then I've got my meetings and other things spaced out below, and they even do a good job of sort of recreating that spacing, right?

There's a bit of a difference. There's a four-hour difference here between these two events compared to the two-hour difference between these two events here and the one up above, so you get a snapshot of your day first thing in the morning, and I'm not suggesting that you're necessarily dealing with email at 5:00AM, but whenever you do open up your email you can have your agenda waiting for you there, so by selecting the Email option here… Oops, I just toggled it off.

By selecting the Email option, you will receive the daily agenda for that calendar. Now, the last section on this page looks a little intimidating.

I'm not gonna go into too much detail here. This is where you will find the public URL to your calendar, so if you want to share this with someone else, particularly when you make this calendar public this is what you'd want to share.

If you want to embed this calendar on a website, on a webpage, this is the embed code here, and then we also have some iCal formats down below.

Perhaps you're working with someone using Outlook or another iCal format, and Google does a pretty good job of showing you and explaining the details of these different areas. Last but not least, if you want to get rid of your calendar altogether, here is the DELETE option.

This is gonna remove everything, including guests, from this calendar as well, so it's gonna absolutely obliterate every single event that you have listed within the calendar. Well, there you have it, an exhausting list of all of the settings, all of the notification settings, within Google Calendar.

So, I would love to hear from you next. What is on your wishlist of things that you wish Google Calendar could do, or did I miss anything out?

Was there something that I didn't cover, or you'd like me to go over in more detail? If so, be sure to leave your comments down below.

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 note in the comments below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.