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(energetic electronic music) Is your calendar the best place to manage all of your to-dos? Can you turn Microsoft Outlook into an even better productivity tool? Well, in today's video, I want to show you how to manage all of your tasks using the calendar area within Microsoft Outlook.

Overview

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

And in today's video, I'm going to show you how to set up your calendar in Microsoft Outlook to be a very effective to-do list.

I'm also going to show you how this works and how this looks like within the Outlook mobile app.

And last, but not least, I'm going to show you both the advantages and the disadvantages of using your to-do list in this manner.

But I think what you're going to find out is that the pros far outweigh the cons.

Outlook Calendar

So let's dive in.

Let's get started here within our Outlook calendar.

And no, we're not talking about the Tasks area.

Yes, of course, Outlook has tasks built right into it.

But I find for many people, it's a little clunky.

People don't enjoy managing their tasks experience here.

And yes, you can change a few different views and that type of thing.

But we want to focus on the calendar, why?

Because this is probably where you are spending a great part of your day.

You've got so many different appointments and commitments that you need to know where you need to be.

So why don't we put our tasks here as well, so we don't forget where we should be putting our attention.

AllDay Event

One of the biggest problems with using a to-do list manager outside of our calendar is that we have to switch back and forth, we have to remember to open up another tab or open up another application.

But as you can see here in my example, I've actually got my tasks listed here, right at the top of each and every day.

So what's happening here?

Well, what I'm doing is I'm using the all-day event area.

And you may be using this area already, right?

If you want to block out an all-day event, or a holiday, or a birthday, or maybe a day that you're going to be away from work.

But I find what makes this area so much more powerful is if we put in our tasks.

So here you can see I've got a number of tasks here on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

And the great thing is, is that as I scroll up and down, no matter where I am within my day, those tasks will always remain front and center.

So it's hard to get rid of them, right?

I can't ignore them when I've put my to-do list here at the very top of the list.

Deferring Tasks

The other great thing about this setup is that you can see the relationship between your tasks and the other commitments, the other things that you have to do as a part of the day.

Let me give you an example.

How many times have you been using a to-do list app and you get near the end of the day and you just say, I haven't gotten to these three things, so I better just defer them all, let's just defer all of these three things till the next day, right?

That's just sort of the default.

In fact, many of our to-do list apps make it easy to defer a large quantity of to-dos.

But let's take a look at this first one, call Jane to confirm lunch.

Well, because I can see it on the same screen, I can see that oh, that lunch is coming up tomorrow.

I can't really defer this.

I've got to do this task today, because I can see the relationship here.

Here's another good example.

Maybe I get to the end of my Wednesday and I say, you know what, I just don't have enough time for these things, I better just defer this one, prepare these HR interview questions.

I know that the interview is not till Friday, so I'll just put it to you on Thursday.

Wait a minute, I'm going to be involved in a very intensive all-day conference downtown.

I don't think I'm going to have time to prepare these particular interview questions.

So no, I'd have to keep that one there on Wednesday, so I can be ready for this interview which is happening on Friday.

Seeing that relationship between the individual tasks and to-dos and your meeting appointments can be so valuable in making sure that you're not just deferring things aimlessly, that you're doing the things that you should be doing to prepare for certain meetings and certain events.

All-Day Events

So how do you use this all-day event area?

Well, you can do it in one of two ways.

You can double-click on this area, of course, to open up a new tab here and let's just call this one new task.

And by default, when you click on the all-day event area, it's going to make it an all-day event.

I'm just going to turn off the reminder here, but you can adjust these reminders as need be, and I'm going to Save and Close.

So there we go, I've got a new task here.

Now a couple of things that you may want to do.

I'm going to open this one back up is that you may want to give it a particular color, for example.

Maybe you want to give all of your tasks an orange color, just to set them apart from your actual meetings and your actual appointments, that is absolutely fine.

Another thing that you can do with these colors, because I know for some people, it's important that you check things off, so what you can do is you could specify, you could create one of these categories or one of these labels to say that blue means it's checked off, right?

So maybe when things are finished, they turn to blue.

And so you want to turn everything that you have listed up here from green to blue in this example.

Your last option that you have here would be just to simply delete it, in fact, actually, that's my personal preference, I never feel the need to keep my tasks around.

So once I've completed a particular task, I just delete it.

My goal at the end of the day is to get all of these tasks done and cleared out as a part of my day.

Now the other way that you can add a new task here is just to click on the New Appointment area here.

And again, by default, it's going to make it an all-day event.

Once again, in this example, I'm just going to turn off the None reminder, you can actually change this default if you want to.

I also want to point out that an all-day event, by default, is going to show up as free.

So it's not going to block out your time, you don't have to worry that this is going to make yourself unavailable for appointments or other people to add you to a particular appointment.

So let's say this is another new task that I'm going to add here, I'm going to keep this one on Wednesday, but I can change the date here.

You can also use all of this area down below to add notes, you can add attachments, you can add true formatting here down below.

So if you want to add further details like a meeting agenda, or those interview notes that I mentioned earlier, you can do that all here as well.

In fact, if I open up that interview question, and I think I added a note here, yeah, don't forget to ask them about this security question or policy changes, it's going to be right there when I go to tackle this particular task.

So again, some great advantages for using this here, and seeing all of your tasks in the same window, in the same view as all of your commitments.

Let's switch over now to the mobile view and see how this looks like on the Outlook app.

Mobile View

So here we are on my Outlook mobile app.

And as you can see, no matter how I scroll, all the way to the early morning of the day, all the way to late at evening, my tasks are always going to show up at the top of that list.

And that's just so key to make sure that I am seeing them, that they're at the forefront, that they don't get lost as a part of all of my busy meetings.

And as I scroll over to the next day, there, I've got my tasks waiting for me, I can see what else I have planned for tomorrow, in addition to all of my appointments.

And don't forget that when you click on your individual tasks, you will still get your notes and attachments and everything else that you've added.

Here again, is that HR interview question, I've got that little note for me here.

I can add even further notes as well.

So no matter where you go, no matter what you're doing within the mobile app, as you scroll up and down, those tasks are going to be front and center so you don't forget where you should be putting your attention.

Disadvantages

Lastly, I just want to highlight some of the advantages and disadvantages of using this method.

Now, of course, I've already highlighted the benefit of seeing all of your tasks on the same screen as your actual events and seeing the relationship between the two.

But one of the things that you may want to be careful with is that because these are technically all-day events, none of them will move over to the coming day.

When Tuesday is over, and I wake up and start my Wednesday, none of these will move over automatically unless I do it myself.

Now, that may sound like a pretty big negative, but I think that there's a silver lining.

Because nothing's going to happen automatically, it's going to encourage you and force you to be that much more engaged with all of your tasks and to-do.

So when I get to the end of my day, if I have not completed all of these tasks, not only will I just move them over, I won't just move them over, I'm going to take a look at those relationships.

I'm going to see where is it most appropriate to move some of these tasks?

Or, are some of these tasks even worthwhile anymore?

Maybe I can just get rid of them completely.

Sometimes I know when we're managing them in outside to-do list apps, it's just so easy to say defer all, if you've got seven, or 10, or whatever that number is.

This encourages you, it forces you to engage that much more with your to-do list.

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

What is your thoughts? What is your feedback?

Perhaps you've used a similar method like this before in the past, be sure to leave me a comment down below.

Thank you so much for watching, and I hope you subscribe, right here to the Simpletivity channel.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

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Have you ever been working within Google Sheets?

Overview

And having multiple sheets of data and wishing that you could sum them all up together in a separate sheet?

Well, in today's video, I'm gonna show you how to do just that.

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

And you know, sometimes there's good reason why we have multiple sheets for different pieces of information.

Maybe this represents different managers or members of your team.

Maybe this represents different sales areas or sales regions, for example.

So you may want to keep them separate because people are entering information just for their area, but you'd like to total them all up in a separate sheet.

Now it's true, I could take the information for example, from B and C, I could cut or copy it and bring it over here to A, but I wanna show you a much better way of doing this, especially if you are gonna be adding more information in the future.

So here I've got a tab, a sheet called Total.

Tutorial

And the first thing that we need to do is we wanna make sure that we have our headings that are exactly the same as the other sheets that we are gonna combine.

So I'm just gonna copy and paste that over here.

Now the next step that we are gonna add here is we're gonna add a formula.

So in the very first cell, just below date, I'm gonna hit that equal sign.

And what we're gonna do is we're gonna add a brace or sometimes better referred to as a squiggly bracket, not just a regular bracket, a squiggly bracket.

And we're gonna come over here to Team A, and we're just gonna select all of the data that we want.

Now we're gonna hit our semi-colon button on our keyboard, we're gonna go to Team B, and do the exact same thing, we're gonna select sorry, all the information that we want from this sheet, we're gonna hit semi-colon once more, go to Team C and once again, we're gonna select all of that information as well.

We're gonna close things off by hitting that squiggly bracket once again, at the end of our formula there, hit Enter and now here on our total sheet, we have everything from A, B and C.

If we look down here, says we've got 30 rows, now let's subtract one, right? Because we've got our header up here.

So we really have 29 rows.

So if we go back here to Team A, remember to subtract one, we've got 12 plus six, that's 18 plus 11.

Yeah, that adds up to 29.

So we've got all of that information here on this particular tab.

So that's great, it looks like we're finished right?

Well, maybe there's one problem.

Maybe this is all you need for right now.

But what if you are planning to add more information to you know, one of these sheets over here or other members of your team?

Let's say I'm here on Team B, and I'm gonna add a new entry here.

Okay?

I'm gonna add, let's add myself, just so it stands out from the rest of the list here.

Let's give ourselves a state, let's say I'm selling binders and let's say I am an absolutely horrible sales executive.

All right?

So I've added my new data here, perfect Team B.

If I go over to my total area, if I scan down and I'm not seeing any zeros here, I don't see my name here, that's a bit of a problem, right?

Because I want to be able to add information over there and have it show here but it's not happening.

I've made that new entry, and it's not showing up here.

So let's see how we can tweak our formula up here so we can do just that.

So a couple of things at first, we're gonna come in here and we're gonna look at the cells that we're referencing.

One of the problems is that we are saying to finish at E13.

We wanna finish at that row but of course, as we're adding things, we're gonna be going well beyond that.

So the first thing that we wanna do is come in here and actually remove the row number.

We wanna leave the column of course, column E, but we wanna come in here and remove the row number.

So E7 becomes E and over here E12 just becomes E as well.

But watch what happens when I hit Enter and change this formula.

So, what happened here?

So this is team A, right?

That looks like Team A has come over and you may be saying it didn't even bring over Team B and Team C.

Well, actually, you'd be wrong.

But here's the problem, I have to scroll all the way down to I think about the thousands, somewhere around there and yeah, look at that.

There's Team B.

And if we scroll down 1000 more, we would get to around Team C.

It is grabbing all of those empty or no cells.

Well, that's a problem, right?

That's certainly not what we want.

So let's go back in here and alter our formula once again.

We're gonna leave those Es that the way they are, but what we wanna do is add a query.

So at the very beginning of our formula, we are gonna type in the word query and an open bracket, all right?

So an open bracket here is gonna allow us to have this query.

We're gonna keep everything that we left in there, everything that we left from that original formula minus the row number and we're gonna come to the end here and hit comma.

Now we're gonna hit our quotation marks and we are going to enter in the following, we're gonna say select, this is how we're gonna make sure that we're only getting information that contains values.

We're gonna say select asterisk, that's sort of our wildcard, right? The star.

Select where column one, and that's capital C-O-L one, that's looking at column one or column A, in all of those different sheets that we're referencing, select star where column one is, oops, Did I put in another space? Is not null.

Okay?

So whenever it's gonna go back and take a look it's only gonna bring in information where there are things where there is information in that date column.

And lastly, we wanna hit our quotation marks to close that off, and one more we're gonna do our bracket to close off the full equation, let's hit Enter and hope that this works.

Okay, looks like we've got a lot more information here.

Do we have all the same information we had before?

We have all the same information and then some, hey, there's me, there's my poor sales job of selling absolutely nothing.

So there's that new entry we made, now it went and grabbed that information from Team B.

Let's do one more quick check test just to make sure that this works.

I'm gonna put in a new entry here on Team C, this time, let's say, let's call this one Jenny Sample also from Washington, let's say, and she's selling art and she is an amazing salesperson.

Sold $45,000 worth of art the other day.

So if I go back to total now, hey, look what's showing up at the very bottom.

So now with that new formula that we put in on this total sheet, we can continue to add new lines, new information to these sheets and they will total up perfectly here on this final sheet.

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

What other tips would you like to learn about Google Sheets here on the Simpletivity Channel?

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

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

In fact, it's very simple.

(machine whirring)
(logo whooshing)

There are many productivity apps and project management solutions, which claim to be an all-in-one solution, but in my experience, there are very, very few that can live up to that claim.

So when I first heard of Notion, I was a little skeptical, but they truly are an all-in-one productivity platform, and in today's video, I wanna show you why, I wanna show you the various different things that you can create and build and link together within Notion and why you should take a serious look at this very cool tool.

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

And let's start out by showing you just a few examples which I've created here within Notion,and I'm gonna start by clicking on this one called Scott's Notes.

Now one of the first things that I love about Notion is that absolutely everything is customizable. Everything from this banner image you see up here to being able to add a logo or emojis to different aspects of the things that you're creating, and yes, it's so much more than just a note-taking tool.

Now here you can see I've got a few simple noteswhich I've created here, but it gets so much better than this because when I click on any one of these notes, let's click on this website re-design one, here you can see I can add almost anything within a note.

Not only is it gonna keep track of everythingthat I've been doing here and I can add tags, I can add other properties here. I can add whatever other property that I like, but look at this beautiful link to the website,the little previews that you can add.

If I come down here I've got almost an unlimited supply of different blocks, Notion refers to these as blocks, and it's so much more than just text and a to-do list. I can embed other pages and other notes which I create here within Notion.

Come down here I can mention other people and assign people to different notes and things. I love how it gives you an actual preview, before you add something. Let's say I wanna add like a little board in line here. If I click on it, look at that, I can actually have a Kanban board within a note, if that makes sense, or if that's useful to me, I can break it out laterif I wanna make this my own project management tool, but it's all here within this note.

And even within the notes view here, I can add different views. Let me jump here to a task list which I created earlier, and here you can see, I've got sort of a simple Kanban format here and we've seen this before, right? With other tools that we've used, I can simply drag things over to change their statuses.

If I click on them, again, I've got this beautiful workspace where I can add any additional element, any other additional details that I would like, but what if I don't like the board view or what if I want a few different views? No problem, how about if I just add a few different views.

So I've already added these two already, if I wanna calendar view of my boards and all of my tasks, I can do so. If I want a more traditional list view, I can do that as well, is that not enough? Let's add a view, look at all these additional views that we can add, including a gallery view, as well.

So if you don't need all of them, that's fine. Don't add it to that particular page or to that particular workspace, but so much flexibility here within Notion.

Another one that I wanna show you here is the Weekly Agenda. And what's great about this one, or sorry, not the Weekly Agenda, it's my homepage, my team homepage.

What's great about this is that you can create your own custom dashboard. So here you can see there's a few different areas, right? Company, Operations and Meetings, and this is more than just notes because if I click on the office calendar, that's gonna take me directly to the office calendar, and I've even got a nice breadcrumb system here at the top left of the page.

So if I go back here and I wanna see what's happening with Requested Time off, I can see that, I can see what's listed here in that space.

But the other great thing is that you can create your own templates, so let me give you a quick example. Here under Meetings, maybe I want myself and my team to follow sort of a preset meeting agenda. I want the Date up front, and I want the Agenda items, plus some Follow-Up and some Reference Material that I would like to be added to each and every one of our meeting agendas.

Well, this is something that already took place in the past, but what if I'm setting up a new meeting? Well, here I've created a template, all I'm gonna selectis Create a Meeting Agenda, and this is gonna launch a new meeting agenda,just waiting for me to input the information that I need.

So it's already here you can already pre load it or pre format it the way that you like and of course I can edit this later on.

If we jump down here to Templates, Notion makes it so easy for you to get started, you can see that they've grouped it by industry, or the type of work that you are thinking of doing or wanting to do, whether that's design,human resources, product management sales, and if you click on them, each of them have several examples.

So before you choose to start using one of these templates, you can actually see what it looks like. If I go into Personal here, and if I wanna look at well what does the reading list exactly look like? How would that oh, cool, it's kind of like a database, like a spreadsheet format here where you can add your own rating system, you can sort this any way that you want. You can customize this table, but it's a great launching off point, right? If you don't wanna build something from scratch, you can come in here and start with a beautiful template.

Now another big advantage that Notion has over many competitors is the ability to create a database or a spreadsheet format right here from within the system.

Now here you can see I've got a fairly simple one setup, but the great thing about this is that I can manipulate and I can filter this data in so many different ways.

Now when it comes to this simple example, I could start by filling out a new entry here and just go column by column, but what I find a lot more effective is as I go up here to the right hand corner, and if I select New, I can start with my new entry.

So let's say this is my new entry, and I can just follow this, almost like filling out a form. I can say this is okay, this is an Onboarding Flow. The status is it's scheduled, it's scheduled for later this week, email, you gonna leave that empty, I'm gonna be the interviewer, so I'm gonna select that, and completion time, we're gonna say 14 days.

And then if I wanna add further comments, I can do so, and when I come back to the main view, there we have it. There's my new entry with all that information that I filled in.

So even if this is a very lengthy or complex database which you have created, it's so much easier just to fill that in using the new and if I wanna open this back up, here I can go and change those settings, I can add that further information down below.

So there is your quick taste, your overview of Notion and I would love to hear from you next.

From everything that you've seen here, what excites you the most about Notion? What are you thinking of using Notion for? I'd love to hear from you, so be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

And if you'd like to try Notion for yourself, you can use it absolutely free, just click the link in the description.

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.

(electronic whirring)

Are you needing a better way to manage all of your tasks?

Are you needing a to-do list solution that really works for you?

Well, in today's video I'm gonna show you five different ways to create a custom to-do list right here within Trello.

And we're gonna start simple and we're gonna work our way up to something that I call the Ultimate To-Do List for Trello.

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

And we're gonna start with the default here.

Default

When you open up or start a brand new board in Trello, most likely you'll have these three lists waiting for you: To Do, Doing and Done.

And that gives us a great way to work through sort of a Kanban style method of dragging things through the process until they are complete.

Now you can add due dates if you want to keep yourself on task but, you know, a pretty simple way to get started here with managing your tasks within Trello.

Why don't we turn it up a notch and go to level two.

Grouping

Those of you who may be familiar with the book Getting Things Done, also known as GTD, know that it can be helpful to group certain tasks together.

So, for example, if I've got something here like Review customer feedback survey.

Let's say that's something that I'm gonna do at my computer. I'm gonna add a label. I'm gonna add a label called Computer.

And you can see here that I've already pre-created a number of labels. I've got about five here: Email, Phone, Errand, Meeting, and Computer because what I wanna be able to do is quickly identify things that are, for example, all of my phone calls, so I can get them all done in roughly the same time within the same batch of time and then move on to something else.

Search Cards

So let's group a few of these here.

Workout at the gym, well, that's certainly an errand. I'm not doing that at the office.

Hire new staff, that's gonna be a phone interview, so I'm going to say two there.

Decide on a website budget, that's a computer related.

Redesign website.

Call long-lost friend. Yeah, that's definitely a phone call so I'm gonna put that as a phone call there.

So the nice thing here is that as I go up to show Menu, I can choose the Search Cards option.

And let's say I just want to work on the things that are at my Computer. I can select that label and now everything else is hidden.

So for the next half hour or next hour, whatever that bulk of time happens to be, I can just focus on these three areas.

If I'm done with that, I can go back here and let's say, hey, I've got a few minutes to make a few phone calls. Let's go to the Phone and now I can focus on just these tasks.

So the combination of adding different labels and then using the Search Cards option to filter things out can be a great way to up your productivity.

Subtasks

Now I'm just gonna reduce these labels. I'm gonna minimize these labels, if I click on them, just so we can focus more on the tasks.

Why don't we step it up a notch once again and something that you may need within your To-Do List system is the ability to add sub-tasks, right?

So, for example, Review customer feedback survey. Maybe there's a few different things that I need to get done here.

Well, if I open up this card, a great way to add sub-tasks is to add a checklist.

So if I add a checklist in here and I'm just gonna call this one Sub-Tasks for our example. I'm going to say Add.

Now what I can do is I can add a bunch of smaller tasks within this. I'm just gonna use a few examples, just so that we have a few to look at here.

So let's say that there are three sub-tasks that I need to complete for this particular task. I can come in here, I can list them and I can start checking them off.

And the great thing is is that on the front of the card, you get a nice little icon that shows me, hey, I'm 2/3 of the way done.

When I'm, you know, all three done here, I can then move this over to the Done list but I'm still not quite finished here.

If I go back in here and I finished task number three. Hey, that's great! I get that little green label and now I can move it over here to Done.

But let me show you one other thing that you want to keep in mind with using the task or the checklist function.

Let's say as I'm working out these tasks I realize that task number three is actually a bit bigger than I thought. This might have some of its own sub-tasks as well.

Well, don't forget that you can break out anything within a checklist. So if I come over here and select the three dots, I can say Convert to Card.

And so now when I go outside of this card, here you can see task number three is now its own task, its own card within this list.

So some things that can start within a checklist if it's a sub-task, for example, you can break it out to its own task if necessary.

Projects

All right well so far we've only been working with three different lists here but why don't we add something else, which I think is very valuable, and that is a Projects list.

So I'm gonna add a new list and I'm going to bring it all the way over here to the left-hand side.

And something that is often missing is that as we go about planning our day, we start to analyze and prioritize all the things that we would like to get done here.

However, often what we get done or where we focus our attention is not necessarily in line with the projects, the big goals that we should be accomplishing.

So let me just add a few here. I'm going to say Project 1 and Project 2, just for example here.

So not only am I gonna have them listed here in my Projects list, and, yes, you will definitely have more than two projects on the go at any given time.

Not only can I just reference it and look at it. So when I'm looking at the things that I wanna be doing today or that I should be doing this week, not only can I look over here but we wanna go one step further and actually connect some of these tasks to these projects.

So I'm going to open up Project 1.

And let's say that some of the things that are already in my to-do list are related to Project 1.

What I can do is go over here and select Attachment.

I'm gonna select Trello.

And you can see that it actually has some of the most recent cards that I have selected or viewed.

So let's say Review customer feedback survey is one of those tasks. Hey, now it appears here within this project.

Let's do it one more time because there's probably more than one thing that is related to this project.

Now I'm gonna go over here and I'm going to say, "Well that new book is also related to project number one."

So now I have both of those tasks listed here. You can see on the front of that card, on the front of my project card, you can see that there's two things.

I can see that there are two tasks assigned or related here, and when I open it up, not only do I see a nice preview of these two but if I click on them, it takes me directly to that card, directly to that task.

So it's a great way to create those relationships between your daily tasks or your actionable tasks and the overarching project.

And keeping track which one of those are related to this given project. All right so we added one more list here.

Notes Ideas

but I'm gonna actually convert this one last time.

We're gonna add two more lists, and we're gonna see if that's gonna help us be that much more efficient.

So the first one that I'm gonna add is called Notes. Sometimes I call it Notes/Ideas.

And I gotta add one more here and it's called Waiting For.

Okay, I'm gonna put them in a few different places here. The Notes, I'm gonna bring all the way over to the left, just to the left of Projects.

And my Waiting For, I'm gonna put here between Doing and Done.

So let's start with the Notes/Ideas. Often we don't think of Trello as a good note-taking tool but remember all of these cards.

Let's just put in a test card here, for example.

All of these cards give you the ability to attach documents, to attach images, to have full comments, and if there's other people involved, such as a meeting agenda, you can include that here as well, whether it's checklists and due dates, it's a great place to add all of those notes, especially here in the Description area.

And remember many of the notes that you take will never become a task or become a project but if they do, how easy is it to just drag it over into the Projects list.

Or if it's a task to just drag it over into your to-do list. You've already got all of that information, you've got everything that you need within that given card.

And remember you can also forward your emails directly to this list.

So if you come across other ideas or valuable pieces of information, you can forward that directly here into your Trello board.

So I think having a Notes or an Ideas list is a great idea.

Now moving over to our Waiting For list, I'd like to have a Waiting For or a Pending list, it could be called Pending if you like, somewhere between the Doing and Done list, because, let's be honest, sometimes you're working on something and it's simply out of your hands for a period of time.

So let's say Hire new staff.

Let's say you're still waiting for more applications to come in. There's really nothing you can do at this given point. There's nothing you can actually do except for maybe just wait 'til the end of the week or whatever that timeframe is for those applications to come in.

So I think it's nice to have that separation between things that you can actionably do here and things that you can review maybe at the end of the day or from time to time, see if you need to give someone a nudge, maybe you're waiting to hear back from someone, that's a great thing to put in a Waiting For list.

And either it may return back to the Doing list or when it's finished you can move it over to Done.

So I think the Waiting For list is a great one as well.

The List

The list or I should say the board that you see here is something that I refer to as the Ultimate To-Do List for Trello.

And if you don't want to waste your time building out this list yourselves, you can make a copy of it.

Please see the link in the description below, so that you can create your very own copy of this Trello board, and then you can do whatever you want with it.

You can add other lists, you can change the labels, you can do whatever you want to help you stay more productive.

Well, thank you so much for watching today's video.

I hope that you leave me a comment and if you have any further questions, let me know down below.

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

Are you ever frustrated trying to find the file or folder that you are looking for within your system?

Have you ever gone down a long tree branch of files and subfolders to find out that no, it wasn't there either?

Well, in today's video, I wanna show you a very simple, but most effective way of managing all of your personal files and folders.

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

And, you know what? I used to be frustrated too, until I came across the ABC Method, so I'm going to show you everything you need to know about this method so you can spend less time searching for your files, and more time getting your work done.

Now, number 1, just a few caveats to get things going, this system is designed for things that you manage.

The ABC Method is not designed for a shared folder, or some shared resource where you have multiple team members or colleagues accessing and renaming folders and that type of thing.

This is for the things that you control, where you are labeling both your files and your folders.

You can obviously share individual files and folders, but this is for a space that you manage and control.

Number 2, the ABC Method can be used absolutely anywhere.

It doesn't matter if you use Windows, a Mac, if you're using Drive, like the example I'm sharing with you today, or some other resource, you can even set up this system for your physical files, your actual paper documents as well.

And third, last but not least, if you deal with a large quantity of media such as photos, videos, or audio, this system is probably not designed for you either.

Hopefully you have your own resources or maybe your own Drive folder or some other shared folder where you can manage that, or something that's dedicated for large quantities of media.

But for everything else, the ABC Method is going to work for you.

So to get things started, you will see that my top-level file folder structure here on the left-hand side is nothing more than an alphabeticalized list.

I've got one folder for each and every letter of the alphabet, and that's by design because I want to be able to easily and quickly get to the information that I'm looking for.

If I'm looking for something that starts with S such as my Sales Numbers or Sample files or this is some SheetGo examples, I want to get there in one click.

I don't want to have to scroll through a massively long list of files and folders.

You're probably saying to yourself, "Scott, well, isn't it going to list it in alphabetical order anyhow?"

And you would be correct, but do you really want to be scrolling through hundreds, if not thousands of folders to find the file that you're looking for?

So by starting with this top-level design, A, B, C, D, all the way down to Z, you're going to be able to quickly open up something with an F, boom, I'm one click away and I'm immediately at that file level.

Now, you'll notice, of course, every folder within that respective alphabet file folder is going to be with the same name.

I've got File Naming Examples, I've got Financial Statements under F here.

But here's the next rule: it's that we're only going to have folders at this next level.

If I click on this F folder just to open it up here, you can see I have no other files here.

Let's go back to that S example as well, if I open up S, there are no other individual files, the next level down is only for folders.

And then that leads us to the third rule here: if I open up one of these folders, I only have files.

We are not going to branch off beyond that next level.

We've got the alphabet folder, we've got the folder that starts with that letter.

And again, you may have a large number in some of these letters, you might only have a handful or, maybe if it's X, you might have absolutely zero in that folder or some of the other letters.

But the very next level down is going to be the files themselves.

And why that's important, why that can help you with your productivity and being more efficient in finding and also saving the files that you're creating is that you're never more than two clicks away from the area you want to be in.

If I go up here to C, for example, I click once on the C drive, and there is my Client Resources Example folder.

That's it, two clicks away, and I'm into those files, or I can save additional files.

I'm never more than two clicks away from finding the information that I'm looking at.

Now, a few things that have come up over the years.

Number 1: some people will say, "Well, Scott, can't I just search for these files and folders?"

Absolutely, and if you're confident with your searching capabilities, by all means, use search.

But chances are you have a number of things that are similarly-labeled or may not be labeled very well in the first place.

Sometimes I find it's just so much easier to be able to click down here, click on the resources that I'm looking for.

So what are your thoughts on the ABC Folder Method?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below, and if you'd like to learn even more ways to be productive and efficient, be sure to click on the videos here.

Thank you so much for watching, and remember: being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

(whirring noise)

Website blockers can be so effective in helping you reduce distractions and interruptions throughout your day, but one of the drawbacks of many website blockers is that they only work on one device.

For example, if I'm browsing here on Amazon and spending too much time looking and shopping, I could block myself here, but what do I do when I go to my phone?

And let's be honest, our smartphones are often the source of most of our distractions.

Well, today, I wanna introduce you to BlockSite, which is available and syncs between your desktop computer and your mobile device, so you can block out and prevent certain distractions no matter where you are.

Mobile App

So, let's jump into the mobile version here and give you a quick look at what's going on.

Here, you can see I've got the BlockSite app installed. It's a very simple, very clean interface.

So, here are some of the sites that I've already added, including social media and a few other websites that I might spend too much time on during the day.

But the other great thing that you'll see here is that you can block particular apps. It's beyond just websites because, of course, on your phone, it's probably certain apps that are distracting you as well.

So, I've added YouTube in this case. Let's say I'm in the middle of my workday, and I want to watch some videos. I click on YouTube—forget about it. This app is blocked by BlockSite, so I can't access it right now because I've added it to my block list.

If I go back into the app, you'll see that my BlockSites are on. All of these websites and apps will be blocked if I try to access them.

Now, it's very easy to add websites or apps. You can hit the plus button, add a web address, and even choose to always block the site and ignore the schedule.

If I select the app tab, I can also scroll through or search any of the apps on my phone and add them to my list as well.

Another great feature is the recurring schedule option. You can set specific times when certain apps and websites are blocked.

For example, I set a schedule here so that between 9 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., Monday through Friday, all those websites and apps will be blocked.

You don't have to set this manually each day. It's automatically done for you.

However, we all work a little differently, so BlockSite also offers a Work Mode.

You can have a different BlockList for specific times of the day or week versus when you're actually working.

It can be the same list or completely different. For example, I have a different mix of websites and apps here.

You also have a timer option, similar to the Pomodoro Technique. You can set a custom interval, say 25 minutes, where you're focused on work.

During this time, you won't be able to access the blocked apps.

For instance, if I try to access the Play Store, it won't let me because I'm supposed to be working.

The timer will keep counting down, and when it's up, I'll be able to access those sites again.

Depending on your preference and what you find most effective, you can customize BlockSite to work best for you.

Another option on the mobile site is the Adult Block option, which ensures you're blocking mature content intended for 18-plus.

One of the great things about BlockSite is that it syncs between both desktop and mobile versions.

So, let's jump back over to the desktop. All right, so here we are back on my desktop...

Desktop App

And let's say I have a tendency to browse and perhaps do too much shopping throughout my workday.

With the BlockSite browser extension installed, all I have to do is come up here and immediately block this site.

I don't have to type anything in; if I find myself visiting a website too frequently, I can just click "block this site" and add it to my block list.

You can see that this browser interface is very similar to the mobile version. We've got our BlockSites, our Work Mode to start that timer, and the Adult Block.

But let's dive into the settings because there are a few additional options we can do here.

We can, of course, type and add new web addresses directly, but what's nice on the desktop version is that you can both export and, more importantly, import a list of websites you'd like to block.

Maybe you already have such a list, or you can find great pre-existing lists on the web. For example, you might find a list of the 100 most distracting websites, which could include a mix of social media, news sites, and funny websites.

You can import it directly into your list here.

You can also create a redirect. So, if there's a particular web address you'd like to be redirected to when you attempt to visit one of your BlockSites, maybe it's your own website or your Gmail account, you can do that as well.

And we already looked at the schedule, but what's nice about the desktop view is that you can add multiple intervals.

For instance, you can block websites from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., allow access during lunch from 12 to 1 p.m., and then block them again from 1 to 2 p.m. You can set up a more complex schedule here on the desktop version of BlockSite.

We still have Work Mode, and you can password protect your settings. You can even block websites by certain words, which is an interesting feature if you find yourself visiting specific URLs based on certain keywords.

Everything here is perfectly synced with the mobile version. You're not going to see the apps here because, of course, your desktop apps are different from those on your mobile device, but all the websites we blocked on mobile are synced here as well.

If we jump back into the mobile version, we'll see that Amazon.com is blocked there too.

So, if you find yourself being distracted or tempted to visit certain websites or apps during your workday, I recommend checking out BlockSite.

BlockSite is available for both Android and iOS devices.

If you have further questions or comments about site blocking, I'd love to hear from you, so be sure to leave a question in the comments down below.

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

Google Calendar, Gmail and Google Keep are three Google apps that are core to my personal productivity system.

But you know, what helps out even more is the relationships between these three.

So in today's video, I wanna show you how you can get so much more out of these three and by connecting and linking them together.

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

How to Link Gmail to Keep Notes

So let's get started.

And we're gonna start with my inbox.

And often I'm dealing with an email here.

And you know, I'd like to take some notes, maybe there's some helpful information here, maybe I've got an existing note that I would like to grab some of this information from.

Well, something that really helps me out is this side panel here on the right, and you can see that we've got some icons here for things like Google Calendar and Google Keep.

Now first things first, if you don't see this sidebar, most likely, it's because you have not hit this little arrow in the bottom right hand corner.

Maybe your website looks or your browser looks a little bit like this.

Come all the way down here to the bottom right hand corner and say show side panel and that will be revealed unto you there.

So if I click on the Keep icon, I've got all of my Keep notes here.

So I can take a look at the relevant note and input the information that I want.

But it gets even better.

Let's say that this is a brand new piece of information but I'd like to have a note linked to this information.

Well, all I need to do here is say, take a note and just before I even begin writing anything, you'll notice that there's an actual link between this spring conference ideas and the email that I'm writing here.

So I'm just gonna say, new note here as an example, I'm gonna hit Done.

The great thing is that no matter where I am, let's go into Keep itself.

Here's that new note.

I've got that link, I can just click on that link and now in a new tab, I'm gonna go directly to this email.

I've got a connection between that note and going back to this email.

So no matter what I do with this email, if I archive it, if I send it to a different label or a different folder, I've got a link.

So as I'm fleshing out these notes, maybe I'm adding a bunch of notes related to that email, I can always go back and revisit it here.

If I wanna kill that link, well, I can just hit the X.

If I never wanna have that link, go back, I can do so there.

But let's look at another way

How to Link Gmail to Google Calendar

In which we can connect information from a Gmail into this time Google Calendar.

So in this case, let's say this is something that I wanna create a meeting about in this email example, someone would like to set up a meeting with me and we've already got part of the agenda listed here.

So why do I wanna copy and paste this or write it all out again, why don't I just create an event from this?

Well, if we go up here to these three dots, we've got a number of other options available to us and one of them is create event.

So if I select Create event within any email that is open, what it's gonna do is open up a new tab within Google Calendar, it's gonna input the subject of that email up top here, and the contents of that email automatically in the description.

And in fact, it's even added that individual over here.

I can actually just hit save and create this meeting, I should really take a look at the date and the time first, but I can hit save and create that meeting almost immediately.

Now, of course, I can change the title, I can add some more information down here as well, but in just a few clicks, one click to be exact, I can be in here and be ready to set up that particular meeting.

So those are a couple of ways that you can get information out of Gmail into both Keep and Google Calendar.

How to Link Google Calendar to Keep Notes

Now let's stick with Google Calendar for a second.

I'm gonna discard this particular meeting.

I'm gonna go back to this one here.

So I'm here within Google Calendar, and perhaps I wanna link some of the information here with my notes.

So for example, let's say I'm interviewing someone later today and I wanna write out some of the job interview questions.

Well, if I open up this invitation here, I obviously don't wanna add it to the description, because perhaps the person I'm interviewing is a part of this invitation.

I don't wanna give away the questions or my personal notes in advance, but with this event already open, I'm gonna come back over here to this side panel and hit Keep.

And very similar to what we saw in Gmail, if I say take a note, I've got that link again.

So here, maybe I've got, question one, question two, question three, I've got a bunch of questions.

I'm gonna label this job interview questions here, perfect.

So I've got some of my job interview questions and perhaps I'm gonna keep adding to this.

I don't wanna be in here all of the time within the calendar, I'm gonna go about the rest of my day maybe throughout the week, I'm gonna come back here and add to these job interview questions or revise these job interview questions.

But if I wanna go back to that particular calendar invite maybe I've forgotten who these interview questions are for, I can select that and it's gonna bring me directly back to this particular invite.

So some cool new ways as to making a relationship between Keep in Gmail, and also Keep and Google Calendar.

How to View Keep Reminders in Google Calendar

But it gets even better.

And we're gonna look at another relationship between Google Calendar and Keep.

So let me close this out here for a second.

Within Google Calendar, this is where I spend most of my day, this is where I have all of my appointments, all of my events, I even manage the majority of my to dos here within my calendar.

But let's go back to this interview example here again.

What if I wanna review those questions in advance?

What if I wanna review these job interview questions, just to refresh my memory or to revise them one last time?

Well, within Google Keep what we can do, of course, is add a reminder.

So if I go in here and add a reminder, let's say I wanna pick a particular time.

If the interview is at 10:30am, I wanna be reminded of these notes at 10:00am.

I'm gonna hit save.

So now I've got my reminder here.

If they have desktop notifications turned on, I'm gonna get a reminder here within the browser, I may also get a reminder on my mobile phone.

But it gets even better if I go back to Google Calendar as long as you have reminders enabled, as long as you're viewing the reminders calendar here.

And I'm just gonna refresh this page so that we can see it here.

What's gonna happen is, there we go. There are my job interview questions showing up as a reminder here within Google Calendar.

So if I click on this, it's gonna remind me first of all, but if I click on this, I'm gonna have those job interview questions waiting for me.

Don't forget reminders that you set here with Google Keep automatically link with your Google Calendar account.

As long as you have your reminders calendar enabled, you can hide them if you want.

See those little purple reminders that I had, I'm gonna enable them again, you can see them here, I've got another one here that may be related to this team meeting here, this particular note as well.

How to View Keep Notes in Google Calendar or Gmail

So that can be very helpful too.

But let's go one step further here, because I want you to show that it actually keeps the link between some of the notes that we've created over here, and the things that we've done on the calendar itself.

So you'll remember that when I created that note, let's open up a new one here.

I'm gonna open this up.

And if I say take a new note, and let's just say this is a new visit client note just so we can see it there.

I'm gonna say done.

I've got that link, it's creating that link because I'm creating it here while it's open.

New clients note how about that?

Let's make sure we get the title correct here.

But what I wanted to show you here is that when I'm back on the calendar, here I've got my notes here, I don't see anything too special, it's just ordering it in the way that I've entered it here.

But if I open up this calendar event, what you're gonna see is looking at that, related.

That's actually gonna jump to the top.

So even if I took this note, and then I took hundreds of other notes, whenever I open up this event within Google Calendar, if there's a link, this is gonna jump to the top, I'm gonna be able to find it later on that much easier as long as I have this side panel open.

Let's go back and look at that example with the interview one.

If I open this one up, again, related, there's my job interview questions.

It wasn't the last one I created, this was the last note I created, but it knows that it's related so that is gonna pop up in the side panel as well.

Now the last thing that I wanted to share

How to Add Keep Notes to Anything

With you today here is how you can actually add a Google Keep link to absolutely anywhere, not just Gmail or Google Calendar you can add it absolutely anywhere.

So here, if I open up, let's say I wanna link back to this particular note here.

Whenever you have a note open within Google Keep, what you can do is come up here and copy, you can copy the information in that link.

Now what I can do is I can go back to absolutely, I've already got one here in that particular note, let's open up this one here.

I can go to anywhere and paste that link.

Now it doesn't have to be within a Google app like I'm showing you here, I gotta save this one, but I'm just gonna use this as an example.

If I come back here, here, I've got that link.

If I click on it, what it's gonna do is in a new tab, it's gonna open up that particular note.

So isn't that fantastic?

No matter where I am, I mean, I could be pasting this into a Google Drive document or a PDF or something like that, it's gonna bring it back to this particular note.

So it may leave you with a bit of an ugly URL.

This is a bit of a workaround, you could say it's not the most prettiest link, but of course, you can do that here by pasting that where you like it.

I'd love to hear from you next.

Number one, what was your favorite tip from today's video?

And number two, did I miss anything?

Is there another way that you can create a connection between these or other Google Apps?

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.

PDF documents are a crucial file type for your business or your everyday use.

Whether you're using it for contracts and agreements, maybe for marketing materials or newsletters.

I'm sure that you are using PDF documents on a daily basis.

So in today's video, I wanna give you five great reasons for using a PDF editor.

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

And in today's video, I'm using PDFelement by Wondershare.

If you would like to learn more and try PDFelement for yourself, you can see the link in the description below.

So let's get started with reason number one.

PDF Editor

And you know what? It's right in the name, you can edit any PDF document.

So let's take this one as an example.

Let's say I've got a newsletter here and you know, the only thing I have is the copy from a few years back and I don't have the original file type, I don't have the Word document, all I have is the old PDF.

So what am I gonna do?

Well, I'm gonna open it up in my PDF editor and here I can come in here, I can change the date.

Let's say for example, I wanna make that 2020, in this case.

Maybe I come down here and I say, oh, we're only gonna have 32 meetings this year.

So let's delete that and put 32, you can see that it keeps the same formatting, the same coloring and everything.

And maybe I wanna get rid of this image because that image is dated as well.

Let's go and replace that image really quickly here.

I'm gonna go up to (mumbles) images, oh, here we go.

Let's replace it with this clock.

And boom, it's seamless.

There it is, it fits in with my PDF documents.

So even if you don't have the original file, or you can't get the original file from someone else, it is so easy to edit any PDF document.

Reason number two, why you should consider a PDF editor is that you can convert any PDF to an editable file.

So I'm gonna look at this one here, as an example here.

This one is mostly text based.

But let's say that I need to share this with someone else, who's actually gonna do most of the editing on their end.

They're the ones who wants to revise this press release.

And I don't know, if they have a PDF editor, or if they have any experience, they would like this in a Word file.

Well, if I come over here to convert, you can see I can convert this PDF to a variety of popular file types.

I can also convert it just to text or to an image itself.

But let's go to Word and let's convert this particular one to Word.

Let's say no, I don't care about saving this one in particular, we just wanna convert this one to Word.

So I'm just gonna say underscore Word copy, just so we know that we can find it.

I'm gonna hit Save and pretty quick.

I mean, this is a pretty short document, so it didn't take very long for it to convert it there.

Let's pop over to Word and let's open it up.

Let's see how we did, it looks pretty good.

Looks pretty good.

You may notice a few minor formatting adjustments.

The spacing may be slightly different than what you're, than what you just saw in the PDF document.

But for the most part, the formatting, the layout, et cetera, is all the same.

So now I can send this file to my colleague or to the person I'm working with.

And they can go ahead and edit it with a program that they are more comfortable with, in this case, Word.

Alright, the third reason why you should consider using a PDF editor is from a collaboration standpoint by the ability to both comment and add notes to a document.

Collaboration

So let's say for example, here I am, and as I'm reviewing this, I wanna add some notes for someone that I'm working with and I say, you know, this picture has got to go.

I'm gonna click on this little sticky note here.

I'm gonna click on it here and I'm gonna say, can we use something else here?

I'm gonna leave a little question mark here.

Now anyone can come in here that I give access to and they can just hover over it and they can see my note.

They can change it themselves, or they can provide me with some feedback.

I can use this highlighting notion here and I can just highlight maybe a section over top of it.

I'm gonna double-click on that and say, let's get the yes from the client, first, maybe I wanna make sure that we get permission to use a particular name here.

So again, anyone can come in here, double-click, see my comment, you can collaborate and add comments as you're working with other members of your team.

Alright now, number four, I think is really crucial for working with a PDF editor.

And actually, it's a big reason why I wish I had started using a PDF editor many, many years ago much earlier than I ended up doing so.

And that is adding customizable and fillable fields.

So this time, I'm gonna go up to Form and here you can see that we can add things such as a textbox, a checkbox, radio button, drop-down fields.

All these types of fields that are fillable, think of how many times you've been sent a PDF form and how convenient it was that you can actually fill it in, you didn't have to print it off and fill it in by hand, you could just fill it in directly.

So in this case, I'm gonna use this set, text field one, for example.

And let's say I want them to, you know, add their full name at the bottom of this PDF.

I'm actually going to come over here to edit and just add the textbox itself here at the beginning.

So maybe I want them to add their full name.

So I'm gonna add it there, I can now adjust it, I can drag it up here.

There we go.

Click and drag, actually like this little crosshairs that they include, so I can line it up exactly.

So now when this person goes to use this particular document, this is going to be a fillable field, right?

And you've seen that before.

I can just come in here and oh, yeah, my name is Joe Smith.

Perfect, I can keep filling out that form.

So think of how many things that you use as part of your day to day, or a part of your business where you're needing someone to fill something in.

How convenient it is if they can do so directly within the PDF, something that is essential in any good PDF editor.

Now the fifth and final reason why I think you should consider using a PDF editor, has to do with protection.

So I'm gonna kind of get to come up here and select the Protect tab.

Now in this case, I could add a password if I wanted to, if I wanted to require a password to open up this particular PDF document.

I could also set some other permissions such as allowing them to print or allowing them to make changes.

But in this case, I wanna show you something in addition to that, and that is actually blocking out or hiding specific pieces of sensitive information.

So let's say for example, in this particular document, let's say that this BCTFD is the name of a client and I wanna share everything else in this document but I don't wanna share the specifics of the client, maybe I'm, you know, showing some work to a potential client or something along those lines.

So I just wanna block out this BCTFD.

What I can do is I can come up here, select redaction, and then start highlighting things that I wanna redact.

But you know what many PDF documents are pages and pages in length.

I mean, what if this is 50 pages in length?

Well, that's just not gonna do.

So let me delete this redaction here, I'm gonna show you a much easier way to do so.

In this case, I'm actually gonna search for the words that I wanna block out.

So let me type in BCTFD, I gotta hit Search.

And it's gonna find occurrences of that everywhere in the document and remember, if this document was 50 pages long, there might be hundreds of references to this client everywhere.

I can either choose them individually here if I want.

I'm gonna select this first one which is gonna select them all.

You can see that they're now all highlighted.

They've all got this little red around them.

The last step in this case is I'm gonna say confirm or apply this redaction, it's gonna give me a warning just to make sure that I wanna go and proceed with this.

I'm gonna hit OK.

And now you can see I have blacked out references to this particular customer, this particular string of words, I can now save this PDF, I can send it to that client or to other people, and be sure that they won't see the client name or maybe I wanna hide some financial information, whatever the case may be, you can do that with a PDF editor.

So I hope I've given you some good reasons to consider using a PDF editor as a part of your day to day.

Again, if you would like to use the exact features that I've shared with you today, here, you can try them for yourself by using PDFelement.

You can find a link to their website 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.

Are you tired of writing the exact same response to the questions you receive on a regular basis, in email?

Wouldn't it be great if you could have a template so that you could send all of the information that you need to, without writing it out every single time?

Well in today's video, I'm gonna show you everything you need to know about Gmail Templates.

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

And to get started, we're gonna need to go up to settings, and hit settings again.

Now until recently, Gmail Templates used to be called Canned Responses, but much of the functionality has remained the same.

Here within settings, we wanna go all the way over to the right-hand side and select the Advanced tab.

Now templates are already at the very top of my screen because I've already enabled it, but by default, all of the options within the Advanced tab are disabled.

So you might actually wanna take a few minutes and review some of the other great features that are available here within Gmail.

So be sure to enable templates, and before you leave make sure to come down here and hit Save Changes, so that they are applied.

So now that templates are applied, when we are either replying to a message, forwarding a message, or composing a brand-new message, we have a special feature available to us.

So let's take a look at this example email.

Let's say I'm receiving a question from someone here but I wanna give a polite response that I'm not interested at this time, and I don't wanna waste the time writing it out myself.

So I'm gonna select the reply button here, and then in the bottom right-hand corner, under these three dots, under more options, I'm gonna click that.

And you can see at the top, I've got an option called Templates.

So I've got a few different things I can do here.

I've already created a few templates already.

Insert a template, I'm gonna show you that in a second, but we can also save a new draft or delete an existing template.

Well let's start with the template that I've already created.

This one called Sorry, Not Interested.

I'm gonna click that, and immediately I've got my pre-packaged response.

Here's the three sentences that I'd like to send.

I can hit Send and get on with my next email or get on with the rest of my day.

So you're probably thinking at this point, well how do I create my own template, Scott?

I wanna create something from scratch.

Well it's pretty simple.

Whether you're replying or whether you're composing a new message, just start with a blank message.

Now let's create something super quick and simple.

I'm gonna say thank you for reaching out, but I'm not interested at this time.

Take care.

So here I've got my message, but just before I hit send, if I wanna save this as a template, I need to come back down to more options, come down to templates, and I'm gonna say save draft as template.

Now you're still gonna see my existing templates here, because the first one is to overwrite an existing template.

Maybe I want to update an existing template.

Well then I would select which one I would like to save over.

But in this case, I wanna save a brand-new one.

So I'm gonna say save as new template, and here by default, it's gonna input the subject line.

Now that's important, because if you're composing a message from scratch, the template name will be the subject line in that case, but in this example I'm just gonna say not interested.

That's gonna be the name of this particular template.

I'm gonna hit save.

And now I can use this again and again.

If you just wanna test it out, you can come back here to more options, select templates, and there it is.

Not interested, I can boom.

I can use it here, I can use it absolutely anywhere.

But remember, this can go beyond just simple text responses, or simple text-based emails.

If I come down here, I'm gonna select one of the templates I already created earlier, called Learn More About Simpletivity.

I'm gonna select this one.

And here you can see, you can add formatting, I've got a few links here, I've even got an image.

I've got a picture that I've included in this particular template.

So think of the examples in your life where people are asking for information or asking questions, and maybe you wanna send them a pricing list.

Maybe you wanna send them a few samples of your work, or sample images.

Maybe you've got links to videos that you regularly send out.

You can compose a very lengthy email, complete with formatting, complete with all of this information, and just have it ready to go as a template.

Now, the last thing that you should know is that if you want to delete a template.

We're gonna go back up here, and come down to the bottom option.

If you wanna delete a template, you can go ahead and do so, and select which one that you would like to.

Now before you do so, once you've selected it, it will give you one last chance, and no, no, no, no, I don't wanna delete it just yet.

So I'm gonna say cancel.

The last example I wanna show you here is that when we are composing a new message, so let's say I'm composing a message from scratch.

Again, we're gonna have our templates available to us as well, but I just wanna show you that if I use this Learn More About Simpletivity template again, you can see how the name of that template will show up as the subject line.

So keep that in mind if you're not just going to be using templates for replies, or for forwarding emails, that that default name will show up as the subject line.

Of course you can always come in here and edit it if you like, but that can be handy if you wanna save some, even more time, when sending out these types of messages.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's video and I hope you start saving a lot of time by using Gmail Templates, formerly known as Canned Responses.

I would love to know how you plan to use such templates in your business, in your day-to-day, or maybe in your personal life.

Be sure to leave your comments in the section down below.

Thank you again for watching and remember being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

If you use Evernote, you're probably sick of managing hundreds, if not thousands of notes and all of your notebooks.

Well, in today's video, I wanna show you five tips to help you be more efficient and effective with managing all of that reference material, meeting agendas, thoughts, whatever you capture here in Evernote, I want you to do it faster.

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

Tip 1 Create Note Links

So let's get started with tip number one and first off, we are gonna take a look at creating note links and what that is is creating links between one or more notes here within your Evernote notebook.

So in this example, I've got a link here that says review new artwork for Google ad. And if I click on that, it's gonna take me directly to another note that I have here within Evernote.

This can be really handy if you want a high-level note in one area of your notebook and maybe you wanna drill down to some more details with other notes within Evernote.

So how do we create this?

Well, first of all, let me delete this for an example and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start with the note that I want to reference.

If I right click on any note, I'll get this menu and I want to choose Copy Internal Link.

By selecting that, I've copied that link to the clipboard and now I can go up to whatever note I want.

Let's go back to this one as an example and I'm just gonna hit paste.

Now, you'll notice that I don't get a lot of gobbledygook like you see up here like you would typically see if you were just pasting a web URL.

But no, this link is clean. In fact, this link is the title of that particular note.

So now I can just click on it and go directly to that note elsewhere within my Evernote account.

It can be really, really helpful.

Tip 2 Create Table of Contents

Let's stay with making these connections and next up what I wanna do is show you how to create a table of contents because maybe you'd like to see a summary of a number of notes within a single note.

Now, you're probably used to managing your notes within a notebook and you probably have a lot more than what I have listed here in my sample account, but maybe you don't wanna manage all of those notes within tags or within their own dedicated notebooks.

Maybe you just wanna reference let's say three or four different notes. So in this case, what we're gonna wanna do is multi-select.

So on the left-hand side here, I'm gonna select these three notes here. I'm just gonna hold down Control on my keyboard and you can see I get a bit of a snapshot of what those notes contain here, but down below the great thing is is that I've got a number of additional options available to me.

And in this case, what I'm gonna select is create table of contents note.

Now, just before I do this, I wanna make sure that you're aware this is not going to delete or remove or change the location of these three existing notes, but it's actually gonna create a new note.

So if I select this, what's gonna happen, I'm gonna scroll up to the top and here you see I have a new note which is called table of contents. But when I click on it, now I've got note links directly to those three notes. It's even added numbered bullet points here to the left. So I can click on any one of them and go directly to that given note.

Now, you probably wanna change the title of this from table of contents to something more relevant, but this can be especially helpful when you are creating for example a meeting agenda and maybe you've got five or six or seven items that you wanna talk about, but you don't wanna list them all within the agenda here. Maybe you just want the bullet point name and then you or members that you're working with can drill down and select that link and then go to the desired note.

So there's one another thing I wanna show you here when it comes to multi-selecting notes here. And we're not talking about just applying tags to different notes. If let's say I take notes one, two, and three, again I'm gonna click on one and then I'm gonna hold down Control to multi-select. I'm gonna add three in this case, but you can actually merge your notes as well.

Maybe for example I've been taking notes about the same idea or the same thought or topic at different times, but after review I've realized you know what, these shouldn't be in three separate notes. These should actually be in the same note. So now that I've got the three selected here, I'm gonna select the merge button and what this is gonna do

Tip 3 Merge Notes

It's gonna take those three notes and put them into a single note.

Now, you can see that there's a header here that is gonna give us the name of the note up here. It's gonna also say the author, who created this note in the first place.

So you can see what is going on and the separation between these three notes. So now I've got them all contained in one note. I don't just have to lump them in within the same notebook. I can see them all right here.

Now, there's one word of warning with merging. There is no capability of undoing this action. So for example, I can't just click on this and say, well, let's go back or actually no, I didn't mean to do that. Can we hit undo?

If I go up here to Edit and say Undo, it's not going to undo it. So before you select that merge button, make absolutely sure that you wanna combine those notes together. But when you do, you're gonna have them more conveniently displayed to you in a single note.

Tip 4 Shortcut Keys

All right, let's move on to tip number four and this is gonna save you an awful lot of time and that has to do with shortcuts and hotkeys.

So if we go up here to the top of our menu and if we select Tools, we wanna then select Options. And when the Options dialogue opens up, we wanna go about halfway down and select shortcut keys.

Now, first off, you're gonna wanna review this and see the number of actions you can perform just by using these shortcut keys. I think probably the most obvious one or the most helpful one will be the first one, create a new note.

But if you don't like this particular key combination, you can just delete it and create your own combination you can use. Maybe there's something a little more convenient to you.

But the other bonus of using global shortcut keys is that you can use these as long as the desktop version of Evernote is open. So you don't have to be viewing this. As long as it's open in your taskbar in your system tray as it states here, you can use these shortcut keys and they will be applied.

Let me show you just a quick example of this one in particular Control + Alt + N. So if I come out of here and just say Control + Alt + N, boom, exactly, I'm gonna have a fresh new note that I can start editing right away. So much easier than always having to come up here and select new note depending on where my mouse is and depending on how many monitors you may be using at any given time.

Tip 5 Advanced Syntax

Now, my fifth and final tip today also has to do with saving time and this one in particular has to do with searching notes, but using some advanced syntax so you can narrow down your search and get to the note that you are looking for.

You're probably already familiar knowing that by typing in a keyword here, you can quickly find something. If I say, I don't know, let's say the word review for example, I'm gonna find every single note that has the word review in it somewhere. Not just the title, but within the note itself.

But what if the note that I'm searching for I know it has review in the title and that's the only one I want. Well, we can use some special features here. In this case, we can use the term intitle. So if I use the term intitle and now I enter in the word, I'm gonna say review, I only get one search result because this is the only one right now that has review in the title. I can narrow it down that much more.

Let me show you two more that I find very, very helpful. You might be using a checklist for some of your Evernote processes and some of the things that you're doing on a day-to-day basis. Here's my office supplies list. If you wanna look for things that have a to-do list or a checklist, what you can do is use the syntax todo and then you can choose either true or false. So if I type in the word true, what it's gonna bring back is any of my notes that has at least one of the checkboxes checked off. Here I've got three in this particular case. So this is the only note that's coming back to me.

If I back up and say todo false, what's gonna happen is I'm gonna get a few different notes come back. I'm still gonna get this one because in this case, it's gonna show me every note that has a checkbox, at least one checkbox that is unchecked and that's the case here. I've got a few other documents here that have things that are unchecked. So I can search just by the status of the checkbox.

The last one that I wanna show for you here is created or updated. So if you're looking for something and you say, I know I created it within this timeframe, you can type in the word created, then start with day. Now, if you say day, it's gonna bring back everything that is today and I like how Evernote always shows you in sort of an easy-to-read manner as to what you're actually searching for.

But don't stop just there. If I say day minus three for example, it's gonna bring back everything that's been created since three days ago which in this case was November 26. So you can get really granular here. You can use created. You can also use updated because those are two different things of course what you're searching on here to be more granular and get specific with what it is you are searching for.

Well, I hope you enjoyed those five tips to get more out of Evernote and especially to help you save time. Now, I'd love to learn from you next what are some of your time saving tricks or techniques for getting the most out of Evernote. Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thanks again for watching and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.