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Hi everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And you're probably wondering, why am I whispering?

Well, I'll tell you in a bit, but today I want to talk about ASMR. And if you have no idea what that acronym stands for, I want to tell you about it.

First off, you may be thinking it's weird that I'm talking about ASMR on a productivity channel such as Simpletivity. But because my goal is to help you to get more done and enjoy less stress, I wanted to focus on something that helps me to feel less stress on a regular basis, and that is ASMR.

So first off, what exactly does that mean? ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.

Yeah, it's a mouthful. You can see why it's more commonly referred to as ASMR.

In summary, individuals who are affected or triggered by ASMR may feel a tingling feeling or other pleasurable sensations from soft sounds such as whispering, but other soft sounds as well. Now, by this point in the video, you may already know if you are affected by ASMR or not.

There are many, many people like myself who are, but there are just as many people who are not affected by ASMR. Now, my intent for producing today's video was not to have a trending video or a higher performing video here on YouTube.

Over the last two to three years, ASMR has really taken off within the YouTube platform. But for me, roughly once a week, I will enjoy an ASMR video to help me relax.

In my specific circumstance, once a week, perhaps I'll have difficulty sleeping. And I find by listening to an ASMR video for several minutes, while it won't put me to sleep, it will certainly help me to relax both my mind and my body.

And so, if you are affected by soft sounds, you may want to look at this as a way of stress relief after you've had a very hectic workday or a challenging or difficult day. You may want to look to ASMR videos to help you relax so you can unwind and finish your day and set yourself up for a great night's sleep.

Of course, ASMR can be used in a variety of different ways to relieve stress. So, if you're new to ASMR, some of the things that you may encounter…

Number one, often ASMR artists will use a stereo microphone like I'm using right now. And if you happen to be listening to this with a good pair of stereo headphones or stereo earbuds, you can see and you can feel the differences as I'm going around the microphone from the left ear to the right ear.

Of course, there's a lot more to ASMR than just whispering. Some ASMR artists may use their fingers such as this.

Some do a form of tapping or scratching. I'm not so triggered by those, but they'll often also use a variety of objects to trigger certain sensations.

It's just a piece of paper I had lying around beside my computer. And if you do decide to explore or do a search for ASMR videos, you will find an endless supply of objects and sounds and different ways that these types of triggers can be produced.

So, I realize today's video was very different than what you've come to expect here on the Simpletivity channel. But because this is something that I have found helpful, I wanted to share it with you.

And I'd love to hear from you. Are you affected by ASMR?

Do you happen to watch ASMR videos from time to time? I'd love to hear your experience in the comments.

And if you're still watching this video and you're not affected by ASMR, I'd still love to hear from you as well. What is your opinion or what is your feeling?

You know, as someone who loves cilantro in my meals and my dishes—I love Mexican food, I love Indian food, and I love cilantro in both of those dishes and many others—I find it amazing that there are some people to whom cilantro tastes like soap. And maybe you're one of those individuals.

To me, because I don't have that same type of sense with my taste buds, that just seems amazing to me, almost absurd. And I imagine if you are not affected by soft sounds such as whispering, you may think that ASMR is pretty absurd too.

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

Let's find our focus with Workflowy. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, and today I'm doing something a little differently.

Yes, today I'm gonna be taking a look at Workflowy. It says it's going to help us to break big ideas into manageable pieces, then focus on one piece at a time.

But what makes this different is that I'm going to be reviewing Workflowy in real time. Actually, I've never spent a single second with this application.

So why am I doing this? Well, number one, several of you have actually recommended Workflowy and asked me to review this application.

And number two, I've never actually done this before—actually gone through a product and reviewed a piece of technology in real time. So let's do this.

Everything from the sign-up process to creating our first… I don't know if it's called a note. I don't know what's gonna happen behind this screen.

So I'm going to start out by putting in some email addresses in here. Let's create a password and hit sign up, and let's see what happens with Workflowy.

Let's see how long it takes and if it gives us some introductory information here. I'm gonna say never—let's get our LastPass stuff out of there for now.

Welcome to Workflowy, where you'll just have a blank page. I'm gonna show you what I do here.

It's only turned that way, but you know what, like I like to do with most of my pieces of technology, I just want to dive in and see what happens here. You can see it is a very, very blank screen.

I've got a bullet point here, I've got a little star here on the right, and we've got a little toggle here—Show Completed and Search Home. I guess I can maybe filter by stars, and I've got settings here as well.

This is somewhat what I expected because I believe Workflowy is a brainstorming or mind mapping tool—a great place to get down those quick notes. So here's bullet point number one.

Brainstorm

Here's bullet point number two, and yes, I realize I added some additional fun in that first bullet point. If I hit tab, okay, I can tab and add more notes, additional notes down below.

But I think the real power of Workflowy, if I am not mistaken, is that you can click on these tabs, and look at that—you can go back in and out. So here you can see I'm a few sections deeper into this note.

So here's some additional text, maybe one more bullet point here. One more bullet point—you'll see why I need spellcheck so often here.

But then I think I can go back somehow. So this is notes; what are these arrows doing in here?

There's some way I can get back out of this. I think I can complete it; I can add a note or duplicate it over here.

Additional Notes

What happens if I click on it itself? Hmm… If I hit Home—okay, there we go.

If I hit Home, I go all the way back to the top level, but you notice here there's now a plus sign beside that note. So if I hit that and expand it, now I get some additional notes as well.

Those are those additional notes that I added. I can keep adding them here.

But I think one of the benefits, what a lot of people enjoy about Workflowy, is that you can minimize that. You can go into so much greater detail down below here and then go off on a tangent, right?

You can add additional things here, but if you don't want to see everything else, if I just click on the bullet point itself, now I zoom in. And if I do that again, I think, there we go.

So additional text, more text, even deeper down the trail. All right, so you can go in and out.

Expand Notes

Now you can see the breadcrumbs at the top. I can go back to the notes, okay, and then I can go back to Home.

So here we can see this one is now expanded, so there's even more things that you can expand here as well. Let's take a look.

You'll notice as I hover over these notes, there's a few other things here: Complete, Add Note, Duplicate. Complete—what does that look like?

Let's say if I have completed this one here, I can either hit Ctrl + Enter or Complete. Okay, a strikethrough makes sense, right?

I'm done with that; I can still go in here and edit it, I guess. Now can I change that? If I hit Complete again—there you go, just to undo it.

Okay, so that's what Complete does. What else do we have here? Share—okay.

Duplicate, I think, is pretty straightforward. Adding a note is just gonna add another space down below.

Oh, it didn't add a bullet point that time, so I guess it's adding some further text or further information below that note. But let's go to Share—let's see what that gives us here.

Share Notes

Okay, we can enter in or paste in an email address. We can get a shareable link, and here's a nice and simple toggle: Can we edit this or not?

Back or forth, and then add that person there. I'm not gonna go through with a specific—actually, you know what, let's paste in something here.

I'm gonna use my other Scott Test, or ScottFTest2, Gmail address, and sure, let's say you can edit. And I'm gonna say add—I just want to see what this looks like.

Really, how can I see this later on? I can add more people if I want.

I'm gonna hit X here, so I've added that one there. Can I—okay, there we go.

There's a little different icon there. I have to click on it to see who I have shared it with, but that's how you can share some of these individual notes.

And I'm assuming, the way bullet points and indentation work, that they're gonna be able to have access to everything here, right? If I select this, they're gonna have access to everything down this particular path, so to speak.

Export Delete

Not this bullet point, but of course this one here that says "more text even deeper down the trail." We can export and delete.

Delete looks pretty straightforward. We do have a timestamp at the bottom, so that's interesting—it does keep track of when that particular point was last made or edited.

If I say Export, what kind of options do we have here? Okay, formatted plain text, plain text, or OPML.

Okay, so we can even grab the code if we need to. Plain text removes the formatting, and then we've got some formatting here such as the rounded point.

I guess this is just a simple copy and paste, and then you can put it somewhere else, or there's a click to download button as well. All right, let's star a few things.

Stars look over here on the right, and look at that—when I hit that, something happened down below. Let's hit that again.

If I hit that, there's a home—hmm, interesting. I don't know what that does.

Quick Links

Let's do that with another one. If I've got my cursor over here—no, does that star only appear at the top?

Okay, maybe I need to create a new one, because that seems to be the same as what we saw earlier. If I go here, what if I star that one?

Okay, so now I've got some—it looks like I've got some—they're almost like Quick Links. Ah, I get it—they're sort of like Quick Links down here at the bottom.

So if I put that star—I'm gonna put—let's put another one down. I'm going to zoom into this one, I'm gonna hit the star.

So now you see that I've got some sort of Quick Links down here at the bottom. So if I want to go to some special places—and I guess I have to click that, do I?

If I hit Home—oh, and here's another way. So there's how those stars appear as well.

Now, if I hit the star in the top left-hand corner, I can go directly to those areas as well. I'm not sure how to recreate what we saw down here—do I have to click on this again?

It's almost like you have to double-click it there if I want to see this view, but I guess the intent is that once you've starred what you like, then you'd go up here and go directly to that.

Home, as I've shown before, is just gonna bring you to the highest level. Show Completed—let's mark one off again.

And so in this case, it's showing strikethrough. I'm assuming as soon as I hit this, oh, it's actually gonna hide it—okay, nice.

Okay, so now I can see what I've crossed through here. If I toggle that, it's actually gonna hide it in my bullet point as well.

Search—I'm sure it's pretty straightforward, so I'm not going to even toy with that. And under Settings—some basic undo, redo, and so forth.

So this was a super quick overview of Workflowy, but really interesting here. As you can see, it follows a bullet point path.

And for those of you who may be looking for some type of mind mapping, some way of diving in deeper into your notes, I do like this functionality of being able to hide higher levels.

Minimize Levels

Or, let's do this again—if I keep clicking on those dots—you know, this could be a full page of information, right? This could be a full page of notes, meeting notes, ideas, things that you're thinking about.

But then you can go back up and hide that, right? If we go back to the notes level here, if we want to minimize that, pretty simple—we can just cinch that out.

Let's go back to that home level here

, where we have a bit more of a breakout. And I can just minimize all of that, so I can keep going down with other ideas, other brainstorming options.

And if I need to go and check out what I've done before, I can do so. I can expand this, I can expand that.

So there you have it—a live, real-time review of Workflowy. I'm sure some of you who have used this app before know much more than what I have just seen in these first few minutes.

So if you have some special tips or some ways in which you like to use Workflowy, I'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much for watching today's video.

Be sure to subscribe right here to the channel. Give this video a thumbs up and leave me a comment down below.

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

Having a great-looking email signature is absolutely essential. So in today's video, I'm going to show you three different ways on how you can create a signature in Gmail.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, and I am excited to share with you three different ways on how you can customize your signature within Gmail. So let's start off with the basics.

Email Signature Basics

First, let's make sure you know where to go to change or edit your email signature. In order to do so, you're going to want to select the Settings icon here and then select Settings one more time.

On the very first tab that you see, the General tab, we want to scroll down near the bottom, and you will see a signature area. Now you've got two choices: either no signature, which means that there will be nothing appended to your messages, or you can choose to have a signature.

What you're seeing here is that you can actually have more than one email signature. In this particular example, I am using two different Gmail accounts—I'm using Gmail forwarding so I can send as either of these accounts—and I can have two different signatures or even more if need be.

But let's take a look at how we can change this very bland-looking signature down below. It can be so much more than simply your name and a tagline.

Number one, don't forget to include some links, such as an email address. I'm just gonna add a simple fake email address here.

Now, in order to add a link within your email address and to change formatting, you're gonna want to use this editor up above. First things first, you need to select what you want to make linkable—in this case, I'm selecting this email address.

Then I'm gonna select the link icon here. Now this is a clickable email address.

If I want to add a website or some other thing that is clickable, I can do so as well. Let's see how we can add a picture to maybe spruce up this email signature as well.

I'm going to place the cursor near the top of the box, and in this case, all you need to do is select Insert Image. This will allow you to insert an image of yourself or maybe a logo—whatever you would like to add to this signature as well.

You can continue on, adding social media icons, or you can add other clickable banners to this email signature. The one thing you want to keep in mind within Gmail, no matter what you do with your signature here, is to be sure to scroll down to the bottom and hit Save Changes.

If you don't hit Save Changes, all this work that you've done up above is going to go away. So make sure you hit Save Changes, and then you'll be able to use that email signature.

But would you like to spruce up your email signature a little more than just what you've seen there? Well, I'm gonna give you a second method.

Email Signature in Google Docs

If you'd like to add even more custom options and flexibility to your email signature, I recommend creating it in Google Docs. Yes, you can create your email signature in Google Docs and then copy and paste it back into Gmail, and it will be saved as your email signature in the very same place that we just saw.

The first thing I'm going to encourage you to do is actually to insert a table. You might be interested to know why I suggest that.

I'm going to insert a simple 2x2 table here, and the reason being is that many email signatures start with an image, perhaps an image of yourself, and maybe you'd like to add other factors as well. Something that you can't do very easily in the standard Gmail signature window is to create this type of layout.

And maybe you want something even more complex than what I'm gonna show you right here. So let's start out in this very first and the top left-hand corner of my table.

I'm gonna insert an image, so I'm gonna upload something from my computer. Since this is gonna be my own email signature, let's start with a picture of myself.

That's a little too big—no problem. I can just drag the corner here and adjust the size of it just like that.

Now I can click and drag my table—I'm gonna go over like this—because in this next area, this next portion of my table, I'm gonna add things like my name. Then I can add my phone number if I want.

I can add whatever other details I want in this area here. Now down below, I can customize further parts of my signature.

So let's say, for example, I want to add a banner, for example. Maybe I want another image here.

So in this case, once again, I'm gonna go back. I'm gonna upload an image from my computer.

Let me go find it—I think it's under Email Templates. There we go, here's a banner that I've created previously.

Again, that's a little too big for me, so I'm going to reduce the size of it just like that. Now because I want people to click on this, all I need to do is right-click on it, and I can insert a link.

Whatever I type in here, whatever I type in this link field here, whenever someone clicks on that, whenever they receive my email, and this is gonna be my signature, they'll be able to go directly to that particular link. Now at this point, you're probably saying, "Well, wait a minute, Scott, I don't want an email signature that has black lines around it."

Well, not a problem. If we go up to Formatting here—actually, let me make sure my cursor is within the table—if we go back into Formatting and I select Table, come all the way down to Table Properties.

I'm gonna say I want to make the table border white, and I'm gonna say OK. Now essentially, it's invisible.

Now all I need to do is copy everything that I see here and then paste it back into my email signature. So if I go back into Settings, all I need to do is go back and paste it in this box that we saw before.

But if this seems like a lot of work—aligning everything and adding links to images—I've got even one more better way of creating your signature.

Email Signature in New Old Stamp

If you want a professional-looking email signature and be able to create it in a matter of minutes, I recommend using a tool such as Newoldstamp. Here you can see an example which I've created in literally two minutes' time.

The great thing about a tool like Newoldstamp is it comes preloaded with a number of templates, so I can quickly change the layout with a simple click. The other great thing is that I can just fill in these areas—you see it already has placeholders for things like name, company, telephone.

So it's already making these things linkable, such as this email address and these social media icons, so that they go directly to my own personal social media accounts. Even other options—you see the image here of my face?

Maybe I want something more square-like, maybe I want some rounded corners—I can easily adjust the size of it if I want. It even comes with some of these preloaded banners and special buttons such as "Find me on Facebook."

Or if you want it to link to other areas of your website, you can do so as well. Now, how do you install or apply this type of email signature?

Well, once you're happy with what you've got here, simply select Save and Install. Newoldstamp gives you two convenient options.

You can either install directly with your Google account, or you can select this option—Copy and Proceed. Then all we need to do is paste this signature into the box which I showed you previously.

Now, if you'd like to learn more about Newoldstamp and try their free email signature generator, I encourage you to check the link in the description below. So there you have it—three different ways on how you can create a great-looking email signature within Gmail.

Which one is your favorite? And I'd love to know, what are some of the pieces of information that you think are essential in an email signature?

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

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.