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PDFescape

I like free, I like simple, and I like to save time. So in this video, I'm taking a look at seven websites that cost absolutely nothing to help you save time as a part of your day.

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

And let's jump right in with editing a PDF document.

Now, the first one we're looking at here is something called PDFescape.

Now, what I am needing in many cases is the ability to add fillable fields to existing PDF documents, and PDFescape is great for this purpose.

You can either use the online version or the desktop version, but we're gonna keep everything online for today, so I'm gonna select "Free Online."

Now, in this case, I'm gonna upload a PDF document that I've already created on my computer.

All I need to do is come here and choose that given file.

Here it is. I'm gonna upload it to PDFescape.

And at this stage, I can edit it and add things in a variety of ways.

But what I'm really after is a simple and quick way to add fillable fields.

Here I've created a homework assignment, and I want my students to be able to answer right here within the PDF document.

So all I need to do is come up here to the insert tab and I'm gonna select "Form Field."

Now I can choose if I want to add a checkbox, a radio button, dropdown, whatever I want to add here.

Well, in this particular document, I wanna add a paragraph.

So I'm gonna select text paragraph and then hit the Select button.

And now I can just click and drag with my cursor the area where I want them to be able to provide their answer.

So I want them to answer in a short paragraph form here.

If I wanna duplicate this, all I need to do is right-click and hit duplicate.

Now I've got the exact same size, which is great, so it's nice and uniform.

I'm gonna do that one more time.

I'm gonna hit duplicate, and I've got my third answer down below.

Now I can continue to add things if I want, but in this example, I'm just gonna leave it at these three things here.

On the left-hand side, I'm gonna click this Save and Download icon.

It's gonna download it to my computer, and I'm gonna open it up here.

And look at this, now I've got a fillable field ready for me to use, and I can send this out to my students.

A great website which is absolutely free and easy to use.

GetHuman

Next on our list has to do with finding customer service faster and getting the results that you need, and hopefully, maybe even speaking to a live customer service representative.

How much time have you wasted going to websites trying to find their toll-free number or to get in contact with customer service?

Well, gethuman.com cuts that time down drastically.

So in this case, I'm gonna type in something like "PayPal," for example.

I'm gonna see if I can get some customer support when it comes to PayPal.

What this does is for any company that you type into that search field, it's going to give you its customer service number so you don't have to go searching for it itself.

It's also going to show you the current wait time, how long your average wait is, and the current wait.

And if you want to, you can skip by calling and get the callback right away from this screen.

So this is a fantastic way to get to exactly what you're looking for.

All of the relevant information here that you need.

In fact, if you're wanting even more targeted help, it's even going to show you some of the most common things that people are asking and provide you with a quick solution.

So a great way to find the service and the support that you're after.

Headline Analyzer

Now, the third free service on my list today has to do with creating content or creating catchy titles.

Now, this goes more than just if you are writing a blog or creating videos.

Think of a presentation that you may be giving, think of a headline or the title of a webpage or a website or something else that you're creating.

Well, Headline Studio is a service brought to us by CoSchedule.

And what this does is it analyzes your headlines and gives you some great feedback, telling you if you should improve it, how you can improve it, and how it can stack up against other headlines.

So let's take a look at a few examples here.

Let's say if I say, "These websites are great."

What if I think that that's gonna be a great title?

Let's see what the headline analyzer has to say.

Well, in this case, it's giving me a score of 52.

Which is really not that great because this score is out of 100.

It's telling me that I probably am using too few words, I don't have a great word balance, and it goes into a lot further description and details as to what all of these figures actually mean.

Let's see if we can improve this a little bit.

In this case, I'm gonna say, "How about 7 websites that you should use today?"

What about that?

Is that a better headline than the first one that I typed in here?

A little bit.

It says 59.

What if I take a slightly different approach and I say, "5 reasons why you should stop using these websites."

How about that?

What's that gonna give me for a score?

Hey, that's quite a bit better.

79 as my headline score.

So it doesn't mean that I'm necessarily going to use this for my next video or blog or whatever content that I'm creating, but this can be a great start, and it's an absolutely free tool.

So I can read through this data, I can look at some of the other suggestions that it gives as I try to craft the ideal title or headline for my content.

10 Minute Mail

The next website on our list is all about email.

Especially if you need an email address to sign up for a newsletter or maybe to access a particular tool, but you don't want to be inundated with all of the marketing and all of the other email that you're gonna be receiving from that website.

So this website is called 10 Minute Mail.

And the idea around it is that it gives you a throwaway email address.

Something that you're only going to use for the next 10 minutes or so.

So here you can see I've been given this temporary email address which looks rather nasty, but it's gonna work on almost any site.

So all I need to do is copy this email address and use it to sign up for a new application or a newsletter or to download a free guide.

And what I will do is I will actually receive that email right here on this page.

So I can access the information, I can download the links or the files that are sent to me, but after those 10 minutes are up, I would no longer have access to this email address.

I can move on and be sure that I receive nothing in my actual email account.

So this can be great if you're just needing a quick email address, maybe if you're testing out a service, you can use 10 Minute Mail for those purposes.

Ninite

Now the next free website on our list might just save you the most time of all.

At Ninite.com what you're going to see is a selection of applications.

Applications that you know and love.

Now, the purpose of this site is really when you are setting up a new computer.

Whether you've purchased a new computer, you've acquired a new computer, and you know how time-consuming it is to start from scratch and you have to download and install or update all of the applications that you're already using or you know you will use.

What Ninite does is give you a list of some of the most popular applications.

So for example, let's say I'm setting up a new laptop and I'm gonna say I want both the Chrome and the Firefox browsers here, I wanna use AVG for security, I definitely want Zoom and Skype and maybe I'll just select a few other things such as Paint.NET and maybe a document reader as well.

Now you can select as many of these files and applications as you like, and the very next step is to say Get Your Ninite.

And what you're going to receive is a custom installer/updater.

Meaning that you'll just have one file which will allow you to install all of these applications at once.

You don't have to go from each and every site, first to Chrome, then to Firefox, then to AVG, you can do it all in one page, all in one screen and get you started with that new machine or that new computer that much faster.

G2

Next up on our list is a website that I use all of the time when I am researching new applications and new software for my business, either on my behalf or for someone else.

And it's called G2, formally G2 Crowd.

What G2 does is that it gathers reviews, real user reviews, from a variety of different software.

So, for example, let's say that I'm interested in learning more about ClickUp.

I'm gonna click on this ClickUp icon here, and I can see that there's over 3000 reviews for ClickUp.

So I can either read those reviews here on the left-hand side, but I can also look at the other ratings and breakdowns that it gives.

I especially like the ClickUp comparisons.

They have these comparisons for almost every piece of software that it reviews.

So I can see how ClickUp is going to compare to some of these other options.

But you can also look at things in different categories.

So, for example, if we click on Project Management Software, now it's gonna gather all of the project management software together so I can compare and see how they rank against one another.

So, for example, if I wanna look at the ratings here on G2, I can see that Monday, Trello, ClickUp, and Asana seem to be near the top of the list.

But of course, I can dive in that much deeper and click on how does this rate on quality of support versus ease of use and everything else that is important to me and to my team.

Even if it's a much more obscure piece of software, chances are you will find it here on G2.

AlternativeTo

Now sticking with software, sometimes when you find the ideal software for you, you realize that it costs an awful lot more than you were prepared to pay.

And that's where AlternativeTo comes into play.

You'll find it at alternativeto.net.

So, for example, Adobe has a wonderful suite of many different products, but they're also very expensive.

So, if I'm interested in using Adobe Photoshop, but I really want something that has almost all of the features, maybe even more features than Adobe Photoshop, but I want it for free, I can click on Adobe Photoshop or use the search bar up here and find out what it suggests for me.

Here you can see that each of the alternatives is ranked by likes.

So the very top one here is something called Gimp.

Something that I have used many times in the past as well.

I can click on that link, and I can read more about what this particular piece of software does, and I can even go directly to its official website.

So now I can read the further details if Gimp is the right product for me and to see if it will be a great replacement for Adobe Photoshop.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's video and I would love to hear from you next.

What are some of your favorite websites that help you save time?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video.

I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.

And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Why you should create online courses

If you provide advice or your expertise as a part of your business, you should be selling online courses. Why? Because you can reach a much wider audience and profit from it at the same time.

So in this video, we're gonna take a look at LearnWorlds, an online course platform for creating, selling, and promoting your online courses.

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

Now, when it comes to choosing the best course platform for you, you have a lot of features and a lot of options to choose from.

Marketing features that course creators need

But we're gonna start somewhere where perhaps you didn't expect, and that's gonna be with the marketing side of your course. Any course platform is going to give you the ability to upload videos and PDFs and create quizzes and questionnaires as a part of your course content.

However, a place where a lot of course platforms drop the ball is when it comes to marketing and showcasing your content. Why is this so important?

Well, you can create the absolute best course in your specific domain, but if people can't find it, or if they're not encouraged or enticed to buy your course, it can be all for naught.

Site Builder options in LearnWorlds

We are actually going to start with the site builder part of the LearnWorld interface. So here we are with a template that I've just started working with a few minutes ago.

And one of the things that I love about LearnWorlds is that they're really thinking about you in terms of selling and marketing your course right away.

They have a number of fantastic landing pages like you see here. In fact, you can create an entire website right here within the LearnWorlds interface.

This can be really important because even if you don't have a website right now, or if you don't want to spend all of that time revising your website and creating new pages, LearnWorlds has you covered.

As you can see here in this sample template page that I've created, I can edit any of the text that you see here. I can add images and move things around and immediately start selling my courses.

This is so crucial because if you want people to pay for your content, you need something attractive. You need something that people are going to be enticed to get involved with.

Beyond just having a page like this, LearnWorlds has other things that you can add as well. So for example, we know how important it is to have things such as popups appear to our users from time to time to either encourage them to subscribe to your newsletter or to be aware of new updates related to that course.

I'm just gonna open up this pop-up as an example here. So this is a pop-up, which I've determined I want to appear to my users after 10 seconds on my page.

I want to grab their email address in case they don't actually purchase my course. I can at the very least market to them and send them updates about that course in the future.

As any good marketer will know, you need several times to get your message across and let them know what you're actually offering before you can actually make that sale.

Here at the top of the screen, we can also see that we can add new pages to our site as well. So whether we want to start with a blank page or maybe a new landing page, about us page, even a blog, all of the elements that you have come to expect from any professional website you can do right here within LearnWorlds.

So no matter where you are starting, or maybe you just want to build a separate school just for your courses, you can do that here as well.

The other nice advantage of LearnWorlds compared to many of the other online platforms available is that LearnWorlds is completely white-label.

What does that mean? Well, it means when people come to visit your website, they're not gonna see the LearnWorlds logo up in the corner.

Even as they take your course, they're not gonna see the LearnWorlds logo all over the place. It's truly going to feel like your content and that they're learning directly from you.

Course creation features in LearnWorlds

But of course, no online course platform is going to be able to compete without giving you the ability to create great courses.

So here I am with a course that I started building out earlier this week called Build a Better Business, and right from the get-go, you can see that LearnWorlds helps us with this landing page.

Most online course platforms will jump you right into the content, so whether that's creating a quiz or a welcome message, or just uploading a variety of videos or maybe links to zoom webinars.

But where LearnWorlds directs you first is the sales page to make sure that you've got something that is going to be engaging, something that people are going to be interested in so that they can see how long it will take or what is included in that course.

Maybe an outline of the course itself, a bit about yourself, or whoever is teaching that course right here within this sales page.

So it looks professional. It looks ready for someone to hit this enroll button and get started with your course.

Adding content to your course

Now, up at the top here, we can see the different areas of our course editor. The second one is the content itself, and it's very, very simple to start adding new components.

So here I've started to add a few different sections to my course. Here I've uploaded a few videos and even linked things to YouTube.

I've uploaded a few PDF documents as well, including an audio interview.

All you need to do is select add an activity and then just decide what you want to either upload or link to in this case.

So perhaps I want to look for a PDF document. All I need to do is give it a name. Maybe this is going to be a new worksheet, for example.

And now when I hover over it, I can choose the settings option and upload that document right here.

I can upload it and add a thumbnail. I can give a further description if I want and immediately start to add it here to my course.

Editing uploaded content and video

But one of the great things about LearnWorlds is not only can you add and upload content that you've already created, but you can take that content and enhance it and make it even better.

So let's take a look at this first video as an example. Here to the right, I can select edit the video.

This is something that I've uploaded already previously. It's just a short video clip of me introducing the course.

But what I love about LearnWorlds is that I don't have to rely on my editing skills before I upload my content.

Here you can see on both the top of my editor, but also along the right-hand side, all of the additions that I can make to this video.

One of my favorites happens to be this add interaction option.

So for example, if I click on this, maybe I want to have my viewers click a particular link or jump to a particular part in my course, or maybe there's something outside of my course, such as a YouTube video.

And I wanna give them the option to click on that video right here. So all I need to do is click this, take me there option here, and I can drag it to wherever I want it on the screen.

I think right over here to the right of me, that seems about right. Over here, you can see I've got the option to choose as to when this will take place and I'd like it to happen near the end of this video because perhaps I'm going to be talking about it a little bit later.

So at the very end of this video, that's where I'd like it to appear.

And maybe I'm gonna change this text to something like "watch this video," something along those lines.

And if I hit that gear element, of course, I can add other such things such as when it is clicked, I want them to open a particular link. And this is where I would paste that particular link at this time.

So now when I go to play this video, what's going to happen is that this video, let me just drag it back just a little bit further here, just a few seconds prior.

If I hit play here, you don't see it until I want them to see it, perhaps when I'm actually talking about it. And now they have the opportunity to click that link.

Interactive tools for your participants

Another great interactive tool is the ability to ask your students questions during a video or a particular piece of content.

So for example, here I'm gonna choose this one here, where I'm gonna ask them a true or false question.

So I'm gonna make this selection and here you can see, it probably is best suited here at the bottom of my screen.

Just like you saw me do before, I can obviously change the text here and I can choose what happens when true is selected, or if false is selected, this is especially helpful.

If I want them to jump to a particular part in my course. Again, I can dictate exactly when I want this to appear.

I can even have the video auto-pause at that particular time to give them an option, give them the ability to answer this question.

These are just some of the great tools that can allow you to enhance and make your course material that much more engaging.

Course player view

Of course, as you continue to create your content, it's important to preview from time to time and up here at the top left-hand corner, I can select this preview option and it's going to open up the course player just as my students would view it.

So as you can see here on the left-hand side of the screen, it's easy for them to expand or collapse the different core sections and work their way through the content here.

And on the right-hand side, a nice large player, whether it's video, whether it's content they need to read or engage with, they can see it here all within a white-label experience.

So if you'd like to create your own online courses or perhaps even build your own online school, be sure to check out LearnWorlds.

See the description in the link below for more details.

Thank you so much for watching today's video.

I hope you give this one a thumbs up and subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.

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

What's covered in this video

Are you new to Acuity Scheduling? Or perhaps you're just not sure what some settings do. Well in this video, I'm gonna show you everything you need to know about all of the settings right here within Acuity Scheduling.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And I'm gonna show you how to set up your availability, how to create your different appointment types and even how to customize your scheduling page. So let's dive in.

Setting up your availability in Acuity Scheduling

Let's get started with setting up your availability. Now, when you first sign into Acuity Scheduling, you'll probably see your Appointment Calendar, whether it's in the daily view that you see here or with any of the views that you can toggle in the top left.

But where we wanna go is on the left-hand side of the menu, under business settings and click availability. This is really the core of your system and where you're going to want to make the most important changes. Now, at the very top, we have our Default Clients Scheduling Limits.

These defaults are going to apply to any of the number of calendars or any of the engagements that you create. Now, of course, we can always go and change individual engagements and individual days, but it's important to start with your default limits, so you don't waste time later. After opening up this tab, we're presented with this general view.

Our first option here has to do with the minimum number of hours before someone can actually book an appointment with you. This is an extremely important setting because if you reduce this down to an hour, this means that someone can click your link or view your calendar and book you as little as 60 minutes from now.

You need to ask yourself, is that enough time for you to prepare or be notified of such an appointment, or if you want to stretch this out? So for example, with my own calendar, I like to give myself 18 hours notification, meaning that someone can only book me at the soonest or at the earliest, 18 hours in advance.

But of course, you can change this to any duration that you like. Now, the next setting is also very important, this is the maximum number of days in advance that an appointment can be scheduled. Now by default, Acuity actually sets this to 365 days, meaning that right now, someone could book you a full year in advance.

But for most of us, we want to keep this in a shorter timeframe, of course, depending on your needs and your business. So in this case, maybe I want to set my maximum to just 30 days. So someone can't access my booking calendar and booked me for some time next year.

Down below, we have a few other options that we should review. Do we want to allow people to reschedule their appointments? This will be checked by default and in most cases you'll want to leave this on. If you have to uncheck this, then that would actually force the client to contact you directly, in some other ways, to let you know that they can't make that appointment or reschedule in some other way.

The second one down below, Cancel Appointments is also important as well. Do you want to set a minimum number of hours before someone can cancel an appointment? So for example, you don't want someone canceling just an hour or two ahead of time because you've already planned out your day.

In this example, we've set it to 12 hours. So we're going to give them the opportunity to cancel or reschedule within that timeframe, but if it's within 12 hours, maybe we are going to charge them for that time nonetheless. The last option here is not gonna be applicable to many of you, at least when you're starting.

It has to do with creating intake forms, which we're not covering here in this particular video. When you make any changes here within Acuity, we wanna make sure that we hit that save button, otherwise none of these changes will be applied.

Now under Default Limits, we have Block Off Time, which is going to allow us to block off either a few hours or multiple days on our calendar. This setting is great, if you have an upcoming vacation, maybe multiple days that you'd like to quickly and easily block off on your calendar.

Remember this is not a default and this is not going to apply to your recurring calendar either. These are just for specific days or for specific hours that you don't want to make available to those who have access to your calendar. Down below, we also have two other important options here.

This first one is our location name. As you can see here, what I have added is my Zoom video conferencing link, meaning, when someone books an appointment with me, they're going to have this displayed within their meaning invitation on their calendar so that they know it is a Zoom video conference, and they can just click the link to access.

To edit this, you just need to click this, which will open up a text box. Here you could include a phone number, here you could include the address of your office, whatever you like. Don't forget to hit save once you've made those changes and you'll be returned to this screen.

To the right, is your direct scheduling link. Now, when you're first creating things, this may not be as important, but this is the link that you're going to want to share with clients, either via email, via text messaging, or however you want to share your calendar.

All you need to do is copy the text, copy the link in this field, you can hit the copy link down below as well, which will copy it to your clipboard, and now we can paste that anywhere that we like. Now down below, this is really the meat and potatoes of our settings here within Acuity Scheduling.

This is where we're going to set both our default hours, but we'll take a look at what our calendar looks like dynamically right now. Here, you can see I have regular hours each and every week. I want to be made available between nine and five, Monday through Thursday.

If I uncheck this option, then I can change to specific days, but in most cases you're going to have a set number of hours or at least regular hours that you're going to be made available for your booking calendar. Now, let's say I'm not available in the afternoon on Wednesdays.

All I need to do is click on this box, and instead I'm gonna type in 12:00 p.m.. I can click outside of this box and it will set that, however, it hasn't saved it until I hit this button down below. The nice thing about Acuity Scheduling, if I need to adjust something else here, it does take natural language.

So if I just put nine dash two and hit enter on my keyboard, or click outside, it's going to convert that to 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.. It's just always a good rule of thumb to double check to make sure that Acuity has the right time set for you.

I'm gonna save those regular hours and now if I scroll down below, you can see my actual calendar has been updated to reflect my regular hours. So this is what people will actually see when they hit my booking calendar.

Now, the nice thing or the difference between this calendar down below, is that we can override specific hours on specific days. So for example, let's say that coming Friday, I want to have availability. I don't usually, and I've set that here as closed on this particular day, but maybe on the 23rd I'm going to make an exception.

All I need to do is click on this box and I'm going to say nine to five, in this case, I'm gonna say set hours. And now you can see I will have availability on that Friday. The same thing goes if I want to remove a particular day, maybe next Wednesday.

I'm gonna come in here and I do not want any availability on that day. All I need to do is delete the amount of time, I can either hit closed or enter the word enclosed, or I can leave it blank and select set hours. Now you can see it's going to view that as closed, no one will be able to book me on that particular date.

Now, before we leave this page, there are two other areas that we want to cover. The first is Clients Scheduling Limits. Now, if we click on this, you will see things that look very similar to our default limits which we edited before.

Keep in mind your default limits, that we set by using this button, will apply to all of your calendars. So for example, if I was to start or create a new booking calendar, these defaults would apply. So it's always good to start with your default, but for each booking calendar, you get to set other choices.

And there's actually some options here that are only going to be specific to that calendar. Once again, we see things such as hours in advance and more than days in the future, allowing clients to set certain limits or parameters. Even though these are the default limits we set, we can come in here and change them for this calendar.

The other one is the number of hours in advance before we cancel. Again, it's taking this number from our default, but we can change it here. It's the next two that are going to be unique to your calendar.

The first one is the number of appointments per time slot. Now, in most cases, especially if you're talking about coaching or consulting, you're going to leave this as one. It's going to be a one to one appointment, but maybe you will want to allow some, either group coaching or allow people to book multiple times, or you're sharing this with other members of your team.

That's where you can increase your number here. Lastly and perhaps most important is the maximum number of appointments. By default, the first option is going to be selected, accept appointments until fully booked.

Meaning if I'm available from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., it's going to allow all of those time slots to be available until I am fully booked. However, there is another option, where we can say accept a maximum number of appointments.

So for example, when it comes to my own consulting business, I choose a maximum number per day and I typically set this to the number two. Meaning I don't want to have more than two consulting engagements per day.

You can also choose this limit based on the number of hours per day, or the number of appointments per week. So depending on what you are offering or what you're booking calendar represents, you can change these maximums as well. Be sure to hit save limits once you've done making any of the changes listed here.

Lastly, we wanna come up here to Calendar Settings. And we click on Calendar Settings, which is actually gotta give us some further information about what this calendar is going to look like. So here is where we can change the name of the calendar.

Here we can include either a brief or a fairly lengthy description. We have up to 500 characters to add in that description, maybe you want to give people who are accessing your page a little bit of direction or what they can expect.

Once again, we have an option for location where we can edit a phone number or include a meeting link as we see here, but we can also add an image as well. So if you want to add the logo of your business, you can do so here.

Lastly, we have areas for email notifications and sending replies too. The first one has to do, if you want to notify someone else or a particular email address when someone books on this calendar, you can add one or more email addresses here.

And send replies to, meaning replies from the clients will be sent to this particular address. Once again, when you're done making changes, hit save and you'll be returned to the availability calendar.

Creating appointment types in Acuity Scheduling

Now that we've set up our availability, let's move on to creating our appointment types. Once again, we want to go to the Business Setting section, and under availability, is the appointment types heading.

Here you can see I've already created two different appointment types, including the consulting engagement and the second one here is a group coaching session, which we saw on the previous screen. But let's start from scratch and create a new type of service.

By clicking this button, we're presented with a new service page with a number of blank options. First off we want to give it a name, so I'm gonna call this a Coaching Session in this case.

If I want to, I can add a longer description by adding this link, if I want to give a little more details. Next up, we want to select how long this appointment will be. In this case, I want to make it 60 minutes in duration.

Now, below this option, we have a very important link, blocking off extra time before or after. I would encourage you to take a look at this and consider this depending on the type of service or the type of booking that you are creating.

By setting the duration for 60 minutes, what this means is this is going to allow to have someone book immediately following this session. So if I'm promising a one-hour coaching session, let's say someone books me from one to 2:00 p.m.

By not blocking off any extra time, another client can book me immediately at 2:00 p.m., right after that first appointment. Maybe I want to give myself some buffer time to either add some notes or reflect on the previous session, or just give myself a breather before jumping in, that's why this block off extra time is so important.

Here I have the option of choosing time both before and after the appointment. In my case, I set both of these to 15 minutes, meaning that I will always have at least 15 minutes before an appointment and 15 minutes after that appointment.

I will never have to worry about jumping immediately in to another type of meeting, whether it's on this calendar or this booking type, or if it's related to something else on my calendar. So make sure to take a look and consider blocking off additional time.

Our next option down below has to do with price. And note, this is just a display options. So perhaps I'm going to be charging $195 for a one-hour session with me. I can include this here and this is what someone will see when they access my booking calendar.

Note, this is just for display purposes and will not force your clients to pay before confirming their booking. If you want to deal with payment in another way or just not display payment, leave this at zero and there will be no mention of price to the clients on the booking calendar.

Down below, you can also add a category if you wish. Now you will have to create your categories yourself, and it's not always necessary to do so. So I'm gonna leave this blank at this point in time.

We also have the choice to add a picture or an image for this particular appointment type, and last but not least, access. Public is the default choice here, meaning that this appointment type, this coaching session, will be available on my main scheduling page.

However, if I make this private, it will not be made available on the public page and I will have to send a direct scheduling link for anyone who would like to book this appointment with me. Last but not least, we select create Appointment Type.

We are brought back to the Appointment Type screen, where we can see this coaching session has now been added. I can either select the Edit Button if I want to make some changes. I can duplicate any of my appointment types, especially if it's very similar to a new one which I want to create.

And last but not least, I have the Direct Scheduling link. So here is the link that I can copy and send to someone who is perhaps wanting a coaching session with me.

Customizing your booking page in Acuity Scheduling

With our availability and different appointment type setup, the last thing we want to look at is customizing the appearance of our booking screen. Now this is so important because this is what people are actually going to see.

Most of the settings that we've dealt with so far are technical, meaning what they can do or when they can book us. But this last one is important because this is what people will see and how it will feel as they actually go through the process.

Our first choice here is to choose if we want to view a monthly template or a daily template, meaning do you want them to see the calendar view of your availability or do you want them to see actual days in between? Now, the great thing about Acuity Scheduling is that it actually gives us a live view here on the right-hand side of the screen.

So here you can see I actually have my three different appointment types for them to choose from. If I click on this coaching session for example, here you can see I've got the days of the week. It's showing me my next five available days available, and then they can just pick a particular time.

However, if I don't like that view, I can choose the monthly view. Once again, I can select that coaching session, and here, the user will have to pick a particular day. Now this will often come down to what your appointments availability distance is.

So for example, if I'm allowing people to book me months in advance, maybe this monthly view makes more sense. However, if most of my clients are going to be accessing me or booking me, within the coming week or the next few business days, perhaps this daily view is better.

Next up is the Business Name. So my calendar name is Scott's Booking Calendar, but this is where I can put the name of my business, so it's displayed on the screen. Here, I can choose a different logo if I want to and show my business name next to the logo or not.

We then have a text field where we can choose a variety of editing options, including adding pictures and adding additional links where we can add descriptions. This is probably the best place for you to give a little bit of direction, encouraging them to select a time that works best for them, and perhaps how excited you are to be working with them or meeting with them in the future.

You can choose a few other defaults here, such as when does the week start on? Is it going to be a Sunday start or a Monday start? What is the appropriate time format for your clients or your area of the world? You can set your default language and very importantly, your default time zone.

Once you've made changes here, don't forget to hit save changes. Now, if you have further questions about how to use Acuity Scheduling by Squarespace, I would encourage you to ask them in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video, be sure to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

Create new files from the address bar

You already use Google Drive. So now let me help you save some time.

In this video, I'm sharing with you seven tips and tricks to help you save time while using your Drive files. And the first one we want to get to is to create a brand new file, but you know what?

You're not always here within your Drive account. You may be on social media or doing something else with your web browser.

Well, if I need to create a new document, all I need to do is come up to the address bar and type in doc or docs.new, either one will do. And immediately after hitting enter, I will have a brand new Drive document to start with.

Maybe I want to add a new sheet. You can either type in sheet or sheets.new, hit enter and once again we have a brand new spreadsheet to start working with.

We can also do this with slides. In fact, you can use the word deck if you want to, deck.new and that will also allow you to start a brand new presentation.

And last but not least, we can type in form or forms.new and hit enter and we will start a brand new form so quick and easy, allowing you to create a new file, even if you're not within your Drive account.

Drag & drop files from your computer

Next on our list has to do with adding files to our Drive account. And you're probably already used to coming up here to select new and then select file upload or folder upload.

However, if you have the file handy with you, you can just drag and drop it directly into the file that you would like. So maybe I want to plant this one here under my test folder, I'm just gonna drag it and let it go.

And now it's right there waiting for me. I've got that file exactly where I want it to be.

So I don't have to go first and find that place and then go into that file and then select new. I can just drag and drop that file directly into my Drive account.

Using keyboard shortcuts

Now, speaking of saving time, there are a few things that are more time-saving than using keyboard shortcut keys. And there are a lot right here within Drive.

Up in the top right-hand corner, if we select this settings gear icon, the third option is keyboard shortcuts. And here you can search through or scan through all of the different shortcuts that are available to you.

In fact, you can even use this handy dandy search bar to type in something that you're looking for. If you're looking for a particular shortcut, but there must be a faster way to get to the shortcut's menu.

And that is the question mark key. If you type in the question mark key on your keyboard, your keyboard shortcuts menu will immediately pop up here.

Let's take a look at two of my favorite. One of the things that I do quite often here within my Drive account is rename a file.

So for example, if I want to rename this file, I have to right-click and then I need to come here and select rename. Well, there's a quicker way.

As long as I select that file, all I need to do is select N on my keyboard and immediately this rename dialogue will come up, so I can give it a new name, for example, and hit enter.

If I wanna rename this spreadsheet, as long as it's selected, I can hit N on my keyboard and immediately rename it. The next one that I love to use on a frequent basis is the ability to share.

Let's say I want to share this image with someone. Well, as long as it's selected and I hit the period key, it's going to immediately bring up this share dialogue.

So some quick and easy ways to get you to where you want to be. Now speaking of sharing, something that can save you

Share files without certain options

a lot of time and really a lot of headache is getting the proper permissions when you're sharing something.

So let's stick with this example. First, I'm just gonna find the person that I want to share this file with.

And you're probably already familiar with this dropdown here where we can choose to allow them to edit, be a commenter or just be a viewer. So in this case, I might choose them to just be a viewer, but don't forget this little gear icon just up above.

Here we have you additional options, two checkboxes which by default will always be checked. The first one is editors can change permissions and share.

In many cases, I don't want that. I don't want to give someone else the ability to choose who can share this file. So I'll uncheck this.

And then the second one is also important. Viewers and commenters can see the option to download, print and copy.

Well, depending on the file, and depending on whom I'm sharing this with, I may want to uncheck this. This is especially important I find with something like video content, where it's so easy to download that content, and then someone else could do something with that video.

With this unchecked, it's an awful lot harder for them to find the tools and others extensions and apps in order to do so here. So these can be a great thing.

Now, if I go back, I'm returned to my share window and I can add further individuals and hit send. So this is going to save you more headache, but also save you some time, making sure that people don't have access to things that you don't want them to.

Manage version history of Drive files

Now, the next tip on my list has to do with reducing the number of times you need to upload new content and then also share that with all of the same individuals. Something that I used to waste an awful lot of time with is that I would create a file such as this video file and then I would share it with a large number of people, or at least a specific group of people.

And just like we saw before, I gave them specific permission and rights and privileges. But then if I needed to upload a new version of this video, something that I didn't create here within Drive, I'd have to upload a second file and then remember or copy and paste and bring over all of those other individuals.

Well, if you just need to upload a more recent version of that file, all you need to do is right-click and select manage versions. So in this case, we can see when this video was last uploaded, but now I can upload a new version.

So if I go in here and let's go and find the exact video that I'm looking for here, I'm gonna double-click here and I'm gonna upload this new version of this particular video.

Now I can see the version history, but I can be confident that anyone who I've shared this original file with will now see the current version of this video. So no longer do I have to manage multiple files in multiple folders, I can just have the single file but have multiple versions within.

Grab text from Drive images

Now number six on my list happens to be one of my favorites and something that a lot of Google Drive users are not aware that we can do here. Let's say for example, that you come across a social media post or a PDF document or something that is image-based.

So in this case, I've been sent this little paragraph of text or a few different paragraphs of text, and I really like the content here. In fact, I'd like to copy and paste it into another document, or maybe I'd like to edit some of this text.

But I can't do that because this is an image, if I drag across the text, the best I can do is just comment on it. Well, if you want to grab the text from an image, all you need to do is right-click on that image file and then the second option is open with, and we're going to open this with Google Docs.

Now depending on the size of the image and how much text is there, this may take a few seconds, but in a little while, not only will it show us the image here within the Google Doc, but immediately down below, we have all of the text that was contained within that image.

So now what I can do is I can select this. I can copy it, I can edit it. I can do whatever I want when it comes to the image that was originally from this text.

Making Drive folders more findable

Now my last time-saving trick today has to do with finding information that much quicker. And one of the easiest ways to do so is to categorize your files within folders.

Yeah, Scott, that's a no-brainer, we get it. But if you have a long list of folders, sometimes it can still be difficult to find exactly what you are looking for.

And by default, Google Drive creates all of our folders in this sort of graphite or dark gray shade. Well, what you can do is change the color of any of your folders.

So for example, if I want this sales folder to stand out, maybe I'm going to make it a red shade. If I want this finance folder to stand out, I'm gonna come here and select change color and make it a green shade.

Now, whenever I come into this subfolder, these particular folders are really going to jump out and stand out to me. Now another trick that I like to use is actually using emojis or special characters in front because maybe this sales folder is something that I use all the time and I don't want it sorted.

I want sales to show up at the very top. So if I come in here and select rename, or perhaps I should use my shortcut key, remember that's N on our keyboard.

What I can do is add a special character such as a period in front, and now sales is always going to jump to the top of this folder. Now if you wanna get a little more creative, we can rename this again and this time, instead of a period, I'm actually going to add an emoji.

And maybe I'm gonna add something like a money sign, for example, and hit save. Now, that file folder really stands out.

It's always going to be at the top because the emoji is being treated as a special character and I've also got a color-coded folder as well. So you can get creative, especially if you have a long list of folders and a complex folder structure here within Drive.

I hope you enjoyed today's video. And if you did, be sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.

I'd love to know next, what are some of your favorite Google Drive tips? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

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

Cons of using Google Tasks with your calendar

Elon Musk does not work from a to-do list neither does Bill Gates. In fact, some of the most successful people have never touched a to-do list.

Why? Because they work from a schedule. So in this video, I'm gonna show you how to drag and drop your to-do list using a free app, so it shows up right here on Google Calendar.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. Now, the first thing you're probably saying is wait a minute, can't I do that already with Google Tasks?

And it's true, you can view your tasks here on the right-hand side and add them to your calendar on the left. However, Google Tasks does have some drawbacks.

Number one, there's a limited amount of information in which you can track and categorize here within Google Tasks. Number two, the mobile version requires you to download its own app.

So you can't just use your calendar, you need to use a separate app to manage these tasks. And then last but not least, the tasks themselves here within your calendar, do not actually show up as a duration.

Meaning if I wanna dedicate an hour or maybe two hours for this particular task, I can't do that. I can't click and drag it and expand it out.

I can't open it and set an end time so for example, I wanna work on this from nine to 11:00 AM.

Benefits of adding tasks directly to your calendar

But let's back up just a few steps. Why is it so important that we have our tasks on our calendar and not just on a sidebar or on a separate to-do list?

Well, beyond just blocking out the time itself and having that proper duration, it's so important that we see our tasks in relationship with our other meetings and our other commitments.

One of the things that I see time and time again, is that people defer a large number of tasks to the very next day even without seeing how many other commitments, how many other meetings or events that they have on that day.

And they think that they're going to accomplish six or eight or 15 things when they've got too many other things on their calendar. What makes the most productive people successful is that they block out that time and actually enter in their tasks directly on their schedule, so nothing else can interfere with their focus time.

Lastly, in order for you to work at your productive best and not waste time, it's important to have a single source of truth. One app that you can reference and see everything that's going on with your day.

We often waste so much time switching back and forth between different tabs and different applications and opening different things on our phone, that we waste time and we also lose sight of what's most important to us.

So let me show you how Amplenote can simplify your productivity and also capture your tasks right here on Google Calendar.

How Amplenote works with Google Calendar

So here I am within the Amplenote app and I've already had my Google Calendar synced, so I can see all of my schedules and all of my appointments here in front of me. Now on the right-hand side, I've got some tasks that I'd like to include some time this week, but let's point out some of the key differences.

Not only is it easy to drag and drop my tasks directly onto my schedule which will then appear on my Google Calendar as well, but watch as I drag additional tasks, see the difference between these two?

This one I had already determined would take 45 minutes while this one is going to take a full hour. Let's try get another one on here, which looks like it's only gonna take half an hour, so maybe I can squeeze that in here before lunch as well.

This gives me a lot more powerful tools and powerful options as I manage my schedule throughout the day. Not just viewing my tasks as things that I'm going to cross off, but things that I need to fit in as a part of my schedule.

Task details and priority score in Amplenote

In addition, the tasks here within Amplenote, give us a lot more detail to work with. Here when I click on a task, not only can I change if it's going to be a repeating task and my start date, but I can edit things such as its importance and its urgency.

You may have noticed that some of my tasks have a different color beside them. That is actually based on something which Amplenote calls a task score.

And what it's looking at is the due date, which you have set for this task in addition with, if you've labeled it as important and or urgent. This is going to help you as you manage your tasks to determine what should come next and what should you be working on right now.

But in addition to that, Amplenote also allows us to drag our tasks off of our calendar. So as you reschedule your day, as you're planning for tomorrow, you can quickly move things around and even take them off the calendar.

This is something that Google Tasks with Google Calendar cannot do. You actually have to click on the task itself and manually remove the date in order to remove it from your calendar.

Viewing tasks in Google Calendar

Taking a look within our Google calendar, you can see the three tasks in which I added within Amplenote. So I can see them here and start to work with them as a part of my day.

But because it is a two-way sync, I can still manage them and deal with these tasks here. If I want to drag any of these Amplenote tasks into a different time slot, I can do so here, right within Google calendar.

And these changes will be reflected on the Amplenote's side as well.

How to use Time Boxing with Google Calendar

Now, another one of my favorite features and best productivity tips is to use time boxing. So let's say for example, I want to box out some time tomorrow.

I'm just gonna call this time boxing here on Google Calendar. And I'm gonna block out maybe two hours of time, just some focus time so that I can get caught up before the weekend.

If we jump back to our Amplenote view, you can see this time boxing event which I created, and now I can drag and drop my tasks directly into that box.

So I can fill up that two-hour gap, maybe I didn't quite finish this task over here no problem, I can bring it into this time boxing space which I've already blocked off with my calendar, now I can fit in the tasks that I need to during that time.

Jots, Notes, and Tasks in Amplenote

Now, while Amplenote is great at dragging your tasks directly onto your calendar, there is so much more to this productivity tool. Here on the left-hand side, you can see we actually have three different areas of the Amplenote interface: Jots, notes, tasks and calendar and they're in this order for a reason.

The jots area is for you to jot down quick notes throughout your day. So if you're interrupted or need something to get to a little bit later, get back to Karen about her request, for example.

These are the little things that come up during your day, but they don't just live here, you can also access them within the notes section. Now this note section is full-featured.

So whether you're taking detailed notes, or if you just want to put together a few tasks, as we see here, here's where some of those tasks originated from you can do so right here within Amplenote.

In fact, tasks that you create in notes mode can include everything from pictures, emails, videos, spreadsheets, and more. All of the content linked from your task will be shown whether you're in tasks, calendar, or jots mode.

And the great thing is, is that you can take any of your notes and convert them into a task if you like. So now I've converted this to a task, I can now add this to my calendar and start blocking out my schedule.

And this notes section naturally follows us into our task manager. Where anything that we've designated as a task within our notes will appear here within our task list.

Now you can segment your tasks out in a variety of different ways including tags.

Task Score and how it helps you plan

But here again, we see some of these ultra productivity tools available to us. For example, if I add important to this task, you can see my task score increase, I can change the duration as well.

And if I change the due date to today, you can see how it jumps up to an extremely high task score. Meaning that this is probably what I should be working on next.

It's these types of tools that can really help you to plan out your day and schedule the most important things on your calendar. Keep in mind that this task score is more than just a fun number to look at.

It can help you prioritize and schedule your day in the moment based on decisions you made in the past. So for example, I created this task about one month ago and I set it as important.

So this task score and what you originally set that priority at can be a great way to help you focus in the present.

Last but not least, as we get to our calendar now I can see this at the top of my list and start to add it to my time boxing or somewhere else on my schedule.

Conclusion

So if you're the kind of person who wants to get the most value from every minute of your day, Amplenote was built for you. This app is ideal for taking those tasks and actually placing them on your schedule.

Amplenote comes with a two-week free trial, but for Simpletivity viewers, you'll find details in the description on how to get Amplenote free forever.

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.

How to create a new board in Trello

Trello is one of the most flexible and easy to use project management systems. So in this video, I'm sharing with you everything you need to know to get started with Trello, whether you're a beginner, or if you're just looking for a refresher.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And let's start off with the Trello home screen.

Now, if you're brand new to Trello, you may not have a single board present here. That's fine. Let's get started with creating our first board.

In the top right-hand corner, you'll see this plus button. By selecting the plus button, we can then select Create a board.

The very first thing that we need to do is give this board a name. Now, in most cases, your boards are going to represent a project or maybe your own personal to-do list.

In this case, I'm just gonna call this Special Project here. Now, we can next choose what kind of background we want.

We can always change this later, but I'm gonna choose the default blue or just a simple blue background for us to work with. Lastly, I'm gonna make this one private, so no one else on my team has access to it.

Whether you're using Trello just for yourself or with a team, choose who has access to your boards. With our name set, we can now select Create board, and now we have a brand new Trello board to work with.

Now, at first glance, this may seem a little intimidating, because we have a blank slate in front of us.

How to add & edit lists in Trello

We don't even have a single list represented here, but let's get started by creating a very simple workflow. Trello, in most cases, is best used to have a number of different stages in which Trello calls lists.

So, let's give this first list a label of Ideas. Let's give another list a label of To Do.

Let's give another one a list of actually Doing, because that can be a big difference between just something you want to do and something that you're actually engaged with. And lastly, I'm going to create one called Done.

Now, you can add as many lists as you like here within Trello, simply by selecting this Add another list option. And if you want to change the order, you can just click and drag and move your lists around.

How to add & edit cards in Trello

Next up, we need to take a look at how we can add cards to each of these lists. Cards are what are represented within these lists, but can be moved to other lists as well.

So, under ideas, maybe I'm considering writing a book. Maybe I need to email my team about next week's meeting.

And maybe another idea I have is to create a new website. All right, so now I've got a few different tasks listed here within this first list.

Now, many things in Trello are drag and drop, so if I want to reorder this list and put create a new website to the top, I can just click and hold and bring it to the top of that list.

But this drag and drop functionality also pertains to moving cards into different lists. In most cases, our goal is to bring a card from the left-hand side of your board all the way to the right, where your last list will be called Done, Complete, or Finished.

So, once I've completed finishing this new website, I can drag it over here into this Done list. Now, at this stage, you can see that things are fairly simple.

We've got the names of our projects or our tasks here on our cards, and we've created our lists where we're going to drag things through their different stages. But this is the beauty of Trello.

How to view & edit the inside of a Trello card

We can get a nice, high-level view of what's going on here, but if we click on one of these cards, we open up to a lot more detail. So, here within the back of the card, we can always come up and change the name if desired.

But perhaps the first place you'll want to go is the description area. Here under the description, we can add as many additional details or links as we like.

Maybe we can add things such as needs to be 500 pages long, needs to be published by the end of 2022. We can add as many notes as we'd like here, and then click Save.

So, you don't have to clutter the name of your card up top. You can add as many details as you'd like here within the description.

But we don't have to stop at just the description area. On the right-hand side, we have a number of different ways.

How to add a checklist to a Trello card

In which we can add further information. The third one down is listed as a Checklist, and this is a great way to add sub-tasks or to add other things that you don't want to forget when it comes to this particular card.

So, if I select the Checklist button, I can either leave the title as Checklist, but in this case, I'm going to say, Remember to do this, and I'm going to say Add.

So, this is going to serve as a list of sub-tasks, other things that I need to keep in mind. So, I might want to add things such as research my topic, hire an editor, and find a quiet place to write.

So, these are my three tasks or three checklist items, which I've added to this card, and as I go through these steps, you can see that it's going to track my progress here within the card.

And if I close the card, I can still see my checklist progress on the front. Let's open up our card once again.

How to add labels to a Trello card

And look at some of the other options we have available to us. Just above the Checklist button, we also have the option to add labels.

Labels can be a great way to categorize and easily see your different cards on your board. So, if I click labels here, and let's select the green label, maybe I want everything that is a writing activity to have this green label.

I'm gonna hit save here and then select that label, and now that will be applied to this particular card. Now, I'm not limited to just one label.

I can add as many labels as I want. Maybe I want to use this red color as far as an urgency label, so I'm going to hit save here and select red for urgent.

And now, I can have that directly attached to this card, and I can easily see this on the front of the card as well.

Here's a pro tip: If you take your cursor and click directly on the label, it will expand and give you the label name. If you want to go back to just viewing the color again, put your cursor over top, click, and it will be minimized to that color.

This can be a great way to see the differences between your cards as you're managing your different tasks.

How to add a due date to a Trello card

We can also apply a due date to any cards. So, maybe I want to be able to write this book or have it completed by the end of August.

I'm going to select August 31st and hit Save. Now I have a due date, which will also act as a notification as I get closer to this date, so an easy way to track my progress and make sure that I'm not left behind.

How to add attachments to a Trello card

Below dates, we have the option to add an attachment. By clicking this, we can add an attachment from our computer, so maybe I want to add this graphic, for example.

I can add this image directly to this card, or I can also connect to other services, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, or OneDrive. This can be very useful, especially if you would just like to link to a particular folder and not necessarily a particular file.

As you can see, in this case, Trello also gives us the ability to add images to the cover of our cards, so depending on how you want to use Trello, you can see that image on the front of your card as well.

How to use search within a Trello board

Now, as you start to add more and more cards to your boards, it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of all of your tasks. That's where the search feature within Trello becomes so important.

In the top right-hand corner, if we select Show menu and then select Search cards, we can search for different pieces of information in a variety of different ways. First off, I can search for anything that has the word book in it.

Here, you can see, I have two cards that have book in the title, so now I can just deal with and work with these particular cards. If I remove that search term, you can see, I can also filter by labels.

So, if I just want to look at things that have the urgent label, I can select that label, and now only those cards are displayed. You will see, up here in this green area, it's telling me how many total search results I have, and then, at the top of each list, it is telling me how many total cards are within that list.

So, for example, even though we don't see any cards under the To Do list, we know that there are two cards that exist that do not include this label. We can also search by members and also by due dates, so if I just want to see what's due in the next week, it will remove everything else and I can focus on these cards.

Keep in mind when using this search cards feature, you can still click on these cards and update them and interact with them. To quickly remove the filter, all you need to do is select this X under the green icon.

How to add Power-Ups in Trello

Now, as you begin working with Trello, you may find that there are some features or functionality which you cannot find. In that case, I would encourage you to click on the Show menu option and select Power-Ups.

Trello gives us a vast library of additional features and additional functionality, including integrations with some popular tools that you already use. For example, one of my favorite Power-Ups is the Custom Fields Power-Up, and if I add this Custom Fields Power-Up, this will give me the ability to add additional fields to the back of each of my cards.

There are far too many Power-Ups for us to review in today's video, but if you'd like to learn more, be sure to check this video in the top right-hand corner.

How to archive Trello cards

Now, as you continue to use your Trello board and eventually drag more and more cards into your Done list, or Completed, or whatever you choose to name your final list, this may start to add up with a long list of cards which you don't necessarily want to be viewing forever.

In this case, what I would recommend is for you to archive the cards in this list. Archiving will remove the card from the board, but it is still searchable, and you can still always reactivate it if you want to bring it back to this board.

So, in this case, all we need to do is select the three dots up above, and we can select Archive all cards in this list. In this case, we continue to keep the list.

The list has not been removed, only the cards in that particular list. So, a great tip if you're wanting to keep a nice, clean, and efficient Trello board.

Now, if you'd like to learn even more about Trello, including advanced features, I would encourage you to click the playlist on the screen in front of you.

And if you would like some personalized Trello consulting, you can find out more details at simpletivity.com/trello.

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.

How KosmoTime integrates with your calendar

Blocking off time on your calendar is one of the most effective ways for you to get things done. However, most of our calendars do a relatively poor job of allowing us to block off distraction-free time.

Well, in this video I'm introducing you to KosmoTime, a beautiful calendar and task interface, which allows you to create Focus Blocks and manage those tasks seamlessly. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And here I am within the KosmoTime interface. Now, KosmoTime integrates directly with both Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook, so you can sync your schedule together.

Now at the top of the screen, we have our calendar, our tasks, and our time reports. Now I'm gonna get to these other two a little later, but in order for you to work at your productive best you need to be focused right here on your calendar.

Now at first glance, it looks like a basic calendar and we have our tasks listed here on the left-hand side. "Big deal," you're probably saying, but here is where things work differently.

On your traditional calendar, you may block out time such as this titled Distraction-Free Work, right? You've set aside some time that you can do some particular tasks, but what tasks exactly are you going to fulfill within this hour?

Do you need to go over here and reference another task list or open up another task app? We'll take a look at this Focus Block.

Creating Focus Blocks in KosmoTime

When I click on this, I already have one task waiting for me here and if I need to add more it's as easy as editing this Focus Block. Maybe I need to email Jane about an upcoming meeting for example.

Maybe I need to review the marketing report for Q3 perhaps that's coming up like this. I can add my tasks right here, I can save this Focus Block, it keeps it nice and clean.

But when I get to this time in my day all I need to do is open up this Focus Block and I can start checking off the tasks that are waiting for me here. Now, as we saw at the top of the screen there is time reporting and time tracking built right in.

So if I'm going to review this financial report I can hit this Play button, hit Start, I can see the timer up here in the top left-hand corner. I can work on that particular task and when I'm done I can simply select Done.

And now that particular task is finished. I can still see it here in my task list.

If I wanna go to a more traditional view and see, okay here's where I reviewed that financial report, I can view all my completed tasks here. So let's see how easy it is for us to create our own Focus Block.

Let's say I've got a number of email tasks over here on the left-hand side of my task pane. Now I could go through them one by one here and there throughout the day but I know I'm gonna be much more efficient if I group all of those email tasks together.

So let's say tomorrow just after lunch I want to bang out a number of email tasks. All I'm gonna do here is click on this space, I'm gonna give it a name, I'm gonna say, "Email Tasks" in this case.

And I can either hit the Plus and Minus to expand the duration or I can click and drag it here. So I'm gonna block out a full hour for this focus effort.

And I'm gonna say, "Create Block." Now you will notice there's a Create Task option here as well.

So you can add your tasks directly to the calendar, but in this case I want to add several tasks for this Focus Block of time. So I'm gonna say, "Create Block."

Now at this point in time, this is empty. I could click on this and start to add other things directly from it but what's easier I find is to look over here on the left-hand side.

So let's pull some of these email tasks. Here's this email team about the summer vacation.

I'm gonna drag and release it in that Focus Block. I'm gonna reply to this marketing team email, I'm gonna put that over there.

And then this email about Karen and my meeting on Friday, I'm gonna put it in that Focus Block as well. Now, the great thing is that not only have I grouped all of these tasks together.

If I open it up you can see that they're all here waiting for me but they've also been removed from my master task list over here on the left-hand side. Now you can see my Focus Block is listed.

So if I want to expand this and see where those tasks are located and even add a few more tasks, if I don't want to open it up here on my calendar, I can do so here as well, but it keeps my tasks nice and clean.

It also keeps them all grouped together. So now when tomorrow afternoon rolls around, all I need to do is open up this Focus Block and I've got these tasks waiting for me right here.

Recurring Focus Blocks in KosmoTime

Another great feature of Focus Blocks is that you can make them recurring. So you could have this same Focus Block day after day or on a schedule of your choosing.

But what's so powerful about this is that any tasks that you do not complete within a Focus Block will carry over into the new Focus Block time based on your recurring schedule.

Tasks view in KosmoTime

Let's move on to the Tasks View here just to see how we can manage our different tasks right here within KosmoTime. Now it's nice KosmoTime by default is going to have this calendar available to us at all times, which I think is ideal.

If you want to be efficient and effective with managing your tasks, you want to be able to see your tasks and your calendar on the same screen as much as possible. Now you can categorize your tasks in a number of different ways.

If you want to set up projects, you can do so as well. Here we're just looking at today's tasks but we can also look at all the ones that maybe do not have a date yet.

You can see that we have some that are listed within my Focus Block time. So this is where they are slated for me to accomplish them but that's going to be different from an actual due date.

A due date in this case is something that is listed in blue here. So this newsletter template, this research new app for contracts, these things are now scheduled on the Monday.

KosmoTime also allows you to add different tags for different tasks. So if you want to group like-minded tasks together, KosmoTime makes it very easy for you to do so.

I wanna come back to this calendar for just a moment here and just to highlight why this is so important. Not only do we wanna be able to see what's going on and we can of course toggle into other days as well.

We're gonna go back to today for just a quick example but let's say I've got some spare time between lunch here. Maybe I want to add something to my task list here.

So I'm gonna put it here. I'm gonna drag it and drop it right on my calendar.

So previously this task was just due today but it actually didn't show up in my calendar, right? Because I hadn't slotted a time when I was going to accomplish it.

And maybe I can try and fit this one in as well. I'm gonna slot this one in right after it.

So this is part of the power, part of the effectiveness of viewing your calendar, viewing your task list, not only on the same screen but being able to drag things in between the two so you can actually slot that time in.

Time Reporting in KosmoTime

Now, the last section here that we'll see is Time Reporting. So if you need to track your time or see how much time you've spent on a particular task, you can do so right here within KosmoTime as well.

Let's go back to our Task List for example and let's say I'm gonna start with this Deep Work. All I need to do is hit that Play button and in the top corner I can see what is being tracked here.

Now I can pause it at any time if I walk away from my desk or do something else but now I'll have a record of that within my time report.

Now, while KosmoTime's primary features are around blocking off time on your calendar and the relationship with your tasks, it also has some additional features to help you stay focused.

Close Tabs and Mute Mode in KosmoTime

Here on the top left-hand corner we have two focus features called Close Tabs and Mute Mode. Something that can be very distracting is that when we're working with so many different open tabs within our browser it tempts us to click on things such as, oh, I don't know, social media perhaps or the NBA playoffs.

Yes, that's one of my things that pulls me away as a part of my day and it takes us away from our most important tasks. Well, here with the Close Tabs feature it is going to minimize all of those open tabs into a single tab.

Now, if I click on the Close Tabs here, I can see and I can still access any of these tabs. So if I want to open up just Twitter, I can do so and I can open up that tab.

However, if I'm done working on my most important task or my Focus Block all I need to do is say, "restore all." And now all of those tabs have returned here.

So I can interact and work with them again. This is a really nice feature and it comes with the KosmoTime extension.

The next one is something called Mute Mode. Now KosmoTime actually has an integration with Slack and Slack can be very, very distracting but also there can be the temptation to continue to open up new tabs.

So with Mute Mode turned on, if I come up here and try to open up a new tab, it's going to allow me to bring up this first tab here but let's say I click on YouTube. I just wanna get a bit of a fix.

I need to just watch a few videos to pull me away from my most important tasks. What KosmoTime is going to do is say, "Hey, wait a minute, you should be focused on something else, you have Mute Mode turned on."

"Do you need just a quick access?" And I can ask for just 15 minutes before it's going to block me out from viewing that tab or using that website.

So these productivity-focused enhancements go much beyond just your Focus Block. It can help you stay focused on what's most important.

And speaking of efficiency, KosmoTime does a great job of helping you get started quickly and easily. If you look at the bottom of the screen you can see it's actually telling me what the shortcut key is to creating a Focus Block.

In this case all I need to do is select the letter B on my keyboard and then I can create that new Focus Block. Once the Focus Block is entered I can see, I can hit Escape or Enter or Shift + Enter.

These helpful reminders yet they're not interfering with my day just so I can get started using KosmoTime that much faster and also not have to rely on my mouse all of the time.

Now, if you'd like to try KosmoTime for yourself and get started for free, be sure to click the link in the description 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.

Change your inbox view settings

Is your Gmail inbox out of control? Well, don't worry, in today's video, I'm gonna show you five simple and easy ways to take back control of all of your email.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And let's dive into tip number one.

This is a mess. I can see a whole bunch of emails here.

Some are read, some are unread, where do I begin? Well, my first tip for you has to do with changing the way that you view your email.

By default, this is what Gmail displays to us. All of our email here within the inbox.

But if we come up to our gear settings, we have a number of different types of inboxes and different views that we can choose from. So for example, maybe I just want to see my unread messages first.

If I click this option, it's going to bring all of my unread messages to the top. And if I scroll down, I've got everything else.

These are all of the messages that I've opened at least once before. Now, it makes it more convenient.

I can always collapse my unread and just go to my read or vice versa. I can collapse and then maximize these areas as well.

But this is just one of the many different ways in which we can view our inbox. Another one here is called priority inbox.

And in this case, it's going to list my important and unread email at the very top. Next comes the starred area.

And now I've got everything else below that. Now you can customize these views as well.

So you don't have to just choose the default, but you can view these in a variety of different ways. I'm just gonna go back to the default view here for a second and show a few other views that you may not be fully aware of.

Down below our inbox type, we have our reading panes. Now by default, Gmail is showing us a no split view, meaning that I have to actually click on every single one of these emails in order to get into them and actually read them.

But if you're used to something more like Outlook, for example, you can get those views here as well. So here we have the right of inbox view.

So I can click on the messages on the left-hand side, but I can read them here on the right-hand side. And of course, I can reply and forward just like I would normally do.

This might be a more convenient view and yes, you can change it to your liking here so you can deal with email the way that you want. There's a third option here called below the inbox.

So here your messages will be listed at the top. And then down below, you will have the body of the message here.

So you can read and reply just as you would normally. So, make sure that you get comfortable with the different views, test them out for yourself so that you can find something that works for you.

Snooze email messages for later

Tip number two has to do with snoozing email for later. This can be one of the most effective ways of managing your email.

Let's say that you've got a message such as this one that has come into your account and you say, I need to reply to this, I want to reply to this, but I just don't wanna deal with it right now.

Well, if you leave it here in your inbox, it risks getting lost and maybe you just won't come back to it at all. However, in the very far right-hand corner of each message when you hover over that message, you can see that there's a little clock icon.

This is the snooze icon. By selecting this option, I can choose a time, one of the default times listed here, or I can pick a specific time when I would like this message to come back to my inbox.

So, no, it's not gone for good, it's simply just going to leave my inbox for a little while. So for example, maybe I wanna choose later today, I wanna reply to this this evening.

I'm gonna select later today, it is now gone. It is no longer in my inbox, but will automatically be returned to my inbox at 8:30 pm this evening.

Let's open up another message here and you can see, even once you've read the email, you can come up to the top and find that snooze button again. So in this case, I'm gonna say, actually, bring this back to me tomorrow morning.

It's going to leave my inbox and it will automatically return at the time I have specified. Now, if you'd like to address that email sooner, no worry, on the left-hand side here on the menu we have this snoozed option.

If we clicked snoozed, it's going to show us all of the emails that we have snoozed. It's also going to tell us here on the right-hand side when it is scheduled to come back to our inbox.

But we don't have to wait for those times. You can click on any of these messages and reply and do whatever you want with them.

You don't have to wait for that snooze time. You can even come up here and say unsnooze which will simply bring it back to your inbox.

Here it is again, and I can deal with it normally.

Add labels to important email messages

Tip number three has to do with labels. And on the left-hand side you can see that I have a number of labels here already, but I haven't been using these labels very well here within my inbox.

Labels can be a very effective way to differentiate the important emails or just categorize your emails in different ways. So for example, if I click on this email again and I come up here and select the labels icon, I can choose from one of the labels that I've already created here.

So, let's say this is something I need to address, I'm gonna select action required. Now when I go back to my inbox, it really stands out from the rest of my emails.

Maybe I have a few of these scattered throughout my inbox. I can see, you know what, I need to do something with this, I need to go back and reply to these.

Now Gmail also makes it very easy for us if we wanna select multiple emails, maybe these three emails, for example, I need to do something with later. I'm gonna check their checkbox beside the message, come up here to labels and I'm gonna say that, yeah, these are urgent.

Maybe I'm gonna use my label in this case, I'm gonna say apply. And now I have those labels here as well.

So another way to make things stand out as you're working through and getting through all of your messages.

Create filters and skip the Gmail inbox

Now to go one step further than just adding labels manually, what we can do is actually add labels automatically and filter out messages. And the great thing about filtering within Gmail is we can actually have certain messages skip the inbox.

Prevent all of this overload within our inbox and go directly to one of our labels here on the left-hand side. So, for example here, let's say these ClickUp notifications.

Maybe I don't want to be seeing them here within my inbox I'd rather that they go directly to my newsletter label. Well, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click up here on the search mail and I'm gonna say, clickup.com, and I'm just gonna hit enter in this case.

And you can see I've got a number of these emails that have come back with it. What I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna create a filter this time.

So I'm gonna click on this little icon here that says show search options. So either I can search for the word, clickup.com or I could search for a specific address.

In this example, I'm just gonna use this term, clickup.com because almost all of their messaging is going to have that somewhere within the body of the email or perhaps the header or the footer. Now, instead of hitting search here, which is just gonna bring me back to the results that we see here.

I'm gonna select create filter. And here is where the magic is going to happen.

The very first option we have is skip the inbox in brackets, archive it. So I'm going to choose check that, why?

'Cause in the future, I don't want any of these messages starting in my inbox. I wanna come here to newsletters and read it when I want to.

So, in order to make that happen, I'm gonna select apply the label. I'm gonna choose the label newsletters in this case.

And in this case, in this particular example, I'm also going to say, apply this filter to the 11 matching conversations. Meaning, those 11 conversations that are already in my inbox, I wanna send them to this label.

I want to send them out of the inbox and apply this label over here. I'm gonna select create filter.

So now when I come back to my inbox, all of those ClickUp messages are gone, but if I click on newsletters, I can find them waiting for me here. So I can deal with them when I want to.

Using and creating filters can be a very powerful way for you to manage an out of control inbox.

Add a plus sign to your Gmail address

Last but not least, I've saved something almost magical for the very end. Here you can see that I'm using my test account where the email address is Scottftest1@gmail.com.

But what Gmail allows us to do is it allows us to add a plus symbol and then whatever we want after the first part of our email address, the first part of the email address, but before the @ symbol. Why might this be useful to you?

Well, let's say that you're signing up for a new account, or you need to submit your email address for a newsletter, you can identify who is using that email address. You can even filter on that email address if you want to in the future.

So let me show you how this works. Let me go to a different test email account, and I'm going to craft a new message.

So let's say that I've given an email address to a marketer, but instead of Scottftest1, I actually input Scottftest1 plus, and I'm gonna say newsletter. Then I'm gonna continue with my email address @gmail.com.

Okay, so this is what I've entered in, or this is what I've given someone, my actual email address but then I've used the plus symbol and then here you can add whatever you want. In this example, I'm saying newsletter@gmail.com.

Let's just type in newsletter test in this case and then we're gonna send this message. What's going to happen is I'm going to receive that in my inbox.

It may take just a second, but there it is. I received it here in my Scottftest account.

You can see that they input the correct email address. It has this +newsletter@gmail.com, but no matter what you put in here, it's going to end up in your inbox.

So now I could filter on this if I need to, I could be a lot more specific and include the name of the app or the name of the website in which I'm setting up. And I could go on to filter out these messages if I need to as well.

So if you don't want to give your actual email address, you can use this plus symbol and add whatever it is you want. This can also be a great way of seeing if any of those services have shared or sold your email address to someone else.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's video and the tips that were shared here. If so, I would encourage you to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.

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.

Using Contact Labels and Groups

You probably have hundreds, maybe even thousands of names and email addresses that you need to keep track of. Well, in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven tips and tricks so you can get the most out of Google Contacts.

Hello, everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And let's dive into tip number one, which is relatively simple, but so important.

It has to do with Labels and using them. If you're not using your Labels here on the left-hand side, you are missing out and wasting a lot of time.

Now, perhaps the best way to think about Labels is to refer to them as groups. It's an opportunity for us to group different contacts together.

In order to create a label, all you need to do is just select this plus button. Let's just call this one New Label.

I'm gonna call it New Label 2, since I already have a New Label here. And now what I can do is I can open up any of my contacts.

I can hit this Edit button here and I can start to add a label. Now, you don't have to limit yourself to just one label per contact.

Maybe they're a part of two different groups. So I can leave them as those two labels there, and I can hit Save.

When I exit from this contact here, you can see that I have these labels attached here. But it's so much more valuable than just organizing and being able to quickly filter these different labels and these different groups within Google Contacts.

When we go into our Gmail account and we wish to compose something, if I start typing in the name of one of my labels it will appear as an option. So now I can select this ABC Work Project Label, and now I have all three of my contacts right here, ready to send this email.

Make Labels Stand Out with Emojis

Now, sticking with labels, let's look at how we can more easily identify our labels, whether it's here within Google Contacts or elsewhere. One of the disadvantages of labels is that they do not give us the option to add a color.

Here, you can see if I want to edit the name of this label, I can name it anything I want, but there is no actual color. So when I'm viewing all of my contacts here, you can see I have sort of this gray color here.

It can be really hard to differentiate. Well, here's a great workaround to help you identify those labels.

I'm gonna go back to my ABC Work Project here and I'm gonna hit the edit button. This time, I'm gonna put the cursor at the front, and all I'm going to do is I'm gonna bring up my Emoji menu.

And here, I can select any graphic that I want, or I can keep it simple. Maybe I just wanna select this red dot so this label stands out.

I can hit Save, and now you can see where a person had that label attached, it's very clear that they are attached to this label. I can also see it over here on the left-hand side.

This is especially helpful if you have a long list of labels. But let's go back to our Gmail account for a second here, and I'm gonna hit Compose.

Remember how it's going to automatically bring up my labels? Well, if I type the letter a, I'm gonna get a lot of names here.

If I type in b, I might get a few more names, but you know what? Because that label has this emoji attached, it's so much easier for me to differentiate between these individuals here and my actual label, my actual group down below.

So now I can select that. I've got the same three.

This is the exact same group, but it's just that much easier for me to identify.

Sharing Google Contacts with Others

Tip number three on our list has to do with sharing your contacts with others. Now natively, Google does a very poor job in allowing us to do this.

That's where the Shared Contacts for Gmail extension comes in. Shared Contacts allows you to share specific contact labels with your team or even external users.

And just like how you share things in Google Drive, you can select who can view, who can edit, and who can add new contacts. Then, they can access your shared labels and contacts on their mobile device, desktop, and hundreds of other apps that synchronize with their Google Contacts.

And with the Shared Contacts for Gmail add-on, your team can create contacts from email centers, include notes, and add the contacts to the shared label directly from their inbox. If you'd like to learn more about Shared Contacts for Gmail and try it for yourself, see the link in the description below.

Custom Column Display

Now, tip number four has to do with customizing the way that we view all of our contacts right here within Google Contacts. Now, first off, we can come up to this gear icon and select More settings, and we can choose if we want to sort our list by first name, or by last name.

But what can be so much more helpful is actually changing the order and what is displayed here within the main screen. So here under the three dots, we can select the Change column order.

That's gonna bring up this dialog box here. Now by default, Name is always going to be the very first column.

I think that only makes sense. But the next four columns we can customize and rearrange.

So for example, maybe I don't want Labels to be my second column. All I need to do is go to the right, click and drag, and now I can bring it to the spot where I want it, maybe the fourth section there.

But, we also have a dropdown menu below each of our options. So for example, under Address, if I select this, maybe I want the job title and company instead.

Maybe their physical address is not so important to me in terms of what their job title actually is. All I need to do is say Done, and now you can see that my columns have been rearranged.

I have my Job title & company column listed here, and now my Labels are in the fourth column. So depending on your needs, you can rearrange things any way that you like.

Adding Profile Pictures

Now, speaking of display, the fifth tip I have for you has to do with adding an image to important contacts. Sometimes it can be hard to differentiate between this long list, especially when we just have a variety of colors and the first initial represented here.

But maybe you have some very important clients, or maybe just people that are very close to you and you would like to add their picture here. Now, if Google can't find their picture based on a Google account, you can still add it, and I wanna show you a very easy way to do so.

So let's say I open up the contact here of my friend, Francesco, and I wanna add his picture. I'm gonna go here and it's gonna ask me to upload a photo, but this is certainly not him and I don't have a photo of him on my machine, but I probably have access to one or more of his social media profiles.

So if I go over to his Twitter account, all I need to do is click on his picture, I'm going to right-click and select Copy image address. Not Copy image, we need to select Copy image address.

Now I'm gonna go back to Google Contacts and select Upload a photo. Now, it's true, I haven't actually downloaded his photo yet, but that's not a problem.

All I need to do is paste it in the file name and select Open. And now what will happen is that it will automatically upload that picture.

I can say Done here, and now I have it added to his contact name, so I can see his smiling face and easily find him within my Google Contacts list.

Merge Duplicate Contacts

Next, let's take a look at how we can merge two or more contacts, especially if we have duplicate information within our contacts list. Now, the good news is that Google Contacts will try to find accounts that are duplicates based on either the name or their email address.

If you come over here and select Merge & fix, it will have a list if it has found some suggestions for you. However, what if you come across a name or a couple of names that you know are the same individual, but Google Contacts has not identified them here?

In this example, I have a Steve and a Stephen, but these are the exact same individuals, I just have their work email and I have their personal email as well. So, how can we merge these two together?

All we need to do is come over here over top of their profile name and select the checkbox. So now that I have both selected, I can come up to the top, and I'm gonna select this Merge icon here.

It's gonna work and merge those two together. Now, although it just kept one name and we're only seeing one email address, no worries, we're gonna have access to all of that information.

Here you can see it's actually saved both of the addresses, both of the company names down below, and both of the email addresses. I can always come in here and edit this and say, actually, he prefers to go by Steve, or I know Steve on a first name basis, so I can do so there as well.

I can even come in here and say that, you know what? This is a personal, or his home email address, and this here would be a work address here.

So I can include that here and hit Save. Now, the nice bonus here is that you no longer have multiple versions of this individual, but if we go back to our Gmail account, and let's pretend that we're composing a new email, and I start bringing up Steve, it will still bring up both of those email addresses for me to work with.

Here you can see the exact same name, but I can access either their personal address or their work address. Last but not least, perhaps I've saved the very best for this last tip.

Shortcut Keys to Access Contacts Fast

We spend so much of our time dealing with email and accessing our contacts here in Gmail that sometimes it can be a hassle to come up here and remember to open up Contacts, or to get into Contacts on an easy basis. Well, I wanna show you a shortcut which makes this so much simpler.

First of all, you're gonna need to go to your settings and select See all settings. And on the first tab, the General tab, you wanna scroll down and make sure that your shortcuts are enabled.

Here, near the bottom, we have Keyboard shortcuts, and you wanna make sure that Keyboard shortcuts are on. Why?

Because now any time that you're here within your Gmail account, all you need to do is select the keys G and C and your Google Contacts will automatically be opened up in a new tab. No longer do you need to be fumbling for that icon, or remember how to get into Google Contacts, just GC whenever you are within Gmail and you'll automatically be brought to your Contacts page.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's video and got a lot of value out of it. If so, be sure to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe right here to this Simpletivity channel.

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

Working with Projects in MeisterTask

You want your project management tool to be easy to use but you also need advanced features. Where is that middle ground?

Well, I think the answer is MeisterTask. In today's video, I'm giving you a full review and all of the features that I think set MeisterTask apart from other project management systems.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And let's dive in.

Here we are taking a look at a project within MeisterTask. And right off the bat, you'll probably notice that things are a lot more colorful.

I would argue maybe just a lot more beautiful, and that's something that I don't say a lot about a number of productivity apps. I think it's important that you like the tool that you're using and the members of your team actually want to be in here so you don't have to remind them to come in and log into that project management tool.

So right away, you'll notice that our different columns, our different lists are very colorful, very easy to read, and they're also customizable. So, for example, if I want my In Review to be more of a red color, make it stand out a bit more, I can do so.

It makes it easier for me and my team to see exactly where everything is. You'll also notice that MeisterTask makes it very easy for me to see how many tasks I have in each stage.

Yes, Trello, I'm looking at you. You haven't built this in just yet so I can quickly see a glance of what things are going on.

And you may be paying attention to these 3/3, 3/4. Yes, you can set limits for a certain list.

So if I drag this task over into my In Review, it's gonna give me a warning, "Hey, this is more than the number that you have set for this particular list." Now I don't need a limit for every single list, but this is a real nice to have for particular stages of your workflow or of your projects so that you can see what is going on.

Viewing your projects the way you want

On top of that, I can do other things such as, for example, maybe I want to collapse this list and maybe I don't really need to see the Done list. It's just taking away from my attention, taking away from my focus, so I can just focus on the lists that are important to me.

And they're still functional. So for example, if I need to drag this into the Done list, I can still do so, I just don't need to see everything that is going on within that particular list.

So I really like the layout of what is going on here within MeisterTask. A couple of other features to draw your attention to.

How about this? I need to edit this one and this one and this one.

Yes, that's right. You can multi-select all of your tasks here.

So if I need to come up here to the top and say that, you know what, I need to set a due date for all four of these tasks, it's gonna be next Friday. I'm gonna hit Done.

Boom, everything is done. I didn't have to go into each and every task and make the same change over and over again.

Key productivity features to stay on task

If we open up one of these cards, here's something that I think is fantastic to help you and your team stay on top of their tasks. At the very top of this task, you'll see that it is currently assigned to Vivian, but there's another section over here called Watching.

And you can see that both myself, and if I hover over here, we have Zoey, we're both watching this task. So what is the difference?

Well, at the moment, Vivian is the owner. Maybe she's the one who needs to do this, fill out the experiment document, right?

She's the one who is next in line for completing something here. But perhaps Zoey is the manager.

Maybe I have some other tasks on this. I just wanna keep an eye on what's going on, but there's a distinction between watching, those who are just watching this task and those to whom it is assigned.

Now watch what happens when it's my turn to take over this task. I'm gonna come up here and I'm going to select myself and… Oh, wait a minute.

Where did Vivian go? Well, Vivian automatically became a watcher.

Why? Because within MeisterTask, assignments are one-to-one.

You can only have one person assigned to a task at any given time. You can have as many watchers but only one assignment.

If I close down this task, you'll notice that it's very clean and simple. We only have one avatar.

We only have one profile picture on each and every one of these tasks. I don't know how many times I have been coaching and consulting my clients, telling them, "Please, just assign to one, maybe two people at the best."

Whether you use Trello or Asana or some other project management tool, I see teams assign so many different people to the same task and then people get confused. Well, who owns this?

Who should be working on this next? I love that this is built right in.

If I need to assign this to Jerry, for example, now I become a watcher down below. I'm still gonna receive updates and notifications, but Jerry is the one who is next in line.

Time tracking tools built-in

You also see that we have time tracking built right into our tasks. So if I start working on this, I can hit that play button regardless if I'm the one assigned to it.

Down here under the Activity section, you can see that Scott started working on this task. And when I close this particular task, I can see very clearly which task I am working on.

I can even see that total up here in the top right-hand corner. Maybe I switched gears and I need to start working on this project.

So I'm gonna hit play over here. Well, obviously I can't be working on two things at the exact same time, so I am no longer tracking down here.

I am tracking this project. And if I need to stop, I can just hit the stop button here and I can review that data later on.

So again, very thoughtful features here to make your life and to make your team that much more productive. Now, if you prefer to work within a Gantt chart or timeline view, you can do so right here.

I can click on any one of these tasks and go directly into the card and start editing that information and come back here. MeisterTask also allows you to see both at the same time.

So if you wanna see your board view but also see your timeline view, you can do so here as well.

Dashboard & Personal Agenda View

But let's jump outside of this project and let's go to the home screen because there's another area which I think really sets MeisterTask apart. First off, we have a dashboard, and this really isn't that unique.

Many project management tools have a place where it will summarize all of the tasks that are assigned to you across multiple projects. Here, you can see our time tracking is listed here and a few notifications on the right, but just below Dashboard, we have an area called Agenda.

And what I love about the Agenda is that this is a private place. This is a private workspace just for you.

No one else on your team can view this. You can now manage your tasks across multiple projects any way that you like.

So here on the left-hand side, I have a list of a number of things that are assigned to me, but on the right-hand side, I have my own personal customized board. So I can change all of these headings, I can add more, I can have as few as I like.

But now I can start to organize, I can start to drag things over here and work the way that I like to work. The way that I go about my day may be very different from the way that you go about your day.

And maybe you would like a certain heading or a certain column that doesn't even exist in one of your projects. No problem.

That's what the agenda area is for. And again, these cards are just like within the projects, we can open them up and continue to work as we go.

Let me jump into this editorial calendar project for just an example here. Now, all of the things that are assigned to me are going to be visible for me to add, but even if I'm not assigned.

Let's say that I want to keep an eye on this task here, all I need to do is select this push pin icon. And then I have the option to put it under the Upcoming.

Maybe it's something that I'm gonna be working on within the next week so I can select where it is going to be in my agenda. If I come back to my Agenda screen, here you see, now it appears here within my private agenda workspace.

So I think this is a great addition to help you stay productive. You can work and organize your tasks the way that you like.

Reporting and Custom Data

Now, another area where I feel many project management systems fall short has to do with reporting. And I think MeisterTask creates a nice balance between complexity of the numbers and the data that you can get, but also with the ease of use in creating and viewing these reports.

So for example, here, maybe I just want to see the things that have been completed. I just completed this this quarter, for example, and I want to group them by project in this particular case, so I can see that data quickly and easily.

I can manipulate these tasks if I want to click on them right here from within this reporting window. And last but not least, I can save them.

So if I want to repurpose or reuse this report in the future, MeisterTask makes it nice and easy. Now, if you'd like to try out MeisterTask for yourself, you can sign up for their free forever plan or use the special coupon code SIMPLETIVITY and receive 15% off any of their paid plans.

As always, thank you so much for watching. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.