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Introduction

There are an awful lot of website builders available but which ones are best when you're starting a new business or building a brand new site? Let's find out. (upbeat music)

Weebly (Best Simple Builder)

The first website builder on our list is Weebly. Now I first started using Weebly back in 2013 and what I loved about it was just how intuitive it is when it comes to creating your web pages and really adding anything to those pages.

Here on the left hand side, you can see that we've got all of our building blocks, all of the different components that we can add to a page and almost everything is drag and drop. If I want to add an additional button here because you can't have too many buttons, I can do so.

And even if I want to drag things around, the spacing is very natural as well. Here you can see when I pushed this button to the right hand side, it evenly spaced things out.

Now, that can sometimes be a drawback as well because what you can't do here within Weebly is adjust everything just precisely. As you'll see in some of the other website builders we're going to take a look at, Weebly does not have a grid aspect.

So you can't just drag anything everywhere but what it lacks in that it really makes up for in great looking design especially when it comes to their mobile view. So here at the top, we can preview our site in this mobile view.

Now note you cannot edit most templates or most themes in the mobile view, but I actually think that that is a plus in many cases because you want to be able to edit your website in one format or one place and just have it look beautifully in its mobile view.

And I think Weebly is very strong in that category. No matter what you create in the desktop view, things are responsive and look very, very good here in the mobile view.

So if you're looking for something that is very, very easy and quick, something that you can start to use in a matter of minutes, Weebly may be the choice for you.

Google Sites (Best for Google Users)

Now second on our list is Google Sites. And if you're already a Google Workspace user or if you use other products such as Google Drive for example, Google Sites may be the solution for you because one of Site's great aspects is that you can quickly and easily import information from your other Google tools.

So for example here, I'm going to come down here and I'm actually going to add, what I want to do here is I want to add a form. So if I come up here, I'm just going to select this section so it's highlighted here and I'm going to select forms.

And what I can do is I can select, let's say this survey and say insert and immediately I've put it right here within my homepage. It's listed here. It's ready to go. People can now fill out this survey when they visit my website.

In most other editors, you either have to use their survey or their form builder and if you want to use something like Google Forms, well then you'd have to use their embed code in order to place it here.

So if you're using things within Drive, if you're already a frequent Google user, Google Sites may be the option for you. Google Sites may be a little more limited when it comes to its drag and drop capability.

You can see that they do have somewhat of a grid format here, but it's maybe not quite as flexible as I would like to see. And that pertains to the colors as well.

If you're wanting to change the color of certain buttons and backgrounds, it will keep you within your theme. Here you can see, I can change this to the yellow or move it back to the white, so forth.

But what I like to do is a button test. And can I change any button to any color I like? And unfortunately, as of this recording in Google Sites you cannot do so.

So one of the cons of using Google Sites.

Zyro (Best Design Elements)

Next on our list is a website builder called Zyro. And Zyro really gives us an awful lot of flexibility.

Unlike the first two website builders we've taken a look at, what Zyro does is actually give you a true grid style. So for example here as I drag this image you can see all the different places where I can place it. It gives us these little squares.

And what I love about this is that I can do something like this. I can stagger my videos. I think that's a little more eye-catching as people are scrolling down this website.

This is something that is almost impossible to do in programs such as Weebly or Google Sites. Maybe I want to bring it up even more. Maybe I want to stagger them. How about something like this? Hey, that's kind of eye-catching as well.

See how easy and quick that was for me to do. The other thing that I like to do is like I said, a button test.

And if I come in here and select, edit this button, I've got my standard options such as, you know, what do I want to name this button for example, maybe I want to name it register now. But it goes more than that.

When it comes under style, I can stick with my standard button style of either dark or light but I can come down further and I can say, you know what? This is a registration type of thing so I want to make it sort of a bit of a green. Yeah, that looks pretty… That looks pretty good right there.

So let's make it that green. That's the kind of button that I want. And again, just like other elements, I'm using this grid style. So if I want this register now button to appear somewhere else within this screen, I can do so.

The other nice thing that is flexible with Zyro is that you can continue to edit in mobile mode. Now I know you just heard me say a few moments ago that this may not be a desirable feature because you have to keep track of the two, but let me just show you a quick example.

Let's say when it comes to the mobile view here you want this button to come first. You want it first and foremost. I'm going to put it at the top of the screen but that's not going to change it here on my desktop view.

So depending on your needs, depending on the level of customization, you can change things, also add and remove certain things between the mobile and desktop versions. Now Zyro is a website builder provided by Hostinger.

Hostinger is one of the most popular and reliable web hosting platforms. So if you need a safe and a secure place to host all of your websites, you should check out Hostinger.

For just a few dollars a month, you can get their premium shared hosting where you are going to host up to 100 websites and get a 100 gigabytes in storage. Hostinger also is one of the most reviewed web hosting platforms and currently has a 4.2 rating on the G2 website.

If you'd like to learn more about hosting your websites on Hostinger and get a special price, be sure to click the link in the description below.

Squarespace (Best Templates)

Now number four on our list is Squarespace. And Squarespace is popular amongst many entrepreneurs and many businesses. Why? Because they have a lot of wonderful templates to get you started.

And if you're looking for a very clean website then Squarespace may be the choice for you. Here what I need to do is actually click on edit to get into my editing mode.

And what makes Squarespace a little different than the other website builders we've looked at is that we do not have a dropdown menu or a side menu to put in building blocks. Instead, what we need to do is look at these little plus symbols which are scattered around all throughout the website.

So for example, if I want to add a button here I need to click this little plus and that will open up all of my options available to me. Now Squarespace does have a lot of elements that we can add, they even give us a handy search bar here at the top.

But if I want to add that button for example, I need to come down here and now I can start creating that content here. And it does give me some design options, but you're typically locked into that template.

Again, this may be a pro or con depending on your needs. How much do you want to go outside of the box? How much control do you want to have when it comes to changing this image for example, or do you want to make sure that it's gonna look good in the template that you're using already?

If you want something that has almost ready out of the box then Squarespace may be the right choice for you. Now, Squarespace does give us a mobile preview as well as we've seen in other areas.

And as we just saw with Zyro, you can edit this text here within the mobile view as well.

Wix (Best Flexibility)

Last but not least, we are going to look at Wix which is giving us perhaps the most flexibility of the five website builders that we've taken a look at here. Here I've uploaded a pre-made template within Wix which looks really, really good.

And if I want to come in here and change something when it comes to this image, including sizing, et cetera, et cetera, I can do so here as well. Wix gives us an awful lot of flexibility when it comes to changing our content.

But the other nice thing that Wix does here is that it gives us some other business-specific tools available to us. So for example, if I click on plans and pricing, here you can see they've actually created elements and even entire pages that are prebuilt just for our business needs.

So we're already familiar that this is perhaps the most common way in which we can sell something or put something up on a sales page. Instead of trying to design this for yourself with the little boxes and making the numbers bigger here and then adding your own buttons, you can come in here and edit this content directly.

So if I want to come in here and edit the content, you can see here on the left hand side I can edit this pricing plan. The other nice thing is that it has things such as booking online, which is not just exclusive to Wix, but what I like about it is that it's more than just an element.

They give you a full template to work with. So you can start to book immediately here within your Wix webpage and start adding that to your own calendar.

So Wix is certainly very business centric or can allow you to add these additional tools as a part of it. It may take a little bit longer for you to get comfortable with the ability to edit the different elements here within Wix.

Again, if I click this edit icon here you can see that everything is here on the left-hand side. One of the things that I don't really enjoy about Wix is that if I want to edit this text, I actually have to edit it over here on the left hand side and then I will see my changes appear here.

What I do like about some of the other tools that we've looked at today, including Weebly and Zyro, is that we can just edit that text in place. So you can see what it's going to look like live rather than going back and forth, left to right.

Now, pricing does vary among these five options and each have multiple packages, too many for me to include in this video, but I've included a link to each of their pages in the description down below.

Now is there another website builder that you think I should have included on this list? If so, 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.

What this video is all about

Believe it or not, I have never actually used ClickUp before. Despite its popularity over the last few years, this is one project management tool that I've never laid my fingers on.

So in this video, I'm gonna use ClickUp for the very first time. Now, usually I'm the one doing the teaching, but I'm looking forward to your comments so you can point out where I went wrong and what I should be looking for here as I evaluate this tool.

So ready to take a look at ClickUp for the first time with me? Let's go. (electronic whooshing)

Okay, so here I am within ClickUp and I have literally just signed up a few minutes ago. Now I've purposely decided to evaluate and to play around with ClickUp here without using a template.

I know that ClickUp has a variety of templates and that can be a great way to get started here. But in order for me to get familiar and really sort of feel my way around ClickUp, I purposely decided not to use a template.

Now I do realize, or at least I have read that ClickUp does have a hierarchy which is very flexible. So if this is my main workspace account, I've got something called a space, and then I can create folders within that space, and then lists I'm gonna assume within the folders themselves.

I'm not sure if we need a folder each time or if we can just go directly to a list, but here I've got a space, or I guess that would maximize it here. If I click up here on space, I'm assuming I can rename it here.

That seems to be just like a search for an icon here or something like that. Well, why don’t we give it an icon? Let's give it like a power.

Okay, but I want to change the name. I can't do it there.

Space, settings. Okay, that makes a little more sense. A few clicks there to get that.

But I guess if this is your department name, then that's a bit different, right? So let's say that this is marketing, review changes.

Okay, you're probably not gonna be changing this that frequently, so I get that. So let's say that is marketing.

Creating a new ClickUp Space

If I want to create a new space, do I click on everything? That's gonna show me everything.

Oh, here, spaces. I'm gonna say, add new. And I'm gonna add a new space.

I kind of like the graphics here that we're looking at a planet here or Saturn or something like that. And let's say that this is my sales department or my sales space.

And for sales, I'll give them a key and a color. That's kind of nice that you can add a color to the icon itself.

Okay, and we can either make it private or a workspace. Let's keep it open.

Okay, so it looks like there's quite a few things here when you're creating a space. But I guess that makes sense. Again, like I said before, if this is gonna be sort of a department level or higher level.

So we've got some templates here, Kanban. Yeah, I’m kind of.

Okay, so if you toggle between these things, you'd get different types of statuses. I guess you can add your own done statuses to consider.

Oh, okay. So you can choose what is done and closed. Okay, well, let's keep things fairly basis.

I’m gonna choose a Kanban. How about that? Keep it nice. And I’m not gonna add anything new here.

I understand that yeah, I could add something new here if I wanted to. I guess you could add a done and then create that as a done status.

Not exactly sure. I’m not gonna waste my time clicking on learn more. I’m having more fun exploring here.

So I’m gonna hit next in this case. And then we've got a variety of click apps which I’m gonna assume are sort of power ups, extensions, things that are added on.

I’m just gonna leave it as is hoping that some of those things will help me.

Required views versus a default view template. So again, I’m gonna stick pretty standard here.

I’ve got a board view. I like a calendar view when I’m working on my projects.

So maybe I’ll just turn that one on. We’ll just take a look at those three at the first place.

And then here, we've already seen this menu when I renamed that first status here. Or that first space, I should say.

Okay, let's create it. Let's create that space. And so now I've got sales and I've got marketing.

Sales has a list, right? Because I guess that's the list that I created with those different levels or statuses.

So let's start adding a few things here.

Adding tasks to a ClickUp List

This is sales. So let's review our sales numbers. How about that? As a task, I’m just hitting enter.

And I like, I can go directly to the next task. Let's call our former clients and let's add something else here.

Let's say, let's set up, set up new phone campaign, something like that.

Okay, so quick and easy. I like that I can just hit enter and select the next task. This does, it treated that as another task, didn't that?

Oh, no, it didn't. It’s just waiting for a task. Good. It always bugs me when something like a sauna where you create a new task and then it just, it keeps it as an actual task here.

Okay, so I've got my different tasks. Let's assign it to me. I’m the only one here.

So we’ll assign, how about two of these to me. Let's give a couple of these a due date.

Hmm, a lot of information here with the calendar. I really like that you can scroll. That's a nice touch here that I don’t have to hit an arrow over or something like that.

So that's a nice touch. And I also like this as well. This is one of my favorite things when it comes to some of my email extensions.

So this is nice. Later, tomorrow, this weekend, next week, again, rather than always having to use a calendar, I like that ability.

So let's say tomorrow, let's hit tomorrow. So that's nice and quick. I do like that.

Due date, when is it? Uh, it's next week. Boom, I don’t have to open up the calendar and select a particular day. I like that a lot.

And then we've got a priority here. Urgent, high, normal, low, clear. These look pretty static.

I wonder if these are editable. If you know if these are editable, let me know in the comments.

Let's just say that this one is high and let's say that this one is normal.

And just for fun, let's say that this one is low. Okay, now the plus is going to allow me to add, okay, so we've got custom fields here, which I haven’t set up any of these, so maybe I’ll stay away from that for now.

So these are the hidden fields. Okay, so we've got all these other things available to us here.

So it sounds like I could add that to, oh, sorry. This is just adding it directly to the view here.

But if I want to come in here, let's click and open up this task

Viewing Task details in ClickUp

And I’m sure I can add all that information within here if I need to.

So let's see, if I wanted a start date, or do I have to add that at the beginning?

Maybe I have to add that? Dependencies, edit tags, attachments, add a checklist, history.

Hmm, okay. So if I need to add further, oh, it knows that I’m using Toggl. So there we go. Great.

And I wonder if that has to do with this timer. Toggl is a time-tracking app that I've been using on a regular basis, but it looks like you can track your time right here within ClickUp, which again, is a nice feature that you don’t have to do that with a third party or something like that.

So I can track how much time I’m spending on this. I guess the next step is open or it's in the open status, let's say in progress.

Okay, and it gives us some helpful click or some quick keys, which because this is my first time today, you're probably gonna see a lot of those suggestions, right?

I've got a little undo there if I needed to go back. So let me see, if I close this now and let's say, okay, so it's gotten my different list in progress and open.

Can I drag open to the top? I would have, I almost would've assumed, or I guess it's doing it by due date.

I guess I can sort these by different, no, due date is further out than this one. So I can collapse it, but can I actually move?

I would have assumed that open would be first and then moving into in progress, but let's open up something else and let's move it to review.

Now let's see, where does that show up on this list? So, hmm. Okay, I’m a little confused or I guess I’m just not clear on this ordering here.

If it has something to do with the last time I clicked the option here or if this is default.

If I drag this, I understand I could probably drag that into in progress. Can I? No. Oh, there.

Oh, that's a sub task. Okay. What if I don’t want it as a sub task? I guess I can undo.

That's the nice thing about undo. But yeah, curious about these orders.

If I can change the order or is the completed always gonna be on the top first?

Maybe list settings. That makes a lot of sense. I wonder if there was probably a default, a default sort order or something along those lines.

But let's come over here and hit plus because maybe I want to, I guess this is mostly just lists, right?

This actually is an additional field, start date. So if I say start date, so I've got one there.

So if I open this up, is that something new that now appears? Did I not see that before?

Or was start date somewhere else? Can I view the start date here? I don’t see a place, due date.

A due date. But that is different than a start date.

So definitely a lot of options I can see. There's a lot of places that you can click on.

I've been told many times before that there is a bit of a steep learning curve here

Viewing ClickUp tasks in different ways

Within ClickUp. So, okay, well, let's leave this at that.

I've got my different lists here. Let's take a look at some of the other boards or the other views I should say.

So if I click on the board view, sort of expecting, exactly, I’m just sort of expecting what I want here.

I should be able to click things over and put them in a different level here.

So pretty standard stuff. If I can click on that.

I do like that. You can click directly on the calendar.

It looks like you can do quite a few things directly from sort of the card front or the task front itself.

So that's sort of quick and easy. And of course, I’ll be able to expand it and edit the task there as well.

Calendar view. Yeah, pretty standard. Looks almost very similar to Google Calendar.

And I imagine that you can sync this with your calendar via a URL or something along those lines.

Sync with calendar. I’m not gonna dive too far into that at this point. But, okay. So we've got a list here.

How does that differ from a folder? So if I go back to sales here, this is where we have this list.

Create a folder or a list. I’m gonna say folder this time. And so I dunno, let's say this is team A.

Okay, so this is the team A folder. Lists. Yeah, that list can be underneath it.

Share folder with task statuses. Okay, so I’m gonna say create folder.

And so I guess I've got this list is within this folder. So I can add more lists, right?

So I've got lists there. Let's add, yeah. Well, let's add list two 'cause we've got list one here.

Create that list. And maybe just one other one.

I’m probably not doing this as quickly or in the most efficient manner. There's probably some other quick keys in which you could create further lists here.

But okay, so I've got my different lists here. Can I drag those in? Yes, I can drag that into a much better order.

So these are all under this folder of team A. And then I don’t have any lists under marketing.

Let's create something called the marketing list. How about that? And say, create.

Okay, so now I've got at least one list but I don’t have many tasks here.

Let's say task number one. How about that? And task number two.

Okay, so I've got a list there and I've got a list here. So if I want to click on sales, I’m gonna get everything within sales.

I’ll admit that these sort of pop-ups here in the lower left-hand corner are relatively large. I’m sure they don’t change just because I’m a newbie.

They're almost sort of blocking my view here. So this is my list within sales and I’m not gonna see anything under, oh, and then here's my other list, team A.

Yeah, list. Oh, team A list. Oh, so I didn’t get everything.

Yeah, this list is outside side of team A. So I guess if I created another folder, I could put my first list, this list underneath it.

So a different way of grouping things. But I’ll admit, giving you a lot more flexibility in terms of how you group that information.

It's still gonna allow you to, I guess change what you see here and the statuses and everything else that comes along with it.

Okay, well, let's open up something here. And let's add a sub task, which it looks like we can add right from the beginning of the card.

So this is gonna be sub task one. And yeah, that's pretty fluid that you can just quickly and easily enter in additional sub tasks here.

And I imagine the sub tasks have all the same capability as a regular task. They're just gonna be grouped together under this master task.

We've got tags here, which makes a lot of sense. So if I say this is an email task, I can just say email.

Let's say that this is, for some reason, this is a phone call perhaps in this case. So I hit phone.

And hmm, can I change the, I’m sure I can change the color. There we go. Change the color.

I’m surprised that by default it made it such a close color to the one above.

If I say something here like this is a meeting, wow, it's really going with that reddish, pinkish, almost forcing you, I would say, forcing you to come in here and change the color, right?

Because you'd want it to stand out a bit more, right? Wouldn’t you want your tags to stand out a bit more?

And then we could group it by, can we group it by tags? Yeah, that's nice.

Although I guess they're all in the sub tasks here. So that maybe isn’t the best example to show or to use in this case, but we can do the sub tasks there as well.

If I click on sub tasks. Okay, collapse, expand all. Gotcha here.

Now I’m sure that there are many of you who have been using ClickUp for some time. I’d love to hear from you next.

Where did I go wrong? And what should I be looking for next? Especially since ClickUp does have a relatively steep learning curve.

Be sure to share your feedback and your thoughts 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.

The criteria for this list

What if your web browser could help you save time? Well, in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven Chrome Extensions, which do just that.

And the best news of all, they're all absolutely free. Hello, everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And that's right, every single extension that I'm sharing with you today is either completely free or has a free forever option. So, let's dive in.

Awesome Screenshot & Screen Recorder

How often have you been wanting to share something with someone else and you know it'd be a lot quicker if you just sent a quick video recording?

Let's say, for example, I'm redesigning my website and I wanna tell my web designer that, you know what? I wonder if we can change this image here, and change the title of this, and I like what's going on here.

Do you know how long that would take me to write in an email or include in a text message or a chat? Wouldn't it be easier if I just took a quick screen recording?

Well, that's where Awesome Screenshot & Screen Recorder comes into play. Here under Chrome Extensions, all I need to do is click on it, and I can start recording right away.

Now, just before I show you a quick demo, take a look at the variety of things that we can do here. We can record beyond just our desktop.

We can also record our webcam if we want. We can also take screen captures.

Now, in many cases, I find that many of you already have a screen capture tool that you like, but this is quick and easy if you want to record a video.

All I need to do is say Start Recording and pick what I would like to record. I'm gonna hit Share in this case.

It's gonna give me a quick countdown, and now we are recording. Now, just before I start to narrate here, what I want to point your attention to here is the bottom left-hand corner.

Because if I click on this mouse cursor, I can select to highlight the mouse. Now, you're used to seeing this here within my Simpletivity videos, but now you can do it yourself as you record videos for whatever purposes that you need.

So I can go over here and highlight something over here. If I want to, I can annotate as well.

So if I wanna say, you know what? I don't really like this one, this is not so great, but this image is great. Let's continue with that.

In the very top right, when we go back to our extension, you can see that we have a counter here, so we can see how long that video is lasting.

If I select this and hit Stop, we are going to be brought to the awesome screenshot page, where we can now preview our video here.

We can edit it if we like. The other nice bonus is that we can generate a shareable link.

So right now I can copy this to my clipboard and I can paste it in an email and share it with whoever I want. Awesome Screenshot also allows you to connect with other popular services, including Slack, Asana, and Trello.

Weava Highlighter

Number two on our list also has to do with interacting with things online, and that has to do with highlighting or retaining information for later.

How often have you been reviewing a PDF document, or maybe just a website and saying, oh, this is great? I love this quote here.

I'd like to include that maybe in my own blog article. Well, all I need to do when I have Weava Highlighter installed is I can highlight this section here, and now I am given a few color options.

I'm gonna use the traditional yellow here, and now I'm starting to highlight text directly on this website. Maybe I wanna come down here and say, you know what?

This is a great quote as well. I'm gonna highlight that as well, but maybe I wanna remind myself what this is all about.

If I click on this highlight again, I can even take a note. This is a great quote. Maybe we wanna include this in, like I said, a blog document or something along those lines.

Now this note is going to be saved with this highlighted option here. What we can do is go into Weava, and now we can see all of the notes that we've collected online.

So here you can see I've collected a few notes, a few highlights I should say, and my notes are saved along with it as well.

The great thing is that whenever I come back to this particular webpage, my highlights are going to be waiting for me here.

So it doesn't matter if I close this tab, if I refresh the page, as long as I have the Weava extension installed, I can come back here on all of my highlights and notes will remain.

Currency Converter PRO

Number three on our list has to do with something that I use quite often, and that is currency conversion. So we wanna take a look at Currency Converter PRO.

So it sits here along with your other extensions, and it's quick and easy, and you don't have to open up another tab.

So here I can just enter in a dollar value, I can select the currencies that I want to convert, and I can get an accurate up-to-date currency conversion.

So if you're dealing with international customers, if you're needing to know the true cost of something, if you're seeing something online, which is not in your own currency, you can easily use this here.

Now, the other nice thing is that we can actually add multiple currencies as well. So let's say there's a few different currencies that you use on a regular basis.

I'm just gonna select these four, for example, and now I'm gonna have them listed here in this window. So if I wanna type in something like $50 US as of today, well now I can see immediately the differences in these other currencies.

And the great thing is that it's just always there when you need it. If I come back here, I can quickly save these currencies that I use most often, and come back and forth, or maybe it's just the top two that I want to go through, or maybe I wanna convert them a different way.

Quick and easy, and I can get on with the rest of my day.

Momentum

Now the next extension on our list is gonna help us save time in a slightly different way. When we open up a new tab, we're often jumping and bouncing around from the variety of different things that we have open at any given time.

But watch what happens when I hit a new tab here. Instead of getting the traditional Google page, which is gonna show me some of my more recent apps or my favorite bookmarks, here, I'm going to get a reminder.

The Momentum Chrome Extension is not just gonna show you the time and give you a greeting and a nice background, which will change throughout the day, but it helps you focus so that you can enter in your number one objective.

So for example, here, I might type in something like, Make a new video. That's maybe my main focus for today.

So every time I open up a new tab, I'm gonna be reminded that making a new video is really what I should be doing today. Now, Momentum is quite beautiful, right?

It's gonna give me the temperature, and it's gonna give me a nice motivational message, and I can customize these things as well.

But what I really like is that you can have your number one task, or your highest priority always visible here so that you can accomplish it and not get sidetracked by everything else on your day.

GetColor

The next extension on our list has to do with colors, especially if you're ever designing or needing a particular color for a presentation, or a website or whatever it is that you do.

How often have you been trying to impress a client, and you say to yourself, boy, I'd really like to get this particular green color, 'cause I know they use it all throughout their website, I'd like to add it to my presentation, but how do you figure out exactly what this green is?

Well, that's where the GetColor Extension comes into play. Up here, if I select the GetColor Extension, I can play around and select a variety of different colors here, but what I use GetColor most often for is this Pick selection here.

So if I select Pick, you can notice that there's a little square beside my cursor. And when I hover over a color, it's going to grab that color.

So let's say I want this green, I'm gonna select that, I'm gonna click it. And when I come back up to GetColor, here is the exact hex color code, which I can select, and I can copy.

Now that it's copied to my Clipboard, I can paste it wherever I need to. So let's say I'm doing a presentation here, and I really wanna impress the client by using this text with their color.

So what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna go to my Colors, go to my Custom Colors. And all I need to do is paste in what I just selected.

I'm gonna say OK, and now I've got their exact green. It's not just close, this is exactly the green that I saw.

So, GetColor can not only help you save time, but make it so much easier for you to grab the colors that you need anywhere on the web.

Picture-in-Picture

Next up, let's go into YouTube for a second. And let's say that you're following a tutorial, such as, oh, I dunno, maybe my Gmail settings tips tutorials.

And one of the frustrating things is that as you follow along with any tutorial, you may need to switch back and forth, right? Someone is showing you how to do something here, but then you've gotta go to a new tab to actually make those changes and follow along.

Well, that's where the Picture-in-Picture Extension by Google comes into play. So here we are. I am perhaps watching this video, and I want to follow along as this person is changing these settings here.

All I need to do is come up here and select Picture-in-Picture, and it will take that video and pop it outside. So now I can go to any tab. I can even go to my desktop if I want, I can hit the play button, and I can start to follow along.

As they are making changes here, I can follow along and make my own changes. If I need to resize the window, no problem.

I can make it a little bit bigger, I can make it a little bit smaller. I can hit this pause button if I need to make the changes here quickly, and then come back here and hit play and follow along again.

So, Picture-in-Picture can be extremely valuable if you need those YouTube videos on a separate tab or on a separate screen.

Trim for Netflix

Speaking of videos, last but not least, my final extension today, it's maybe a bit of a fun one, but it helps me save a lot of time, especially if I'm trying to browse and find what I'd like to watch next on Netflix.

I get really tired browsing through Netflix, finding things that are actually worth watching. And I often use a website called IMDB to find their ratings.

And here you can see, I've got the IMDB ratings here, so I can try to filter out the things that are something that are a bit more interesting, or at least other people find interesting as well.

But you'll also notice that a bunch of the videos are grayed out. Why is that? That's because I can set the IMDB rating filter level.

So let's say I want to think look at things that are only, like a 7.8 or above. Well, now you can see, I've got a few more videos that are blocked out as I scan through and only see things with that number or higher.

Maybe you don't wanna use IMDB, that's okay. You can also set the Rotten Tomatoes Score here as well, and you can even choose a different date range if you only want to see things that are released after the year 2000, that will filter out things as well.

Last but not least, what this has is also something called a Trim Button. So if there's a particular category that you don't want to see here.

So for example, Critically Acclaimed Dramas, maybe I don't wanna see this as an option today. I can hit this X, and it's going to remove it.

So I won't see it anymore as I browse through these titles. A bit more of a fun one, but one that helps me save time as I try to find something worth watching here within Netflix.

Now, if you have a favorite Chrome Extension, I would love to hear from you. Perhaps I can feature it in a future video.

Be sure to let me know, and share it with others 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.

Why I decided to give you a tour

What does my workspace actually look like? Well, in this video, I'm going to give you a full office tour.

Last year, I moved into a new home and thus, a new office. And after many requests, I've decided to give you a tour of my setup.

Now, this video is gonna be broken up into two parts. The first, we're gonna be focusing on my desk and what helps me to stay productive throughout the day.

And then in the latter half, we're gonna be looking at a few things that are a bit more video conferencing or YouTube specific. So, without any further ado, let's jump outside my office and let me welcome you to my workspace.

Desk setup for daily productivity

Here we are outside of my office, and I wanted to start here with a very important piece of technology. My handwritten cardboard do-not-disturb sign, very, very important.

Well, without further ado, let's open up this handle and welcome to my office space. The first thing that you're going to notice, is that the desk is placed in the middle of the room.

Yes, it prevents me from adding more shelving or more storage space, but that is by design, so I've got a lot of open space behind me for my videos. But more about that later.

Let's take a look at the desk itself. You're probably saying to yourself, Scott, you probably spent the last five or 10 minutes clearing everything up, maybe vacuuming the carpet making sure that it looked good for this video.

But the honest truth is, this is how my desk looks each and every day. I like an uncluttered workspace and have as few things on my desk as possible.

Let's take a quick look at the tech. It all starts with my ThinkPad Carbon X1 Laptop, which I have connected to a ThinkPad Docking Station.

This allows me to connect to a variety of other peripherals including my keyboard here and my mouse, both of which are Logitech. And of course, things like my webcam and my microphone.

Over here on the left-hand side, I try to keep things as cluttered as possible. You'll notice just a few things beyond my water bottle, I have my wireless earbuds, I have the cable to my mobile phone and I even have some wired earbuds, which I prefer when it comes to recording audio.

But beyond that, I like to keep things very, very sparse. The one piece of non-technology, at least not electronic in nature is this blank piece of paper accompanied by a single pen.

I like to have a single piece of scrap paper always available so that no matter what I'm doing here on screen, I've got something quick and easy that I can scratch an idea down or if someone gives me a call, something that I can input very, very quickly here and review later.

Of course, that piece of paper gets recycled at the end of the day. At the top of my monitor screen, which is attached on a floating arm, you'll see that I actually have two webcams.

I have a Canon Mirrorless camera, but I also have a Logitech HD Camera. Now, do I use them both at the same time?

No, but because I do so much video conferencing, it's nice to have the backup just in case. Well, with that, why don’t we transform my office in just a few moments?

Because you may have noticed that this is also a standing desk and when I conduct meetings and when I record my videos, I am always standing. So, let me adjust and give you a tour of my video setup.

Office setup for video meetings and YouTube recording

We are back at the entranceway of my office, just so I can show you the height adjustment of the standing desk and my standing mat. Now, I have a personal rule.

I do not take any meetings sitting down. If I'm on a consulting call, if I'm delivering any type of training, I force myself to stand up.

This makes it so that I am standing up typically at least 50 to 70% of my day rather than just sitting. So, coming over here on my standing mat, the lights are a little dim at this point in time because when I'm recording my videos, I do adjust my lighting.

I have a ring light, which gives me ample light here on my face, and then behind me, which I will use sometimes when I'm sitting in my chair, I have a very inexpensive floodlight from Home Depot, which I can adjust those colors.

It is a LED light. I can adjust it to anything that I like.

And then beyond the cameras, which I showed you just a moment ago, I have my trusty Blue Yeti Microphone on a boom arm so I can swivel it out and position it wherever I like when I'm involved in a meeting or delivering a video conference.

Now, just like my desk is rather sparse, you may also notice that my walls are relatively sparse but they also have sound paneling all around. Now, you're probably most familiar with this checkerboard design, which is behind me at all times when recording my videos.

This is much more than just aesthetics, these actually serve a purpose and I have these sound panelings on every corner of my walls. This helps to dampen the sound and reduce the number of echoes when I'm recording audio here within my room.

Beyond the desk itself, I do have a relatively simple carpet just to try and dampen that sound some more against the tile. I have a chair for a guest over here.

Just a few things, including my favorite candy Maynards Wine Gums here on my desk and other files, and pieces of equipment, which I store on this container.

Last but not least, the one thing that I do have displayed on my wall beyond just sound paneling, is my YouTube Silver Play Button. And I wanted to take this moment to thank you for all of your support, all of your questions and all of your comments right here on the Simpletivity channel.

Now, of course my needs are going to be different from your needs, but hopefully you enjoyed this office tour and maybe got some ideas of how you'd like to change your office space.

Now, if you'd like to learn more about any of the products or the furniture which I showed in today's video, be sure to check out the links in the description.

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

What is the RESET Productivity Masterclass?

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

My goal is to help you save time and make your workday that much easier, that's probably why you're watching this video.

But what I really love is being able to work with people directly, and that's why I created the RESET Productivity Masterclass.

The RESET Productivity Masterclass is a four-week online course where I teach you all about how to get more done in less time and how to simplify your technology.

Now, if you don't know me, I'm a productivity coach and technology YouTuber.

For the past 10 years, I've helped thousands of people to get more done and enjoy their work so much more.

I apply these same principles to my own business, which allows me to work just 25 hours per week.

So if you're wanting to accomplish more and in less time, this course is gonna be really helpful to you.

Course Overview and Schedule

Now you can review the entire course curriculum at the official RESET website, but basically we'll be covering a new theme each week.

In week one, we're gonna look at all of those distractions that get in the way of our day and help you select a note-taking tool that works for you.

So if you're bothered by all of those interruptions, this first week is gonna help you solve that problem.

In week two, we talk all about focus and how to prioritize all your tasks and projects.

Even if it feels like you've got way too many things on your plate, I'm gonna show you techniques so you can keep your workload under control.

In week three, we'll talk about creating the ideal productivity system just for you.

We all work a little differently, so I'm gonna give you a framework for finding the perfect software setup.

Then in week four, we'll talk about mastering your schedule and creating a balance between your professional and personal life.

Because what's the point of being more productive if you can't enjoy your time away from work?

Online Community and Special Guests

Now, in addition to the course content, you'll also get access to the RESET online community.

This is a place where you can ask me questions directly and also get to know other students, including past RESET graduates.

On top of that, we will also have some special guests join us for some bonus sessions.

These productivity experts will give us some additional insight on how we can get the most out of our day and the tools that we use.

Best of all, you get to interact with them directly.

So if this sounds interesting, you'll find a lot more information and details at simpletivity.com/reset.

If you still have questions, let me know in the comments down below.

I hope to see you at the next cohort, and then we can chat directly.

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

Intro

what if you could eliminate all those annoying distractions that pull you away from your work what if you could increase your focus and stop procrastinating over projects that you know you need to complete or what if you could manage all of your tools and technology with ease so you could get more done well i think you can do all of those things and i'd like to show you how hello everyone scott friesen here at

Reset Productivity Master Class

simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress and i wanted to make sure that you knew that registration for the reset productivity master class opens friday october 1st now if you haven't heard about the reset

Course Curriculum

productivity master class it's a four-week online course where i teach you how to get the most out of your time and pick the right software for your needs we also talk about how we can increase our focus prioritize all our tasks and simplify our technology if you like you can view the entire course curriculum at simplitivity.com

reset in addition to learning from me

Special Guests

directly i also have some special guests who will be joining us francesco d'alessio from keep productive will share some of his favorite tools and also trends to watch out for in the coming year and mike vardy from the productivities podcast will share some of his best planning strategies and how we can stop overthinking all of our

tasks now i only teach this course three times a year so if you're serious about working at your productive best and finding the right software for your needs don't miss out registration opens october 1st for the fall cohort i hope to see you there and then we can chat directly thank you so much for watching and remember being productive does not need to be difficult in fact it's very simple

What OnlyOffice includes

When you're creating and sharing your documents, is security near the top of your list? Do you wish that you had a few more controls when it came to sharing your documents or your files with others?

Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at an office suite that will allow you to be more secure and keep your files hidden from, let's say, the big guys like Google and Microsoft so that you can have full control of all of your documents.

But it also allows you to share and be more collaborative when it comes to working with others. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Today we're taking a look at OnlyOffice, a full office suite that, yes, allows you to run it on your own server. What does this mean?

Well, if you don't want Google, Microsoft, or some other document provider to have the ability to scan and search and look at all of your files, you can run OnlyOffice locally or on a virtual server so you have 100% full control.

However, if you don't need this level of security or if this sounds a little too advanced, no problem. You can use OnlyOffice in the cloud as well.

So let's dive in and take a bit of a deeper look. First off, OnlyOffice is a part of a larger collection of tools called OnlyOffice Workspace, where you can manage your mail, create a CRM, manage your projects, and schedule all in one place.

But for the sake of today's video, we're gonna look at OnlyOffice Docs, which is on par, if not better, with what you would find in Google Drive and Microsoft, specifically documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

And as mentioned, you can use OnlyOffice in the cloud or choose to download it for your desktop or iOS or Android devices.

What OnlyOffice looks like

So here we are within the OnlyOffice document editor, and right off the bat, you'll notice that it has a very similar look and feel to Microsoft Word, which is great for anyone transitioning to OnlyOffice.

You'll recognize many of the same icons and even many of the same locations of these icons when it comes to the ribbon and menu up above.

I might even add some things like this header option here on the right-hand side, and if I want to choose to make adjustments to the images and other such things that I click on the document, here are almost easier to access.

I don't have to minimize and expand so many different things as I would in Microsoft Office. It lets me know what I can change right off the side of my editing window.

Google Drive sharing comparison

But one of the additional features that really sets OnlyOffice apart is its collaboration opportunities and things that you don't normally see or can find elsewhere.

Let's actually jump back to Google Drive for a moment just so I can show you what I mean. So here I am within a docs file within my Google Drive account.

And I'm going to go up to the top right-hand corner and select the share button. Now, if you're already familiar with Google tools and services, you're probably familiar with this share dialog.

Here I've added someone that I'd like to share this document with, but if I go over to the right, I only have three different options.

Now, I can choose to give them editor permission so they can basically do whatever they want with this document, and that may be appropriate depending on my needs.

I can choose to make them a commenter so they can add comments, but they don't have the ability to edit anything on the page. Last but not least, I can choose for them to be a viewer, so this is a read-only option.

At first glance, it may seem like this is all that you may need, but OnlyOffice gives us so many more flexible options. Back inside my sample document, I'm gonna go over here and click on the collaboration tab and I'm going to click on sharing.

Now, first off, I've got a lot more options here that I can choose from, including adding groups and users right from this screen.

Advanced collaboration options

But where I really want to pay our attention to are the sharing options. So if I click on this dropdown, you see that we have much more than just three options.

The first one is full access, which would be the equivalent of an editor within Google Drive. But the second one down is a reviewer.

This is so much more than just a commenter, which we also have that selection here as well. As a reviewer, they can come in here and edit anything they want, but of course, everything will be tracked.

And you, as the author or owner of this document, can approve anything that you want, but you can also decline things in which they have changed. This can be a really powerful option when you're collaborating with others.

The third one down I think is rather unique but can also be very, very helpful. This is called form filling.

And this is where you choose certain pieces of text or sections of your documents where you're going to allow this individual to add content. Let's take a quick look and see how this works.

So if I close this sharing dialog, maybe I want them to fill in the title or the name of this line here. So I'm just gonna highlight this particular line, and I'm gonna come over here to the insert layout option.

I'm gonna come over to content controls, and for our example, I'm just gonna say plain text. By applying this option, I can add as many different sections or different areas of my document where I only want to allow other people that I share with to fill out this form.

So if I go back to collaboration and I choose to share this with someone else, I can set them as a form filler only, and that means only these types of sections of my document will they have access to.

Again, giving me just a more control, maybe a little more freedom, and I can sleep a bit easier sharing this document with other individuals, knowing that they can only fill in certain areas.

The comment section is gonna be very similar to what we've seen in other programs. Yes, we do have a read-only. This would be the equivalent of a viewer.

But I especially like that they've added a deny access choice. Why? Because then I can keep a record of who did have access at one point, but now I have denied them access to this document.

Unlike other tools such as Google Drive and others, you can simply just remove that user and you won't have that same history or remember who you've shared this file with in the past.

So a lot of additional options here within the sharing settings, but it goes one step further. Besides sharing, you'll also see something called co-editing mode.

Co-editing mode options

And this can be really helpful depending on who you're sharing your files with and how you plan to update and edit the content.

So here by default, we have what's called the fast co-editing mode. And this is very standard, what you will find in other areas including Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, where everything is real-time.

For example, if I'm editing something and I choose to delete something from this line, anyone else that I'm sharing this with is going to see that immediately. And in some cases, that may be okay.

However, there is a second option called strict mode, and what this means is that you will need to use the save button to sync the changes you and others have made.

So for example, maybe I need to rework these next two paragraphs, but I don't wanna see others having me work on this in the process. I'm gonna make some mistakes, I'm gonna write some things, I'm gonna edit it, I'm going to change it.

Instead, I can choose the strict mode, and now I can choose to edit whatever I need to here and then hit save when I'm ready, so they can see the final piece or the edited version once I'm all done.

Again, just giving you some further flexibility when it comes to collaborating and sharing and editing with others.

Now you can start using OnlyOffice Docs free for 30 days, but if you choose to upgrade to their business plan, you can receive 50% off your subscription with the coupon code simple15.

For full details, be sure to check out the link in the description below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

How I rank the books in this list

I've read an awful lot of productivity, business and psychology books over the past year. So in this video, I want to rank 12 of those books so you might find further insight,

maybe find the next great book for you to read. I'm also going to highlight maybe one or two that I think you should skip all together. So let's dive in. I'm going to be ranking all of these books on a scale from must read all the way down to skip. Now, of course, this is based on my own personal preference, but I'll give you a bit of a summary and what I learned from each book along the way. And we're going to go through this exercise in chronological order Meaning from the first book I read in 2021 all the way to some of the latest books that I've just finished reading in the last few weeks. Now, I have read a lot more books than just these 12, but I wanted to focus on these 12 for this particular video.

The Practice

So let's get things started off with "The Practice" by Seth Godin. Now I've been a fan of Seth Godin for a number of years. I've read several of his books in the past, and this was actually a really, really good book to start off the year because it really gets you motivated about your work and maybe thinking about doing your work in a few different ways. So I'm going to start off with really a great one. I was debating between good or great, but I'm going to put this in the great category. Some of Seth Godin's books are a lot more blog format style. This isn't that much different.

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They're very short synopsis, very short words of inspiration and things in which you can do. But even if you don't think you're in a creative industry or a creative role, I would highly recommend this book because really, if you're not innovating, if you're not thinking of new ways of doing things, this is precisely the type of book for you.

"The practice" in at great.

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do

Next up, we have the book, "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do" by Amy Morin.

Now I was looking forward to this book because it has a very catchy title. However, just a few chapters into this book. I was actually relatively disappointed because I didn't think there was an awful lot of meat here. There wasn't an awful lot of things that I hadn't read or learned before and on top of that each and every chapter seemed very much like a formula. It started off with a nice sort of three paragraph story. Then there was some bullet points and then the summary, I mean, it just seemed like each and every chapter felt very much the same, even though the topics adjusted slightly over the course of it. So I'm actually going to put this right in the skip pile. This was not a great way to start off the year. I would say you could pass on "13 Things."

The Champion's Mind

Next we have the book, "The Champions Mind" by Jim Afremow. Now this one may be geared a little bit more towards those who are looking for athletic excellence, but I find that you can learn an awful lot from the sporting world. And as a sports fan I've learned some very valuable business lessons from books such as Phil Jackson's books over the years, the championship coach of both the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers. I had pretty high expectations for this book as well, hoping that I could apply some things both to my business but also to some of my athletic pursuits but I was a little disappointed as well. I felt that things were sort of glossed over, there wasn't as much specifics and I hate advice that is just simply saying,

hey, just, just do it. You know, just get up and say to yourself, you're going to do it because it's important today. And I found that this was full of that type of advice.

Now you may think a little bit differently but there's no way I'm putting this book any higher than okay.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Next on my list is a book which was somewhat of a surprising entry to my reading list.

Titled, "Maybe You Should Talk To Someone" by Lori Gottlieb. Now this particular book I had seen on bestseller lists for the past year or two. And finally, after I read the summary, I said, you know what, let's give it a shot. Let's see what this book is all about. Lori is a trained professional and the story sort of falls her real life experiences

including some of the traumas and the circumstances that she was engaged in over a several year period, but also you get to know her patients. It's a fascinating look at the world of psychiatry and psychology and how the human mind works and how we need to heal ourselves and how we can heal ourselves in a variety of ways. This was really a surpriser on my list. I'm going to put it in the good category. I didn't absolutely love it. It was very, very entertaining, almost felt a little bit like a fiction book, even though it's completely nonfiction, but a very good read for me in 2021.

Thinking in Bets

Another book that I read this year was titled "Thinking In Bets" authored by Annie Duke. Now Annie Duke is a former poker champion. So she knows an awful lot when it comes to statistics and numbers and odds, and of course betting. And this book is not all about card games and poker or gambling, but just thinking about how we can reanalyze ourselves when it comes to numbers, when it comes to pricing, when it comes to negotiating of any sort. Now, as someone who is very analytical in nature

I found this book quite fascinating. It may not be the most entertaining read for some of you, but I found that it really helped me look at numbers in a slightly different way.

So I'm going to put this one in the good category. Again, depending on your interests,

you might like it more or less, but something that has some really tangible and solid information.

Limitless

Next up is a book titled "Limitless" by the author and well-known speaker Jim Quick. You've probably seen Jim Quick in a variety of YouTube videos. He's an excellent guest, an excellent speaker, and he runs his own YouTube channel along with other offerings online as well.

Jim focuses on maximizing the use of our minds, including how to concentrate more intently on what we want to achieve. This book was interesting for me because it offered some very good and tangible pieces of advice. However, there were other chapters that I felt like glossing over.

Another thing is that I felt Jim maybe wasn't giving as much actionable advice as he could have in this book—advice that we can start to apply immediately. As I got past the halfway mark, I started feeling like this book was more of a pitch for some of his more expensive courses or other programs online. Now, there's nothing wrong with that—you'll probably get a lot more out of his training if you take a several-hour or a four-week course—but I really dislike when a book feels more like an infomercial or only gives you a taste of the content. So, I was a little let down by "Limitless." I'll put this one in the "okay" category.

Now, if you're curious about how I find what to read next, and sometimes I don't even read the entire book because I just want the good stuff, I use Shortform. In my opinion, Shortform is the best place to get the best book summaries, which you can not only read but also listen to.

Here we are within my Shortform account. These are some of the books I've been reviewing or just taking a look at their summaries. What I love about Shortform is that it summarizes not just what the book is about but also gives you the key points—things that you can start to apply right away. So, if you don't have time to read the entire book or just want to see if it's worth reading, you can come here and get these fantastic summaries.

Each summary starts with a one-page overview, giving you a clean summary. But as you can see below, it also provides actionable items. Don't have time to read the summary? You can listen to any of these summaries as well. So, Shortform has you covered regardless of how you want to consume your information.

If you'd like to get a five-day free trial of Shortform, just go to shortform.com/simpletivity or use the link in the description below.

Now about halfway through the year

Beyond Order

I had the opportunity to read Jordan Peterson's latest book and follow up to his best seller, "The 12 Rules For Life." This one titled "Beyond Order; 12 More Rules For Life." Now I recognize that Mr. Peterson is a bit of a controversial figure, one of those individuals that you seem to either love or hate and I wouldn't put myself on either of those extremes. I do find him a fascinating individual and I really do enjoy watching him go through the thought process of actually formulating his arguments and responding to questions. This was certainly not an easy book to get through, and I don't mean about the topic but just really the way that Mr. Peterson writes. It's something that you can't just sit back on the beach and read casually. You sort of need to dive in and really digest the content here. Overall, I found it an enjoyable read. While I don't certainly agree with all of his viewpoints it certainly made me think and I think that's what most books should do is aim to make you think and maybe even question some of your own biases. So in this case, I'm going to put this as a solid good rating.I had the opportunity to read Jordan Peterson's latest book and follow-up to his bestseller, "The 12 Rules For Life." This one is titled "Beyond Order; 12 More Rules For Life."

Now, I recognize that Mr. Peterson is a bit of a controversial figure, one of those individuals that you seem to either love or hate, and I wouldn't put myself on either of those extremes. I do find him a fascinating individual, and I really enjoy watching him go through the thought process of actually formulating his arguments and responding to questions.

This was certainly not an easy book to get through, and I don't mean because of the topic but just really the way that Mr. Peterson writes. It's something that you can't just sit back on the beach and read casually. You need to dive in and really digest the content.

Overall, I found it an enjoyable read. While I don't agree with all of his viewpoints, it certainly made me think, and I think that's what most books should aim to do—make you think and maybe even question some of your own biases.

So in this case, I'm going to give this a solid "good" rating.

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Not great, certainly not one that I was going to skip, but something that I did enjoy and really had to work at over a few different weeks.

A World Without Email

Next on my list was one of my favorite authors, Cal Newport. And I'll admit, my expectations were quite high for his latest book here in 2021, "A World Without Email."

But I was a little concerned with that title, that the whole book was going to be about email. Well, here's the good news. It's not really just about email. It's about digital communication as a whole. And I think Cal has perhaps written another classic or in my case a must read. So this is going to be the first book that I give it a must read rating. In my opinion, this is exactly the type of book that we need now more than ever. If you're wanting to work at your productive best and get some concrete models and a concrete framework in how to do so, Cal Newport's "A World Without Email" certainly fits that bill. So if you haven't read Cal Newport before, you might want to check out something like "Digital Minimalism," or maybe "Deep Work" for example, but you don't have to read either of those books to dive in and get valuable information from "A World Without Email."

Effortless

Next on our list was another author that I really enjoyed his first book which was "Essentialism," and we're talking about Greg McKeown. Now his follow-up took several years to write but it came out earlier this year titled "Effortless." And again, I would say that this is a winner. Greg really has this amazing way to weave stories and real-world examples and show us that, listen, we don't have to be caught up in the rat race and live up and be disappointed by all of these expectations. He's continually asking ourselves when is enough enough, and when do you get to fully enjoy your work and really enjoy your life. So "Effortless," I'm not going to put quite as high as a must read but I'm definitely going to put it in the great category as another fantastic book, whether you're focused on improving your productivity or just your wellbeing as a whole.

Think Like a Monk

I next started reading, "Think Like A Monk" by Jay Shetty. Now, I actually hadn't heard of Jay Shetty before. Although I quickly discovered he has a massive online presence.

And if you happen to follow him on Instagram, as I started to do, you'll see just how much content he's producing at a very, very rapid rate. This was a very interesting book as someone who grew up in a pretty standard, a pretty standard home sort of middle-class home. But then instead of going on to study business and sort of take the traditional route, decided to become a monk, despite the lack of encouragement

from both friends and family. This was an interesting book because you not only follow his journey, but Jay really makes you think of some questions within your own life. I might say that reading this book immediately after "Effortless" was probably a good selection because they both have some similar themes in terms of, you know, what is really valuable to you and where are you going to be putting your focus?

It also talks a lot about personal relationships, whether that's your family relationships or just working with others within the world itself and making you think about our relationships in a slightly different light. As far as its final ranking, I'm probably going to put it sort of middle of the row. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it,

but I just don't feel right giving it a great ranking or the same level of the other two books that we have listed here. Now, nearing the end of '21 I found a neighbor of mine

Range

who happened to recommend the following book online. "Range" by David Epstein.

And I really didn't know much about this book or this author at all. But very quickly within the first few chapters, I became fascinated with the subject material but also what David Epstein had to say about specializing versus generalizing when it comes to our careers. Basically David Epstein puts forward the argument that we should not super specialize in any particular topic. In fact, that that often brings with it a number of blinders and may not make us open for other more innovative or creative or financially beneficial ideas as well. This book I would have to put in my must read category. It's the type of book that is not necessarily just timely for 2021. You could probably read this book anytime in the next decade or maybe anytime in the future

and you're going to get a lot of great benefit behind it. The key message here with "Range" is don't feel left behind. Don't feel if you haven't done something or accomplished something by a particular time that you're a failure or that you're not going to make it to those end goals. A very uplifting book without sounding overly motivational. So I would certainly put "Range" in my must read category for 2021.

Show Your Work

Last but not least, the most recent book in which I've read is "Show Your Work" by Austin Kleon. Now this particular book is almost looks like a flip book. It's perfectly square and you can read it in basically under an hour if you want to. He gets straight and to the point and gives us 10 different things to think about when it comes to showing our work rather than just being salesy and having people encourage us to buy, buy, buy. Now, Austin Kleon is an artist himself So this is very much geared towards creative types and creative people, but you can find a lot of great benefit

from this one as well. In my case, I'm probably going to put this sort of middle of the road as well. You know, it's one of those books that you might want to pick up for some short or brief pieces of inspiration but it's certainly not going to change anything in your world. Now, I would absolutely love to hear what were some of the books that you read in the past year and what would you put on your must read list?

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.

Intro

Finding and hiring the right people for your team is never an easy task. It can also be very, very time-consuming.

So in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven tools that are going to make hiring, interviewing, or onboarding much easier for you so you can spend more time growing your business and less time in the hiring phase. Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Now, the first tool that we're going to look at is the Salary Calculator by Glassdoor. Glassdoor Salary Calculator When you're hiring for a new position, especially if it's a role in which you have not hired before in the past, you're probably curious as to what you should be paying for that, or maybe can you even afford to hire someone in that particular area?

Now to get started, all we need to do is enter in a job title. So let's say that I am looking for a graphic designer.

Now it's going to give me a number of different related options here or things pertaining to that word. I'm just going to stick with the basic graphic designer.

You can change your location, but it's already identified that I'm here near the Seattle, Washington area. And then this one is really more designed for those who are maybe seeking a job at a particular employer.

I'm going to show you how you can see this information on the next screen anyhow. I'm going to hit get started.

And what Glassdoor is going to do is it's going to take all the information that it's collected and give me a very accurate number. In fact, it's telling me right here at the top that they have very high confidence that the average base pay for a graphic designer in the Seattle area is about $57,000 a year.

Now you can see a lot of the other income and data statistics that they include here, including different seniority levels. So if I want to see the difference between a graphic designer and a senior graphic designer in this specific area, it's roughly $20,000.

So a lot of great information as I plan to either put together a job description or start interviewing possible candidates. Now, if I scroll down, you'll see that Glassdoor gives us some other great helpful information as well, including related job titles and their average salaries so I can compare as well.

But I can also keep scrolling down further and see if my business falls into a similar category. Now, these are pretty significant corporations here that we see here, including things like U of W and Amazon, which of course are based in the Seattle, Washington area.

I'm going to have a much smaller business, so maybe it's not directly comparable, but you can see where these prices are coming from. The next tool on our list is a website called Willo, which completely changes the way in which you interview Willo your prospective candidates.

You probably realize how time-consuming it can be to set up and schedule those interviews, to have them come in person, or maybe schedule a Zoom or video conferencing meeting only to find out in the first few minutes that, oh, you know what? This person is really not a good fit for this role or for our organization.

Well, what Willo does is allow you to set up specific questions and then have your candidates record their answers at their leisure at their time, and then have you review them at your leisure or at your time so that you can quickly and easily whittle down that list to just maybe your core candidates that are worth your time for an actual in-person or live video.

Let me show you how it works. Here I am within my Willo account, and I've set up a sample job description. I'm looking for an assistant store manager.

If I click the edit button here, I can just copy and paste my existing job description, or I can add it from scratch right here. But on the very next screen, we have a list of questions so that they can record their answers when they want to, and then I can review them and see if they're a good fit for my organization.

If I go back to the interviews tab, and if I click on the assistant store manager, you can see that I've got three responses already. So I can come in here whenever I want to.

I don't need to schedule time. I don't need to call them and find a time that is suitable for both of us. What I can do is I can click on this response here and hear this applicant… I've got the details of the applicant here, but I've also got his video replies.

So I can sit here and say, "Hey, you know, tell me a time when you were the hero in your workplace," or, you know, "What motivates you to work in a LEGO store?" I can hit the play button and then I can listen to his response and evaluate and see, "You know what? I think this would be a relatively good fit. I'm going to put this individual as four out of five stars."

The great thing is that you can work with Willo with a number of your teammates. You can quickly and easily toggle through the people who have submitted their responses here and watch their videos and evaluate them at your leisure.

And then when you've whittled it down to what you feel are the really good golden core candidates, well, then you can schedule them in for a real interview. Now, another tool that can help you with the hiring, interviewing, and onboarding phases is Trello.

Now Trello can be used in so many different ways, but I've seen so many teams use Trello as a part of their interviewing and hiring strategy. So here you can see we've got a fairly simple workflow, but a great way to keep everything organized as you go through the hiring stages.

So in this particular example, you can see how this recruiting pipeline is working for this particular organization. We've got future needs. So here we have a few titles, a few positions that we think we're going to need in the future, maybe not immediately, but we're just thinking ahead.

Next, we have a list called paused. Maybe we thought that a designer was a future need, but once we started looking, once we started maybe interviewing or just discussing with the team as a whole, we decided, "You know what, maybe we don't need a new designer at this point."

Next up we have a need to post. So these are the things that we need to get ready. Maybe we need to draft the job description. Maybe we need to do that salary research at this point in time so that we can get ready to post.

Next up, we have our open positions and keep in mind, these things are meant to move from left to right. So once we've got all the information for our iOS developer, well then maybe it moves over as an open position.

And of course, the great thing about Trello is not only that we see a high-level view, but we can dive in deeper and add more details. So, for example, if I want to click on this internal software developer role, which is currently an open position, I can see who the lead recruiter is.

I can see who the main team contact is. I can have a link directly to the job description. So all of this detail and information can stay within the card. But then at the high-level view, I can see where everything is going until hopefully they move over as a closed position.

And the other great thing about Trello is that you've got a great history of all the positions which you've hired for in the past. So if you need to reuse any of these cards, you can quickly and easily do so.

Now, when it comes to finding the very best talent, of course, you're not only going to rely on job postings, you're also going to be actively searching for the best people. And that's exactly where Contact Out comes into play.

Contact Out Because what if you are searching for someone here on LinkedIn and you'd like to reach out to them. Now you could use the messaging feature here within LinkedIn, but I think many of us know that not everyone responds very timely.

Some people might not even respond at all. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to find Euan's actual email address or phone number, so I can contact him directly.

Maybe impress him with something special and see if he might like to join my team. So what Contact Out is, is actually a browser extension, which works in conjunction with LinkedIn.

Once you have Contact Out installed, here I am on Euan's profile page, all I need to do is come up here and click on the Contact Out extension and look at this. It's giving me three different email addresses.

It's giving me two different phone numbers and even his Twitter handle. I might even be able to find additional emails. I can even save his profile.

Now, all I have to do is click this show button, and it's going to show me the full details. For the purposes of this demonstration, I'm not going to do so right here.

If you'd like to find out his actual contact information, you'll have to install Contact Out, but a great way to find those emails and phone numbers and contact information for the people you really want to get in touch with.

Now, another great tool that can assist you during the hiring process and beyond is SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey And you're probably saying to yourself, "Wait a minute, SurveyMonkey, I know that tool, I've used that tool, but how is that going to help me as a part of the hiring or interview process?"

Well, SurveyMonkey knows an awful lot about what makes people tick and also how to complete very effective surveys. So if we come over here to the template section of SurveyMonkey and come down to human resources, there are several different templates that you can either use right out of the box, or maybe inspire you to create your own.

So, for example, here, we have a template called

Advanced searches can waste your time

When searching and shopping for things online, it can be helpful to use the filter option here on the left-hand side. For example, I have found my location, but it's given me almost 1500 results.

I need to whittle this down. So the filters here on the left-hand side are going to be very helpful.

Or maybe I'm shopping for something, and yeah, I've got nearly 1,000 results, so I'm going to use the filter on the left-hand side. However, many of these websites don't allow you to save these options.

So if I want to come back in a few days and see what has changed with my specific options, I can't do so. Well, in this video, I'm going to share with you a free tool that allows you to record whatever you're doing on a website and then play it back whenever you want so you can quickly come back to your specific search results in just a few seconds.

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

Shopping filter example

So let's take a look at this example here. Let's say that I'm in the market for a new pair of skis.

So I've come to this website, and it's giving me nearly 1,000 different results. Well, that's way too many for me to sift through, so I want to take advantage of the filters and the categories here on the left-hand side.

However, there's no way for me to save this, so I'd like to save the selections I make so I can come back tomorrow or next week or whenever I want, and it will save the options that I've chosen here. Well, that's where Katalon Recorder comes into play, a free browser extension.

Now, if I open up Katalon Recorder, it may look a little intimidating at first. There's a lot of different options here. There may even be some things that look a lot like development code.

Now, Katalon Recorder is excellent for those who are wanting to test their websites and if you happen to be working in software development. However, Katalon Recorder is just as useful for people like you and me.

So in this example, what I'm going to do, I've got something here called ski search. I've created this label already.

Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to select this record button. Now, when I'm returned to this website, I'm going to select my options.

I'm looking for all-mountain skis, and I'm looking for skis with bindings. Yes, I want skis with bindings, and I'm looking for men's skis, so I'm going to select that choice there.

And then I'm also looking for skis somewhere in the 180 to 190 length. So now I'm brought back with something which is a lot more manageable.

I've got 138 results, and I can continue to make selections here if I want to. What I'm going to do is come up here and select stop.

So what Katalon Recorder has done is just recorded all of my actions and activity on this screen. If we refresh our screen and I clear all my filters, we're brought back to our original search results of 984.

Now what I can do is select Katalon Recorder, and with ski search selected, remember, this is what we just recorded, I'm going to select play test case.

Now what's going to happen is that Katalon is going to apply all of those filter settings, all of those options that I made here on the left-hand side. It's going to take a few seconds and apply it and will return to, hey, 138 results. These are exactly the types of results that I was looking for.

Now I can come back in the future, and all I have to do is select play. I don't have to manually come down here and select all these options here on the left-hand side.

Katalon Recorder settings and options

Now, if we come back up and open up Katalon Recorder, we can see exactly what Katalon recorded. Here are the different options that I selected.

So if you need to make some small adjustments, you can do so. Let's say, for example, I don't care if the skis come with or without bindings. What I can do is right-click on this option and say delete command.

Now, the next time I go to play this test case, it's going to ignore that but keep my previous selections as well. So a very powerful yet free tool for us to sift through our results.

Advanced search example

Let's take a look at another example. Here I am on the internet movie database site, and I'm on the advanced title search screen.

Now there's an awful lot of options here, and this is a place that I like to go to search and filter down as to what I would like to watch next. But there's an awful lot of selections here, and I can never save my choices here.

Well, that's exactly where Katalon Recorder comes into play. I've previously recorded a simple test case where I've made a number of different selections, including what year a movie has been released, the type of language it's in, and a number of other choices here.

So now all I have to do is come up here and select play test case, and Katalon Recorder will do everything else for me. It's going to make the selections that I saved about eight days ago, so I don't have to come in here and waste my time selecting and checking off all of these boxes, and this is exactly what I was looking for.

A feature film released before 1978 within the top 250 and is a silent film as well. So I've got exactly the search results that I'm after.

Websites where recording & playback is helpful

So consider all of the places where you spend far too much time repeating yourself and making the same selections. Maybe you're searching for a hotel or a flight or an upcoming vacation.

Katalon Recorder can be a great solution for that. How about if you're shopping, such as amazon.com, and we've got all of these options here on the left-hand side? You can record it once and then play it back as often as you need to.

Now, if you'd like to use Katalon Recorder within your browser, be sure to click the link in the description below. Katalon Recorder is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge browsers.

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