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Using multiple inboxes here within Gmail is a great way to highlight your most important messages or to make sure that things that get labeled don't get buried here on the left hand side. So how can you add multiple inboxes and configure them for the way that you want to? It's actually a lot easier than you think. 

Here in the top right hand corner of the screen, we can click this gear icon, and if we scroll down, you'll notice that we have a number of different ways to view our inbox.

Now you're probably most familiar with the default view where we have all of our messages listed here in a linear fashion. But we have several views to choose from, including the last one here called multiple inboxes.

In my example, you can see that I have two of my labels, "Action Required" and "Waiting for Reply" displayed here on the right hand side.

And the great thing is that whenever I need to add a new label, so for example, maybe I'm going to select this message here and I'm going to say that yes, I need to deal with that, it's immediately going to appear here within this action required section, not get buried over here and force me to have to remember to come and click and select this label.

I also have a second one here called "Waiting for Reply". So these are perhaps messages that I've sent and I want to make sure that I follow up and don't miss their replies so I can see them here as well.

Now the nice thing is that we can continue to minimize these sections if we don't want to see them as well. Maybe I only want to see "Action Required" and not "Waiting for Reply".

Well, we can do that as well. And if we hover our mouse here between the divider, we can adjust the size and the display. But let's go back to our setting here.

We're going to come down to multiple inboxes, and once you have this selected, we want to come here and select Customize. Now, this is where we can decide what will appear within our multiple inbox section. Now note, you are limited to a maximum of five different sections.

You can customize how they are named, and we can even choose in terms of how many conversations will be displayed at a given time, because depending on the label or the search query that you choose, you probably don't want all 125 messages displayed on the multiple inbox section. 

So by default it's set to five. I'm going to leave it at five here. And we even have a choice in terms of where it is displayed on the page. But what's most important to remember is how you can add a new section.

It's not quite as simple as just clicking into one of these fields and selecting a label. And the good news is that you're not limited to labels either. So how can you add your own labels or other search criteria? Well, let's go back to our inbox.

And when we click on any of these labels, you'll notice that at the top of the screen within the search bar, it is actually displaying the search criteria. So let's say we want to add the newsletter label to our new multiple inbox section.

I'm going to click on newsletters. And here you can see, all I need to do is come up here and copy this search criteria. And then we're going to go back to multiple inboxes and select customize. And all I need to do is paste it here within section three. 

Now, lastly, we can give it a name. You don't have to, otherwise it's going to say this as the section label, but I'm going to continue with my pattern of adding an emoji. I'm going to add a newspaper emoji, and I'm going to say, "These are newsletters."

Let's keep it nice and straightforward. Now, don't forget, don't just click to your inbox at this point. We want to make sure that we scroll down to the bottom and select save changes.

Now I'm brought back to the newsletter label because that's where I was last. Let's go back to our inbox. And here you can see I now have my new section called "Newsletters" right here.

If I want to minimize that, I can, and this is also a good example of where it's instilling that five message limit. I've got over 700 newsletters within this label, but it's only going to display the first five.

Whenever you want to quickly access all of the messages within your section here, all you need to do is select the number here on the right hand side, and that will take you directly to your labels or whatever that search criteria is. 

So let's choose a search criteria for our last section because you don't have to add labels. Maybe I want to create a new section here that are all of the messages sent from a particular individual.

I'm going to come up here and select this show search options just to remind you that you can create a very complex filter if you want. In my case, I'm going to insert this particular email address.

I want to see all of the messages that are coming from this sender, but I could add other criteria such as a key subject line in terms of a size, or maybe I just want to highlight all of the messages that have an attachment.

Maybe that might be helpful to you. But I'm going to keep it simple in this example.

I'm going to say search, and yes, it's going to go ahead and find all of the messages from this sender, but all I have to do is come up here, select it, select copy, and then you guessed it, we're going to come back to multiple inboxes customized and under section four, I'm going to paste in that search criteria. 

Over here on the side, let's continue with my theme. I'm going to choose this envelope, and I'm going to say, "From Scott." I'm going to keep it nice and simple.

These are all of the messages from this particular sender. Once again, I'm going to come down here and hit save changes. Let's go back to our inbox, and now we have that new section down below. I'm seeing one of five of many.

Yes, there are many messages from this sender, but now I have access to them directly here from within my inbox. 

Now, if you are still feeling overwhelmed when it comes to your inbox, I suggest that you check out SaneBox. With AI technology, SaneBox prioritizes essential messages, saving you hours of time each week, and by learning from your behavior, SaneBox will clean up your inbox, get rid of spam, and organize your emails into relevant folders.

Best of all, SaneBox works with any email provider. To get started, click the link in the description to get your free 14 day trial.

Is Google's new and improved Gemini AI really better than ChatGPT?

Well, if you're a Google user, the answer is yes. Before you get started with Gemini, come on down to the left hand side and click on settings and then select extensions.

And there's a number of Google extensions that we can enable, but the one that you want to make sure you have toggled on is Google Workspace, because we can do a lot with our email, with our files and folders, even with our specific documents. So let's take a look at an example.

So with my cursor in the prompt area, I'm going to add the at symbol and here you can see we have access to our extensions. Now this is going to help Gemini realize where or what we are trying to do. I'm going to select Gmail.

I'm going to say, review all of my unread email from the past two days and identify the first three that are most important. Maybe I'm coming back from a vacation or several days away from my inbox, and I just want to zero in on what needs my attention now.

What Gemini will do is connect with my Gmail account and quickly identify what it thinks is most important. Now of course, keep in mind, this is AI. It's not going to be perfect, but it can really help us to sort, find, summarize, and do an awful lot with our email. 

So here it has come back with the three emails it feels that I should review first, but better than just giving me a summary of its title and its contents, if I scroll down below, I am one click away from actually opening up those emails and responding as well.

So it's made it that much more actionable if I want to. Let's take a look at another example. This time I'm going to hit the at symbol and we're going to select Google Drive and it can often be frustrating to search for the exact file that you're looking for.

Well, in this case, I'm going to ask it to find the Kanban file from last year. I'm going to specify that it is last year, not this year. And let's say, summarize its details in five bullet points.

So there's two things here, right? We are finding, we are searching, a particular file but then I want it to do something with that file as well. 

Just like we saw before, it may take a few seconds depending on the complexity of that request, but this was actually a lot quicker. Here are the details. It found the file. Here is the summary of the contents of that document.

And once again, I have direct access. It's showing me exactly the particular file so I can click on it and do more with it. But it gets better because under every single response, you can see we have this share and export button.

Here, I can export this information back to Docs or I can take anything here within Gemini and draft a Gmail in a single click. Now, if you're wanting even more Google and productivity tips such as this, you should join the Simpletivity newsletter.

Just click the link on the screen now and join me at Simpletivity.com.

I love to save time, but I also love to save money. That's why in this video I'm going to show you how to save both by combining meeting scheduling with your customer management. 

You're probably already familiar with scheduling tools such as Calendly. It's a very popular service used by many. However, it's going to cost you something additional and it's also something additional for you to manage.

So what if you could take all of the functionality here and combine it with a powerful CRM System? Well, Pipedrive, one of my favorite CRM tools, has done just that.

Not only is Pipedrive's Meeting scheduler easy to use, but I feel that the user experience is actually better than Calendly and integrates directly with your contacts and your deals.

Better user experience

Now, before we get into the setup, let's take a quick look at the look and feel because what I love about the meeting scheduler within Pipedrive is that it's big, it's bold, and I think the navigation is even easier for your users.

So here at the top, you can see that we have the title of the meeting. We have the location, and you can add as much detail within the description as you like.

And then down below, rather than having Calendly's default full month calendar, we've got something that I think is a lot easier to navigate. So whether I want to book a time for this week or next week, it's easier to go back and forth.

I'm going to select this Wednesday, and also things stay on the same page. So let's see, maybe 1:00 PM works well for me. Now I can enter in my information and confirm that booking. 

Meeting scheduling in Pipedrive

Let's jump back into our Pipedrive Account and see how we can add further schedules and manage our existing ones as well. So here we can find the meeting scheduling option in a variety of different places.

Here I am within my calendar and it will always be available at the top of the screen. If I jump over into one of my deals, let me jump into this deal here. Remember, we can email any of our clients directly from within Pipedrive. And from within my email, I can always add my meeting scheduling link here as well.

And if I happen to be viewing some of my contacts, once again, I have access to that meeting scheduling link because we can email from a variety of different places right here from within Pipedrive.

Creating your meeting link

So I'm going to come here and select Manage availability. Here is the Discovery Call that I set up already, but let's go ahead and create a new scheduling link. So our first option here is how long should this meeting be?

And let's say I want to make this 30 minutes in length. I'm going to choose that option here. When is this availability going to be active?

I can either set a future date or say that I want it to be active from right now, and I can either put this out indefinitely or maybe I only want to make this particular meeting, this particular call available from now until the end of April.

Again, you can always come back in here and edit any of these options. 

Then thirdly, we can choose what days of the week. Do we want to be made available for these meetings? Well, I'm going to come down here to Tuesday and unlike Calendly's somewhat complicated way of specifying times and dates, I can simply just click and drag.

Maybe I want to make myself available, 9:00 to 12:00 in the morning, and then once again from 3:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon. So I can do that here.

And rather than hit save and go to another day of the week, right from this same dialogue, I'm going to say I want to add it to Thursday as well. I'm going to hit Save. And now I've got my schedule. I've got my availability listed right here.

Now, before we select Continue to meeting details, it's important for us to select our Buffer and time settings. Now, there's a couple of defaults in here already. We may want to add some buffer time before or after the event. 

So if you want to make sure that you have perhaps 15 minutes before your very next event or afterwards, you can choose that here. Here you can choose if the invitee can select times in different intervals.

Now, for me, I prefer things on the half hour. I don't want people booking me at let's say 3:15 or 9:45. But if you have a different preference, you can make that selection here as well.

Then the last two are very important, so don't ignore these two options. The first is the shortest notice to book you. Meaning, if you shared this link right now, could they book you 30 minutes from now?

Well, that might be too soon for a lot of us. So I'm going to say I want a minimum of four hours notice before they can book me.

 Meaning, if I sent them the link right now, the earliest they could book me would be about 2:30 in the afternoon, my local time, because it's currently 10:30 AM. And then lastly, how far in the future can someone book you?

Now, unlike Calendly, we have a number of default options here, but I think that this might actually be easier. Do you really need 27 days, or 32 days, or 56 days or a particular number of weeks? We have between one, two or three weeks or a month, two months, or six months in advance.

So maybe the most I want someone to be able to book me out in advance is one month.

Adding meeting details

So I'm going to select that option here. I'm going to select Continue to our meeting details. And this is the final section. This is the last page that we need to configure. The first thing is to give our meeting a name.

So maybe this is going to be a 1:1 Call or a 1:1 Meeting. Here under location, we can either specify where it's going to be a phone call, a Zoom meeting, or in person. Maybe you want to add an address here.

And Pipedrive does integrate with the three most popular video conferencing tools. So whether you use Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet, you can use that integration here. Here you can adjust the company name. This is being pulled over directly from my Pipedrive account.

And then lastly, we can choose what is required when it comes to the fields? Now, just like with Calendly and other popular scheduling tools, name and email is going to be required.

You can choose if you want to require a phone number, but you can also choose to add as many additional fields as well. So for example, do you want to add some specific questions, maybe some things for them to consider ahead of time or just collect some more information.

You can add those details here as well in addition to adding your own custom footer. Then on the right-hand side of this screen, we have two additional helpful options. These are only visible to you, so this has to do with how this is tracked or recorded within your Pipedrive account. 

So do you want to record this as a call, a meeting, a task, a deadline, an email, or lunch? In most cases, you're probably going to choose one of these first two, or maybe it's a task depending on how you manage your customers and manage your projects within Pipedrive.

And then lastly, you can add a specific note.  So if you want to add a detailed note specific to this meeting type, you can add this here and it will be included in that user's record.

I'm going to come down here and select Share as a link. And now I can go ahead and copy this link and share it with anyone that I like.  But better yet, now that this new availability is saved, I can share it anywhere here within Pipedrive.

Scheduling example

So for example, maybe I need to setup a time to meet with Phyllis here. I'm going to, of course, give a subject and give a nice message, but when I'm ready, I can come up here to the Meeting scheduler and say, "Hey, let's put in this 1:1 Meeting."

See my schedule and book a time here. Now they have a direct link to that booking calendar, and I didn't have to write in any of this text. But let me show you perhaps the best reason for integrating your meeting scheduler with a CRM. Here I am back with that Discovery call that we looked at earlier.

But this time I'm going to pretend that I'm someone who is filling out this form. I filled out all the details here, and I'm going to say, confirm that booking. As the potential customer, I'm brought to this confirmation screen. 

And of course, I've been emailed that scheduling link and it has been added to my calendar as well. But if I jump back into my Pipedrive Account, and if I look at my contacts, (sighs) look at this.

At the bottom of my list is my brand-new contact, and I didn't have to enter in any of this information. I have the name, I have their email address and their phone number.

And when I click on his account, here I have all of that information available to me, including here is our discovery call listed here so I can keep track and keep record of this customer engagement.

There is no copy and paste, there is no complicated integration that I need to make with Calendly or some other tool. I have it all here directly from within my CRM. 

So if you'd like to save time and money and make it easier for both yourself and your clients to book time, click the link in the description down below. Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Would you like to collect more detailed information about your users?

In this video, I'm going to show you how to create a form so that you can ask questions and then send them to specific additional questions depending on the choices that they make. This is sometimes called conditional logic or branching, and it's a lot easier than you think. So let's get started. 

Adding sections to your form

Here I have a very simple form where I am asking them for their name and their email address, and then I want to know what is their biggest pain point right now.

But depending on which of the three selections they make, I want to send them to ask them further questions about that selection. So in order to do this, we first need to create our additional sections.

Here on the right hand side, you may be familiar with selecting the plus button to add additional questions, but we want to come down all the way to the bottom and select add a section. So here we have section number two.

I'm going to continue to select this two more times because I'm going to have three sections for each of these three answers. 

So now we have section two, section three, and section four. At this stage, it's also going to be important that we title each of these sections so we can keep track of where we are sending people depending on their answer here.

So I'm going to title section number two, procrastination. I'm going to come down here, and I'm going to call section number three, email management. And then section number four, we will title this work life balance, just like the questions that I am posing in the very first section.

You're going to see why it's important to label these, maybe not necessarily exactly the same as your question up above,

Send to section based on answer

But so that you can match them together. Now, let's go back to our first question where we are going to branch them off depending on their answer. The very first thing to keep in mind is that there are only two question choices in which we can use this type of logic or this type of branching.

One is multiple choice, the other one is if we wanted to choose a dropdown menu, these are the only two that we can use for this branching.

My personal preference is multiple choice, just because everything is visible, it seems to be a lot easier for people to engage and make their selection with multiple choice.

Now, the very next step is to come down to the more option here, and we want to select go to section based on answer.

I'm going to select that option here. And here you can see we are presented with an additional dropdown beside each of our choices. So beside procrastination, you can see that it is currently set to continue to next section.

Now, that's okay because the next section happens to be the procrastination section. But just to be safe, I'm going to select this dropdown and say exactly where I want it to go.

Section two, and here is the title of that section, And I'm going to do the same for the next two. I want this to go to email management, and if they select work-life balance, I want them to select that as well.

This can be very, very important because we may not be done adding sections, and in fact, once they get to procrastination, maybe I want to branch them out into other subsections, or other areas of my form.

So having these labels and matching them appropriately are very, very important. 

Adding additional questions

Next, let's go down to our email management, for example, and add further questions. Remember, at this point, we have no other questions in this area, simply the title.

So I'm going to come up here and let's ask an additional multiple choice question. What email issues are you facing right now? And I've given them three additional options.

This is going to give me so much more valuable information than if I just left my form with this basic question at the beginning. And remember, I could come down here and say, go to section based on answer and continue to branch out.

So for example, when it comes to folder organization, I could create a section where I'm asking them, what type of email client are you using? 

How many folders do you currently have at the moment? Go into so much further detail in an effort to find out if I'm the right fit to solving their problem or get them that much closer to a solution. In this case, I am going to turn that off.

You can see that you can toggle that on and off as needed, but this is going to be maybe the last question that I give them. Now for our example, I'm not going to add further questions for section two or for section four.

But what I am going to do is add one more section here below this email management section. And in this case, I'm going to give it the title of email solutions. That's going to be the title of this section.

But maybe here in the description, I could write something like, Hey, I've got a great solution to help you with your email problems. Or maybe something like, I'll be in touch with you shortly so I can help you with your email management. 

Something that is personalized based on the fact that they chose the email route or the email path. Now, I'm also doing this to show you a few other things that you want to keep in mind. Number one, the importance of these labels.

Remember this work-life balance used to be section four, but it is now section five of five. But if we go up to our original question here, you can see that we've already kept that connection.

Because we connected it to work-life balance, it doesn't matter how many additional sections we add, it is not going to come out of sync.

Ending your branching form

So that labeling can be very, very important. But you also want to pay special attention as to how you end your form. Here you can see, even if I give them a comforting message to say, I'll be in touch with you shortly to help you with your problems, it's going to continue to the next section.

Yes, you can see that there are options here at the bottom of each of our sections. In this example, I'm going to want to select this dropdown and select submit form.

Meaning when they get to this area, I don't want them to go to any other section, I want them to finish the form at this stage.

And remember, another best practice is whenever you are branching off within your form, you may want to make sure that that particular question is required, just so that they don't end up in some other section if you haven't set these quite correctly. 

And don't forget, at any time, I highly recommend that you preview your form and test out some of your scenarios just to make sure that everything is working properly.

So in my example, I want to select that email management option, and it should take us here to these options here, and then to this final email solutions page. Let's see if we've set everything up correctly.

So here is our preview form. I have not made my name or email address required, but I'm going to say my biggest pain point is email management.

I'm going to select next, and perfect, it's brought me to my email management option here. I'm going to say I have not enough time to read my emails. I'm going to select next. And here is that email solutions header.

We didn't actually add the description, but here is either where we could give a comforting message, we can include a link just before they go ahead and submit that form. 

So now that you know how to create conditional logic and branching questions within Google Forms, I'd love to hear from you. What other questions do you have about form design or optimizing your Google forms? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

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

Would you like to create a mobile app for your business and do it without any coding and do it for free? In this video, I'm going to walk you through step by step so you can impress your clients with your very own mobile app. 

‍Start with a template

To get started, we want to head over to jotform.com. Here at the top of the screen, we want to come up to, products and then we want to select JotForm apps.

And our very next step is to decide if we want to start from scratch, use a template, clone an existing app if you've used JotForm apps before, or you can build your own store.

I have a separate video if you'd like to take advantage of JotForm store builder, and I'll leave the link for you in the description down below. But my recommendation is that we start with a template because there are so many different templates for us to choose from.

And remember, we can swap out any of these logos, we can adjust the colors, we can move things around. 

This is going to be the fastest way for you to get started. So for our example today, I'm going to use this counseling template here.

I'm going to assume that we are wanting people to book time with us and perhaps give us some additional information along the way. So in this case, we have a button here to schedule their appointment and another one to provide their consent.

And you'll also notice if I scroll down below, there's a second page where they can enter in their profile information, so things that are actionable, things that they can do right away. 

‍Customizing your app

So here within the builder page, we want to start on the left hand side and show you just a preview of the large number of elements which you can add to any of your mobile apps.

So whether you want them to sign something, whether you want to add an image or add additional buttons, it is quick and easy for you to simply drag and slide any of these things over to the right hand side.

We also have a section called widgets. So if you're needing something just a little more advanced, if you want to embed a PDF, if you want to show a map location, you can do so here as well. In my case, maybe I want to add some more images here to the cover of my app. 

So I'm just going to take this image, I just need to drag and drop it wherever I would like. And now I can click that upload image and upload something directly from my computer.

As for the other elements within your app, everything is drag and drop. So you're probably already familiar with this when it comes to managing your website.

Let's say for example, I want them to provide their consent before they see the “schedule your appointment” button. All I need to do here is click this little handle, I'm going to drag it over here to the left, and now things have been reordered in the way that I want them to.

And when it comes to the forms themselves, here you can see, as I've highlighted this, schedule your appointment.

Here I can say edit this form, and I will immediately be brought into that form builder so I can customize how this form looks, what questions I'm asking them, and they can book directly here from within the app.

And remember, because JotForm apps is a product of JotForm, you can build the most complicated and sophisticated or simple forms that you need to and have them incorporated directly within your app.

‍Selecting colors and logo

Now, when it comes to customizing the look and feel of your app, we want to come over here to the right hand corner  and select this paint roller.

And here we can adjust any of the colors, we can adjust the fonts, we can adjust our logos here, anything else that we would like to change. For example, maybe I have a custom color that I would like to include here. So I'm going to add that here. That's a lot more closer to my branding here.

I can change the color scheme here at the top of the page if I want to quickly sift through and see some of the additional themes that are available to me here. 

If I click on the logo itself, of course, I can remove it and replace it with my own, and I can adjust the logo size as well, depending on what I've uploaded and how I want it to fit with the rest of my app.

As you're playing around, JotForm also gives us the ability to have a live preview. So here with this preview app toggle, I can select this, and it will give us a preview of how this will look and feel.

Here I can see how everything will look. I can even play with different things and go to different pages to see how they look and how they are formatted. I can even come up to the top and see if it will look drastically different, better or worse in portrait or landscape mode. 

‍Adding multiple pages

Now at the very bottom of the screen, you will notice that it's listed the different pages. We have our homepage, which is titled appointments. That's going to be the screen that users first see.

But if we scroll down, you can see that there's this page break, and we have a second page, which is our profile page.

You can continue to add as many pages as you like. So if we want an about section or maybe we want to send them to two different areas based on their selection here on your home screen, you can send them to different pages as well.

All you need to do is either select this add a page option at the bottom of each page, or at the very bottom of the screen, we can select add page as well, and then immediately start dragging in our different elements for that page.

‍Editing your app settings

Now when you are happy with the layout and the look of your app, next we want to come up to the top of our screen and select settings. Here we want to review a couple of important settings so we can make it the best user experience for those who have access to it.

First off, we can change the app status, meaning when can people have access to this app. Of course, you're going to want to turn this to enabled so that users can access that app, but you also have the choice to disable it on a particular date. Maybe it's just for short-term use, or maybe you are creating an app for a particular event. Next, we have an option called add to home screen modal. 

And this is very important. Unlike an app that you would publish on the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, you are going to be sharing access to this app via a link.

But with this setting turned on, when they first open up the app, they will be invited to create a shortcut to the home screen on their device, meaning it will appear just like any other app on their phone or on their tablet. So I recommend that you leave this on. 

Next, we have the option to continue forms later, meaning if you do have forms within your app, do you want allow users to save those forms and come back later to finish them off? Of course, depending on your business, depending on your needs, you'll want to turn this on or off. 

And then lastly, we can choose to show the progress bar or not. Next, we want to come up to the app name and icon. And this is, of course, one of the most important settings that we want to take a careful look at.

So for example, maybe I'm going to call mine Simple Solutions, something along those lines. Keep in mind, just like with other apps on your mobile device, longer names will not be displayed in full. So maybe I would be better off in calling my app the Simple App, so it will appear on more devices.

And next we have the chance to edit that home screen icon. I'm going to select this button.

 I'm going to say remove this image, and I'm going to select upload file, and then I can choose my own logo to include so it matches my branding and looks professional on the home screen.

Our very last option here is the splash screen, meaning that when there may be a few seconds in loading your app, what do you want that screen to look like?

Now this yellow doesn't really match my branding, so maybe I'm going to come over here and choose something a lot more basic, a lot darker, like this black.

‍Publish and share your app

Now that we're happy with our settings, let's move over to the publish tab and get ready to share our app. Now just before we copy our link or produce our QR code, we want to come up here and review our settings. Remember, you don't have to make your app available to everyone.

For example, you can restrict your app to just private access. So if you want to make sure that people register in order to use your app, you can select this option here. Or if you want to restrict the app to just company access, you can require authorization for a particular domain name.

But for most users, including our example today, we're going to choose public for everyone. 

Lastly, when it comes to sharing your app with others, there are two methods that I recommend. Number one, you can copy this link here, and then paste it or include it anywhere that you like, whether that's your website or invitations through an email or maybe via social media.

If I open up a new tab, and I'm going to paste in that link, you can see that they are brought directly to the web version of this app. But here is that modal screen, meaning if someone was to click on this link on their mobile device, they can add this app directly to their home screen, and it will appear just like any other app on their device. 

Now, the second way that you can share your app with others, and you may want to use this in combination with the link, is to use a QR code.

So here is this unique QR code, which I can then use my mobile phone to scan, and then have direct access to it on my device. And don't forget, you're not limited to creating just a single free app. You can create multiple apps right here within the JotForm app builder. 

To learn more and to get started with your very own mobile app for free, go to jotform.com, or click the link in the description down below. And if you have any other questions about creating your own mobile app, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

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

Are you tired of being distracted by all of your incoming email? Do you wish that your inbox could look something like this so you can focus on your most important work? Well, in this video I'm going to show you how you can pause your inbox. 

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

And for nearly a decade, I have been a user of Boomerang, an extension which gives both Gmail and Outlook email users the ability to add some additional features, and I might say, superpowers to our inbox.

And one of those features is the ability to pause any incoming mail.

Now, why might this be helpful? Well, think of how often you've gone into your inbox to write a simple message only to be distracted by dozens and dozens of other new emails that are arriving here.

Or maybe you're tired of receiving notifications on your phone for emails that don't need your attention right now. 

Well, Boomerang has the ability to pause our inbox. So once you've installed the Boomerang extension, you will see this Pause Inbox button in your inbox. And by selecting it, we are brought here with a dialogue, which is going to give us a few helpful options so that you can feel confident in pausing your inbox.

Now, just before I walk you through each of these very important settings, including some brand new scheduled settings, what actually is going to happen with your email? Where will they go?

Well, actually, what will happen is that you will have a new label applied to those incoming emails, which will bypass your inbox and go directly to that label down below.

I'll show you how this works in just a moment. But the reason why this is so important is because you can still search for those emails even if you have the Pause Inbox function engaged. 

So by selecting this option here, we have a couple of different things we want to keep in mind. We can either manually pause our inbox and turn it on or off as we like, or we can set up a new schedule.

Here on the left-hand side when it comes to manually pausing, we do have the ability to add an auto-reply message. Now, this is completely up to you. This is a personal preference.

If you're worried that someone has thought that you haven't received your email or that your email is down, you can send a simple message telling them, hey, I'll get back to you at 3:00 p.m., or, thank you for your message but I'm only responding to email once or twice a day.

This is just some boilerplate text. You can replace this with anything that you want, including the subject line and the message itself, or you can simply leave this off.

Personally, I would turn this off because I don't want to contribute to more inbox overload with the people who are messaging me. 

Down below, we have a toggle for delivery exceptions, and this is very, very helpful if there are some emails that we do want to get through the pause function.

So for example, is there a very important person in your world? It could be a boss, it could be a very important client, it could be your spouse, it could be a parent. Do you want to make sure that their emails get through? You can simply add them here.

Down below you can also specify if an email is sent to a particular email address. So maybe you manage multiple addresses or maybe you're just CC'd on something. If there's a particular address that it is sent to, you can let that bypass as well.

This third one is very, very easy if there's a particular domain. So maybe it's your own domain or someone else's domain, you can let that through as well.

And lastly, if there are any key words you want to look out for within those emails, we can let them go through as well.

Finally, our third option here is to hide the Inbox Pause label. I'm going to show you what that label looks like so you can more fully understand what this toggle is attributing to. But in most cases, I would suggest that you leave this off as well.

Now at this stage, I could go ahead and just pause my inbox now, but if I don't want to manually unpause my inbox, I'm going to come over here to the bottom left-hand corner, and I'm going to say unpause automatically after, and I can choose any interval that I like.

Maybe it's just an hour, maybe it's a couple of hours, maybe I want to pause it until tomorrow morning. I can choose any length of time that I want and then select ‘confirm’. But in this example, I'm going to leave that off as well. And I'm going to say Pause Inbox now.

So a couple of things that you'll notice: at the top of the screen we get this nice large warning letting me know that my inbox is currently paused.

In addition, you'll see that it's actually sent me an email. This is very helpful, especially if you're accessing your Gmail or Outlook account within the application on your phone, because of course this will not be visible, but this will remind you that your inbox is paused.

Lastly, over here under Labels, you can see that we have a new label. It's titled Inbox Paused and today's date, so we know exactly where all of those emails will be going.

If we want to, we can of course cheat the system and anytime we can click on this particular label, I have no new incoming messages at this time, but I can always go and find it here.

And this is very, very important because remember, we want to be able to search all of our email including things that we haven't laid our eyes on yet. So that is why this label is created. 

Now, when I'm ready to unpause, I can come up here and select the unpause button. You will notice that the banner at the top of the screen is now removed. It will automatically remove that email that we saw here as well. And finally, on the left-hand side under labels, you will see that that label has been removed as well. So nice and clean. It's not going to leave anything behind.

If I had new incoming emails, they would all be displayed here as well. Let's go back to our Pause Inbox dialogue and quickly look at this new feature on the right-hand side, which allows us to set up a pause schedule. S

o rather than manually pausing our inbox and un-pausing it, here, we can set our own specific work hours. So perhaps you want to pause your email every morning from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. but you want things a little different.

On Wednesdays, for example, you can come in here and edit your schedule and then turn on your schedule. Maybe you want to set up some focus time where you're dealing with your deepest work or your most important projects. 

You can set up a focus time schedule here as well. And then the third option here is an interesting one, but I think might be one of the most valuable, and that is a batched delivery.

So rather than setting up windows of time where your inbox will be paused, here you can tell Inbox Pause to simply deliver your email at specific times of the day. So maybe you only want to receive, new email once or twice a day.

You can do so here, or you can set up a different batched delivery schedule here down below. So this I think might be one of the more helpful ones and even a bit easier to set up than the work hours and the focus time. Lastly, they have an option here called Mix and Match.

So you can combine batch delivery and inbox and unpausing your inbox if you want to set up a more intricate schedule. As mentioned, Inbox Pause by Boomerang is available for both Gmail users and Outlook users, and it's also available in the Boomerang app for iOS and Android. 

To learn more and to get started with Inbox Pause, just go to InboxPause.com. And if you have any other questions on how to be more effective with your email, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

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

Walling continues to impress me with the number of features that it is adding to make it that much easier to manage our projects, brainstorm our ideas, or share them with others. So let's take a look at five features you need to be using in 2024.

Generate projects with AI 

First of all, is something that they added late in 2023, and that is the ability to create things using AI. And unlike so many other tools, which seem to just bolt on a ChatGPT component, Walling has developed something incredibly powerful and useful.

Instead of starting with a template Wall. Whether I want to produce a project or maybe put a presentation together, I'm going to get Walling to produce it for me using AI. So let's say I'm an accounting firm and I want to plan out my social media campaigns for the coming year. 

I'm going to hit enter, and now that Walling AI has finished, we have a completed Wall focused on social media plans for the coming year for our accounting firm, including a yearly overview.

So here you can see it's produced a number of checklists, including our monthly themes and our focus topics, which of course are relevant for different times of the year.

April, "Tax Day Reflections and Planning Ahead." August, "Back to School Financial Education."

These are some great themes and ideas as we plan out our year, including some very important dates here in terms of International Accounting Day and maybe National Financial Awareness Day, things that we want to use in our social media campaign. 

You'll see that it's even including several images here and other KPIs, other things for us to consider.

We've got a content repository so we can start to add additional ideas, including things such as the published date and status.

You can quickly see that this is so much better than just producing a list or an Excel spreadsheet, something that we may be used to within ChatGPT. We've got so much more information to go on here and it's actionable, so we can start working

Custom colors & branding 

On this social media plan right away. Another feature that sets Walling apart from many of its competitors is our ability to customize the colors and the feel of each of our Walls.

Because Walling is so easy to share with others, we want to make sure that we are perhaps following our own branding guidelines, or if we are presenting a proposal, maybe we want to match the branding guidelines of the people we are working with.

By editing our Wall here, we can customize it to our heart's content.

So for example, maybe I want to add my Simpletivity Blue. So I've got my precise shade of blue. I've got a particular shade of off-white that I use on my websites and within my social media posts, including my logo here at the top of the screen. 

Of course, we can edit all of the fonts of the different sections and the headers if we want to as well, but we can also be a little more granular.

Rather than having a page which is completely in blue, maybe I want this welcome section to stand out. Well, you can customize each individual section as well.

So for example, maybe I want to change this background to a bit of a white or a slight off-white, so it's that much more visually appealing to someone when they arrive on this page, as they review this Wall, this section stands out, so a lot of customization.

Remember at the top of your Wall, just select this paint roller to customize any component that you like.

Share with a short link

Now, one of my favorite features of Walling is the ability to share your Walls with others without having to create a login or to ask them to sign up for Walling.

You can publish any of your Walls and share it just like you would a webpage. I'm going to come up here to the top of my screen and select Publish, and one of the recent enhancements is to shorten the link that we need to use when sharing that Wall.

Rather than sharing a long, lengthy link, here, we have a much shorter link that we can quickly and easily share with others, but it gets better.

Present your Wall in slides 

You may already be familiar with sharing your Wall such as this, so it's nice and clean. They can scroll through and even easily navigate here on the left hand side, if those who are viewing want to jump to a particular section.

But recently, Walling has given us an additional way to share that Wall with others. Rather than sharing it as a one page, we can also share it as a slide show, which maybe adds just a little more extra pizzazz as you share it with others.

This time around, when we select that link, you will see at the bottom of the screen, they can simply navigate left to the right, or they can simply go directly to one of these sections down below.

Now the people you share your wall with will still have access to the table of contents here on the left hand side, but by using the slideshow method, it might be a more cleaner way of sharing your ideas, sharing your project status, or your proposal with others.

Walling tips and tricks

Lastly, if you're wanting to get even more out of Walling, visit explore.walling.app. Here you'll find a number of resources to get the most out of your Walls, including the latest featured Wall templates and other resources to help you stay productive and share your ideas with others. 

Now, if you have further questions about Walling, be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Do you want to get even more out of Google Keep? Let me show you seven features that every Keep user needs to know. 

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

Bulk Edit Notes

And let's get started off with something that many Keep users are unaware of. And that is when it comes to editing our notes, you don't need to come into this note and make a change and then come over to this note and make another change and click and go in and out.

If there's something you'd like to apply to several notes, you can make a bulk change. Here, you'll see as I hover over my notes, there's a little check mark in the top left hand corner. If I select it, let's say I want to select these three notes and I want to pin them. 

Now that they're all selected here at the top right, I can pin them, I can set the same reminder, I could change them all to the same color. I can archive them, and if I select the More dropdown, there's even more things I can do with these notes.

Let's say I want to change them all to this pink color here. That's great and I'm going to pin them. That was so much faster than going into each and every one of those notes individually.

Group Checklists

Number two, let's see how we can get more out of our checklists. Here I have a note called a packing list, and I hope that you already know that you can convert any of your notes into a checklist.

I just quickly jotted these down, but if I want to turn it into a checklist, I can select the more dropdown and say show checkboxes, and immediately it's going to turn it into a nice checklist.

If I want to go back, I can do that and come down here and say hide check boxes, but let's stick with our checklist. Now, I've got a bunch of clothes here and I've got some electronics. The tough thing here is that I haven't really grouped them together. 

Well, did you know that you can select the left hand side of any checklist item and drag it to the right if you want to indent that item? So here I have all of my jeans, shirts, and jacket underneath my clothes checklist.

And under electronics, I'm just going to indent these three items as well.

Not only is this so much easier to look at and manage, but let's say I just finished packing all of my electronics. I'm just going to select the one checkbox and now everything is checked off and is down below.

Even if I just check off one or two of these items under clothes, and then I check off the clothes, it's still going to keep everything nice and grouped together.

Now, if you want to hide those items, you can do so here by selecting this little arrow here. It's going to tell us how many completed items are there.

The other great thing is if I want to repurpose this list, I only have to uncheck this checkbox and this checkbox, and now I am ready to go. It's ready for me to use this packing list again.

And because these items are indented within this electronics header, I can move them as a group. Maybe I want to pack my electronics first. Perfect. I can move that to the top of my checklist and it's kept everything together, so don't forget to indent some of your checklists.

Move Notes to Google Drive

Next, let's take a look at a tip that not only every Google Keep user should know, but every Google Drive user should know as well. Here I have a much lengthier note where I've been collecting a number of definitions.

Maybe I'm going to put this into a blog article or some other reference document. Now, what I could do is simply select all of the text here and then copy and paste it into a Google Doc, but Keep makes it that much easier.

At the bottom of the screen, if I select on More, I can say copy to Google Docs, and in just a few seconds, it's going to turn it into a Google Doc.

Here, I can select open up that doc, and now I have all of that information, including the title of the Keep note and everything else here ready for me to continue to edit or get ready to publish and perhaps share with someone else. 

But now that we are here within Google Docs, there are some additional things we can take advantage of. On the Google side panel here on the right hand side, we have access to all of our Keep notes, meaning if we want to input other pieces of information, we can do so here as well.

So, remember that checklist that we've been using? I can actually drag and bring that checklist directly into my document. Maybe I'm working on some type of article and I want to include this image.

No problem. I can simply drag and drop that image directly into the document as well. So all of that information that you've been collecting within Keep, you are simply one click away, or one drag away from bringing it into your Google Docs.

Clip with Chrome Extension 

Next, let's take a look at how we can easily grab information from other websites so that we can access it from within Keep. By installing the Google Keep Chrome extension, you can quickly and easily grab information from any webpage.

Here, for example, I've come across this article about Google's new AI search tool, and I'd like to both read this article a little later, but also have a direct link. With that extension installed, I can come up here and click on Save to Keep, and before creating the note, I can actually add a few more details.

Maybe I'll say read this by the end of the week, for example, I can give it a title if I want.

I can even add a specific label before creating the note. So maybe this is work related. I will select that label here, and now I can select create that note. It gives me a quick confirmation that my note was saved successfully, and then I can go back to doing whatever it is I want to here on this website.

But if we jump back to Google Keep, here, you can see near the top of my screen is that direct link to that page. I also get a quick preview of what that page looks like as well. So I am only one click away from returning to that webpage.

Grab Text from Images

Now, since we are grabbing information from so many different places, whether it is websites, whether it is images or other lists, this next tip is one of my all-time favorites, and that has to do with grabbing text directly from an image.

Here you can see I grabbed this image a little while ago, which is actually an advertisement, but it has a fair amount of text on it, and I don't want to just copy it down or type it out myself. I'd rather grab it directly from this image. So with this note open, I can come down to the bottom and select the More option. 

And this time we're going to select grab image text, and almost instantly it will scour the image and grab all of the texts that it can find, including words such as photography, even though it was overlaid over this person and has some different colors in the background.

It grabbed the button here. It even grabbed the Adobe logo, including the letter A within that logo. So if you want to take a picture of a document, a poster, a menu, or anything else that you come across, you can easily grab that text by using Grab Image Text.

Edit Images

Now, speaking of images, another feature is the ability to edit or annotate any of our images. Here's another image that I have here, and if I click directly on the image, I will be given a full screen preview. But up in the top right hand corner, you can see that we have the ability to edit this image by selecting Edit Drawing.

Here, we are brought into an editor. So if we want to highlight certain sections of the image, for example, or maybe I want to use an actual highlighter feature here, maybe I want to say something about the letter C and the letter R, I can do so here as well.

I can edit in a number of different ways, and you always have an Undo button here if you want to go back as well. And if you want to reset, you can choose this dropdown and say clear the page. This can be a great way to make some simple changes or simple edits to any of the images you upload to Keep.

Set Reminder Defaults

Next, let's don't forget the power of setting reminders. If you have a particular to-do or task, or something that you just don't want to forget, you can click on any of your notes. Come down here to the left hand corner and select remind me.

But in particular, we want to look at making it faster and easier for you to set these reminders. Now, you can always come down and select a particular date and time, but these defaults can be very handy, later today, tomorrow, or next week.

But wait a minute, 8:00 PM today, 6:30 tomorrow morning. Where are these times coming from? 

Well, if we come up here to the right hand corner and select Settings and then select Settings at the top, here is where we can change or adjust our reminder defaults. So maybe 6:30 AM is a little too early for me. I want to change that to 8:00 AM.

I'm going to hit Save, and now the next time I want to set a reminder tomorrow at 8:00 AM or next week at 8:00 AM, that suits my schedule that much better. But there's one important warning.

The changes you make within Google Keep when it comes to your reminder times also affect the snooze reminder times within your Gmail account. 

For example, if I want to come over here and snooze this message, I'm going to select these Snooze icon, and here you can see the 8:00 PM and the 8:00 AM applies over here as well.

So you may want to ask yourself, where do you use reminders more often, within Google Keep, or by using the Snooze function within Gmail? Either way, you'll need to make that change within Google Keep Settings. 

Now, I would love to hear from you next. Did you know all seven of these Google Keep tips? If so, let me know in the comments, or share with me some of your favorite tips right here within Google Keep.

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.

Do you want a faster way to manage all of your email and spend less time in your inbox? In this video, I'm going to show you how to combine two email apps so you can deal with email at lightning speed.

So today we're going to take a quick look at something called Fastmail, something that is not only lightning fast, but also adds privacy to your email so you don't have to share your details, your information, with big time marketers such as Google and Microsoft.

Fast Mail Demo 

Here I am within my fastmail.com account and maybe nothing special. It looks like an email account. I can easily read everything here. I've got my search bar at the top, and I've got my folders in different sections down below.

But as I click on my different sections and my different folders, you'll notice something different. It is lightning fast. And here within my inbox, I'm not only viewing just my first 50 or first 100 emails, no, it's loading nearly 300 emails.

Even as I go between my pinned, my VIPs, and my all mail, it's not wasting time loading these messages. And if I click on this message and start to scroll through, if I want to go and reply to this message, it is also lightning fast. 

I'm not waiting for dialogues to pop open. I'm not waiting for things to send. So it truly is a very fast, a very quick experience. but there's a number of other things which you may benefit from by using Fastmail. Here on the right hand side, we too have a sidebar.

So we've got access to our calendar. I actually like the display of the calendar here within Fastmail, which to me feels a lot easier to read, a lot more easier to manage when it comes to looking at these events and seeing their details.

I also like that I have full access to all of my contacts here on the right hand side. But it doesn't stop with just a side window. Here in the top left hand corner of the screen we can go directly to our contacts or our calendar without opening up a new tab. 

So if I go to my contacts, I want to go directly to this contact and pull that information, or I want to go directly and create a new contact. If I want to go to my calendar, again, lightning fast without having to add unnecessary tabs at the top of the screen.

And for those of you which may be familiar with other Simpletivity demos, you may notice that this is actually my Google calendar. And yes, if we go back to our mail, this is actually my Gmail email as well.

It is super easy to sync your existing email provider, including Gmail and Google Calendar, so you can access all of your messages and all of your events in a faster environment.

Fast Mail Privacy

But let's not forget the other bonus of using FastMail, and that is your privacy. If you are using Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo, your information is being shared with advertising agencies and big marketing companies.

That means that they can read the details of your messages and use that to market ads and information to you. But with Fastmail, your messages are completely your own so they are hidden from sharing it with others.

Sanbox

But of course, getting through your email has a lot more to do than just clicking and loading things fast, we also want to make sure that we can get rid of all of that junk and hide things to work at a more opportune time.

And for that, we're also taking advantage of using SaneBox. Here on the left hand side of the screen, you will notice that I have several sane specific folders, meaning they all start with this at sane.

Because I've combined SaneBox with my Fastmail account, I have an opportunity to teach what is important, what is not, or what I would like to work on a little later in the future. So for example, here is a sane black hole. Maybe I want to stop receiving these reminders. 

All I need to do is drag that over into the black hole, and I will no longer receive those reminders from that messenger. I didn't even have to open up that message and hit the unsubscribe button or create some other filter or rule, I can simply drag it over.

Maybe I want to deal with this security alert a little later today and this email as well, no problem. I can go back and work on these messages later. And perhaps I don't want to see a particular message until next week or even next month.

Nothing is faster than simply dragging things over here to a folder on the left hand side. It saves me time from opening up the message itself, and I always know where to go when I want to go and review that message.

So if you want to spend less time in your inbox, go to fastmail.com and sanebox.com or click the links in the description down below.

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

Is your desktop in Windows 11 getting out of control? Are you tired of seeing all of these files, shortcuts and way too many things down here on your taskbar?

Well, I'm going to show you how to turn this into this, and it's only going to take you just a few minutes. Let's get started with all of the files and shortcuts, and even the recycle bin.

Desktop clean up

Everything else that tends to hang out on our desktop.  Now, if you have a particular way in which you like to group or organize all of your files or shortcuts on your desktop, go ahead and do so.

But for many people, including myself, I never really make use of this area unless I want to put something there temporarily. So you could group things together either manually by dragging them together.

We could right click and we could say sort by name or size. For example, let's say sort by name and everything's going to be vertical over here on the side, but over time, it's going to start to creep over.

Well, did you know you can right click, hover over view, and come down to the bottom and uncheck show desktop icons. 

And in just a second, they are all gone. Well, they're all gone visually. They're still there. If I open up my desktop folder, here you can see all of those same files and shortcuts exist.

I still have access to all of them, but they will never appear, nor will anything else appear here on my desktop. It will stay completely clean. If I want to go back, I can right click and then check that box. And then of course, everything else will return.

But if you want a super clean desktop and never have anything appear, you want to make use of that option. And don't forget that you can personalize this image if you want something a bit brighter or a different image altogether.

I'm going to choose this secondary theme just to sort of brighten up my screen a little bit.

‍Taskbar clean up

Next up, let's take a look at how we can clean up our very messy and busy task bar down below. I've got a lot of things going on and I never really make use of this search bar.

Well, what you can do is right click anywhere on the task bar and select taskbar settings, and this is going to give us a lot of additional options and really clean up this mess down below.

First off, as I mentioned, I don't use that search box, so if you want to hide it completely or change how it appears, you can do so.

Now that search bar is gone, and if you have any other default windows items you'd like to hide, such as the task view, widgets or chat, you can toggle them off here as well. But down at the very bottom, there's a section called taskbar behaviors. 

If we expand this, this gives us probably one of my favorite features when it comes to cleaning up our task bar.

At the very bottom, there's an option called combine taskbar buttons and hide labels. I currently have this set as never, but if I select this dropdown and say always, suddenly everything is minimized and centered on my taskbar.

It hasn't closed any of my files. You can see here, I still have two PowerPoint files open. It will give me a preview if I hover over that application. The same with any other application here as well. 

And if I want to just hover over the two previews here, I can quickly see which one I want to deal with next. But this makes everything so much cleaner, so much easier to get to. 

And if you want quicker access to your favorite applications, this is a much better area to include the shortcuts. Let's say, for example, that I use the calculator application on a frequent basis. I don't want to have to go searching for it or create some other quick key.

I'd rather have it always available here within my task bar. If I right click on this application or any application, I can select pin to the taskbar. And now even when I close this application, I'm only one click away from reopening it.

So think of your favorite applications, think what you would like to have access to most often, and you can pin them right here to your taskbar.

System tray clean up

Next, let's make sure that we clean up any unnecessary icons that are visible here on the right hand side. Here within your system tray, there's probably a number of things that you are using, but you don't need to have access to.

Well, the easiest way to minimize them is to put them here in this collection of hidden icons.

Well, all you have to do is select that icon, and drag it over the arrow and then release. And as you can see, I can quickly drag them over top, leaving only the one or two icons that I want to have direct access to. 

Now, I'd love to hear from you next. What are some of your favorite tips for keeping your desktop and your workspace clear and focused so you can work at your productive best? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching this video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.