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Is your to-do list driving you crazy?

Are you a little concerned about the length of all the tasks that you're facing right now?

Well, probably the top two questions I receive are: number one, Scott, what do you recommend as the best to-do list app?

And number two, Scott, how do I manage all of these tasks?

It's so overwhelming, I'm looking at this huge long list on either a sheet of paper or within my app, how do I manage all of these tasks?

Well, today I hope to share with you how to solve both of those issues, both of those questions, and you might be a little surprised by my answer.

If you are a subscriber of Simpletivity, you're probably familiar with my video on using a calendar as a to-do list.

And today I wanted to revisit the benefits of using your calendar as your to-do list, because it's gonna help you with both of those issues.

First off, in terms of which app you should be using, or at least be considering.

And number two, how to manage a very lengthy to-do list.

Now, the number one reason why I recommend you explore using your calendar as a to-do list is because you're already using it.

You're already using your calendar to manage all of your commitments, all of the places that you need to be.

And you're going to be more productive.

You're certainly gonna be a lot more efficient if you don't have to switch back and forth between more and more apps, from your calendar app to your email to your to-do list to your project management list.

If you can minimize the number of applications you need to go to to figure out what you should be focusing on, you're going to be more productive.

So, since you're already here in your calendar, why don't we maximize the capability of our calendars by adding a to-do list.

And here you see, up in the all day event area, is where I keep all of my tasks, all of my to-dos.

And one of the great things, not only do I not have to travel to a different page or to a different location, but I can see the relationship between my tasks on a given day and my other commitments, whether these are physical commitments, places where I need to be, or perhaps they're just phone calls and other meetings that I'm going to be joining that day.

Too often, our to-do list apps do not allow us to see our calendar events on the same screen or at the same time.

And so, we're sort of managing them separately.

We start to look at a long list of to-dos like this one here and we say yeah, that looks good, and yeah, I think I'll accomplish that all in that day.

But here you see I have quite a few meetings scheduled for that day.

Maybe this isn't realistic that I accomplish all six of these tasks while I have a minimum of four hours of meetings that day.

And perhaps I'll have a few more meetings by the time I get to this date.

So, seeing the relationship is a great benefit of adding your tasks, adding your to-dos here at the top.

Now, just as of note, you can do this for virtually any calendar application.

This is usually the area reserved for an all day event.

And if I go up here and click and want to add another event, let's say I'm gonna email Ted regarding the meeting.

It is, yes, it is going to technically be created as an all day event.

But again, I'm using this area to manage my tasks and manage my to-dos.

It's not gonna stop you from adding an all day event.

Maybe you're going away on a holiday or going away on a vacation.

But you can either use a different colored label, you could use all caps, you can always make a distinction between your tasks and your all day events.

Now, in terms of managing a very lengthy list, let's take a look at that in a bit more detail.

In your to-do list app manager, it's probably so easy to add tasks that they just start to bulk up on a given day.

And most to-do list applications give you a due date feature.

That's a pretty standard feature, right, with our to-do lists?

When is that task supposed to be due?

But what they often don't ask you is when do you wish to accomplish that task, or when do you actually wish to start working on that task?

'Cause that's a little bit different than a due date.

And pretty soon we have a large number of tasks with the same due date.

And then we start to defer, right?

We push it one over, we push it one over here.

Well, when you see all of your commitments on the same screen, you can be really honest with yourself and say you know what?

This is not realistic, the marketing report does not need to be done that day, so I'm gonna push it over here until Wednesday.

Now again, getting back to that defer capability within a traditional to-do list app, usually it's just a standard defer to the next day.

But because, in our calendar, we can see the next day, both the task that we want to accomplish that day and our meeting commitments, instead of just deferring it one day, we may say you know what?

This is already starting to pile up, I know what the other commitments are this day, I'm gonna take this one and I'm gonna move it to Thursday, or maybe I'm gonna move it to next week.

I can push things around and easily see where I am working on different tasks.

When you have 17 or 23 different tasks here in the event area, yeah, that's gonna start to squish and push everything else down here in your calendar view.

But you're probably not going to keep it at that length.

I honestly feel that limitations can be liberating.

And in this case, we want to see that, we want to see if something is piling up on a given day, and then we can start to be honest with ourselves.

Do we need to push things around?

Do we need to renegotiate deadlines and so forth?

Far too often, I find people complain that when they're using their traditional to-do list app, they're regularly arriving at work or they're starting their day and they've got 20 plus or 30 plus to-dos for that day.

And they spend so much of their time just deferring or reorganizing or managing their to-do list.

It's an awful lot more difficult to have a day piled up with tasks in your calendar because you can see it grow in this type of view.

You can see it grow at the same time, you can see its relation to other tasks as well.

And speaking of those relations, I wanna highlight a few other things here.

So, for example, in this Tuesday list, I've got a task that says email team regarding a software update.

Makes sense, I've decided that that's a good day to notify the team of the software update.

However, if I look down below, I'll realize that I'm actually meeting with my team earlier that morning.

Maybe I don't need to send out an email, maybe I can take this task and reserve five minutes to share that information with my team in this meeting.

If I was only viewing this in my to-do list app, I probably wouldn't even be aware of this team meeting, and I would leave it here.

Another good example would be if when we look at the Friday column, here you see I'm gonna be away all day, or most of the day for a conference.

But at the top, I've got a task that says meet with Karen regarding a particular topic.

Well, if Karen works in my office, I want this to happen in my office, and I'm not gonna be able to do this at the conference.

Because I can see the relationship between these two, I can pull this one back and say you know, I'm gonna fit that one in on Thursday when both myself and Karen are within the office.

So, I would encourage you to explore using your calendar.

It doesn't matter if you're using Google Calendar, whether you use Microsoft Outlook, whether you use virtually any other type of digital calendar, you can use your all day events as tasks, you can use it as your to-do list.

And if you're already using your calendar as a to-do list, I would love to hear your feedback.

What are some of the pros, some of the cons that you've experienced by using your to-do list in your calendar app?

Please leave a comment down below and share your feedback.

If you liked this video, I'd love to get a thumbs up from you.

And if you didn't like it, well, please just be honest.

Of course, I'd love to have you subscribe right here to Simpletivity.

We have many more productivity videos to help you be more efficient and effective.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

As you manage your various projects and to dues and tasks within Trello

you may find the need to create a recurring card

to have a particular card we appear at a regular interval

let's take a look at this card for example

let's say I need to email my manager a weekly report

and this is something that I need to do each and every week

so how should I manage this card

should I archive it and then create a brand new card each and every week

well there's a much easier way

and the best way to do it is to enable the card repeater power up

to access your power up select the menu select power ups

and you will get your full list of power ups

now it should be noted if you are a free or basic user of Trello

you are only permitted one powerup per board

if you'd like to enable all of these power ups

you will need to upgrade to Trello business-class

so here's the card repeater power up

and I'm going to enable it

there's really no other settings that we need to adjust at this point

we can close this menu

so now when I go into this email manager weekly report

you will see that I have an additional button here under power ups

I have a repeat button

so if I click on this I get a few different options as to how frequently

how often do I want this particular card to repeat

we've got three choices here

weekly monthly and yearly

and if you'd like to have something more frequently

let's say you do have something that you want to repeat daily

you would simply need to check the weekly option

and then check all the days of the week

but in most cases not a lot of people have particular tasks

that they're going to be managing that frequently

so now let's say in this example here

I want to set it at weekly

and I'm going to leave it at 12 noon

that sounds like a good time for this card to display

and I want it to pop up on Thursday

I need to get it in before the end of the week

so maybe Thursday at noon with good time for this card to reappear in this particular list

I do have a few additional options here below

I don't have to do it every week

it could be every two weeks or some other distance criteria that that we like depending on what you pick above

so for example if I select monthly

I can choose not only the number of the number of months

but other choices will come up

such as you know do I want on the first of the month

which date of the month

or maybe I just want it on the very last day of the month

but let's go back to our weekly example

weekly on Thursday

I do want it to appear every week

you also get a choice of which list you would like this card to reappear

and I'm going to stay with tasks

and lastly what position do I want it to appear at the very top of my Trello list or at the bottom

I'm going to say top

and then depending on the complexity of the settings up above here

I think it's nice the Trello gives us a nice summary of what we've selected

you will see this card repeat on March 30th 2017 at 12:00 p.m.

so it tells you the next time that this card is going to repeat

and then another helpful note below that is if this card is deleted or moved to another board will stop repeating the card

so as long as you archive this card and keep this card within this particular board

it will continue to repeat

all I need to do is select save here

you can see my next repeat here at the top of the Trello card

and I can get on with my day

so now when I select this card and let's say I've completed it

so I'm going to say archive tells me that this card is archived

but in just a day's time in that tomorrow happens to be Thursday

that card is going to reappear at the top of my list

so if you have the need to have certain cards repeat or reappear at a certain time

be sure to check out the card repeater power up

thank you so much for watching

if you enjoyed this video

I would encourage you to give it a thumbs up

and be sure to subscribe

remember being productive does not need to be difficult

in fact it's

Several months ago

I came across the 5 a.m. podcast

and my eyes just lit up

because for someone who has started their day at 5 a.m. for nearly the past decade

I wanted to hear all about the 5 a.m. podcast and Jeff Sanders

so I am really excited to have Mr. Jeff Sanders

the author the host of the 5 a.m. miracle joining me today

we're going to be talking about mornings

how we can get the most out of our mornings

and the benefits to our productivity

the benefits to the rest of our day by waking up bright and early

so Jeff thank you so much for joining me

well thank you Scott decide to be here today

so tell me a little bit about yourself Jeff

tell me a bit about your story

and how did you get into helping others be more productive

it's a great

Jeffs story

Question

and whole thing kind of happened by accident for me

I was working a day job about probably 6 years ago or so

and I had my full-time job

I was building a side business

which is what I do now with my podcast and blogging and all the other things I do

but I also had a marathon to train for

and so with a nine-to-five job side business marathon training my life was just crazy busy

a lot to get done which is like most people

we all have busy lives

but I was trying to figure out how do I fit these pieces of the puzzle together to make everything fit

and the only answer I could come up with was to wake up earlier

to go for my morning run

and then that would become my new system to get to my day

at that point I was not an early riser

this was kind of like a foreign concept

it sounded like torture

but yet I realized that this is the only way that I can squeeze everything in

so I got up early one morning

went for a run

and just fell in love immediately

like not only I loved running

but I realized there's something magical happening early in the morning during sunrise

like there's something that is better that's happening there that I was not experiencing

and so I continued to wake up early to train for my race

and then over the course of the next few months I finished the race

but I still wanted to get up early

and I wanted to use that time for other projects

and so it became just this habit of mine to wake up and utilize those morning hours for something that was important to me

and then once I started to do that to blog about it

talk to my email my followers about it

I realized there's a podcast here

there's something that I could share on a bigger scale

about these simple concepts of waking up early

being productive

having healthy habits in your day

you know just simple concepts

but ones that have a really dramatic effect on how much you get done every day

fantastic

you know I have a very similar story of myself when I first got into running

again find the time

where do I find the time

and whether it's running whether it's a new passion

it can be very difficult to find that time

in fact when I first started running

and similar to you started training for a half marathon and then a full marathon

I had two young kids at the time

and no joke for about a two-year period

they didn't even know that dad was a runner

because I was waking up so early

well I had I had finished my run

I had taken off my sneakers

I had showered for the day

and I think one morning my four-year-old son said

dad you you like to jog

I mean this was two and a half years after training that most mornings or many mornings early in the morning

so so fantastic stuff

so you know when it comes to waking up early

I find that there's a lot of people who would like to do it right

a lot of people would like to wake up earlier

it may have been a New Year's resolution

and maybe something that they wanted to pursue

what do you find are some of the biggest coals that stand in people's way from making that jump or making that adjustment

I think most people wake it

Mental shift

Up early

is it's a mental shift

right

we all have these like simple habits that we've over time has become the way we live

and so we come to believe that the way we live now is the only way we can live

and I think that you know my story is a simple example of I was not an early riser

and then I became one

and so there was something that happened to make that possible

and I have found that the simplest thing to do

is to find something that you really want to do with those early morning hours

right

the last thing I want them to do is to you know watch a video of some guy who has a podcast and be like this guy said I should get up early so I'm going to do it

right

that's never going to stick

and maybe one day it will

but long-term the motivation

the reason to get up won't be there

and so like I begin what my story was to wake up early to go for a run to make sure I time for that thing I was passionate about

and so for most people that's the key thing

you find that thing that you want to do

and all of a sudden it's not difficult to go to bed a little earlier

to wake up a little bit earlier

to use your time a little differently

and all sudden those obstacles

those excuses you've made for yourself don't really apply anymore

because now you're looking forward to doing something that you've not been able to do up to that point

so for me it's very simple

you find that thing you want to do

and they just you build the time in for it

and ideally that time will be earlier in the day

where now you can have that focus time to get those things done

so you're saying waking up early to binge watch Netflix probably isn't a motivator for a lot of people

or wake up early to aimlessly surf via the internet probably is not going to get a stick

find something valuable

find something that means something to you

that's going to be your motivator in the morning

yeah

Search the internet aimlessly

Totally

an exact point about waking up to come you know search the internet aimlessly

I've had people tell me that's what they did

and they email me like why can't I be more productive you know at 5:30 in the morning

I'm like well what do you actually do at that time

and are those activities motivating of themselves

like do they cause you to think like I actually would love to be out of bed to do this

if you're not like legitimately excited about what that thing is

like it's not a good fit

you know obviously we really spend too many hours of our lives watching you know Netflix or surfing the web

and there's plenty of time to do that in the evening if you want

but ideally your morning hours are used for those most effective highly productive activities

so speaking about the evening

or speaking about the night before

and let's say someone wants to make that shift or make that adjustment

do you have a particular routine that you follow

or do you have some things that you suggest to people that they do the night before so they can set themselves up for a great morning

that's

Do the night before

A great question

because really an ideal morning begins the night before

and so for me the key thing is an evening boundary

so for me personally that means 8:00 p.m.

and at 8:00 p.m. everything has to stop

that means there's no more television

there's no more computer

no more phone

all electronics have to be shut off

because otherwise I will keep working

I will keep watching TV

it will just continue right

and I'll end up going to bed at midnight instead of you know 9:30

and so then my next morning is torture instead of a lot of fun

and so I'm trying to make that next morning as easy and as fun as possible

so to do that I have to actually be in bed and asleep by a certain time

so for me it's usually 9:30 or 10:00

and so to make sure that I'm actually in bed and actually asleep

there has to be this very definite shift between doing things and then slowing things down to prepare for bed

and so for me yes 8:00 p.m. boundary works well to cut those things off

and then I can shift into you know take a shower

read a book

and then go to sleep

take the simple activities that don't require you know a lot of electronics or distractions or things that would hold me back

and then ideally during that time

I'm also making a simple to-do list for the next morning

so I can write down like at 5:00 a.m. tomorrow

I'm going to do these three things

as long as I know ahead of time what those are

I don't have the excuse to not do them

because the next day I get up

my workout clothes are set out

the book I want to read is right there

whatever I need is ready

so there's fewer boundaries or fewer obstacles to get over when I get to the next morning

you know I love that suggestion of spending some time with your to-do list the day before

which is going to be at least you know several hours before you actually get to that day

I think there's a real benefit of having that separation

it often gives us a bit of a higher-level view of tomorrow

as opposed to starting the day with the to-do list where you know you may just be a half hour from that next meeting or some other crisis that's going to fall on your plate

so I love that planning out your to-do list

getting your workout clothes

getting yourself set up for a great day in the morning

now I'm sure you've come across a number of people who maybe identify themselves as night owls

you know they stay up quite late

midnight or maybe well beyond into the early parts of the morning

and maybe they've done this for some time

what do you say to those who feel that maybe getting up earlier is overrated

or that you know they shouldn't consider making that change

what do you say to some of those individuals

well it's a great question

What are you doing with your time

Actually

I live in Nashville

in music city

so a lot of musicians have these very late nights

and it's kind of built into their career

so for those people

they have kind of just like a lifestyle that warrants itself to later

you know

later sleeping patterns

and so that's one side of the equation

as your actual lifestyle will say

I have to stay up late

the other side of the equation are people that have been using to do so for just whatever reason

and so regardless of which one you which you fall into

it's about intentionality

about choosing how your time is spent

so you could say

would you have a 5 a.m. wake-up call sounds like torture

I'm not going to do it

that's fine

but then the question is

what time will you commit to getting out of bed

and when you get up

what are you going to do

and it really can be that simple

you don't have to

you know

wake up when the Sun gets up to make your day effective

but you do have to know

when I get up

here's my plan to make my day effective

and so if you are a night owl and you want to stay that way

I'm totally fine with that

it's just my question of

but what are you doing with the time you have now

if you're staying up till 3 o'clock in the morning just to you know

do whatever it is you happen to be doing

it's like that's less appealing I think

than saying

I was up till 3

but I was doing these things

and tomorrow morning

this plan here might

you know

it's all laid out

ready to go

it's a very type A approach to all this

but like

I think that that allows you to say

I'm being intentional with my time

I know what I'm doing

there's a plan for it

there's a reason for it

I find that those people who have thought about it ahead of time

ultimately

I think they end up choosing to wake up earlier by default

because they see over time

that actually works better for their energy cycles

it works better for their focus

there's fewer distractions of other people

so it's really about self-awareness

and knowing what's best for you

and then when you know that

make the right choice from there

I think that's so true in terms of what you're engaged in later in the evening or in those final hours of your day

you know

if you happen to be an author

and you find yourself doing your very best work late at night

and you're writing many, many pages

well that's great

but I think

you know

there's a pretty large percentage of people who are staying up later and later

and they're not actually being that productive

right

they're not really engaged in activities that are pushing themselves forward or pushing their careers or helping their families

whatever it may be

it's often something a little less

so I love how you've touched on

you know

those motivating tools

and how

yeah

sometimes it's our lifestyles

or a new goal

whether it's a marathon

whether it's something else big

a big change in our lives

that may make that adjustment possible

now how about when it comes to technology or tools or applications

is there anything in particular that you use or possibly recommend that make mornings that much easier

well it's a great question

What tools do you use

that you're a big fan of Trello

I use a similar system called Nozbe at n o ZB e

it's basically glorified to-do lists

it's a task manager

and basically what it allows me to do is structure my day in a way that makes sense to me in a list format

so I for a long time I used calendars

now I kind of have this hybrid model between a calendar and a to-do list

or the to-do list kind of wins out

like it's the thing that tells me here's the order that I'm going to do my day

and here the things I'm going to work with

and I can shift those things around very easily

so Nozbe for me allows me to do that

there's a lot of applications that are similar to that

Asana is one of those

Todoist is one

it isn't the tool to me though

isn't the point

the point is that you find the system that allows you to work with your brain

and you can think

you see it

you think this is how I want to operate

this is the way that I like to position my day

and make the puzzle work right

because a lot of tools I'll utilize

and go this is not the way my brain thinks

this is not how I want to go about my day

and I find one that I like

it's like oh snap I got this

let's do this

and so you find that tool that works for you

you find the one that allows you to organize your time

and then you stick to that tool

this is the biggest thing I see people do all the time

they'll get a new app

they'll use it for two days

and they're like this tool sucks

like it doesn't though

because you didn't invest enough of your life into it to really get the value from it

and so what I found was what's best is you pick something that you think is a good possible tool for you to use

and then just dive in 100%

so when I you know onboard myself into Nozbe

I put every personal

every professional goal in my life

every task

everything was in there

and then I committed to it for at least 30 days

and said I'm going to give this thing a real legitimate shot

and 30 days later

like it was just part of my lifestyle

it was the thing I wanted to continue to use

because I understood the program

I knew how

I knew all of its you know features

I know how to use it well

and I had optimized that system for my life

and I think that's a really big missing piece with technology

is that we just want to go

download a

say it's a cool app

and then we delete it the next day

or we just forget about it

like you really gotta dive in and say this is my tool

this is the thing I'm gonna commit to

and when you do that

that's where the value really shows up

I think that's so true

it's so easy to download something new right

and there always is something new right

there's always going to be something new in the App Store

or the Google Play Store

there's certainly no shortage of productivity apps

and yeah you have to invest in it

you have to dedicate yourself to at least an appropriate trial period

before you can say I'm going to go on to the next thing

so Jeff I know you're known for the 5 a.m. miracle and the podcast

and being sort of the morning guy

but I know you also help people out in productivity

much more beyond just getting up early

so what is some of your best productivity tips for the rest of the day

what's sort of something that you recommend to most of your clients

when it comes to getting the most out of the rest of their day

not just their morning

it's a great question

I mean a

Focus blocks of time

lot of the same strategies that I use in the morning actually can be applied later in the day

as an example of that focus blocks of time

something I know you're a big fan of

I know that this is a thing that works wonders in my own life

which really just says I'm going to carve out a set of time where I am distraction-free

or I can guarantee that I will do one specific task until it's completed

or until the timer runs out

either way I have a block of time where I'm not gonna have a phone call

I'm not going to have a co-worker knocking on my door

I'm not going to have distractions that most of us just kind of unintentionally let into our lives on a constant basis

and so you have to really be intentional about this

to say I'm going to guarantee a certain block of time

usually for a very important task

or one that requires a lot of creativity

or one that requires a lot of thought

because those are the tough ones that need a distraction-free environment

and so when you have those built into your day

or what it's like you know

as soon as you get to the office by 9 o'clock you're on your first focus block

and then after lunch the next focus block

you can get those into your schedule on a routine

and then you can tell your co-workers like hey guys don't talk to me from 9:00 to 10:00 I'm not available

and they will listen

and hopefully they'll do the same thing with their own work

and the next thing you know the whole office culture

everybody is having their focus time

and that everybody is getting more stuff done

and so for me like that's a phenomenal way to say we're all going to get more done

because we're not going to distract each other

and try to do our best work

yeah there's something really powerful about being deliberate with your time

rather than just being dictated by the next email

or the next phone call

or something else that comes across your desk

no matter what your working situation

whether you are self-employed

or whether you work for a large organization

I mean you're in control right

it's your job

it's your life

it's your career

sometimes we need to start acting like it

so I love that

be deliberate

block out some time

block out your schedule for your most important work

well Jeff it's been absolutely fantastic having you here on simple tivity

where can people learn more about Jeff Sanders and the 5:00 a.m. miracle

well great question

thank you for the show today

I love the fact that it's a chance to be here and talk to you

Jeff Sanders dot com is the website

my podcast the 5 a.m. miracle is on iTunes

find my book the 5 a.m. miracle also on Amazon

so over the web just Google me you'll find me

fantastic Jeff

well thank you again for joining us today

and you know for the rest of the viewers here on simple tivity

whether you're watching this bright and early at 5 a.m.

or late in the evening

we hope that we've given you some food for thought

I know Jeff has given me some great ideas

how I'm going to maybe change

adjust some of my evening habits

so I can have even that much more of a powerful morning

and remember being productive does not need to be difficult

in fact it's very simple

we live in a world where there is new content and new articles being published by the thousands each and every minute

and that can make it very difficult

as a consumer

as someone who is wanting to stay on top of a particular topic

or to browse even one of their favorite websites

to find the articles

to find the postings that are most either relevant to them

or worth their time

I mean think about it

the average blog post is somewhere in the range of 500 to a thousand words

it's going to take you a couple of minutes for you to sit through and read it

and you're hoping

you're hoping when you start that particular article that it is worth your time

well today I want to share with you a website that I find myself using more and more frequently to help me do just that

help me to find articles

help me to find content that is worth my time

and to see what other people are sharing

to see what other people are viewing as well

now the website is called BuzzSumo

and you can find it at buzzsumo.com

and let me just walk you through what BuzzSumo does

and how I use it to find content that is most relevant to me

and at the very least help me find content that other people are sharing

so all you need to do to use BuzzSumo is to use this search bar here

and you can search either by topic

you can search by keyword

now keywords are a little limited

they only limit you to about two keywords

if you start entering in more than two keywords you'll find that your results are not nearly as good

or you can decide to search by a particular domain

so let's type in productivity shall we

and let's see what it brings back

I'm going to search for productivity

and I haven't changed any of my filters here on the left-hand side

so by default it's going to bring me back all of the articles

all the content from the past year

but you

it's going to sort it by the number of total shares

so what BuzzSumo is doing

it is looking at all of the shares on the five major social media platforms

we've got Facebook

we've got LinkedIn

we've got Twitter

Pinterest

and Google+

and by default it is going to display these results by the total number of shares

right

because that might vary by the type of content that you're looking at

some may have many more Facebook shares while others may have many more LinkedIn shares

you can see here in these first two results

this first article from ENCOM

many many more Facebook engagements

however this second article from the same domain is almost equal between Facebook shares and LinkedIn shares

so it's taking a look at this topic that I've put in here

productivity

and it's bringing back all of the articles which have been published within the past year

and sorting them by total number of shares

now maybe I want something a little more up-to-date or a little more current than just the past year

well I can use any of these preset filters here

maybe I just want to look at the past month

I hit that radio button

and now it has adjusted my filter here

now I can see articles that are just specific to the past month

now I am NOT a pro user of BuzzSumo

so they will limit you to about 10 articles when you are searching by domain

but I find that is just enough for me to look through the content which it is listed here

and find at least a handful of articles that are worth my time

my theory being this

that if thousands upon thousands of people are sharing this content

chances are it's worth my time

or at least worth browsing the headline

or at least the opening paragraph

I mean if a piece of content is not being shared in any way shape or form

chances are it's probably not worth your time either

so let's see how it works if we choose to enter in a domain name

I like to visit Lifehacker once in a while

and lifehacker.com produces an awful lot of content in a single day

I certainly don't have enough time to browse through all of their content

so often I will come to BuzzSumo

I'll type in lifehacker.com

and maybe I'll select the past week radio button

and now I can see what are the most popular articles

what are the most popular pieces of content from lifehacker.com during that past week

now I don't have to browse through literally hundreds of different posts

hundreds of different articles that Lifehacker produces on a regular basis

I can just see a short summary

sort of a best-of

now they may not in fact be the very best articles

but they are certainly being shared a lot

and that's a hint that at least other people are finding it interesting

or other people are wanting to share it with others

so chances are I might find a few things in here that I'll want to read

that I'll want to consume as well

now of course you can filter in a few other ways beyond just a time frame

beyond just the filter by date

down below we have a few other options

we have an in-depth articles only

not exactly sure if this is restricting things to

journals

things that are recognized

like actual published journals

but you can choose an option there

you can filter by language

you can filter by country

you can also filter out certain domains

you can include only certain domains or exclude certain domains

and then at the very end you can even go granular in terms of the type of content that the results will bring back

articles

infographics

you can include videos

or you could exclude videos if you like as well

and of course you can always change the default order

if you don't want to look by total shares

you can always look by the number of Facebook shares for example

and change which way that the results are listed

but I find BuzzSumo can be a very very helpful tool to see what is trending

see what you may have missed in the past

I'll give you one other example which I find is very very helpful

sometimes I'll go out a bit further

let's let's change this filter to the past six months

the reason I choose this is that once in a while

and perhaps more frequently than we think

there may be an article or there may be a piece of content from your favorite website

or at least a favorite topic or subject of yours

that was not very popular in the first 24 hours

or in the first week that it was published

but if it was a quality piece of writing

if it was a very helpful piece of content

chances are that gained more and more shares over time

so once in a while I will go back to 6 months or even the past year

on a favorite topic or maybe a favorite website

a favorite domain of mine

so I can review and look back at that content

so I would encourage you to check out BuzzSumo

the free version will allow you to retrieve the top 5 pieces of content from any particular domain

and the top 10 pieces of content from any keyword or subject

and that includes all of the filtering that you can include here on the left-hand side

check out buzzsumo.com and see what is interesting to you

see what other people are sharing when it comes to topics that you are most interested in

I'd love to hear your feedback

and if you have used BuzzSumo yourself

especially if you're a content creator

BuzzSumo can be an excellent tool to see what else is trending amongst your competitors

against other people who are talking about the same things that you are

I'd love to hear your comments in the section below

and if you like this video please give it a thumbs up

and be sure to subscribe to the Simpletivity channel

remember being productive does not need to be difficult

in fact it's very simple

I have been a longtime user of Trello and I recommend Trello to both individuals and teams to help them get more done. It's a fantastic tool for managing projects and really organizing almost anything.

And it's very interesting to see how Trello has affected many other applications, particularly in the productivity space. Microsoft, about a year and a half ago, introduced something called Boards, which allows you to manage your Microsoft files and other Microsoft documents within a sort of Trello-like space.

Then roughly a year ago, Asana, which has been around for a while as a very excellent task and project management tool, introduced a Boards version of their application as well.

So today, I wanted to take a look at the Asana software. I want to look at the Asana application both from the vantage point of a Trello user and also for those who are just looking for an alternative or maybe looking for a new tool to manage either your personal tasks and your personal to-dos or if you're wanting to collaborate with others.

Let's start out. This is sort of the traditional or default view here in Asana. I'm looking at one of my projects that I've titled Personal To-Do List, and here you can see all of my tasks listed below.

Now, Asana really was developed from a task management point of view, and you can see that these check marks here are built right into the application. It's really meant to complete things, not just manage things or not just organize things, which many of us might do within a Trello board.

You can also separate your tasks by adding these sections. So here you see I've very originally titled them New Section, Section Two, and Section Three. So you can sort of break up your tasks. However, it should be noted that if you go to move your sections, it does not bring the tasks below them with them. I found this kind of surprising that the sections weren't grouping together the tasks that are below them.

So there might be some other interesting ways in how you can break up your sections and how people are using sections within Asana, but I found that a little puzzling at first when I went to go and move around my sections.

In terms of the tasks themselves, you know, very similar to a drag-and-drop system. So you can reorder them or group them any way you like. One other thing I'll note is that it's very easy to add tasks to Asana just simply hitting Enter here.

If I want to add a new task, New Task For, and hit Enter, it gets me all set up for a new task. However, I soon realize that as soon as you hit Enter, not only does it get you ready for the new task, it actually creates that new task.

So here you see I haven't entered in any text or any title for this task, but it has actually gone ahead and created it. In fact, if I just hit Enter a few times, I'm going to have multiple tasks appear at the bottom of my list.

I found myself coming back and deleting a bunch of these tasks because of the way it's set up, because of the way that it adds an additional task with the Enter key, so I wasn't a big fan of that.

Let's move over here to the right-hand side of the screen, and you can see by selecting any of your tasks, it will give you a split-screen view. So you can still see all of your tasks on the left-hand side, but now we get to see the guts or the details of a particular task.

And for Trello users, a lot of this looks very familiar. We can assign a task to either ourselves or someone else, we can give it a due date, we can give it a like—you can almost think of this as a thumbs-up or maybe a voting button.

You can favorite tasks within Asana. You can have the ability to have subtasks, which is a really nice feature here within the Asana application. You can attach documents and other files and some other functionality such as copying and merging tasks, that type of thing.

Now, another thing to note is that you also have the ability to have a task appear in multiple projects. Right? You may have a single task which will benefit or is applicable to multiple projects. So you can see here this particular task exists in both my Personal To-Do List project but also in my New Website Development project.

So they can exist in multiple places. And then down below we've got some of the regular stuff—the title, the description. Here you can see I have an attachment as a part of this task, and you can see the image here as well. And at the very bottom, you have a comment section where you can have a discussion with other members who may have access to this project.

Now, I will admit this detailed view of the task did leave me feeling a little cramped. You don't have the option of just seeing the detailed view without your list. It's always going to show it in this split-screen view, and so I found that this did get me feeling just a little cramped with everything sort of bunched in here.

Again, coming from Trello, I'm used to having a larger card or a larger detailed area for me to work in.

Now, a few other things I want to show you here within your project: you have a few different views you can look at. You can view your conversation so you can see a nice summary of all the conversations that are going on within this project. It's a very nice touch.

We have a calendar, which is pretty basic. You can see where tasks are due on the calendar view. You also have a progress view where you can give this project a status update using sort of the traffic light system, but you can also see a graphical representation of the number of tasks you have remaining to do here in blue and the number of tasks which you have completed.

So that's sort of just a nice visual indicator of where you're going with your tasks. And then lastly, you can view all of the files which are attached to this project.

So again, nice to have some of these summary views such as the conversations and the files—really easy to get to, really easy to access so you can view these other areas of the project.

Another nice thing with Asana is that you can access your other projects quite quickly and with ease. You can minimize or hide this left-hand menu if you like, but it's really quite quick, you know, transferring between different projects that you have here.

Another nice thing that I really like about Asana is that this My Tasks area will give you a summary of all the tasks that you are assigned to. So regardless of the project where that task lives, you can see all of those tasks here and do the same type of functionality. You can make changes to the tasks here.

But I like how it gives you a nice summary of everything that has been assigned to you regardless of how many projects you're involved with.

So I started off by talking about Boards and how Asana introduced Boards. So let's take a look at what Boards look like in Asana.

Now, probably the most important thing to note is that if you are desiring a board view in Asana, you have to make that decision from the get-go. You have to make that decision when you first create the project.

So here, I've created a project. I've titled it Content Planning and I've even put in parentheses Board Style to remind myself that this was the board project because the first two I showed you are using the traditional Asana list view. You cannot view these projects in a board style, just like I cannot view this board-style project in a list view.

And again, I found that a little bit surprising. I assume that the column headers, or what we refer to as lists in Trello, would be the equivalent of sections in our list view, but that is not the case. You do have to make that choice; you have to make that distinction when you first create the board.

So here is the board view, or the board style in Asana. Again, if you've used Trello in the past, you'll find this looks very familiar. We have what Asana calls columns here—the vertical columns—you can have as many as you like, and then we have our cards or probably more appropriately called tasks within those columns.

Because if you click on any of these tasks, we have all the same functionality, identical functionality as you would find in the list view version of Asana. Again, it looks a little more comfortable to me here that we have a larger display, a larger view of the details of that task, but everything here is exactly the same as we would find in the list view.

So, some other thoughts about Asana. I'm going to go back to the list view here just for a second. Something that I found a little, I guess a little uncomfortable—not just how cramped some of the space was here in the list view, but just how much white and gray text on top of white is displayed.

I found that there wasn't quite enough distinction as I would prefer when working with an application. We got an awful lot of white space and then most of the text is in this gray color. You know, I find that Trello does a very good job of making a distinction between some buttons and bolded text and highlighted areas, and that was something that made me a little, not uncomfortable, but just made it maybe look that much harder as to where do I need to go to make this change or find this piece of information.

So maybe too much white and not enough distinction for my own personal taste.

One other thing that really stood out to me is that here we see the activity log for what has been done or what has been changed on this Asana task, and it gives you the ability to delete the log.

Now, you do it one by one. The first one you can't change when it was created, but I can go here and say, you know what? Yeah, I added it to that project, but you know, I don't want to. Let's just get rid of that. And so it's gone. And you can see here just a few moments ago, not too long ago, I added this to this particular project. I can say, well, get rid of that.

I don't know the advantage of allowing the user or users to do that. It'd be nice if maybe you could minimize this if you think this is taking up too much space, but it really surprised me that you can go and actually delete your activity log or the timestamp. I think you always want the ability to go back and see when something was changed.

So there you have it. Asana somewhat through the eyes of a Trello user or a Trello expert. Which one is better? It's going to come down to personal preference and what you are trying to accomplish, what you are trying to do.

I would love to hear your thoughts about Asana and also Trello. What do you use these applications for and which do you think shines brighter depending on the circumstance? What do you use these particular pieces of software for? If you like this video, I would encourage you to give me a thumbs up down below and be sure to leave a comment as well. I would love to hear your input and also hear what are some of the other pieces of software or other types of videos you would like to see here on the Simpletivity channel. And if you haven't already done so, please be sure to subscribe. We would love to have you as a part of the Simpletivity community. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult—in fact, it's very simple.

It is so important that we are clear and concise with our communication.

And today, I'm not actually going to focus on our verbal communication but our written communication.

And no, I'm not talking about short pieces of text like email or text messaging.

Today, I want to look at some longer forms of communication.

Things like a blog article, or maybe a report that you need to write, or perhaps it's even just some content that you post on your website.

It is so important that we are clear and concise with our communication.

There's a vast audience out there, right?

There's millions of unknown readers who may stumble across your article or stumble across your website.

You want to make sure that whatever it is that you're writing, it is easy for your viewers, for your audience, to digest.

Today, I want to share with you.

The Hemingway App

A free app called the Hemingway app—you can find it at Hemingwayapp.com—and that's precisely its purpose: to take whatever you have written and to help you make it bold and clear.

Here's how the Hemingway app works.

When you first visit Hemingwayapp.com, it's actually going to pre-populate the editor with some text, some default text, and it's gonna actually help you explain what the Hemingway editor does.

I'm gonna start with some of the metrics and some of the data that it's showing us here on the right-hand side of the screen.

First, it gives us a readability grade, and in this case, it's saying that the text over here on the left is a grade 6 readability, and it's saying that that is good.

Now, it's my experience that as this grade level goes down a bit closer to, I think, grade 3 or grade 4, this good actually turns to great.

And, you know, you want to think about that for a second.

Think of the variety of people who may be consuming your content.

These are people from various different back—whether it's socioeconomic backgrounds or just language—where something like English may be their second or third language.

You want to make sure that you're communicating at a level that the most amount of people can digest it and consume it with ease.

Metrics

Now, it's also going to give us some other metrics here, such as word count and character count.

You're going to find that almost anywhere, including a basic word document.

But it also has an estimated reading time, which might be helpful.

How long would you expect someone to take to read this content?

But the really good stuff, I think, is the colorful stuff that you will find down here.

And this acts as both a guide and a bit of a key as to what is happening here on the screen in front of us.

You can see that many of these sentences and several of the words are highlighted in different colors.

What exactly does that mean?

So let's go through them one by one.

The first one, highlighted blue, is highlighting adverbs.

And depending on how much you have written, it's going to tell you what your goal is or sort of what the minimum is.

And here it says that it's found two adverbs, meeting the goal of two or fewer.

Again, this is based on how many total words are in the article or in the document.

If you write more words, well, you're going to be permitted more adverbs.

But you can use this information and decide if you want to omit these adverbs or change them, or are you fine with them.

The green one is similar, but this time it's looking at the passive voice.

And again, it says that you should aim for two or fewer based on the number of words here.

And they are highlighted in green.

Simpler Words

Shade has to do with using simpler words, and they will provide a simpler alternative.

So here in the second paragraph, you can see that in their default text, they've used the word "utilize."

You can utilize a shorter word in place of a purple one.

Well, there is a simpler alternative to "utilize."

When you hover over that text, it's going to give you a suggestion.

We can either replace it or maybe just try to omit it altogether.

If I like the suggestion, I can click on it, and it just replaces it.

And there you can see that now that purplish shade is gone.

I can move on to something else and decide if I want to make changes there as well.

The last two shades—the first one is yellow, and then the last one, sort of a reddish-pinkish—has to do with the complexity of a sentence.

Yellow identifies sentences that are hard to read.

Here, you see we have an opening sentence, and then the pinkish color identifies sentences that are very hard to read now the great.

Editing

thing about the Hemingway app is that you can edit this and it can make the changes dynamically so in this first sentence a simple fix would be just to split this one up I'm going to delete and put a period there and let's put a capital there on the on the if and now you can see that that yellow is gone it's a much easier sentence to read for the audience to come along and consume this and hopefully continue to read the rest of this article or this this report now you of course don't need to make all

of these changes to make your writing as clear and concise as possible but what I do like about the Hemingway app is that it highlights these facts and then you can make the decision if you want to make changes if you want to make these edits based on the recommendations here now one thing is I don't recommend that

Writing

You actually do your writing within the Hemingway app.

If I select everything here and delete it, I can easily get a back blank screen, and I can start to type out my article or maybe my website content.

But this is a web app, and so nothing is actually being saved as I go along.

The second reason why I don't recommend that you write within the Hemingway editor is that with all of these shades that are coming up as you write, sometimes that can be a little tricky in terms of identifying.

You know, you can get stuck on a certain passage and say, "Oh, well, maybe I should say it this way or say it that way," when what you're looking for is more of a flow, right?

Where you're looking to just get things down on screen and not really think about editing should always really be the second part of the writing process.

Now, it does give you the option here in the top right-hand corner.

You can select "Write," and then it's gonna hide all of this information here, and it will not highlight things as you go.

But again, I prefer to write in a place where things are going to be saved, and I can always paste it in here later.

So that's typically what I'll do.

Let me go and grab some text that I've written previously, and I'm just gonna paste it here into the editor just to show you what it looks like.

So, you know, immediately you don't have to write it in the app to get the benefits of the app.

Here you can see it's highlighting some of my sentences, some of my words, and what I like to change these.

And it's giving me the data on the right-hand side, and you can see how things like my adverbs and passive voice, the minimum number has increased because this is a much longer article than the first one we used in this example.

So from a workflow perspective, I'll often write in a different document, whether that's a Word document, or sometimes I'll use The Most Dangerous App, which is another online tool, but I find a really effective tool for getting into flow and to continue writing.

You can find more about that app in a previous video.

But in most cases, what I will do is I will write first, and then when I'm sort of ready to publish or almost close to posting that article or posting that piece of content, I will paste it in the Hemingway app.

And then I'll make some final touches, right?

I'll see the suggestions here, I'll see the words or the sentences that are highlighted, and make those changes there.

I have even used the Hemingway editor once in a while for very important emails.

You know, I want to be clear, I want to be concise, and we know when it comes to email communication, if you're not clear, chances are your email may be ignored, or you know someone will never come back to it later.

You want to be as clear and concise as possible.

So even in a few important emails, I've used the Hemingway editor, and for my website, even if it's just two or three paragraphs in a certain section of my website, I find the Hemingway editor can give me a little bit of reassurance that what I've written is concise and can be consumed by a broader audience.

If you have had experience with the Hemingway app or a similar app, I would love to hear about it.

Please include your feedback or your comments and questions in the comments section below.

And if you like this video, please go ahead and give it a thumbs up and subscribe.

We would love to have you as a part of the Simpletivity community.

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

Your calendar is probably the most basic productivity tool that you use.

In many ways, it's the lowest common denominator when it comes to getting things done.

I mean, we all use email to some extent, but some of us use it a lot more frequently than others.

Some use it a lot less.

Some use it a lot more.

A lot of us use a to-do list or a task manager app.

Some of us don't use that at all either.

If you have watched some of my previous videos, you will know that I often use Google Calendar.

I use my calendar to manage my tasks as all-day events.

It's a great way to keep them front of mind.

They're at the top of my list, and I can't ignore them because I'm in my calendar so often, looking at other appointments and other events, places that I need to be.

I really like having those tasks in front of me at the top of my calendar.

Well, today, I want to show you how to adjust some of your notifications in Google Calendar.

Make them optimal for you, make them optimal for your specific workflow, and in particular, I'm going to show you one little checkbox that you may not have used before in the past that's going to help you set yourself up for a great day.

To adjust your notifications in Google Calendar, we want to select the little gear icon in the top right-hand corner and find settings.

Now, the very first tab that you're going to see here in settings is going to be a general one.

We want to click on the calendars tab here, and here you're going to find the list of all of the calendars that you have associated with your Google calendar.

Now, in this particular example, I really don't have that many other calendars, but if you have more, you're going to see them under this other calendar setting.

But if we go all the way to the right, we're going to see the notifications column, and we want to be able to select the edit notifications link.

This is going to give us a variety of options of how we receive and when we receive these notifications.

Now, at the very top, we've got two different types of notification settings.

The first one is event notifications.

The second one is all-day event notifications.

Now, the second one probably has cleared up what the first one means, right?

The second one is things like the tasks I just showed you on my calendar.

These are things that are all-day events.

They don't necessarily have a start and an end time, but they're attached to an entire day, or they may be stretched over multiple days.

The one up above, event notifications, are specific meetings or activities, places that you need to be.

These have a distinct start time and finish time, right?

It can be a meeting with Greg at 1 p.m., or a dentist appointment, which starts at 10:30 in the morning.

Now, we've got a few different options as to how and when we will receive those notifications.

So here you see I have set up for my event notifications.

I'm going to receive a notification 10 minutes before each event.

Now, when it says notification, it means that I'm going to receive a desktop notification.

Right when I'm here in my browser, that's where that notification will appear.

And this notification will also apply to your smartphone, phone, or your tablet device, if you'll be notified by those notifications as well.

The only other option that we have here is email.

If you'd rather have an email notification, you can make that selection.

And then you might want to adjust the time difference as to when you will receive that notification.

Ten minutes just before an event might not be long enough.

You might want an hour before.

You may want a few hours before to remind you for those events.

But for the way that I use Google Calendar, just the desktop, just the in-browser notifications suffice my needs, and 10 minutes is about right for me.

Now, the one thing to note is that you can have multiple notifications set up.

So if you do want email notifications as well, you can do that.

You can do that too.

You can continue to add notifications, maybe at different time lengths, or maybe just at different times, you know, different types, email and regular notifications.

You can also change these settings within your individual events.

So, for example, I like the default here of 10-minute notifications for all of my events.

And if there's something particular, I might adjust the length, or I might adjust the type in that individual event.

A good example would be something significant like a birthday in my family.

I will often have multiple notifications for someone's birthday coming up.

I might have an email that comes out maybe two weeks before someone's birthday, my mother's birthday, for example.

And then maybe I'll set up a second email three or four days before her birthday in case I've forgotten.

Because in case I ignored that first email, just another reminder, hey, this special event is coming up.

You don't want to miss it.

You want to make sure you've got your presents or your cards or whatever else you need to get together for that event.

Now, for my all-day events, you can add further notifications if you like, but I prefer not to.

You know, these are my to-dos.

I'm very engaged and involved in my calendar, so, you know, for me, I would rather not have a notification shown.

But of course, just like our time-based event notifications, you can add multiple ones as well.

Now, the only thing left on this notification settings page is the last section, which is entitled "Choose how you would like to be kept up-to-date."

And here you have two options, either email or SMS.

These would be text messages.

Now, you will need to set up your mobile phone in order to receive those text messages.

And here you can see I have not linked up my phone with this account.

That's because I really have no interest at this time in receiving text messages for these updates.

Email will suffice.

And you know, these first few choices have a lot to do with events where you have been invited to or you've invited others to.

So I have things here like new events.

Receive an update when someone sends you an invitation, when someone changes an event, when someone cancels an event, or here, receive an update when guests respond to an event for which you can see the guest list.

So again, most of these things are involving other people, either people that I've invited to a calendar event or I've been invited to.

But the last one on this list is where I really want to focus our attention.

The daily agenda sort of gets hidden here at the bottom of the page, so I'm sure there's many of you who have maybe not been aware of this option.

So by selecting this box, "Daily Agenda," you will receive an email with your calendar's agenda every day at 5:00 a.m. in your current time zone.

So depending on your personal workflow, depending on how you receive information, depending on how you would like to get a summary of your day, this may be an excellent way to receive it.

Google is going to send you a very short, a very concise email showing both your time-based events but also your all-day events in one single email.

And the great thing is that if you do manage multiple calendars within Google Calendar, you might have seven, you might have 12, you might have many, many more calendars.

For each one that you check this box, you will need to go into each calendar to select this box.

But no matter how many you've selected, you're only going to receive one email.

A single email.

So don't worry about checking this box for four or five or six different Google Calendars thinking that you're going to receive four, five, or six different emails at 5:00 a.m.

No, it's going to combine it all into one single email.

One single email for you to review.

So it can be an excellent way to start your day or review your day to get that email in your inbox and see all of your events there.

Now, be sure whatever changes that you make on this page, be sure to select "Save" so that those changes can be applied and you can start to receive your daily agenda.

Now yes, that time, as you can see, it is hardwired.

You cannot adjust that time for 5:00 a.m., and it is going to be based in your current time zone.

But I think for most people, that's probably a good time.

I can't see many people wanting it much earlier than that.

And if you're wanting it for sort of a planning purpose or what's coming up today, that's typically a good time to receive that daily agenda.

So try out and investigate some of the notification settings that you have for your Google Calendar.

You can experiment with different time lengths and different times and see if you like the daily agenda.

Thank you so much for watching.

If you liked this video, I would encourage you to show it.

Give me a thumbs up down below.

Add a comment.

What do you think about the notification settings within Google Calendar?

And we have many other videos here at Simpletivity, so we would love to have you subscribe.

Tell us what you think.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

I'm going to assume that in your role you probably have to do some type of writing

perhaps you write a regular blog article for your own personal website

or perhaps you write blog content for your company or organization

perhaps you are starting to write a book and you have a goal to write a new chapter each and every week

or perhaps you just need to get that marketing report done or some other piece of written work done this week

well today I want to introduce you to the most dangerous writing app and I love that title

you can find it at the most dangerous writing app.com and the entire purpose of this application this web-based tool is to keep you in flow

I don't know if you're like me but when I go to write something I'm often a bit of a perfectionist

and I overanalyze what I'm writing while I'm writing

too often I have started to write an article or started to write a report and after the first two sentences I start to overanalyze those sentences saying well that's not exactly what I wanted to say

or maybe I'd like it to sound a bit more like this

and I waste a lot of time because as any established or professional author will tell you

you want to get into to some type of flow

you want to get into some type of rhythm

you can always edit it later and in most cases you should edit it later

and that's what the most dangerous writing app can help you with

here you can see their tagline don't stop typing or all progress will be lost and that is very and 100% true when it comes to the most dangerous writing app

here's how it works you get a choice of either the length of time that you would like to write or the number of words that you would like to write

so it has several different defaults

no you cannot select your own specific length or your own specific word count

but they give enough variety here I think for any writer to use or benefit from

so here's the number of minutes that you can select from

and I usually prefer this one is the number of words

when I sit down to write a new blog article I'm usually targeting somewhere around 500 Words so that's the length that I will select

I'm not really sure about this one 1667 words I don't know if that's an inside joke for writers or authors

if you know what this number is referring to please leave your answer or leave your comments in the section below

now I'm going to get back to hardcore mode a little bit later but let's don't worry about that just yet

so let's say you want to sit down and you want to write for five minutes so we've got minute selected and then we've got five

the next step is we select the big start writing button and then we get a blank page

we get a blank canvas to start typing

now just before I begin start typing I just want to highlight few of the other things that we see on this screen

number one I love that most of it is blank

this is not a place to do any editing bold italicize bullet points this is pure for writing

if you have a preference of a dark contrast or a light contrast it allows you to do that

you can expand the entire screen if you want to hide even your web browser

and then at the very bottom you can see we have our word count and it doesn't matter if you've selected a time limit or a word count limit it's always going to show you the number of words down below

and then lastly you will see right here creeping out from the top left corner there will a progress bar that will start to branch out

now this will either represent the amount of time that I've selected

and so in this case we've selected 5 minutes so you know it's going to slowly creep out across here until we get to 5 minutes on the right hand side of the screen

or it will represent the number of words that you have typed if that was your goal

so how does it work

so I haven't started yet as soon as I start typing it is keeping track of how often my key are on the screen and if I pause it's going to start fade

oh did you see that it started fading there a little bit now I have a tough time talking and typing at the same time so yeah this is a little gobbly go

but I'm going to stop again and watch it's going to start to fade

and I'm going to stop it once more now this next time I'm going to let it fade out and it's about a 5-second interval and if you stop typing for 5 seconds it's gone

I failed even gives me a big red screen and yeah you can see how many words you wrote

and no I don't feel like tweeting this out to anyone but the entire concept is this if you stop typing within that interval whether it's a time-based or a word-based you are going to lose everything

the goal here is just to keep writing

keep it coming keep writing

you can always edit it later and if you achieve that milestone if you achieve that limit that you have set out to do well then can keep the work

right nothing's going to happen you're not going to get this red screen in the future so if we say try again it's just going to bring us back and keep us at that time limit

let me show you that fail once again

so again I'm a poor typer and speaker at the same time so I'm just sort of putting some garbage down here in front of me

and here you can see this progress bar right which is a timer in this case

but if I wait right it's going to give a slight fade

oh oh I better yeah let's keep writing let's keep writing

so it is going to give us a bit of a visual indicator and then if I wait too long and it is gone

I fail oh nine words again they weren't really words it was really more a mashing of keys in this example

but I have actually used this quite regularly over the last few weeks

let's go back to the home screen just so I can show you that last setting which is hardcore mode

now this one really surprised me and I think this is only for experienced writers because I'll show you exactly what happens when you select hardcore mode

you can do it for minutes or words it's available in both both options

but if I say start writing you'll see that my screen looks a little bit fuzzier right

you can't even see that that says start typing and watch as I start entering in some keys it quickly puts the letter of the key that I'm hitting at that moment but you can see I can't actually read what I'm writing

now I guess for some very experienced writers or authors this is fine

you know just a stream of Consciousness just keep it coming without even being able to proofread it

and of course if you stop typing you're going to get the exact same fail screen

I have not used hardcore mode before I am not ready for that and I don't think I'll ever be ready for that

I do want to see what I have just written down and how that forms what comes next

but this may be a very big help to you especially if you're in a bit of a writing rut

I've used this for a variety of different content

most often for articles and blog content

recently I actually used it when I wanted to compose a letter to a relative of mine

it was around the holidays I really wanted to reach out to this person and I sort of kept putting it off

but I wanted to give something a bit more meaningful than just a five-sentence email or short paragraph in an email

and the most dangerous writing app helped me to do so

it allowed me to sit down write about 500 Words

just let it come out just whatever was on my mind whatever I wanted to say and express

and then of course I didn't send that letter as is

I went back

it's very easy you you'll get it in a in a Note file in a text file

sorry is how you can export it or you can just copy and paste what you see on the screen and then put it in a Word document

put it in a web page put it in your blog editor

wherever you'd like to edit it afterwards

and in my particular example it was great

I could edit the letter

I could edit some of the content

but the important thing was it allowed me to do it in a much shorter period of time

because I knew if I stopped writing I was going to lose it all

so check out the most dangerous writing app

you might want to start out just by doing it for fun

but you might be surprised how it can help you get more done and really get into that writer's Zone

achieve that type of flow with your writing

I'd love to hear your experience with the most dangerous writing app

so be sure to share your experience in the comments below

remember being productive does not need to be difficult

in fact it's very simple