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The number one power-up that I recommend all of my clients enable when they start out with Trello is the Custom Fields power-up. That's because our businesses, our organizations, our teams all require some type of custom field.

I'm sure that there is a text box, a number box, or a drop-down menu that is specific to your team's needs—or even if it's a personal project—specific to your personal needs that you would like to add to your Trello cards. Well, in today's video, I want to share with you three Custom Fields features that you may not be aware of.

So let's get things kicked off with actually creating our custom fields. Now you can edit your custom fields in one of two ways.

Edit Custom Fields

You can go into the power-ups menu—you'll find that by clicking on the menu and then selecting Power-Ups. You can either search for Custom Fields to enable it if you haven't enabled it yet, or in this case, because I do have it enabled, I can just go find it here.

By selecting that option, I can hit the gear icon, hit Edit Power-Up Settings, and now I can go into this. I can relabel the text field here and name this as a checkbox field—I can relabel that here as well.

But there's another way you can do that. You can go into any of your cards, find the Custom Fields button, and once again, when you click on those items—this may be the faster or the quicker way—you can just go into a card, and you can edit those things.

Dropdown Menu

So, tip number one has to do with the drop-down menu. In this case, I have a priority drop-down, which is very handy.

Here, I've got a high-priority item; maybe I want to change it to medium or to low. The great thing with Custom Fields is that you have the choice of actually showing these fields on the front of the card.

So let's go back to the high-level view, and there you can see I have a priority label. I have my priority Custom Field visible on the front of the card.

But what if I want to make this stand out even a little bit more? Well, the nice thing is that within the last year, Trello introduced colored drop-down labels.

Here I have my medium and high for my priority drop-down, but let's give it some more punch, shall we? Let's make medium maybe yellow—let's use the classic traffic light system and red for high.

So now, not only will I see that color here within the card, right? That makes it nice and easy.

If I change that to medium, I get that yellow label. But even on the front of the card, now I can see there's my medium level.

Let's change this one down here—let's change this to a high-priority level. So now I've got even further Custom Field capability here.

Not only do I get to make those choices, but they stand out that much more for myself and my team. So make sure to color code your drop-down menus, if applicable, depending on how you are using that drop-down menu.

Reorder

Now the second tip I want to share with you is something that we often overlook. Once we've started dealing with our Custom Fields for a while, we may determine that we want to reorder them.

Sometimes we forget that we can do that within Trello. No, you can't just drag them here within the card, but if we go back to that Custom Fields option, the Custom Fields button, you can simply drag and drop and reorder your Custom Fields.

So in this case, maybe I want priority number one—maybe that's the most important thing. So I'm going to drag that to the top of my list there.

Then I want to have name, and then yes, my satisfied checkbox and the start date. So now it's a bit of a cleaner look.

You can see, depending on what combination of Custom Fields you have, you may want to reorder them in a particular manner. So don't forget that you can reorder your Custom Fields.

Sort by

The third and last tip I want to leave with you when it comes to Custom Fields within Trello is don't forget that you can sort by certain Custom Fields and also filter by those Custom Fields as well. So at the very top of your list, you will find these three little dots that give us some additional functionality.

Here we have the Sort by option. Now the first three are going to be found on all of our lists—date created, date created oldest or newest, and card name alphabetically.

But look at this—I actually have a Custom Field because, of course, we can sort by start date. So I'm gonna select this option—Sort by Start Date—and now it's going to... I think I already sorted this just a moment ago, so nothing has actually changed in this particular case.

Let me drop this one down and maybe this one down to the bottom. Let's do that one more time—I'm going to come up here, I'm going to say Sort by Start Date, and there it has reordered.

You'll notice I don't have the start date on the front of the card—remember, you can always do that as well. Let's go to our Start Date option, and I'm gonna tick this option—Show Field on Front of Card.

You can do that with any one of your Custom Fields. So now, with that selected, I see that start date on the front of my cards.

Filter by

Lastly, don't forget that you can use the Filter Cards option as well. For example, you may have noticed that one of my Custom Fields had to do with a name, and one of those names was Kelly.

Well, I can find that card immediately just by typing in Kelly here. No, it's not the name of the card—it's not the description—you can't see it on the front of the card, but Kelly is the name here within the Custom Fields.

So yes, you can even filter by that option as well. I hope you found this useful, and I would love to hear from you next—how do you make use of Custom Fields?

I'd love to hear your tips and tricks, and I'm sure there are others who would like to take advantage of the way that you are using Custom Fields within Trello as well. Thank you so much for watching.

I hope you give this video a thumbs up, that you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel, 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.

Let's make Google Keep so much more colorful. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Today, we are taking a look at Category Tabs for Google Keep—the most popular and best-rated Google Keep extension beyond the official Google Keep extension. So, what is Category Tabs, and how might it help you within Google Keep?

Well, of course, you'll notice right here at the top of my Google Keep page, I've got something a little different. I've got the entire rainbow in front of me—all of the different colors that are available to us here.

What this allows us to do is to quickly get access to certain notes which have been attached to a particular color. Or, we can just look at all of our notes, or blank notes, for example, as a part of it as well.

But this gives us a little more flexibility in terms of how we access and also how we enter in new notes. Now, the ability to add colors or change colors to notes has always been available to us here.

But sometimes it's rather difficult to access those notes—you have to come up here to the search bar, and then you often have to scroll down to the color area and then select those colors here. But if I go back to my main notes screen, all I need to do if I want to see all of my red notes is just click red.

Not only will I see my active notes, but also have access to my archived notes down below if I want to as well. Maybe yellow means my personal notes or my personal tasks.

I can just click on this and access my grocery list, access that book that I should have finished ages ago, and I can quickly continue down depending on which colors are associated with which categories. I can access those particular notes.

Now, the other nice thing is that when you are on a particular color, when you go to enter in a new note, by default it's going to assume that you want to make this new note the same color. And I think that makes a lot of sense.

If I'm back here in my yellow notes, for example—my personal—I think it only makes sense. If I'm taking things off here, or if I'm adjusting things on this screen, if I take a new note, I can change it if I want to—I don't have to keep it yellow, but I like that default functionality.

Now, there is one major drawback that you may want to consider when it comes to using Category Tabs. This is only available on your Chrome extension, so you will not be able to access this type of menu on your mobile device.

Of course, it still carries over—anything that you've applied here, anything that's red is going to be red on your mobile device, and so forth. But you won't have access to this type of tab.

The other minor drawback, I guess, depending on how you work and how you function, is that you cannot relabel these particular color tabs. So, I can't tell red that I want this to be business, or I want this to be something different—it's going to stay red.

I think that only makes sense because you can't go that far into the code in terms of changing how Google Keep functions. And remember, labels are still available to us here.

If you'd like to learn more about Category Tabs for Google Keep, I would encourage you to go to the Chrome Web Store. Just type in "Category Tabs Google Keep," and you will find it—you can try it out for yourself and see what you think about Category Tabs.

Now, as always, I'd love to hear from you next—do you have experience with Category Tabs? How are you planning to make use of this feature?

If you haven't tried it out for yourself, be sure to leave me a comment down below. Thank you so much for watching.

I hope you give this video a thumbs up, and be sure to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult—in fact, it's very simple.

Do you need a better place for you and your team to store all that information? No, I'm not talking about tasks and projects, but I'm talking more about all the other information that may support your projects.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. Today, we are taking a look at Nuclino.

Now, Nuclino can manage your projects if you want, but where Nuclino really shines is as a team knowledge base. Whether it's meeting notes or a meeting agenda like you see here, or maybe it's some brainstorming or things you are trying to work out with your team, Nuclino is a great place to organize and store all of those ideas.

Let me get you familiar with some of the terminology here within Nuclino. You'll see there's a little plus button here.

If I select this, I have two options: I can either create an item or I can create a cluster. An item is essentially a single file or a single workspace, like you see here in this example called "YouTube Ideas."

The nice thing about Nuclino is that you can embed those videos directly into your item space. Here, I can actually watch those videos and share them with others with whom I may be working.

My second option is to create a cluster, and you can see here I actually have a few different clusters. Here's my team brainstorming cluster, which branches down into a marketing cluster.

In another way, it's like saying that you have folders or subfolders, which can be a great way to organize your information. Let's take a closer look at what an item looks like and feels like within Nuclino.

Here, I've got an example called "September 10th Meeting Notes." At the beginning, you see I've got some pretty standard text here, some things that we perhaps talked about or need to talk about in a future meeting.

But I can do so much more within a single item. Here, I've got a link to a PDF document; I can create separation within my item, I can create a workable checklist, and I can even upload images as well.

Let's start a new item just to give you a better example. I'm going to call this one a "Text Item Sample," and I can start typing in text right away here if I want.

But you'll notice that there's a little plus button. If I hit that plus button, I've got so many more options available to me. Whether it's adjusting the heading and the font, changing the types of lists, uploading files or images, or even adding a code block, it's all here.

And of course, because Nuclino is a team knowledge base at its core, I can mention other people that I'm working with or link directly to them. I really like that flexibility.

In fact, if I go back to this example here, which has some further content, the look and some of the feel is almost very similar to Evernote in terms of a simple editor. But you can do an awful lot in it.

As I look at something like "YouTube Ideas," for example, yes, I can embed videos directly into an item. Here's another one I've entitled "YouTube Thumbnails," so I can get access directly to those images.

It can be a great place to brainstorm and store those pieces of information, but of course, Nuclino is so much more. One of the nice things about Nuclino is that you can view your information in a few different ways.

At the top, you can see we are looking at all of my items in this particular case, and of course, I can expand or collapse certain clusters. Let's go over to the board view.

For anyone who is familiar with Trello or the Kanban style of project management, yes, you can have a board view. Here, I have a few different clusters: content marketing, team brainstorming, in progress, and done.

I can move things along just like you would expect with any Kanban board if I want to move things from one area to the next. Of course, I can click on them, and this window will expand, and I can see more details about what's going on on that side of the screen.

But there are other views for us to take a look at as well. This one is called the graph view, and this can be really great for mind mapping or brainstorming.

Here, you see I've got content marketing, which would be the highest level project. You can see the title of it here at the top of the screen, and then I've got my different clusters.

You'll recognize some of these from our Kanban view, but if I click on this one, for example, team brainstorming, well, now I can branch out even further and take a look at what's going on in these areas. I can see, even if I hover over these little dots, it will actually give me the title of those particular items.

In this case, I've used a combination of clusters and items, but it's an interesting way for you to view and take a look at some of your content within Nuclino. Now, Nuclino has developed a mobile app for both iOS and Android, so I would encourage you to check it out.

Some of the things that I like the most here are just how clean the interface is. I like how the menu is clean on the left-hand side, the ability to add new items or create a new cluster is very simple and straightforward.

This simple editor, where you can add text immediately or change the type of input, or add different elements to your notes, is very quick and intuitive. If you are managing a team or if you are part of a team, you may want to check out Nuclino.

Even if you are an entrepreneur or just a small business owner, maybe you're just a team of one, I think you're still going to see the benefits of using a tool like Nuclino. Even if it's just for brainstorming or a mind dump, it's a very clean interface for you to check out.

Now, I would love to hear from you. What do you think of Nuclino, and what do you hope to use it for as part of your day or business? Be sure to tell me below in the comments.

I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you subscribe to the Simpletivity channel. We produce new content each week.

Be sure to give this video a like, and tell me what you think in the comments. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Do you use PDFs as a part of your day? Do you need to edit PDF documents or maybe combine a variety of PDFs together?

Well, in today's video we are taking a look at three different PDF editors all at three different price points to help you find out which one is best for you. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

PDF documents have been with us for a very, very long time. But if you're not using a PDF Editor, you may be wasting your time converting documents from a word processor into a PDF and back and forth.

Well, today I want to introduce you to three different tools: PDFelement, Nitro Pro, and perhaps the one you're most familiar with, Adobe Acrobat Pro. We're going to take a look and find out which one is the best editor for you.

PDFelement Pro

Let’s get started by taking a look at PDFelement Pro. Right from the home screen when you first open up PDFelement, you can see some of the major features that it offers.

Now editing a PDF is pretty standard. I'm going to get into that in just a moment, but of course, you're going to want to be able to convert your PDF to other formats.

Here we see a few different examples including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. But combining PDFs may be the function that I am looking for and the one that I use most often when I want to combine or merge different PDF documents together.

PDFelement also allows you to batch process PDF conversion. So if you have a large number of PDFs, you can do so, and they also have a fairly large template gallery.

So if you want to get started quickly, you can do so. But in this example, let's take a look at editing a PDF.

All I need to do is select an existing PDF, either it's one I created or maybe one that I've accessed or has been sent to me. Now any PDF Editor should work in a seamless way, and I find PDFelement does a very, very good job of this.

As you can see, as I've opened up this particular PDF document, you will notice that there are some highlighted lines around most of the text but also the images. So all I need to do is click on this logo, for example, and drag it to wherever I want.

That's right, I've just opened up the PDF document, and I can move things around wherever I need to. And that goes for text information as well.

Let's say I need to add a date for this particular contract. I can work with this very much just like a standard word processor.

So if I want to enter in a date, I can do so and then continue to add client information or other things that may be needed in this particular form. Now one of the things that I really enjoy about PDFelement is that the application looks and feels very familiar.

As you look at the file menu at the top, as you look at the ribbon down below, things look very similar to a Microsoft product. So I find it very intuitive as I'm browsing through the different menus here as I'm looking at the different icons which have been used to find the types of functions and features that I'm looking for.

PDFelement allows you to create form elements directly in your PDF, including checkboxes and radio buttons. And of course, if you want to add some password management or some protection to your PDFs or place a signature, a digital signature directly into your PDF, you can do so as well.

Now, if you would like to try PDFelement for free, I'll leave a link in the description below. And if you like it, Simpletivity users can get 40% off of PDFelement, and I'll be sure to leave that link in the description below.

So the next PDF editor, which we're going to take a look at, is called Nitro. And at first glance, you may say that Nitro looks an awful lot like PDFelement.

We have a similar menu and many of the same features here at the top. But as I've been playing around with Nitro, I've just noticed how fast and how quick it is.

Even notice here as I'm dragging my cursor over the different elements just how quick it is as I want to drag this image over to the left. A very quick and robust experience.

Nitro

Now one additional feature which Nitro has is something called the Nitro Cloud. And this allows you to not only upload and save your documents within the cloud, but this is very helpful when you are using e-signatures because you can track that entire process using the Nitro Cloud.

So a nice little enhancement here within the Nitro interface. But when it comes to me, when it comes to seeing if a PDF Editor is worth its price, it all comes down to conversion.

So let's do a quick test with Nitro. Let's say that I want to convert this PDF document into a Word document.

I'm going to select the convert option. And in this case, I'm going to select Word.

Now, the nice thing with Nitro and other PDF editors, at least some other PDF editors, is that you can convert multiple PDFs all at once. They don't have to be multiple pages; you can actually have separate documents here.

But in this example, I'm just going to convert the single document and select convert. And wow, that was pretty fast, that was super fast.

Look, here I am now in my Word document. And of course, what we want to look for here is, are there any spelling mistakes?

Are there any alignment mistakes? And this is a form that I use actually quite regularly.

This is my training and speaking engagement document, and so I know it very well, and this looks pristine. This looks pretty much exactly how it does in PDF format.

My image doesn't look wonky or misaligned. I don't see any spelling errors here on the page.

It's done a fantastic job of editing this PDF into a Word document. So Nitro is priced at about one hundred and seventy-six dollars.

That's nearly twice as much as we saw with PDFelement. But you do get some additional features and the speed at which not only you can edit the PDFs but also convert, as we just saw, is very, very nice.

Adobe Acrobat

Now the last PDF editor which we're going to take a look at is Adobe Acrobat Pro. And of course, we couldn't leave Adobe off this list because they are the creators of PDFs.

Yes, in case you didn't know, Adobe is the company that actually created the PDF file format. Here you can see just a preview of the many features and functionalities, the things that you can achieve when using Adobe Acrobat Pro.

So really, all of the things that we've seen before and then a few additional formats. Here you see the exact same PDF document.

One of the advantages of using an Adobe product is that there's a good chance that you may already be using the Adobe Acrobat Reader to actually view your PDFs within your computer. So a lot of the display up top, a lot of the menu options, are already going to look very familiar to you.

But I do want to show you one feature that I like a lot here within Adobe Acrobat Pro. And that is the compare files feature.

So maybe you have an older version of the PDF, and you have a newer version, and you want to see what has changed, especially if you're dealing with contracts. And maybe a client or someone that you're working with, they've made some changes in a very lengthy document, and you want to find out what exactly has changed.

So here I have that same PDF here; it's listed under old file. And I'm going to select a new file.

I'm going to select a different PDF document. And I can change a few settings here if I want to.

I can choose if I only want to compare the text; maybe I don't care if a logo or an image is out of place or missing, but I'm going to leave that unchecked for now. And I'm going to select the compare button.

Now, of course, depending on the length of your PDF, this may take some further time, but you can see that I've got some great statistics, some great summary data right out of the gate. So it's telling me there's 12 total changes, and it even breaks it down by what's been replaced, what's been inserted, and what's been deleted.

So I can see that data here on the left and right of the screen. Now, if I scroll down, I'll actually see the two PDFs side-by-side.

And I really like the way that Adobe visually displays this information. It may seem like there's a lot going on here, but I like how they sort of keep things attached so I can see it if I'm on a different page.

Wait a minute, some of this is related to up here to what we see in PDF one to PDF two over here. Now, is Adobe Acrobat the only PDF editor that can handle comparing?

No, there are other PDF editors which do this functionality as well. But I don't think there's another PDF editor that does it as well as Adobe Acrobat.

Now, for all this advanced functionality, you are going to be paying a premium, especially if you're comparing it to the other two PDF editors on today's video. Acrobat Pro goes for $15 a month, which works out to $180 per year.

Now, you might think that's very comparable to Nitro, but remember, that's $180 per year. You need to keep paying that fee month after month.

So you may want to take that into consideration as you're selecting the best PDF editor for you. Well, I'd love to hear from you next.

What do you think of PDFelement, Nitro, and Adobe Acrobat Pro? Which one do you feel is right for you?

And if you have experience with any of these PDF editors, be sure to tell me in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching.

I hope you give

this video a like. I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.

And be sure to leave a comment below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult; in fact, it's very simple.

Gantt chart, Kanban, Gantt chart, Kanban, Gantt chart or Kanban? Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

If you manage projects, especially with teams, there's a good chance you're using either a Gantt chart or a Kanban board. But which one is better? Which one is ideal for you?

In today's video, we're going to be looking at both the advantages and disadvantages of each, so you can pick the right tool for you. But before we begin, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, GanttPro.

Sponsor

If you are looking for Gantt chart software, you're going to want to check out GanttPro. No matter how complex your projects are or how many teams or dependencies are involved, GanttPro can cover it all.

If you want to add attachments and comments, track your project progress, and assign tasks to individual team members, GanttPro has you covered. So if you'd like to learn more and receive a special discount, be sure to check out the link in the description below.

Gantt Chart

Let’s start our comparison with the Gantt chart. Here I have an example project; on the left-hand side of the screen, I have my individual tasks which make up the project itself.

Each task has both a start date and an end date, and of course, the duration here, identified in the number of days, is calculated for me. But the real power of a Gantt chart is the visual representation happening on the right-hand side of the screen.

Here you can see I have some color-coded bars, each representing the duration of a given task. The top bar identifies the project as a whole.

So here I can see if I started this project on September 10th, I should finish by October 5th at the end of the day. But the real advantage of using a Gantt chart is the dependencies.

Here you can see, not only do I see the visual representation of how long this particular task will take, but I also see what else is dependent on it. Let’s say, for example, I want to install this software across departments, and I'm scheduled to finish by September 21st.

What this tells me is that the soonest I can begin delivering the workshops is the following Monday. Of course, in this particular example, we're not working on the weekend, so the earliest we can do those workshops is on September 24th.

But what if this goes extremely well? What if installing this software takes less time than we predicted?

I'm going to drag this back a couple of days, and what happens now? Well, because of that dependency, everything else shifts accordingly.

Now I can start those workshops a bit earlier, and if we go to our due date, we will be finished by October 3rd. We're going to be finished in advance, and this is one of the biggest advantages of using a Gantt chart.

You can quickly and easily change the duration or the start and end date on the left-hand side of the screen. Or you can simply drag the bars on the right-hand side of the screen, and in this case, I can start reviewing feedback earlier.

I'll be finished an entire week earlier according to the Gantt chart data. Now, one of the disadvantages you're going to want to look out for with a Gantt chart is if there's too much detail required.

Sometimes a Gantt chart is overkill depending on the type of project you're involved with. In this case, I've just got a very simple example with only about five different tasks.

I think if you have something quite a bit larger and maybe you don't have quite as many dependencies going on in your project, it could be too much. If it is a lot more detailed and you still want to go the Gantt project route, I would encourage you to get familiar with minimizing and maximizing subtasks or subprojects or milestones within your project.

But if you have not tried using a Gantt chart, I would encourage you to do so. See if it's the right fit for your team and projects.

Kanban

Next, let’s take a look at the Kanban board view. Here we are looking at the exact same project that we just saw in our Gantt chart but in a different layout.

For those not familiar with a Kanban board, a Kanban board represents different stages in a particular workflow. Here we see four different columns: open, in progress, done, and closed.

The purpose in this example is to have all of your tasks start in the open column and then, as they are started, move from left to right. So as someone starts working on this particular project or task, it moves to in progress.

Once it is finished, it may move to the done column. Sometimes you may want a particular sign-off, or maybe there’s some checking that needs to happen before you can officially close or finish that particular task.

But as you can see, things move from the left to the right-hand side of the board. Now, of course, you will notice there's not nearly as much detail that we can see at this first level.

If I were to double-click on any of these tasks, I can still see the start and end duration, the total time, and all of the data that we saw within our Gantt chart. But one of the advantages of a Kanban board is getting a cleaner, somewhat higher-level view of what is going on in your project.

Depending on the scope, depending on what you are trying to achieve, Kanban may not be the ideal method for you. One of the disadvantages is the lack of dependencies.

For example, it can be very difficult to see if this particular task is dependent on something else and if that's going to prevent it from moving to the next column. But if you are looking for a cleaner way or maybe an executive-level way of viewing your project, the Kanban board view may be the right one for you.

So, Gantt chart or Kanban, which is the right view for you? I'd love to hear your opinion in the comments.

Have you worked with both a Gantt chart and a Kanban board? Which one do you prefer and why?

I'd love to hear from you, so be sure to let me know down below. If you haven't yet subscribed to Simpletivity, I would encourage you to do so.

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

Do you wanna Asana, or will you thrive with Hive? Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

I've been a longtime user of Asana, which has quickly become one of the most popular project management tools in the world. Recently, I was introduced to Hive, and I have been very impressed as I’ve been trying things out, managing a few mini projects within the Hive space.

In today’s video, I want to give a few comparisons between Hive and Asana to see if you might want to try out Hive for yourself. Here we are with a test project in Hive, and at first glance, you’re probably saying this looks a little bit more like Trello.

We’ve got a Kanban view of this particular project with unstarted tasks in one column, tasks in progress in another, and completed tasks in a third. Of course, in Asana, you can have a board view just like this as well, but when you create a project in Asana, you have to choose between a list or a board.

Change Layout

Unfortunately, you cannot have both; it’s either/or. One of the great things about Hive is that you can view your work in so many different ways.

Up here on the right-hand side, we have an area called Change Layout, and as you can see, there are six different ways in which we can view our project. For example, maybe you want to view your project in a Gantt chart.

Perhaps you want to see where things are laying out, and I just have a few tasks with due dates here, but you can see that, just like a typical Gantt chart, I can change things on the fly. I can drag things to the right or left and see how the duration of the test project will last.

Don’t want a Gantt chart? Maybe you prefer to see a team view.

This might be my favorite view within Hive, where I can see everyone's work in a nice, concise list. Sometimes when you’re looking at things in a Kanban view, you need a filter or some other way to see who is doing what, but I really like this team view within Hive.

It allows me to get a good grasp of how many tasks I have compared to my coworkers or others I’m working with. This Change Layout option is very flexible, with six different ways to view your projects.

Integrations

Another area where I’ve been very impressed with Hive is how it integrates with so many other tools. Of course, Asana integrates with a number of applications, but beyond integrations, isn’t it great when an application just does what you want out of the box?

Let me introduce you to something you can do in Hive: create a form without needing to interact or integrate with anything else. Here you can see, by selecting your profile picture and going to Forms, you can add a custom form.

I’m not going to start a new form because I’ve already created one, so let me just hit the edit button to show you all the goodness within the form creator. You can give it a title, a description, and choose from all these options on the right-hand side, from checkboxes to radio buttons, short text, long text, and more.

You can even give it a custom confirmation message. But the beauty of any form within a project management tool is being able to tell it what to do with that information.

You can see here that once the form is submitted, I’ve checked the box that says each time a form is submitted, it will be added to a selected project and assigned to a team member. I’ve selected my project here and assigned it to myself.

You can even add a template if you want, though I’m not going to add one now. I’ll just save that, and then we get a link we can share with customers, coworkers, or whoever this form is intended for.

Let’s copy that link, open a new tab, and paste it in. Here we are with our custom form, which could be sent to customers, team members, or anyone else.

This is just a very simple form I’ve created here. It says “Feature Request,” and asks for the type of request and details about it.

I’m going to say it’s a bug fix and write, “I don’t like the way it looks.” After I hit submit, you can customize the thank-you message.

Now, let’s go back to our Hive project, and you’ll notice something new in the unstarted column. Here is that feature request, and just as we told it to, it’s been assigned to me.

I’m going to open this up, and here is all the information that was submitted in that form. Whether you’re a support team or need unsolicited information from others in your organization, you can have it brought directly into your project.

Now maybe I need to follow a specific workflow or do something with this particular task. Speaking of a particular task, let’s open one of our tasks here within Hive.

Tasks

I want to show you some of the features and functionality. A lot of this may look very similar to Asana or other project management tools, such as adding a description, progress stage, comments, attachments, or labels.

Sometimes it’s the small things that make the biggest difference, and one of the things I’ve really appreciated about Hive is the date feature. If I click on Dates, by default, this is a due date, and I can select it with no problem.

But something that many people, including myself, are always looking for is the ability to quickly and easily select a start date. In Asana, you can select a due date, but there’s no easy way to select a start date from this screen.

In Hive, all I have to do is select “Add a Start Date,” and now I can say, “I’m going to start that on Thursday.” With two quick clicks, I can see the duration of this task.

After I hit close, there are my dates right there. When I go to another view, such as the Gantt chart, I can see that start date for the task.

Here’s the “Write report for new product” task, and it makes sense that I can’t view it in the Gantt chart without a duration. I can see that right here, and I can click on any of those items in this new view to adjust or change the duration of the task.

Sometimes it’s the little things that make the biggest difference. I might also add that I personally prefer, and this might be because of my experience with Trello, having the view of your task front and center.

In Asana, we often have this left and right view. Most of the time, you have your list on the left-hand side, with a somewhat squished view of your task on the right-hand side.

Of course, you can expand this to full screen if you want, but I really appreciate that when I click on a task in Hive, it comes up full screen. It takes up most of the screen, making it a lot more comfortable for me to work with my tasks in Hive.

Conversations

One of the last things I want to share with you has to do with having a conversation within Hive. Of course, any project management tool worth its weight will have the ability to communicate directly with other team members.

Inside a task, we have this comment section, and these comments will be linked and kept here within this particular task, similar to Asana. Asana has a Conversations tab where you can have a conversation with everyone within the project.

However, I’ve always found that the Conversations tab seems a little static. I have to leave the rest of my list, and these almost feel like individual posts rather than an actual conversation.

In Hive, instead of just integrating with something like Slack, which is very popular with Asana users, Hive has a very good built-in chat group. Here you can see, as I’ve expanded this area, that I can have a discussion with my team while viewing my project on the right.

This is what I’m really looking for: having that conversation while I’m looking at our individual tasks. Maybe I prefer the Kanban view while I’m chatting, while Landin is viewing the Gantt chart because that’s what he prefers, and Barb is looking at the team view.

Whatever works well for them, but I like having this chat built right into the application. I don’t want to have to integrate with Slack or another tool as an add-on.

If I don’t want to view the chat, I can just minimize it and return to my regular view. It’s a nice addition to the Hive atmosphere.

So there you have it, a quick overview of Hive and some comparisons with Asana. I’d love to hear what you think, especially if you’ve already spent some time with Hive.

If you’d like to learn more, I’ll leave a link to Hive so you can try it out for yourself. I would love to hear your feedback and comments.

Remember to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel. Give this video a like, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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

Do you want to wake up more refreshed? Perhaps you'd like to wake up just a little bit earlier.

Well, in today's video, I'm going to share with you a super cool service which is gonna help you do just that. Hello everyone.

Welcome

Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. I think most of us would like to start our day feeling refreshed.

Perhaps you've read about the benefits of waking up and starting your day a little earlier. Well, if you'd like to achieve either of those things, it really begins the night before.

When you get to bed is crucial. Although you may have good intentions of getting to bed by, say, 10:30, things add up and other things happen in our lives.

Before you know it, it's not until 11:45 that your head is hitting your bed. Today, I want to share with you a new service which I think is amazing.

Not only is it effective, but it's so simple anyone can use it. Let me introduce you to meal.

What is Meal?

meal is a text messaging service which helps you and reminds you to get to bed at a certain time each night.

Now, there are a number of different apps and websites which promise to help you get to bed on time. The problem is that you have to install one more thing or perhaps you have to check your email on a regular basis.

Well, meal is not an app, nor is it a website. It is actually a text messaging service, and that's what I love about this tool.

You don't have to install absolutely anything. It's like having a personal coach by your side, encouraging you and helping you to get to bed on time.

I've been using meal for the last three weeks, and I absolutely love it. It gives me one gentle reminder approximately an hour to an hour and a half before my desired bedtime.

Then, sometime in the morning, it will check in with me to ask if I met that goal or not. Meal will adjust my settings and keep track of my sleep log as I go.

So, do you want to take a look and see what meal feels like? Let me show you on my device.

Meal Example

Alright, so here I am within my text messaging service. I just want to show you some of the back and forth between myself and meal.

At the top of your screen, you can see that I've asked meal to change my sleep goal for the rest of the summer. What I love is that Emil's responses are just like a real human being, even though it's all artificial intelligence.

I tell a meal that I'd like to change it to 11:00 p.m., and it saves that information. Now, at approximately one to one and a half hours before your desired bedtime, it sends you this gentle reminder.

Remember, bedtime tonight is 11 p.m. Then the very next morning, at approximately 10:00 in the morning, it will ask me if I achieved that goal.

You can respond yes or no, and it will keep track of your goal. Here it's like, again, a great coach off to a great start, keep it up.

Last night again, it gives me another gentle reminder when my bedtime is. This morning, at 10:44, it asked me if I got to bed at 11:00 last night.

I'm going to reply I sure did, yes I did. I send it, and let's see what meal has to say as a response.

Boom, two down, five to go. That's right, it's keeping track of my goals for this week.

If you get this week's goal, you'll have a month-long streak going. So there, another example of the motivation that mealgives you so you can achieve your desired goals.

I encourage you to try meal for yourself. Remember, there's nothing for you to install; it simply uses your text messaging service.

Now, if you'd like to try meal free for one month and get 75% off your first paid month, be sure to click the link in the description below. I look forward to hearing your experience of getting to bed at a regular time.

Thank you so much for watching. If you liked today's video, be sure to give it a thumbs up, leave me a comment, and don't forget to subscribe.

If you'd like to watch even more Simpletivity, you can click on another video right here. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult; in fact, it's very simple.

Let's get so much more out of Google Contacts. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity.

Helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. If you use Gmail or any type of Google application, chances are you are using the Contacts page.

In today's video, I'm going to share with you five tips to get so much more out of Google Contacts. Let's get started with accessing the Google Contacts site.

For most of us, we spend much of our day here within Gmail. Ever since Gmail updated its interface, probably the most common question I've received is, Scott, where are the contacts?

In the previous version of Gmail, we had either a button or a drop-down menu on the left-hand side which took us directly to Google Contacts. I was really hoping with this new sidebar on the right-hand side that we would have a mini version of Google Contacts.

They've already given us the Calendar, Keep, and Tasks. It'll be interesting if they actually add a Contacts preview here on the right-hand side.

Until that happens, what you need to do is go up here to your Google apps icon, select it, and then find the Contacts icon. The very first tip today is to get you there even quicker with a keyboard shortcut.

Before I show you the shortcut, we need to make sure that you have Gmail shortcuts enabled. To do that, we want to click on Settings, go down to the Settings option.

On the very first tab, the general tab, scroll about halfway down, and you will see that there are keyboard shortcuts. By default, Gmail has this turned off, so you're gonna need to select keyboard shortcuts on, select this radio button, and then don't forget to scroll down to the bottom and select Save Changes.

Now, with keyboard shortcuts on, all you have to do is select the keys G and C, short for Google Contacts. I'm going to hit G C on my keyboard, and immediately in a new tab, it's going to pop up my Google Contacts.

It might take just a second there to load. I've got quite a few contacts in this sample batch here.

Any time that you are in Gmail, not even just the home screen, you could be within a message. As long as you're not in the search bar,

as long as you're not actually typing something, even if I just open up one of my emails, I could select G C on my keyboard, and it's going to bring me directly to my Contacts screen. The second tip I want to share with you as it pertains to Contacts also relates to Gmail.

Many of the contacts that we see here originated from email communication that we had with these individuals. What Gmail will do by default is add a new contact for every single person that you email or reply to.

However, there may be some of you who don't want everyone to be added to your contact list just because you emailed them or you reply to one of their emails. So let's go back to Gmail for just a second, we're gonna click that gear icon and select Settings once again, and we're staying within the General tab.

Scroll down a little bit further this time, and here is the option that says create contacts for auto-complete. You can see by default, when I send a message to a new person, it adds them to Other Contacts so that I can auto-complete to them next time.

Auto-complete to them next time. This is the default option.

If you like, you can turn this off so that you will manually add contacts yourself. Personally, I like the default option because it helps me to grow my contacts list.

Then I don't have to remember everyone's email addresses or their first name, last name. It's going to remember that information for me.

But if you don't want Google to continually add to your contacts list, you can choose this option here. All right, let's jump back into our contacts list.

Another problem that we often face no matter where you are managing your contacts is duplicates, right? You send someone, the same person maybe has multiple email addresses, and Google maybe creates three different accounts, three different records for the same individual.

Google makes it very easy for us to find those duplicates. Here in the menu, we can select the Duplicates option, and it's going to quickly take a look at all of the duplicate entries.

In this case, it's found two duplicates within my contacts list. You have an opportunity to take a look and see if they are actually duplicates.

Maybe you actually know people with the same name, or maybe you accidentally entered in the same email address for two different people. You can look at some of the data that is duplicated, whether it's a first name and last name.

Sometimes you may have duplicate email addresses. Before I dismiss or merge those accounts, I can always click on them myself and take a closer look at what is going on within this particular account.

What I can do immediately is I can say, you know what, this is the same person, I would like to merge this information and select Merge in the lower right-hand corner. The great thing is that regardless if there are multiple email addresses and multiple phone numbers, like you see here, Google will merge them all.

It will keep both of these phone numbers, it will keep both of these email addresses. Now if you don't want to keep both of them, you can either remove one of them after you've merged them or you could do that right now.

You could select this, hit the edit contact icon, remove the phone number or the email address, for example, that you don't want before merging. I'm just gonna hit the Merge button right now, and there we go.

There you see, I've got both email addresses and the phone number, and I'm gonna do the same here for the one at the bottom. You will notice in the top right-hand corner, if you have a large list of duplicates and you've done a quick review of them all, you can always select Merge All.

It's going to do everything on your behalf. Selecting Duplicates once in a while, maybe once a month or every couple of months, might be a smart idea so that you don't have too many duplicates within your system.

All right, let's go back to my master list or the default view here. A tip that I want to share with you has to do with adding some more visuals to your contacts, specifically adding some pictures.

Here you can see in my sample list I have almost no pictures beside my contacts. By default, what Google is going to do is put the letter of their first name along with sort of a random color beside it.

Here you can see I've got an awful lot of C's with just a few different colors here, a few different shades of purple and maroon or magenta, whatever that is here. It doesn't really help me to differentiate who these people are.

I might like to have some pictures for people that I actually know well. Some of these pictures may come over pre-populated if that person has it associated with a Google+ account, if they've already uploaded a picture on their end.

Some of these pictures may be pre-populated from their own user account. For others that you would like to add their picture, one of the main reasons that I like to add pictures is that this carries over to my mobile device.

When I'm texting with someone or if I'm looking up someone's name to give them a call on my smartphone, I like having the picture there rather than just the text. Let me show you how to do that.

I'm going to select this person right here, just as an example. If you click on the actual icon on the avatar area, you can see that it gives us the option to set a contact photo.

We've got a choice here, this is a recent photo I believe that I've uploaded, it's of myself, but that's not obviously who I want to put in here. My second choice is to upload a photo.

Some of you are probably thinking, well, you probably don't just have their headshots on your system, right. You don't just have them ready to go to upload your photo.

Here's a much easier way for you to do so. I recommend going to one of their social media accounts.

In this example, I am going to use my own account just because I haven't asked anyone else's permission to share their photo in today's video. But you can go to Twitter, you can go to LinkedIn, to Facebook, anywhere where someone typically includes their headshot.

Here in Twitter, all I'm gonna do is select the headshot, which is going to give me a larger preview. If I right-click on this image, I've got a few different options here, and what I want to select is copy image address.

Not this one, not copy the image, but I want to copy the image address. I'm gonna select that, which is going to copy the image address to the clipboard.

I'm going to come back to my contacts, and I'm going to select upload photo. You're going to be presented with a screen or a dialog like this, which typically allows you to select or pick that photo.

Even though I have that same photo here waiting for me, what I'm going to do is I'm going to paste what we just copied on the clipboard. This is that copy image address, and I'm gonna hit Return.

What it's going to do is it's going to actually download that photo to my computer, but it's also immediately going to upload it right here to my contacts list. I can change the dimensions here if I drag it within the corners.

I can rotate it if I like, but I like the way it looks already, so I'm going to hit Done. Now this image is added to this contact.

If I close this up, there you can see, now I have this image added to this person's contact here. For those key contacts, maybe they could be members of your team, your family, or key clients, find their social media account.

If you would like to add their

face alongside their contact, you can just copy the image address and then paste it to get it into your contacts list. All right, the final tip I want to share with you today is all about creating groups.

One of the easiest ways to be more efficient within Gmail is to create groups, so that you don't have to be adding multiple email addresses all of the time. If there's a group of three or five or maybe even 20 people that you email on a regular basis, it's much better to create a group.

Within Google Contacts, they actually refer to these as Labels. Of course, individual contacts can belong to more than just one label.

Here I've got one called Client Team where I have four individuals. When I click on it, I can see those four individuals right here.

I've got another label that's called ABC Work Project, but I don't actually have anyone in this work project just yet. Let me show you a few ways in how you can add people to a Label.

If I go back to my main contacts list, one method of doing so is actually just by checking the few contacts that I want to add. Maybe these are three individuals that I would like to add to this label.

With the three of these selected, all I need to do is select the manage labels here in the right-hand corner of the screen, and I'm going to say ABC Work Project. That is going to immediately add those individuals.

You can see the number three. It's going to add those individuals to this particular label.

Maybe there's someone else that I want to add to that label, and I don't want to go down my long list of people. All I need to do is find them.

I can use the search window here to find them. Then if I select the more actions option, I can see the labels at the bottom of this menu.

Here I can say ABC Work Project, and I've got the checkmarks there. You can see that it's highlighted, or I've got the label attached directly to this contact.

You can also see here on the left-hand side, now it has been increased from three to four. The great thing is, when I go back to Gmail, let me go back to my inbox, and I'm going to start to compose a brand new message.

If I start typing the words ABC, now I get ABC Work Project here, and it actually gives me a preview of some of the email addresses in there. I can select that, and immediately I've got all four of those contacts.

All the individuals who make up that particular label. I hope that you enjoyed those five tips for getting more out of Google Contacts.

I'd like to hear from you next. What are some of your favorite tips or tricks on getting the most out of Google Contacts?

Of the five that I shared today, which one is most helpful to you? Thank you so much for watching.

If you liked today's video, be sure to give it a thumbs up, leave me a comment, and don't forget to subscribe. If you'd like to watch even more Simpletivity, you can click on another video right here.

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

Is there a perfect time of day to create your to-do list? Let's find out in today's video.

It really doesn't matter what you do for work or what industry you're involved in. You are managing a to-do list.

Whether you like to manage those tasks on a productivity app or prefer pen and paper, you need to find time to review and revise that list on a daily basis. In today's video, we're gonna be taking a look at three different times of day and find out which time is best for you.

We're gonna look at first thing in the morning, at the end of your workday, and last but not least, at the very end of your day, for example, shortly before you go to bed. So let's get started with first thing in the morning.

When you manage and revise your to-do list shortly after waking up in the morning or perhaps first thing when you sit down to your desk, you are setting yourself up for a great day. This is a fantastic time for you to review all of your meetings, all of your commitments, all of the things that you must complete by the end of the day.

However, you might want to be careful about this time because often we allow other distractions to take over this sacred time for you to plan ahead. For many of us, we start our day with email, which seems to distract us and push our to-do list to the side.

Or we may be busy in a conversation with a fellow colleague or an early morning meeting, which takes away this time for us to revise and really optimize our morning to-do list. So be careful and protect this time if you want to plan out your day first thing in the morning.

Next up, let's take a look at revising our to-do list at the end of the workday. Now I'm sure some of you may be saying that you don't really have an end of the workday.

You may often deal with emails late into the evening. You may even have some scheduled meetings with colleagues around the world.

Having said that, most of us still have a time of day when most of our work-related activities are finished. This can be a great time for you to review everything on your list and plan ahead and set yourself up for a great tomorrow.

There's something very special about looking at your day that far in advance, giving you a high-level view of all of the things that you need to accomplish. This can also be an ideal way to close up your workday if you set this up as a regular routine.

If that's part of your routine to manage all of your notes, review your calendar, and review your to-do list, you can safely say goodbye and then move on to your other pursuits, whether that be family or just hanging out with friends. So consider managing your to-do list at the end of your workday.

Last but not least, let's take a look at revising our to-do list at the very end of the day. Now this happens to be my personal favorite and when I revise my own to-do list.

I find that there's something special about taking a break from the end of my workday before I reengage with my to-do list. When I finish work at roughly 5 p.m., I want to get away and spend time with my family and spend time with other pursuits before coming back and revising my to-do list.

I find it just gives me that much more clarity as I'm planning out my day ahead. Now of course, there are many of the same benefits of planning out your day ahead in the evening as there are at the end of your workday.

So you may want to experiment with both of these times. But for me, it's nice to have that additional clarity and it's also a great way to get to sleep, to have everything closed and taken care of and planned ahead before I retire to bed.

So there you have it, three different times of day to create your to-do list: first thing in the morning, at the end of your workday, and at the very end of your day. Now I'd love to hear from you.

Which of these three times seem to work best for you and why? Be sure to tell me in the comments below.

Thank you so much for watching. If you liked today's video, be sure to give it a thumbs up, leave me a comment, and don't forget to subscribe.

If you'd like to watch even more Simpletivity, you can click on another video right here. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult; in fact, it's very simple.