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

Todoist is arguably the most popular to-do list app in the world right now, and actually, I would say it's probably the very best pure task manager that is available. So then why on earth don't I use it? That's a common question that I receive, and so today I wanted to give you a few reasons why.

Now up front I wanna tell you this video's not intended to try and convince you to not use Todoist, especially if you currently are a Todoist user or you're thinking of using Todoist. I simply want to explain why I choose not to use Todoist as my primary task manager.

So, first and foremost, whenever I am thinking of adding a new system or app or workflow, I'm very cautious of how many additional tools I am bringing or including in my productivity system. If you're a longtime subscriber here to the Simpletivity channel, you will know that my primary way of managing my tasks is within my calendar. I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail in this video. You can see some of my other videos, and I'll leave links to those in the description below, but I think it's key, I think it's crucial, that you see your tasks on the same screen as your meetings and events and other things that you have going on in your calendar.

Now, it's not to say that Todoist doesn't have an integration with online calendars. In fact, right here you can see these little orange tasks at the top are actually synced with this particular Todoist account. So I can see all of these tasks within my calendar. I can move them around as well if I want to, and the sync is actually pretty good in terms of changing those tasks, and sometimes it can take a few seconds or maybe even a couple of minutes, but you can make those changes. There you go. There you can see that that one was moved back to December 17th.

Still, if I want to get the full feature and functionality out of Todoist, such as using labels and adding comments, I have to come back here. I can't do that within my calendar. I can see the task, I can see what date it's on, but if I want to change those details I need to come back here into Todoist. So that is one of the key reasons why I don't just use Todoist. I don't use other dedicated task list managers because of the lack of seeing my events, seeing my calendar on the same screen.

Now a couple of other reasons why I choose not to use Todoist is that sometimes I find the AI features and some of the features that are meant to be helpful, I find can actually have a negative effect on our productivity.

So let me give you just a couple of examples. If you select the three dots here on the right-hand side of any task you get a number of options available to you here, and near the top we have some scheduling options here. Now the first one here is a suggested date as to when you should complete this task. Now I don't know all the factors that are going into the selection that Todoist is making. Now in this case, it's saying that this task is overdue. So this is probably a pretty straightforward one, right? That the suggested date should be today because it's no longer December 17th.

Let's click down to something else. Let's see if it gives us a different date. So this one it's saying not today. Even though it's due today, it's suggesting tomorrow. Maybe because it's a blog article about cute kitty cats. Maybe it's looking at the text and making that assessment here. Here's this proposal for a Florida client. It's saying today. So I'm sure there's some smart function going on here looking at things like maybe proposal and client, and here it saw that there was cats in the title, and that's why it's saying we would postpone that one a little further off into the future.

But again, when we start to rely on this, we start to often think that the computer or the artificial intelligence is smarter or knows something that we don't, and that's why I'm often cautious with this type of technology.

But there's something else I wanna point out here, and that's these two features here. The one is postpone to tomorrow, and the next one is next week as in postponing to next week. Now these are meant to make our lives easier. That in just a single click I can postpone this to the coming Monday, and I can postpone this to tomorrow, and of course, I can actually do this to multiple tasks at a time, especially if I have a bunch of things that I didn't get to yesterday. I can quickly bring everything to today or postpone them all to next week.

Well, that is precisely what I think is the problem. When we make it so easy to defer or postpone something, what I often find is that we no longer think clearly enough or carefully enough about the task itself, and I think, when it comes to deferring and moving our tasks around, you need to be careful. You need to put in some careful thought as to, you know what? Maybe I'm not gonna get to this today, but should I really defer it till next week? Just because it's so easy for me to do so. No, let me think more carefully about this. Maybe I need to actually block out some specific time because this particular task is so important.

I think there's something to be said to actually putting in a little bit more manual effort so that you're not so quick to defer things on your to-do list.

Now, like I said, I want to be very clear. My intention of today's video is not to try and convince you to stop using Todoist or to not use Todoist at all. I simply wanted to answer some of the most common questions available. I think there's a very good reason why Todoist is one of the most popular apps. If you go to the Google Play Store, the Apple App Store, there's a reason why Todoist is always near the top of the productivity category.

But these are just some of the reasons why I choose not to do Todoist. With that, I'd love to hear from you next. Two things. Number one, if you are a Todoist user what do you love about Todoist? What are some of the features that you absolutely love? What are some of the reasons why you think others should consider Todoist? And I'd also love to hear the opposite. Are there some additional reasons why you don't use Todoist? And if not, what do you use as an alternative?

I would love to hear your answers in the comments below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel. Be sure to give this video a thumbs up, and don't forget to leave me a comment below.

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

What is the best way to name your files? Let's find out in today's video.

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

You probably already know that the way that you structure your folders is important, but what's so much more important is how you name your individual files so you can go and find them and retrieve them when you need to.

So in today's video, I'm gonna show you three different components that you should include in each of your filenames.

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When it comes to naming your files, there are many different approaches that you can take, but I think you only need three key components, a date, a file subject name, and a unique identifier or some other special code.

So let's take a look at all three of these components, see why they are important, and also look at the different ways in which we can order them.

Here you can see in this example I have a few files that have a date at the beginning and this is great if you are managing files that need to be sorted by a particular date.

Now it's true almost every file system will include a last modified date and also you'll be able to find when that file was first created.

It doesn't matter if you're in Drive like the example I'm showing you here or if you are on a Windows or a Mac computer.

But in many cases, the last time that the file was edited or when it was created is not the most important date so you may want to include something more specific.

I'll give you an example. I give a lot of presentations and so for me I don't care so much as to when it was last modified or when I first created that file.

What I'd like to know is when did I last present that file. When did I actually deliver that as part of a speech or as part of a live workshop?

So I will often include a date at the beginning of those files.

Now we wanna go one step further and make sure that we list our dates in a proper order.

Here you will see I have things listed in year, month and then day order and we're using two digits for both month and day. Now this is really, really important.

This has nothing to do with where I live in the world or the country, whatever date format that your country follows, the reason why we want to follow year, month, day is because it will always sort properly.

As you can see in these first four files here, I'm starting in 2017 and things are sorting properly down to 2018 including at the month and the date level.

And that's always going to be the case if we follow this format.

Now I've seen some people who omit this little dash in between so the numbers are all together. You've got an eight-digit number.

I prefer to have a small dash in between. I just find it that much easier for me to read.

But as I'll be showing you a little bit later on in today's video, you don't necessarily need to start with the date. We'll look at the pros and cons of having that at the beginning of your filename.

Now the second component of this filename includes a subject line and I'm gonna spend very little time here because this really depends on so many different factors as to what does this file include, what's the purpose of this file.

I think the key thing here is that you should be adding a few keywords letting you know and perhaps other people that you may be sharing this file with what exactly should they expect when they open up this file.

In this case, I have labeled this Client_Email_List and you'll also notice that I've added underscores between the spaces within that filename, but also between the date and the unique code or identifier at the end.

This makes it a bit easier to read rather than this one down below where I've had no spaces and I've just got VendorTrainingContract all smashed together.

The reason why underscores are still important in this day and age is that there are some file systems who may replace a space with a funny character.

You may have come across a situation where a filing system has thrown in a percentage sign in between any original spaces or they will try and put in underscores themselves, but if they can't, sometimes they will simply collapse those spaces and the entire thing will end up looking like this with everything jammed together.

So you may want to get used to adding underscores to your filenames. Not only does it make it easier to read here, but as you share your file with others or as other people share them with you, you can keep that proper spacing in between.

And remember, you don't know what type of system where you are sending this file to. You don't know what they are using and so how it may convert the name of your file.

Now the last component here is what I call a unique identifier or a special code. And I've got a few different examples here.

I've got this one which I've labeled draft letting us know that this is the draft version of this particular file.

In the next two, I've added some initials. So here SDF I can see that I am the author or the creator or maybe I was the last person to touch this file so I've got my initials at the end.

Here I've got someone else's initials signifying that perhaps they are the author.

And then I've got one last example here. This one is VER2 as in version two letting me know the version status of this file.

And as you can notice, I've put everything here, this last component in all capitals unlike the subject name itself which is just in regular text.

This makes it stand out that much more that I've put this in all capitals. I can tell that this is a different component or an add-on of that filename.

Now again, you need to decide what it best for you in terms of what makes the most sense. Does putting a version number make more sense to you?

Does having the initials of yourself or someone else, does that make more sense?

Let's take a look at a few other examples down below here. Here you can see I've put the subject name first, then the unique identifier and then the date at the end.

Now the nice thing about this format is that if I have a bunch of contract templates or maybe I have a number of different things that start with contract, maybe this next one is a contract email template and maybe this is a contract paper template, something like that, I know that everything is going to sort properly with contract first within this folder and that may be most important to me.

Here you can see I've got the different version numbers showing up next and then I have the date at the end.

Last but not least, I've got one last revision or different ordering of these three components. In this case, I have the code or unique identifier at the beginning.

I've got the subject name in the middle and then again I've got the date at the end.

And again, this can be great for sorting purposes. In this case, I've got some purchase order numbers and maybe that's what's most important to me or to my team is that we sort in the order of purchase numbers.

So in this case by starting with that code or that unique identifier, it's always going to sort properly here and I still have my other information to the right.

So no matter what you do as a part of your business, maybe you're an educator, maybe these are just your personal files, I would encourage you to include these three components, a date and don't forget that order, the subject name or the filename with some descriptive keywords and then a code or a unique identifier as you can see here at the end or in our examples here at the beginning of the filename.

As it pertains to the precise order, well that's up to you and it may also depend on the folder that you're keeping these files in.

I hope you enjoyed today's video and I would love to learn from you.

What do you think of these three components and do you have some additional ways in which you order your files?

I'd love to hear from you so be sure to leave your answer in the comments below.

I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity YouTube channel. Please give this video a thumbs up and don't forget to leave me a message in the comments below.

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

Does the Pomodoro technique actually help you to be more productive? Let's find out.

The very first video here on the Simpletivity channel was all about the Pomodoro technique, but I actually haven't talked much about it since that time.

It's been nearly three years. So in today's video, I want to go over what exactly the Pomodoro technique is, how you can implement it, and does it actually work.

Is it gonna help you to be more productive? Alright, so first thing first.

What is the Pomodoro technique, and where does that name come from?

Well, pomodoro is the Italian word for tomato. And in Italy, a very popular type of kitchen timer is in the shape of a tomato.

That's the history or the origin of the name. Now the Pomodoro technique really involves some very simple steps.

It basically involves grabbing a timer, and you could use something as simple as your smartphone, setting a determined period of time in which you are going to focus.

You are going to focus exclusively on one task or one project.

And then when that timer goes off, you take a short break.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to say goodbye to that task, but at least re-evaluate where you are in your day.

Does that particular project need a little more time? Or should you be moving onto something else?

And the great thing about the Pomodoro technique is that you can use it for almost anything.

It's more than just project work. You can use the Pomodoro technique when you're dealing with emails, something that I use the Pomodoro technique with quite often.

Let me give you an example. A lot of us say that hey I'm gonna spend a little bit of time with email.

But there's a big difference between spending 20 minutes with email and 20 focused minutes with email, when you're gonna do nothing but email and processing your inbox.

And to make sure that I don't spend most of my day in my inbox, I will use a timer to set a limit.

Now a traditional Pomodoro duration is 25 minutes. Setting a timer for 25 minutes and working exclusively until the timer goes off.

But you don't have to restrict yourself to just 25 minutes. In my own work day, I will often set the timer for twice that length, 50 minutes, especially when I'm working in the morning.

During the morning hours is when I have a greater amount of energy and I want to accomplish a lot more before I break for lunch.

So I'll often set my timer for 50 minutes and then also follow that by taking a somewhat longer break.

But you may want to experiment with what is the ideal time for you, and also adjust that time depending on the activity or the project that you're engaged with.

But perhaps you don't want to use your smartphone because when you're doing focused work, you like to put this on mute or maybe put it away completely.

And perhaps you don't want to install another application on your desktop computer. Well, there are other devices that you may find helpful.

Right here on my desk, I have something called the GetProductive Alpha. Now this is a brand new product which is designed specifically for those who want to make use of the Pomodoro technique.

Now one of the nice advantages of using an external timer such as the GetProductive Alpha is that that is all it does.

You don't have to be searching for a separate app or doing something additional on your computer.

Yes, it does make it a bit of a uni-tasker. It is basically only a timer and a stopwatch, but once you've found the duration that works for you, all you have to do is press a single button.

And the GetProductive Alpha will tell you when your time is up.

Now this product is so new, it's actually in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign.

So if you'd like to learn more and perhaps be one of the first people to own a GetProductive Alpha, be sure to check out the link in the description below.

So I want to hear from you next. What do you think about the Pomodoro productivity technique?

Have you used it before? And if so, what types of activities are you using a timer for?

The Pomodoro technique is not really ideal for every single thing you do, but when you need that focus, when you need to block out other distractions, that's where the Pomodoro technique can be so helpful.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.

Give this video a thumbs up. And don't forget to leave me a comment down below.

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

Google Tasks, Google's version of a to-do list app and today's video, I'm gonna show you what it is, where to find it and I also wanna highlight the pros and cons of using this tool.

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

And in today's video, I wanna give you a full tour.

We're gonna start with the web based version of Tasks and then move on to the mobile version so you know where to find things and also some of the things that you might wanna watch out for.

Google Calendar

So let's get things started here in Google Calendar.

Why the calendar? Because probably this is where you may have first been introduced to Google Tasks or seen the icon.

In the right hand side of the bar, this little side menu, you can gain access to Google Tasks.

And this is going to expand this little menu.

Now of course, you can access other things such as Google Keep, and when you're in other Google applications such as Gmail, you can even access the calendar.

But of course, today we are talking about Tasks, a very simple to-do list manager but that may be exactly what you're looking for here.

So here I have a couple of sample tasks, which I've added already.

In order to add a task, it's very, very simple.

Just click the plus or this field at the top of the bar.

I need to give Bill a call today.

I can hit enter on my keyboard and immediately, I can start adding an additional task as well, about that meeting, yeah, later today.

Now, there's more than just this simple one word task.

As you can see, to the right there is an edit details icon.

And here I can add a brief description of what I'd like to see, some further details that I'd like to add to this particular task.

I'll show you how that looks on the previous screen in just a moment.

You can also have multiple lists.

So here is a dropdown. I'm currently in my My Tasks but I actually have another list called A New Project.

Now I really like this feature so you can have more than just one task list that you're working with.

I'm gonna keep this one in My Tasks.

Below that, I can add a date. Let's put that to a couple of days out.

And then last but not least, something which is crucial for most of us, is the ability to add subtasks.

So I'm gonna keep this really simple here.

I'm gonna say sub one and, let's say, sub two.

Really, really simple stuff here at the bottom.

Now, the other nice thing here is that you can keep going on if you want to have more and more subtasks but let me show you how this looks on the previous screen.

So now that I'm done adding some further details, I'm gonna go back here.

So here you can see the brief description.

It's nice and visible.

We have the due date here, which is also pretty visible and we can see our subtasks down below.

But the one thing that I wanna point out when it comes to subtasks, and this may be either a pro or con, depending on how you view these things, is how you want to view your tasks here.

So if we go up to the more option, right beside the add a task, we can either choose to view it by my personal order, right, the order that I would like to see them in, or by date.

So I'm gonna select date for just a moment here.

So let's see.

There's that give Bill a call option and you can see there's some separation.

We've got my subtasks here down below with no date, right, because I didn't add a date for these items.

I can go in and add their dates as well.

If I change this back to my order, now you can see my subtasks are nicely nested beneath this one.

If I drag this one down, those subtasks are gonna go with it.

Of course, you may have, if you sort this by date, I guess that makes sense if you have a different date for these subtasks, then you would want them sorted that way as well.

So if I hit the icon button here, again, I can add further details for those subtasks.

I couldn't do that when I first added them but once they're created, I can give them an additional due date.

I can even have them assigned to a different task list.

All right, a couple of things I want to point out here within the task.

Let's create a new list.

So here you can switch back between different types of lists.

I'm gonna go to my New Project list for just a moment here.

So this is a completely different set of tasks.

And as you're checking things off it's pretty simple, just hover over these circled bars here.

I can check this one off.

This one, you can see, as I hover over, I have a couple of other things down below which are also being ready to be checked off.

That's because, those ones, are the subtasks of this one down below.

This is the parent task, the one that is up above.

If I click on edit details, you can see that this is the highest level one and I've got two things down below.

But if I check the parent off, everything else below it will be checked off as well.

At the very bottom of the screen, you can see that there is a completed list.

And why don't I just check something else off here just to add a few more things to that completed list.

So this is where everything goes in your completed list and you can expand this, see what's going on down below.

If I want to undo a task, I simply need to check this or select this check box and it's gonna bring it back to my list up above.

If I go back, this relates to that completed list, I can go down here and say delete all completed tasks.

So as that completed list racks up with a number of tasks, and there's too many to review or you don't need them anymore, you can always go in here and delete all of those tasks.

But there's one other key thing I wanna share with you here in the calendar and that is when I added that first task…

Let's go back to my My Tasks.

This, uh… Bill, give Bill a call.

That's the one I added here.

You'll notice that something was added to the calendar as well.

And this is a really nice feature is that you don't necessarily have to have your task list open at all times but you can access or see those tasks here at the top of your calendar.

As long as your tasks calendar is visible, here's the little check box here under your My Calendars, you can see those tasks directly on your calendar.

I can open it up.

I can even mark it as complete, directly from My Calendars.

So it's nice to see that association between the two.

But here is a big warning.

And I'm gonna get to this again when we look at the mobile view, is that tasks do not yet show up in the mobile version of Google Calendar.

Reminders certainly do but when it comes to tasks, you're gonna have to use the Tasks app.

And we're gonna get to that in just a moment.

Gmail

Now I'm gonna quickly jump over to Gmail for just a second because as I mentioned, you can access tasks in a variety of Google programs.

Everything here is exactly the same.

I'm just accessing it from Gmail.

But what I did want to point out is that when you are dealing with email within Gmail, you can immediately add that email as a task.

So let's say that I've got this email and I need to reply to it or I want to reply to it later, I wanna create a task.

So simply by selecting the options here, the little three dots, I can select add to tasks.

And over here on the right, you can see it's just gonna copy the subject line over here but I've also got a direct link to that email.

Now I can always go in and change that title, right, if that subject doesn't make a lot of sense.

But the great thing is that it creates that link to that particular email.

So if I am back in the calendar, for example, or how about this, even other Google applications such as Google Drive, if I'm here in Google Drive and I wanna access that email, all I have to do is click on this little icon and I will go directly back to this email.

All right, let's take a tour now of Tasks on our mobile device.

Mobile App

All right, so here we are in Google Tasks on my mobile device.

And you can see it looks almost identical to what we saw in the web based version.

And I love when Google or any developer does this.

It makes it so much easier to navigate when you don't have to think differently or go to new places to find out what you're looking for in that mobile version.

Even that first task that we see there.

You can see that I still have that link to that email, all the same functionality exists here.

Now in order to add a new task, you want to go to the bottom of the screen and select add new task, that blue button.

They keep it very simple here as well.

If you wanna add something really quickly here.

You can just do the text based version and hit save or I can hit this plus button and I can add that description or due date.

You see how that slides out there.

But if you don't need that additional detail, I can just hit this new task and immediately it's gonna be added to My Task list.

There it is, at the top of the list.

In the bottom right hand screen, this is where you'll find the ability to sort by order, date, you can rename your list or delete all completed tasks.

So all the same functionality that you need is available to you right here within the mobile app.

Well, with that, I would love to hear from you.

Are you a Google Tasks user?

And if so, what do you think?

What has your experience been with Google Tasks?

If not, have I convinced you to use it or I'd like to know, what's your preferred to-do list manager?

Be sure to leave a comment and your answers down below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video.

I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.

Give this video a thumbs up and don't forget to leave me a comment down below.

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

Many of you've been asking, "Scott, what do you have on your phone "and what are some of your favorite apps "on your Android device?" Well today, I'm gonna share with you just that.

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

Google Keep

And today, I want to share with you seven of my favorite apps, seven apps that I use on a daily basis.

Now we're gonna get things started today with surprise, surprise, Keep Notes, formerly known as Google Keep.

Yes, even I'm having a difficult time reminding myself to call it Keep Notes.

But when I have an idea, when I have a thought, I need some place to quickly capture it.

I find that there's very few apps that are quicker at capturing those notes, whether I want to type them in on my thumbs or whether I want to use the recording ability and actually narrate that note, this is the place where I go and do it within Google Keep.

The functionality is very much the same as you would expect on the web version of Google Keep, or sorry, Keep Notes.

Search functionality, everything else looks very very similar, and that's something that I love about some of my used apps.

Trello

So next up, let's go to number two and yeah, this isn't gonna come as a big surprise, but that would be my Trello app, something that I use very very frequently.

What I love about the mobile version of Trello is that it looks and in many ways feels just like the regular version or the web-based version of Trello.

So whether it's the location of things, such as labels, descriptions.

You can add checklists, you can access your attachments.

Everything looks and feels very very similar to Trello, and I can't say the same thing about a lot of other apps.

You know, the drag and drop functionality just like you would expect on your boards within Trello.

When it comes to many other project management tools, I find that they dumb it down too much and it doesn't even feel like the same app.

But not the case when it comes to Trello.

So certainly, a deserving place at number two on my list.

Habit Bowl

Alright, let's explore some more.

The next one I want to share with you I've been using for only about six months, but I absolutely love it and it's called Habit Bull.

It's this purple one here with the bull on the front.

Habit Bull is all about keeping track of your goals and helping you get the data that you need in order to track those goals.

So here I've got an example to share with you here, and it's super simple to use.

You've got a basic calendar here in front of you.

The things that are shaded in green mean the days in which I've accomplished this particular task.

And you can see today's November 21st.

So if I just tap it with my thumb, it's gonna add that green color there letting me know that I have completed that goal whether it's a run, whether it's doing some reading, whatever your goal may be.

If I tap it again, it's gonna change it to pinkish which means I failed on that day.

Now you can choose to use this option or not.

And if I click it one more time, then it gonna disappear as if I didn't click anything at all.

One of the things that I like about Habit Bull compared to many other simple app goal trackers is that I can go back and select dates previously.

I've used goal trackers before which only limit you to the day that you're on.

Perhaps what I like the most is the snapshot data that it gives me.

So here I can see my daily streak progress, but also at the bottom, it gives me some other great averages which is really what I was looking for.

If you look down here at the bottom, you can see my current total, current month, but I love this average per week, for example.

So if you've got a goal to go for a run or exercise three times a week, you can see how you're doing.

Not just look at the calendar and count the number of days, but see if you can maybe up it one week if you're failing in that particular goal the previous week.

The other great thing about Habit Bull is that you can keep not only just multiple habits, but it will keep you a percentage of all your habits as you see here as well.

So again, something that I haven't used quite as long as many of the other apps that you'll see in today's video, but I've really enjoyed using Habit Bull.

Clock

Alright, now the next app on this list is actually something that came stock with my phone.

I'm sure it probably came stock with your Android phone as well, and that is the Clock app.

And I know many of you are probably saying, well Scott, you didn't have to install it. How is this a favorite app of yours?

Well, I use a timer on a regular basis.

So the timer functionality is something that I'm using quite frequently.

Whether I'm focusing on a piece of work for a specific period of time, I'm gonna maybe set it for I don't know 45 minutes or something like that, and start working on a particular task.

But I love that you can add presets.

And down below, I have some of my favorite presets, whether I'm taking a quick break, whether I'm taking a power nap in the afternoon.

So if there are some favorite intervals that you want to use on a regular basis, you can just create those, and that's just a single tab to get you there and then you can start the timer.

Of course, if you're not familiar with your own clock app, I would encourage you to explore it a little bit.

You can obviously set multiple alarms.

Here I have my wake-up schedule for both the weekday and weekend.

Yes, no I'm not just trying to impress anyone, I really do wake up at five in the morning Monday through Friday.

But an app that I wanted to include on this list just because I do actually use it so frequently.

Stow Card

Alright, next up that keeps me productive when it comes to my daily tasks, not necessarily with my business, but especially when I'm out and perhaps I'm shopping or needing access to a loyalty card, I use Stocard.

That's up here in the top left hand corner.

Now I only have a few things here.

You can see that I've got a couple of library cards and then I've got a grocery store loyalty card here as well.

So if you hate collecting so many different cards with you and would rather just have that barcode, would rather just have that available to you here, yes I guess some of you may have access to my library now if you know this card, but hopefully you don't know my library location.

Anyhow, what Stocard does, it allows you to quickly and easily take a picture of your loyalty cards and it will grab that barcode so anything, absolutely anything that has a barcode, you can grab and then just scan it at the store.

Here you'll see that I actually have myself and my wife's library card because you know sometimes she puts things on hold and she'd like me to pick it up for her.

But I can't do that without her card. Well now I've always got her card with me.

You may have the same thing if you have children's library cards or you have other membership cards related to your family or maybe even members of your business.

So Stocard, I am barely scratching the surface with the features that are available here, but even for the small number of cards, I find it very very valuable.

Speech Timer

Now the next one is very particular to my business and the type of work of which I'm engaged in, and that is giving speeches.

Giving either keynote speeches or perhaps delivering a workshop, and that's the one just below Stocard called Speech Timer.

Now this is a very very simple app, but it's something that I use not only live when I'm a delivering a speech or running a live workshop, but it's something that I'll use to practice as well.

In fact, if any of you have joined me on a Ask Scott Anything live webinar or perhaps you've been a participant in a productivity bootcamp, I actually use this timer beside me as well to keep me on track.

So very basic.

Let me give you a quick snapshot here.

You see at the top of the screen, we've got green, yellow, red.

So you get to determine when do you want the timer turned to green which often means you've met the minimum amount of time, or maybe that's your first warning.

Yellow, letting you know that hey, you better start wrapping things up here. You're getting near the end.

And then red, in terms of when you really need to wrap things up here.

I don't think I have a very short example here.

I'm not gonna be talking for a full minute further on this, but if I just hit the start button, you'll see that it's gonna stay in this mode, but once it reaches that one minute mark because that's what I've set in this particular example, the entire screen will turn green.

And then yellow and red at the upcoming intervals.

This is really really valuable to me because when I'm live in a large conference room or something like that, I can easily see this.

Even if I'm several feet away from the podium or perhaps the platform that I'm delivering my speech from.

So even if it's in a meeting for example, this is something that you could use beside you if you so wish.

And of course you can program all these different intervals if you want below.

Stretching Exercise

Alright, last but not least, I did want to include something directly related to health, and in this case, exercise.

I've got an app that I use every morning called Stretching Exercises, and this is something that keeps me really honest and true with my stretching, making sure that I don't pull a limb, making sure that I still do those stretches, especially after my run.

So Stretching Exercises not only will it keep a simple report of what you've done and allow you to keep track of your goals, but I love that it has these preset stretching exercises, right.

So it's got everything from some morning warmups or a sleepy time stretch to this one here, this post run cool down is actually the one that I use most often after my runs.

It's got a number of other selections or stretching playlists that you can pull down and run through as a part of your day.

So just showing you very quickly here, this is my post run cool down, and I haven't put this together, they put it together for me.

So it's only five minutes, 12 different stretches, and it goes through.

Most of them are 30 to 20 seconds.

They show you how to do it.

There's even audio guides so I don't have to be looking at the screen if I'm lying on the floor doing one of these stretches.

But something that, again, if I didn't have an app, if I didn't have a tool like this with me, some days I would just say, ah, I don't really need to stretch.

But of course no matter what type of exercise you're involved in, you do need to stretch.

And so an app like this really really helps me out.

Conclusion

Alright, well there you have it. Seven of my favorite apps for Android.

I'll include a link to all of them down below so if you'd like to install or try them out yourself, you can do so.

But I'd love to hear from you next. What are your favorite apps?

What are the favorite tools on your phone, whether it's Android or iOS, that you absolutely can't live without?

Be sure to share them down below in the comments.

Thank you again for watching.

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.

Ultimate Guide to Google Calendar Settings Google Calendar is where I spend an awful lot of my time, and there's a good chance that you spend an awful lot of time here, organizing your day, setting up your meetings, and seeing all the things, and places, where you need to be.

Well, in today's video I want to show you everything you need to know about settings within Google Calendar. We're talking about notifications, we're talking about defaults.

I want to show you how to get that daily agenda as well, which can certainly help you with your productivity. Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress, and after today's video, I don't want you to have any questions about settings in Google Calendar.

Well, maybe I'm just kidding. If you've got questions, please include them down in the comments below.

I always love hearing your feedback, and I'm curious what other questions you have for me after watching today's video. So, let's get things started by clicking the Settings icon, but just before we select the settings option, I want to go over the other options that we have here, just in case you're not sure where to find these options.

So, the first one is Trash. Anything that you delete here within Google Calendar, as long as it has been deleted within the last 30 days, will show up here, so if you need to review something

which has been removed from your calendar, and if you'd like to restore it, you can do so here. This is especially helpful if you happen to use some of your events as tasks, and perhaps instead of crossing them off or using some other method, you just delete them, you can always go back here and review them as well.

So, that's where you'll find them, in the Trash. Now, you also have the option to change some of the density and color.

So, this is the default set here, modern with white text. You can always change that to classic with black text.

Now, you can also get into a lot more detail if you want at an individual calendar level, but these are just your defaults for your main calendar, and lastly, your second option here is if you want a responsive design, so as you minimize or adjust the size of this window, everything will be responsive, or you can go back to the compact design, which sort of squishes things together a little bit more so, but I prefer the responsive design here.

Addons Last but not least in this particular list, I want to get to the Get add-ons section. A lot of people don't realize that almost every Google app has the ability to add some additional features to it, so if you happen to use Cisco Webex or GoToMeeting, for example, for your video conference calls, you can actually add them directly here, and now you know where to find them.

General Settings All right, well, let's jump into settings, and let's start with the general settings. Basically I'm gonna be going over two different areas here within the Settings window.

General settings, which apply to all of your calendars, and then I want to show you the settings that are particular to individual calendars down below, but let's start with General. Language and region, pretty straightforward.

Language, country, time format, if you prefer military time or 24-hour time, you can make that change here. Time zone, also pretty straightforward.

You want to have this first one set to your local time zone, and this is probably coming from your Google account, when you first set up your Google account, but a lot of people don't realize that you can set up a secondary time zone, so I'm gonna check this box for an example here, and I had previously selected New York, Eastern Time here, so you can see that displayed down below. So, perhaps you work with colleagues, or perhaps you travel back and forth

between two different time zones. This can be helpful to show a different time zone

in addition to the one that you're currently in, and you can also add some labels here as well. So, perhaps I want to call this one Home.

These are custom labels, and this one I'm just gonna put NY for New York. Now, everything is saved automatically, which is nice, I don't have to go finding a Save button like in Gmail.

So, let's go back to our calendar to see what that looks like. So, here you can see on the left hand side of the screen I've got my Home time, the default time, but now I've got New York time beside it.

Now, this is really the only place where you're going to see that. When I open up an event here, I'm not going to see additional times.

If I go to edit it or change the time it's not gonna show me that Eastern Time, but it can be helpful to see that here on the left hand side of the screen.

So, let's jump back into settings here. I'm gonna leave that one on for now, but I do like that you can change these labels.

They even give you a nice button here if you want to swap those time zones. All right, the last little checkbox, Ask to update my primary time zone to current location.

This can be important when you're traveling, right? So, instead of using this as the primary all the time, it is going to make changes when

you're traveling across time zones, and you can read the details by clicking this link here. So, in the next section down below we've got some more world clock options,

and this is one that I was not terribly familiar with, but again, depending on who you are working with, other countries or other time zones that you need to deal with regularly, this world clock may be very helpful. By checking this box, you can add a number of additional time zones, I'm not sure about the limit.

You could probably add as many as you like, but if I go back to my calendar, you will see here, below the mini calendar here, I have the three time zones that I selected, so I've got some UK time, I've got Anchorage here, and I've got New York as well. So, this is the current time, so as I'm working, as I'm going about my day, I can glance over here and know exactly what time it is in these other time zones.

Now, again, by default this is turned off, so if you want to uncheck it, you can do so here.

I'm gonna turn it back on just for today's example. We'll see that on the left hand side of the screen.

Events Now, the next one is a pretty important one. This has to do with events, and the defaults for your events.

Now, all of these things, almost all of these things can be changed when you're creating an event, but in order for you to work at your productive best, I think it's important that you are setting default settings that make the most sense to you, so you don't have to waste time clicking other boxes or selecting other dropdowns.

So, the first one is default duration, and it's important to take a few minutes to decide what is best for you. Is a 60-minute meeting, is that typically the type, or the length of event that you're creating, or are you typically creating 30-minute meetings?

Remember, every new event-- If I set this to 30 minutes, what's gonna happen is I go over here and I'm gonna click on Friday, you can see immediately by default it's saying 9:00 to 9:30. Of course, I can change that, I can make it to a full hour, but I think it's important within Settings that you pick the duration of time which is most common to you.

I'm gonna leave it at 60 for now, and down below we have this Speedy meetings checkbox, what on earth does that mean? Well, there's actually a brief description here.

If you turn Speedy meetings on, 30-minute meetings will be five minutes less, and longer meetings, 10 minutes earlier. So, you remember I had selected 60 minutes, but now it's set for 50 minutes, so if I open up this dropdown,

everything is just somewhat reduced. 15, 25, instead of 30, 40 instead of 45.

You sort of get the idea here. The idea, really, is to encourage you, and maybe more importantly, other people who you've invited to that meeting, that hey, let's wrap this up before the top of the hour.

Let's give everybody a little bit of time to get to our next meeting, or to get to something else.

I'm not exactly sure how effective this is, but even psychologically, if you were to receive a meeting like this, it might help you to be more, a little more efficient, make sure that you're making the best use of your time.

So, really up to you, your personal preference if you'd like to choose Speedy meetings. Now, the next three dropdowns, the first one is Default guest permissions, so when you are creating an event, what do you want to allow others who you've invited to do?

Can they modify the event, can they invite others, and can they see the guest list?

Remember, you edit all of this within the individual event, but what is most typical? What in the average situation when you create a new event, what do you want to allow guests to do or not to do?

So, you can make those changes here. The next one has to do with automatically adding invitations.

Three options here: Yes; Yes, but don't send event notifications unless I have responded "Yes" or "Maybe"; No, only show invitations to which I have responded. Essentially what this is doing, and you can hover over this question mark to give you a further definition, or description, is that when you receive an invitation, do you want to see it on your calendar?

Not that you've accepted it, but do you want to see it there? I, personally, like this option because I want to see if someone… Maybe I haven't gone to my email first, and so, the first time I'm seeing it is on my calendar,

and I can choose right there within my calendar if I want to accept it or not, and it will be shaded in a different color. You'll be able to tell if you have not accepted that invitation or not, and the last one here has to do with notifications, what types of notifications would you like to receive?

Do you want Alerts, do you want Desktop notifications, or do you want them turned Off altogether? I choose to have alerts for my default here, because in most cases I do want to be reminded of those options.

I think if I choose Desktop notifications, that's where this Play notification sound will turn on. I can talk about On or Off, but I'm just gonna leave this one at Alerts, Video Calls and the last option in this area is Automatically add video calls to events I create.

Let me show you how this works, so if I select this box, I'm gonna check it, and I'm gonna go over here, and let's say I'm gonna create a a new event.

I'm gonna say MORE OPTIONS, you will see that automatically they have added Hangouts, Google Hangouts, to this invitation. Now, I can say No conferencing if I want, but remember, we're just talking about defaults here.

Now, for those of you asking about this button up above, I already have Zoom Meeting, the Zoom Meeting Chrome extension installed, so that's why you're seeing this here. It has nothing to do with the option that I just selected.

It really has to do with this one down below, so if you want a Hangouts meeting to be added automatically be default, you can have that checked. In my particular case, I have that unchecked, not only because I use Zoom, but I usually make the distinction if I'm going

to be inviting someone to a video meeting or not. View Options We're almost near the end of this list.

Here we are into View options. A lot of this is pretty straightforward.

Do you want to Show weekends, do you want to Show declined events, things that you have turned down, week numbers, you can Reduce the brightness of past events. This can sometimes be helpful just to see what you've done and be able to clearly see the day that you're on, especially if you're looking at the Week View or Month View.

View calendar side by side in Day View, and a couple of other default view options. Which day of the week do you want to start it on, how many days out do you want for your custom view?

I don't really use the custom view, but if you do, this is where you go to change it, and if you want to show some alternate calendars. Last but not least, we have an area here to automatically add events from Gmail to my calendar, so that's going back to receiving that invitation via Gmail, and if you want to enable keyboard shortcuts you can turn this on or off, and let me just show you by hitting the question mark, here is your full list.

Just by hitting the question mark key you can get a full list of all of the shortcuts here within Google calendar.

I'm not gonna go over these, but if you want to see them and review them for yourself, just make sure that this option at the bottom is checked, and then you can select the question mark. Individual Calendar All right, we're gonna jump down now to an individual calendar, and in this case mine is called Scott Test Calendar, and there's some really important stuff here.

There's some really great stuff to help you be more productive and efficient with all of your events, and whether else you're keeping track of here within your calendar, so of course you can change the name of your calendar, and you can add a description. I'd say the description is probably only helpful if you're going to make this calendar public, if you want to share some further

information about this calendar. Otherwise, I typically leave this blank.

You can change the primary time zone for that calendar, and just some basic Google information as to who is the owner. Here is where you can make that calendar public,

and you'll see when I check this box you actually get a warning because if you make it public, everything will be visible to the world, including via Google search, are you sure?

You want to make sure that you're sharing this with the world. This can be very valuable if you are sharing a calendar that is intended for the public, like a community calendar, something that you want to make available to everyone else, but this is where you go to enable that.

If we want to share this calendar with specific people we simply select this option and invite them to have access and to share this calendar with them.

Event Notifications The next three sections, though, are where I want to spend a lot more focus, because this is where a lot of the great stuff is. So, Event notifications, how often in advance do you want to be notified of events on your calendar?

Now, the default here, I believe, is 30 minutes. I don't believe I've changed this since coming in here, but there is a bit of a distinction.

We've got Notification, and then we've got Email, so a notification would give you an alert here within the browser, or an alert on your mobile phone, and then of course, you can select how far out you would like that time, so maybe I'd like it to be a little bit closer to the event, so I'm gonna change that to 10 minutes. Of course, you can change this to hours, days, or weeks, but keep in mind you can add multiple notifications.

What if you want a notification and an email? This is not an either/or option.

If I also want an email notification, I just need to select ADD NOTIFICATION, and here I will now get an email notification, and maybe this one I want a little further out, like 30 minutes, so for the same event, remember, this is gonna be the default, for the same event I'm gonna get an email notification 30 minutes out, and then I'm get an alert either on the desktop or on my mobile phone 10 minutes out.

Once again, you can change this at the individual event level, like if there's a particular event you don't want notifications for, you can turn that off when you create that event, but this can be very helpful if you want to discern the difference between an alert or a notification versus an email, and again, you can go further out. You can say, "Well, I also want a

"notification two days before," and so on. Just clicking the X here will remove that notification.

All-day event notifications, by default they're turned off, right, if you have something listed as an all-day event. Some of you may know that here at Simpletivity, I recommend that you use that all-day event area for your most important tasks, and so therefore you may not want a notification of all the things that you have stored there, or maybe you want to be known the day before.

The nice thing about the all-day event notifications is that you get to choose the time, all right, in terms of when you'd like to receive those notifications, but again, you don't have to turn this on if you don't wish to. The next section here has to do with General notifications, and there's a lot of goodies here, but there's also a few things that

you may wish to toggle or turn off. New events, do you want to be alerted when someone sends you an invitation to event?

I recommend that you keep that on. Changed events, someone changes an event.

Again, probably worthwhile, right? You don't want to be showing up too early or miss the event, so you probably want an email notification for that.

Canceled events, probably goes for the same thing. All of these choices, almost all these choices are either None or Email.

Event responses is maybe a little bit different, when guests respond to events for which you can see the guest list. So, do you want to know when someone has accepted your event?

And this can be a little bit different depending if you have a long list of invitees. Do you want a notification for every time someone accepts, or do you want to check in on your own?

But the last one here, Daily agenda, can be so helpful, and sometimes people forget that this is an option, or forget where to find it. The daily agenda, if you have this turned on, Daily Agenda you will receive an email with your agenda everyday at 5:00AM in your current time zone.

Let me show you what that looks like, so here I am in my Gmail. Here's the subject line: Daily Agenda for Scott Test1 as of 5am.

It's important to know that you can't change this time. This will be attached to your calendar's primary time zone, so you can't make it any earlier or later, but I think for most of us, 5:00AM is a fairly safe time.

So, down below you can see my entire agenda for that day. I've got my travel itinerary, which I had listed as an all-day event, so that appears up top, and then I've got my meetings and other things spaced out below, and they even do a good job of sort of recreating that spacing, right?

There's a bit of a difference. There's a four-hour difference here between these two events compared to the two-hour difference between these two events here and the one up above, so you get a snapshot of your day first thing in the morning, and I'm not suggesting that you're necessarily dealing with email at 5:00AM, but whenever you do open up your email you can have your agenda waiting for you there, so by selecting the Email option here… Oops, I just toggled it off.

By selecting the Email option, you will receive the daily agenda for that calendar. Now, the last section on this page looks a little intimidating.

I'm not gonna go into too much detail here. This is where you will find the public URL to your calendar, so if you want to share this with someone else, particularly when you make this calendar public this is what you'd want to share.

If you want to embed this calendar on a website, on a webpage, this is the embed code here, and then we also have some iCal formats down below.

Perhaps you're working with someone using Outlook or another iCal format, and Google does a pretty good job of showing you and explaining the details of these different areas. Last but not least, if you want to get rid of your calendar altogether, here is the DELETE option.

This is gonna remove everything, including guests, from this calendar as well, so it's gonna absolutely obliterate every single event that you have listed within the calendar. Well, there you have it, an exhausting list of all of the settings, all of the notification settings, within Google Calendar.

So, I would love to hear from you next. What is on your wishlist of things that you wish Google Calendar could do, or did I miss anything out?

Was there something that I didn't cover, or you'd like me to go over in more detail? If so, be sure to leave your comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you subscribe right here to Simpletivity.

Give this video a thumbs-up, and don't forget to leave me a note in the comments below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

When it comes to working with Trello, one of the most common questions I receive is how can I sync cards from one board to another. I only want to see a fraction of the cards on this particular board or maybe I want multiple boards to filter up into a single board.

Well, today I'm going to show you how to do just that.

Overview

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

Today we are taking a look at one of the most powerful power-ups on Trello and more than just Trello. It is called Board Sync and it's brought to you by Uneeda.

As you can see here from the Uneeda website, you can do so much more than just Trello. You can sync Trello to any of these other applications including Asana, Basecamp, and many more.

But perhaps one of the most common uses of Board Sync is to sync one Trello board to another or multiple Trello boards to one another. So let's take a look at an example.

Sync Multiple Boards

Here I have an example team board—a team project. And as you may already know, when you are working with others, sometimes your boards can grow into more than a hundred cards, and you've got multiple members.

You've got many different people working on that board, but perhaps you want a high-level view. You just want to work on your own board so you can focus in on your tasks.

Maybe you even want multiple boards filtering up into that. So what I've done is I have created a personal board—a separate board which is only going to show me the tasks that are assigned to me from this board.

Better yet, I'm gonna have a bit of a cleaner view because this first list is just called Ideas and I don't really want to see this. This is sort of in an incubator mode; I don't need to see this just yet.

So I don't want to see that on my personal board. So let's go over to my board—obviously, a much cleaner view because I only have the things that are assigned to me and I don't have that Ideas list at the beginning.

But what Board Sync has done—and you can see it's enabled here in the top right-hand corner—is it has created a true sync between this board, my personal board, and the team project board. It has not just duplicated these cards.

When I make a change or an edit to this card, it's gonna reflect here on the team project board and vice versa. And you can choose to set that up if you want a dual sync, right, both directions, or if you just want a one-way sync.

Board Sync will allow you to set it up that way as well. Now let's take a look at a few examples of how this works. So let's say that here are my tasks; I want to focus in.

I'm back on my personal board and I want to talk to Karen about spelling her last name. So I take this task and, let's say I've completed it. I'm gonna drag it over here into the Complete list.

But remember, this is my personal board. Is the rest of my team going to know that I've completed this task? Well, let's go back over to the project board.

And look at that—I didn't click anything. We did see it better just for a split second. It automatically synced and moved it over to this Complete board.

So I don't even have to spend any time—or at least very little time—in the team board. I can focus on all of my work here on my personal board and when I make changes and drag things over, it's going to be reflected over here.

Let's take a look at another example—this time making a change on the team board. So here I have that Ideas list and remember, I've chosen not to see it on my personal board.

But let's say that my manager assigns this task, assigns this card to me. So what they're gonna do is they are gonna come in and drag this over into the Tasks list over here.

But perhaps I'm not looking at this board. Am I going to miss out, or am I going to be assigned this task as well? Well, let's go back over to my personal board.

And there it is—there it is. Took it just a split second, but now I have that new task. It reflects in my Tasks list just like the master Tasks list.

I can see it there within my own personal board. Now remember, it goes far beyond just matching lists to lists. You can create filters based on labels and you can create filters on a variety of different criteria.

So let's take a look under the hood to show you what the setup looks like within Uneeda. So here I have my sync and I have auto-sync turned on.

But what you may find is that sometimes it may be as much as a five-minute delay depending on the size of your boards—how many cards, how many boards you are syncing at a time.

But in this case, let's go into the Edit window and I want to show you what I've got set up here. So here you can see I've got my team project board.

I've got a dual sync so we're syncing both directions with my personal board. And the nice thing is that it keeps a nice history of your sync history.

So here you can see all the operations—if it found an error or not, what is going on with that particular sync. Now the Filter Tasks area is really the key part and also the Map Fields is really the key part of Uneeda's Board Sync.

So here are the filters which I have applied. So from my team project board, I only want to sync cards with the following members. I only want to sync cards with me—the ones that I'm assigned to.

And remember how I hid the Ideas list? I don't want to sync cards that appear in this list, and you can add multiple lists. In fact, one way that many people will use Board Sync by Uneeda is that they'll create an executive board.

So let's say that you have a team project that has multiple steps on a long, large workflow—maybe twelve different lists. But the executive team, they only want to see the approval list or maybe two or three of those steps.

Well, you can do that. You can create that here within Board Sync. And I'll just give you an example of some of the other filters you can apply.

So here's the labels—only sync or don't sync. Lists—only sync cards in the following lists and of course members, which we've also applied here at the top.

Now the last one I want to show you here as a part of the setup is Map Fields. Now within Trello, you're gonna see a lot of things that are the same—members to members, due date to due date.

It makes sense because here we are. List is a little bit different as you see here because one of the lists is not coming over. We've chosen that specifically.

But where this page will become more useful is if you decide to use Board Sync to sync Asana to Trello. Right, because Asana and Trello use slightly different terminology.

Depending on members, due dates, labels, lists, and what you—what is a label in Trello, you could map that to something completely different within Asana. So think about that for just a moment.

I'm going to click over here back to the Uneeda homepage. Think if you're working with a team that loves Asana—they love Asana, but you love Trello. Well, that's fine.

You don't have to limit yourself. You can continue to work in Trello and then they can work in Asana and have your tasks and your projects sync back and forth.

So if you would like to learn more about Board Sync, you can either select the power-up here within Trello or you can go directly to Uneeda.io and find out all the different ways in which you can sync your Trello projects.

But also multiple projects with all of the different apps that you see here. Now I would love to hear from you next. What do you think of syncing cards within Trello or with other project management tools?

Be sure to leave your comments down below. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you give this video a like, 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.

Not long ago, I gave a review of all of the new enhancements to Gmail. Steve replied with this comment: he says, "I like the new features, but I've been hoping for a sticky note feature that would allow me to put notes on an email that only I can read."

Well, Steve, I think that's a great enhancement to Gmail. I'd love for Gmail to add that natively as well, but in the meantime, I think you're gonna enjoy today's video because I've found an extension that will allow you to do just that.

Simple Gmail Notes

It's called Simple Gmail Notes, allowing you to add your own notes to any email within Gmail and keep them privately. You're not sharing them with anyone; you don't have to reply to yourself or any of that kind of hokey stuff, which is only gonna make your inbox more of a mess.

So let's take a look at this. Let's go into my dummy inbox here—yes, this is not my usual inbox, just some emails that I can play around with for today's example.

Sticky Notes in Gmail

I've already installed the Chrome extension. If I go and click on one of my emails, you'll notice something a little different at the top of the email. Yes, I've got a sticky note area.

This is a place where I can add text-based notes, maybe a reminder of something regarding this email, even after I've replied. Maybe I just want to remind myself of something if I ever go back to this email.

Or if you use a method such as inbox zero, maybe you just want to give yourself a quick note because you might not reply to this email till another hour from now or even a few days from now. So in this area, I can add whatever I want, and again, it's all text-based.

You can't bold, you can't underline, but remember, it's a sticky note feature. That's what you want; you just want to give yourself a brief reminder. You can copy and paste information in here if you want or not.

Previewing Notes

Whatever I write in here, if I click out, I'm going to go back to my Inbox. The nice thing is that you can actually see a small preview of your note, and if you hover over it, you can actually read the entire note.

Now, this is one feature that I particularly like because you want to know which of these emails may have a note. It's gonna be displayed very similar to the label area, and I don't recommend that you use this to replace labels.

But it's nice to be able to see a preview of these notes and hover over and see the full note. But it doesn't stop there. Let's go back into this particular email.

Of course, I can immediately go back and change the note, but it also gives you the opportunity to change the color of the note. So let's say these types of notes, I'm going to give it more of this teal or this light blue color.

Then I'm gonna go to the email just down below, and I'm gonna add a new note here. So add a new note, and let's say I want these ones to be more of—I'm gonna show you that feature just in a second.

Let's say I want to change the color of these ones to like this green shade here because maybe I have a system for my different notes. Right, and so here again, we see that preview: blue notes—maybe this is something personal, maybe green, this is something more business-related or maybe I add financial information.

So I'm gonna make those notes green, so you can customize the color of your notes as well. Now the next thing I want to show you, you're probably wondering, can I search these notes?

Searching Notes

And that's a very important question. Right, what if you have a keyword in the notes, not the email itself, but the notes. So why don't I type in the word “whatever”?

Let's do that up here. I'm going to type the word in “whatever” up top, and I get a hit enter, and, uh-oh, oh, it's not there. Yeah, it didn't search for it there.

Well, that's okay because Simple Gmail Notes allows you to search for these notes specifically. So let's go back into this email, and you'll notice some of the additional options that we have here.

You saw where I changed the color. Well, next to it is a search function, so if I click that, what it will do is give me my own search bar. So I am just searching my Gmail notes.

But also, what's nice and convenient is you can see all of your notes down. Now, I've only added to here my green note and my blue note here, but now I can quickly and easily see all of these notes.

I can see when they were last updated. If I select them, I've got a few other options if I want to do a bulk delete, for example, I can do so that I can do that here as well.

So don't fret, you can search your notes. Just remember you can't use the default or the standard Gmail search. This is only going to search the contents of the mail or the senders or receivers.

But if you want to search your notes as a part of this Chrome extension, you can do so here. A couple of the other features here as well: you can immediately send this email and note to Google Calendar.

Other Features

So it will include the note if you're looking for that as well. There is also an option to sync to mobile because you're probably wondering, can you get these messages? Can you get these custom sticky notes on your mobile device?

Now you can, but it seems like there's a bit of a workaround. You're gonna need to install Simple Mobile CRM. It is available to iPhone, iPad, and Android users; however, I've not yet tested out this feature.

So I can't give you a good, bad, or otherwise review. But the short answer is yes, you can have it sync and have it appear on your mobile device, but you will need to use this other app in order to do so as well.

Lastly, I just want to briefly show you some of the preferences because maybe you don't want your notes at the top of the email. That's okay, you can have your sticky note appear at the bottom of emails or even here on the side.

If I click on the Preferences bar here, you can see there's actually quite a few options. You can even change the default background color or font size, how long do you want to see that preview, what about the note height.

I've changed it to three; you can do a number of others. Look at that, you could have a full paragraph visible. It doesn't mean that you are limited by that number of lines but just how many do you want to see at a given time.

So if you are wanting the ability to add some sticky notes, some custom notes that are just for you, remember, you're not replying to yourself. Stop doing that—it's just adding more garbage, more notes, more stuff to your inbox.

You can add custom sticky notes to any of your emails here in Gmail. So if you want to learn more, I'll leave a link in the description below. But all you need to search for as a part of the Chrome Web Store is Simple Gmail Notes.

You can find out, read more reviews, quite a few users; you can see it's got a 4.7 rating with nearly 500 users. So, 33 thousand users—enough people are using it, and I've been impressed with my initial test, with my initial review.

So I'd love to hear from you next: what other features would you like to see within Gmail? This is one of the things that Steve wanted to see. What are some of the things that you wish you could do here in Gmail?

Perhaps I can do a video just for you in the future. As always, thank you so much for watching right here at Simpletivity. I hope you give this video a thumbs up, make sure to subscribe, and leave me a comment down below.

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

Quickly and easily convert your speech into text. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Today, we are taking a look at a simple speech-to-text app and also a web page where you can actually do this on any of your browsers. You don't even have to install anything in order for you to convert your speech into text.

Now, I know you may be familiar with this on your mobile device, but recently I was introduced to SpeechNotes. I'll tell you a bit of the background.

One of my sons was doing a homework assignment and, very much like myself, he's not too wild about writing text. He doesn't love to write long essays or even just short book reports.

So, I thought I would find something for him that would make it that much easier so he could record something on his device. We came across SpeechNotes, and you know what? He absolutely loved it.

He spent a few minutes reciting, talking out the story or the report that he had to give. He could edit it right within the app and then quickly pasted it into a Word document, applied a little bit of editing, and boom, his homework was done.

Today, I wanted to take a look at the web version of SpeechNotes to see how it performs and to see how it might be helpful to you. Whether you're crafting emails or writing a longer report, maybe you're not wild about writing and you would like to just get your thoughts out using your voice only.

When you get to SpeechNotes.co (and yes, it is .co), you're going to come to a page like this. It gives you a little bit of instruction here on the left-hand side.

This is where you're going to see your text appear once you start recording. But a really important part is what you see here on the right.

This is some of the punctuation and some of the things that you can include. For example, if you want to add a period or a comma, I think a new line or new paragraph are very important.

Some of the other things that you'll see here I would probably go back and edit myself anyhow, but it's helpful to have this as you're recording. So how do you get started?

Well, it's pretty simple. You've got this big red record button here, which is a start/pause record option.

You will have to give SpeechNotes.co the ability to record from your system. Now, let me give you just a quick example, and I'm gonna be doing this somewhat off the top of my head, but let's say I'm replying to an email in this case.

So, let's see how it works. I'm just gonna start by hitting the record button and then I'll see how far I can get with dictating this message.

Hi Eric, comma, new paragraph, I wanted to talk to you about the meeting this coming Friday, period. Jane and I are going to need to reschedule this particular meeting, period.

It seems as though our developers are not getting as much attention as they deserve with this particular project, period. So, we need to have an emergency staff meeting this coming weekend, period.

New paragraph, we'd like to reschedule for next Wednesday and hope that you can make that date, period. Please reply and let us know if that's a possibility for you and your staff, period.

New paragraph, looking forward to hearing your reply by the end of the day, period. Okay, I've hit the pause button, so it's gonna stop recording and transcribing my text here.

So, I'm just doing a quick review because I actually wasn't looking at the text that often as I was recording. I was trying to think of the message, and of course, this is just a fictional conversation that I'm having here.

I did feel a little weird because I knew it was gonna be transcribing immediately what I was saying. It doesn't really give you that option to, you know, sort of go back.

I could hit the pause button and go back, and of course, I can go back and edit anything at this point. But as you can see, it actually did a pretty good job of transcribing word-for-word what I was saying.

Even when it came to the new paragraph option or adding a comma like I did at the very beginning, it did a pretty good job of doing that as well. Now, you might be thinking, is this a little pointless?

Why would I be crafting an email here and then I'd have to copy and paste this into my message? Now, they do give you a fairly large icon here, so if I hit copy to clipboard, now it's copied to my clipboard.

I can go and paste this anywhere that I want. But remember, you could use a service such as SpeechNotes for anything.

It doesn't have to just be an email. You could be writing a report or an introduction, an executive summary, or something of that matter, and then paste it into that document.

So, this is obviously not the only option available to you. I do like to review something that is a little browser-specific.

This isn't specific to Mac or PC or to a particular device, although you may want to check out the SpeechNotes app if you'd like to make use of this on your mobile app as well. So, I'd love to hear from you next.

What do you think of this type of software? Do you have a recommendation of other speech-to-text applications or services out there?

How do you use them? Do you use them for email replies? Do you use them for writing a report?

Are you like me, and you really don't like typing out? You don't like the act of writing, so you'd rather just talk about it? I'd love to hear from you next.

As always, thank you so much for watching today's video. Be sure to subscribe, give this video a like, and leave me a comment down below.

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

If you are ever curious as to what other people are searching and asking questions about, you can always go to google.com and start typing in some keywords. Just the other day, I typed in Trello how to and look at what came up at the very top of the list: how to delete a list, how to delete a card, how to delete a board. It looks like a lot of you are curious not how to necessarily archive them but how to get rid of them for good. So in today's video, I'm looking at all three of these things: how can we delete lists, cards, and boards within Trello?

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. Here we have a sample board, sample board number two actually, that I'm not afraid to delete at the end of this video.

How to Delete Trello Cards

Of course, when it comes to Trello, there are basically three key terms that we need to know: boards, lists, and cards. So, let's take a look at each of them in order to see how we can delete those items.

Let's start at the smallest form, and that of course is a card. Here's a card I no longer need, so how do we go about deleting this card?

Well, you may already be familiar with archiving. You see that a lot within Trello, and I think it's a smart move.

Maybe you made a mistake, maybe you want to go back and still search for a card or information within the card. So we can hit archive here if we want.

We can click on the card and, of course, near the bottom we have an archive button as well. Now, as soon as we hit that button, you will notice at the top it's telling us that this card is archived.

Even in the background, I can already see it's been removed from this list. But there is a red delete button, so this is how we go about and permanently delete this card.

If I never want to see this card again, I can hit the delete button. It's gonna ask me one time if I am absolutely sure, and then I can hit that delete button, and it is gone for good.

But why don't we look at another example there within the card, in case we want to archive something and go look for it again. I know a lot of you are also wondering about that too—where does it go exactly when I hit the archive button?

So, in this card, I'm gonna hit archive as well. It's telling me that the card is archived.

If I click out of here, actually maybe there's one more thing I'll say: if you need to send it back, you can always hit this button here, Send to Board. But let's close this card, and it's gone.

Let's say what we do want to go back and retrieve it—where do we go? Well, it is searchable if we want to search for it, but an easier way, I think, is to go into the Show Menu.

Number one, you can look at your activity. So here's the card that we just archived.

It tells me that I archived it. I can select it here, and now I'm right back in the card.

I can hit Send to Board, and I've brought it right back. There it is, back in the list.

But let me archive it once again and click out of here. So here it is in my Activity Feed.

But there's another area which may be more useful to you, and that is if you select the More option. You can select Archived Items.

Here you can see, because this is a sample board, I only have one that I've archived at this point. Here, I can see that card again.

I can click on it if I want to look at the details, or I can send it back to the board immediately. Here's another way in which you can delete that card.

In this example, I'm just gonna say Send to Board again, and there we are back in list number one. Alright, so let's move on to lists.

How to Archive Trello Lists

Now, of course, here's a list, let's say list number two, and let's say I no longer need it, but maybe I want the information within it. I can archive it.

You'll see that there's no option here to delete. There is a difference between archiving all cards in this list and archiving this list, right?

If I select this option, it's just gonna archive all of the cards; the list will remain the same. But if I select the last option, Archive This List, it is gone, right? It's removed from this board.

How to Delete Trello Lists

Now, what if I want to go back and delete the list? Well, here's the catch—you can't actually delete lists.

I'm gonna repeat that one more time: deleting a list is not currently possible within Trello. However, if we do want to go back and resend that list or have that list reappear in this board, we can go back to our menu.

We're back to archive—let me just show you that one more time—archived items. But you will notice that we need to select this link to switch to lists.

Here is list number two. It's important that you notice the switch to cards—we don't have any archived cards at the moment—and switch to lists.

So now, here is list number two, and my option is to send it back to the board. There it is, it's back on the board, but I can only archive this list—it's not actually possible to delete that list.

So, something that you learned, hopefully, as a part of today's video. Alright, last but not least, let's take a look at deleting a board.

How to Delete Trello Boards

Again, by default, Trello is going to encourage you, or at least as a first step, to have you archive the board. So if we go back to menu and select More, we can come down here and say Close Board.

Now, closing the board is very much like archiving the board. If I select that, I can reopen the board by clicking the Boards menu from the header, selecting View Closed Board, finding the board, and clicking Reopen.

Okay, so I'm going to select Close in this case. It's telling me that it is closed.

I can reopen it by this link here, but here is our option if we want to permanently delete the board. If we never want to go back and find those cards, look at those lists, or rearrange anything, we can select Permanently Delete the Board.

One more warning—it's good, right? It's good to have a number of warnings, it's good to have red colors, red buttons to make sure we know what we're doing.

But I can hit delete, and now that one is gone, it's out of the way. So, there you have it—how to delete a card, how to almost delete a list, and how to delete a board.

I hope that you found today's video useful, and I hope that you give this video a like and you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.