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Are you tired of being distracted by all of your incoming email? Do you wish that your inbox could look something like this so you can focus on your most important work? Well, in this video I'm going to show you how you can pause your inbox. 

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

And for nearly a decade, I have been a user of Boomerang, an extension which gives both Gmail and Outlook email users the ability to add some additional features, and I might say, superpowers to our inbox.

And one of those features is the ability to pause any incoming mail.

Now, why might this be helpful? Well, think of how often you've gone into your inbox to write a simple message only to be distracted by dozens and dozens of other new emails that are arriving here.

Or maybe you're tired of receiving notifications on your phone for emails that don't need your attention right now. 

Well, Boomerang has the ability to pause our inbox. So once you've installed the Boomerang extension, you will see this Pause Inbox button in your inbox. And by selecting it, we are brought here with a dialogue, which is going to give us a few helpful options so that you can feel confident in pausing your inbox.

Now, just before I walk you through each of these very important settings, including some brand new scheduled settings, what actually is going to happen with your email? Where will they go?

Well, actually, what will happen is that you will have a new label applied to those incoming emails, which will bypass your inbox and go directly to that label down below.

I'll show you how this works in just a moment. But the reason why this is so important is because you can still search for those emails even if you have the Pause Inbox function engaged. 

So by selecting this option here, we have a couple of different things we want to keep in mind. We can either manually pause our inbox and turn it on or off as we like, or we can set up a new schedule.

Here on the left-hand side when it comes to manually pausing, we do have the ability to add an auto-reply message. Now, this is completely up to you. This is a personal preference.

If you're worried that someone has thought that you haven't received your email or that your email is down, you can send a simple message telling them, hey, I'll get back to you at 3:00 p.m., or, thank you for your message but I'm only responding to email once or twice a day.

This is just some boilerplate text. You can replace this with anything that you want, including the subject line and the message itself, or you can simply leave this off.

Personally, I would turn this off because I don't want to contribute to more inbox overload with the people who are messaging me. 

Down below, we have a toggle for delivery exceptions, and this is very, very helpful if there are some emails that we do want to get through the pause function.

So for example, is there a very important person in your world? It could be a boss, it could be a very important client, it could be your spouse, it could be a parent. Do you want to make sure that their emails get through? You can simply add them here.

Down below you can also specify if an email is sent to a particular email address. So maybe you manage multiple addresses or maybe you're just CC'd on something. If there's a particular address that it is sent to, you can let that bypass as well.

This third one is very, very easy if there's a particular domain. So maybe it's your own domain or someone else's domain, you can let that through as well.

And lastly, if there are any key words you want to look out for within those emails, we can let them go through as well.

Finally, our third option here is to hide the Inbox Pause label. I'm going to show you what that label looks like so you can more fully understand what this toggle is attributing to. But in most cases, I would suggest that you leave this off as well.

Now at this stage, I could go ahead and just pause my inbox now, but if I don't want to manually unpause my inbox, I'm going to come over here to the bottom left-hand corner, and I'm going to say unpause automatically after, and I can choose any interval that I like.

Maybe it's just an hour, maybe it's a couple of hours, maybe I want to pause it until tomorrow morning. I can choose any length of time that I want and then select ‘confirm’. But in this example, I'm going to leave that off as well. And I'm going to say Pause Inbox now.

So a couple of things that you'll notice: at the top of the screen we get this nice large warning letting me know that my inbox is currently paused.

In addition, you'll see that it's actually sent me an email. This is very helpful, especially if you're accessing your Gmail or Outlook account within the application on your phone, because of course this will not be visible, but this will remind you that your inbox is paused.

Lastly, over here under Labels, you can see that we have a new label. It's titled Inbox Paused and today's date, so we know exactly where all of those emails will be going.

If we want to, we can of course cheat the system and anytime we can click on this particular label, I have no new incoming messages at this time, but I can always go and find it here.

And this is very, very important because remember, we want to be able to search all of our email including things that we haven't laid our eyes on yet. So that is why this label is created. 

Now, when I'm ready to unpause, I can come up here and select the unpause button. You will notice that the banner at the top of the screen is now removed. It will automatically remove that email that we saw here as well. And finally, on the left-hand side under labels, you will see that that label has been removed as well. So nice and clean. It's not going to leave anything behind.

If I had new incoming emails, they would all be displayed here as well. Let's go back to our Pause Inbox dialogue and quickly look at this new feature on the right-hand side, which allows us to set up a pause schedule. S

o rather than manually pausing our inbox and un-pausing it, here, we can set our own specific work hours. So perhaps you want to pause your email every morning from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. but you want things a little different.

On Wednesdays, for example, you can come in here and edit your schedule and then turn on your schedule. Maybe you want to set up some focus time where you're dealing with your deepest work or your most important projects. 

You can set up a focus time schedule here as well. And then the third option here is an interesting one, but I think might be one of the most valuable, and that is a batched delivery.

So rather than setting up windows of time where your inbox will be paused, here you can tell Inbox Pause to simply deliver your email at specific times of the day. So maybe you only want to receive, new email once or twice a day.

You can do so here, or you can set up a different batched delivery schedule here down below. So this I think might be one of the more helpful ones and even a bit easier to set up than the work hours and the focus time. Lastly, they have an option here called Mix and Match.

So you can combine batch delivery and inbox and unpausing your inbox if you want to set up a more intricate schedule. As mentioned, Inbox Pause by Boomerang is available for both Gmail users and Outlook users, and it's also available in the Boomerang app for iOS and Android. 

To learn more and to get started with Inbox Pause, just go to InboxPause.com. And if you have any other questions on how to be more effective with your email, 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.

Walling continues to impress me with the number of features that it is adding to make it that much easier to manage our projects, brainstorm our ideas, or share them with others. So let's take a look at five features you need to be using in 2024.

Generate projects with AI 

First of all, is something that they added late in 2023, and that is the ability to create things using AI. And unlike so many other tools, which seem to just bolt on a ChatGPT component, Walling has developed something incredibly powerful and useful.

Instead of starting with a template Wall. Whether I want to produce a project or maybe put a presentation together, I'm going to get Walling to produce it for me using AI. So let's say I'm an accounting firm and I want to plan out my social media campaigns for the coming year. 

I'm going to hit enter, and now that Walling AI has finished, we have a completed Wall focused on social media plans for the coming year for our accounting firm, including a yearly overview.

So here you can see it's produced a number of checklists, including our monthly themes and our focus topics, which of course are relevant for different times of the year.

April, "Tax Day Reflections and Planning Ahead." August, "Back to School Financial Education."

These are some great themes and ideas as we plan out our year, including some very important dates here in terms of International Accounting Day and maybe National Financial Awareness Day, things that we want to use in our social media campaign. 

You'll see that it's even including several images here and other KPIs, other things for us to consider.

We've got a content repository so we can start to add additional ideas, including things such as the published date and status.

You can quickly see that this is so much better than just producing a list or an Excel spreadsheet, something that we may be used to within ChatGPT. We've got so much more information to go on here and it's actionable, so we can start working

Custom colors & branding 

On this social media plan right away. Another feature that sets Walling apart from many of its competitors is our ability to customize the colors and the feel of each of our Walls.

Because Walling is so easy to share with others, we want to make sure that we are perhaps following our own branding guidelines, or if we are presenting a proposal, maybe we want to match the branding guidelines of the people we are working with.

By editing our Wall here, we can customize it to our heart's content.

So for example, maybe I want to add my Simpletivity Blue. So I've got my precise shade of blue. I've got a particular shade of off-white that I use on my websites and within my social media posts, including my logo here at the top of the screen. 

Of course, we can edit all of the fonts of the different sections and the headers if we want to as well, but we can also be a little more granular.

Rather than having a page which is completely in blue, maybe I want this welcome section to stand out. Well, you can customize each individual section as well.

So for example, maybe I want to change this background to a bit of a white or a slight off-white, so it's that much more visually appealing to someone when they arrive on this page, as they review this Wall, this section stands out, so a lot of customization.

Remember at the top of your Wall, just select this paint roller to customize any component that you like.

Share with a short link

Now, one of my favorite features of Walling is the ability to share your Walls with others without having to create a login or to ask them to sign up for Walling.

You can publish any of your Walls and share it just like you would a webpage. I'm going to come up here to the top of my screen and select Publish, and one of the recent enhancements is to shorten the link that we need to use when sharing that Wall.

Rather than sharing a long, lengthy link, here, we have a much shorter link that we can quickly and easily share with others, but it gets better.

Present your Wall in slides 

You may already be familiar with sharing your Wall such as this, so it's nice and clean. They can scroll through and even easily navigate here on the left hand side, if those who are viewing want to jump to a particular section.

But recently, Walling has given us an additional way to share that Wall with others. Rather than sharing it as a one page, we can also share it as a slide show, which maybe adds just a little more extra pizzazz as you share it with others.

This time around, when we select that link, you will see at the bottom of the screen, they can simply navigate left to the right, or they can simply go directly to one of these sections down below.

Now the people you share your wall with will still have access to the table of contents here on the left hand side, but by using the slideshow method, it might be a more cleaner way of sharing your ideas, sharing your project status, or your proposal with others.

Walling tips and tricks

Lastly, if you're wanting to get even more out of Walling, visit explore.walling.app. Here you'll find a number of resources to get the most out of your Walls, including the latest featured Wall templates and other resources to help you stay productive and share your ideas with others. 

Now, if you have further questions about Walling, 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.

Do you want to get even more out of Google Keep? Let me show you seven features that every Keep user needs to know. 

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

Bulk Edit Notes

And let's get started off with something that many Keep users are unaware of. And that is when it comes to editing our notes, you don't need to come into this note and make a change and then come over to this note and make another change and click and go in and out.

If there's something you'd like to apply to several notes, you can make a bulk change. Here, you'll see as I hover over my notes, there's a little check mark in the top left hand corner. If I select it, let's say I want to select these three notes and I want to pin them. 

Now that they're all selected here at the top right, I can pin them, I can set the same reminder, I could change them all to the same color. I can archive them, and if I select the More dropdown, there's even more things I can do with these notes.

Let's say I want to change them all to this pink color here. That's great and I'm going to pin them. That was so much faster than going into each and every one of those notes individually.

Group Checklists

Number two, let's see how we can get more out of our checklists. Here I have a note called a packing list, and I hope that you already know that you can convert any of your notes into a checklist.

I just quickly jotted these down, but if I want to turn it into a checklist, I can select the more dropdown and say show checkboxes, and immediately it's going to turn it into a nice checklist.

If I want to go back, I can do that and come down here and say hide check boxes, but let's stick with our checklist. Now, I've got a bunch of clothes here and I've got some electronics. The tough thing here is that I haven't really grouped them together. 

Well, did you know that you can select the left hand side of any checklist item and drag it to the right if you want to indent that item? So here I have all of my jeans, shirts, and jacket underneath my clothes checklist.

And under electronics, I'm just going to indent these three items as well.

Not only is this so much easier to look at and manage, but let's say I just finished packing all of my electronics. I'm just going to select the one checkbox and now everything is checked off and is down below.

Even if I just check off one or two of these items under clothes, and then I check off the clothes, it's still going to keep everything nice and grouped together.

Now, if you want to hide those items, you can do so here by selecting this little arrow here. It's going to tell us how many completed items are there.

The other great thing is if I want to repurpose this list, I only have to uncheck this checkbox and this checkbox, and now I am ready to go. It's ready for me to use this packing list again.

And because these items are indented within this electronics header, I can move them as a group. Maybe I want to pack my electronics first. Perfect. I can move that to the top of my checklist and it's kept everything together, so don't forget to indent some of your checklists.

Move Notes to Google Drive

Next, let's take a look at a tip that not only every Google Keep user should know, but every Google Drive user should know as well. Here I have a much lengthier note where I've been collecting a number of definitions.

Maybe I'm going to put this into a blog article or some other reference document. Now, what I could do is simply select all of the text here and then copy and paste it into a Google Doc, but Keep makes it that much easier.

At the bottom of the screen, if I select on More, I can say copy to Google Docs, and in just a few seconds, it's going to turn it into a Google Doc.

Here, I can select open up that doc, and now I have all of that information, including the title of the Keep note and everything else here ready for me to continue to edit or get ready to publish and perhaps share with someone else. 

But now that we are here within Google Docs, there are some additional things we can take advantage of. On the Google side panel here on the right hand side, we have access to all of our Keep notes, meaning if we want to input other pieces of information, we can do so here as well.

So, remember that checklist that we've been using? I can actually drag and bring that checklist directly into my document. Maybe I'm working on some type of article and I want to include this image.

No problem. I can simply drag and drop that image directly into the document as well. So all of that information that you've been collecting within Keep, you are simply one click away, or one drag away from bringing it into your Google Docs.

Clip with Chrome Extension 

Next, let's take a look at how we can easily grab information from other websites so that we can access it from within Keep. By installing the Google Keep Chrome extension, you can quickly and easily grab information from any webpage.

Here, for example, I've come across this article about Google's new AI search tool, and I'd like to both read this article a little later, but also have a direct link. With that extension installed, I can come up here and click on Save to Keep, and before creating the note, I can actually add a few more details.

Maybe I'll say read this by the end of the week, for example, I can give it a title if I want.

I can even add a specific label before creating the note. So maybe this is work related. I will select that label here, and now I can select create that note. It gives me a quick confirmation that my note was saved successfully, and then I can go back to doing whatever it is I want to here on this website.

But if we jump back to Google Keep, here, you can see near the top of my screen is that direct link to that page. I also get a quick preview of what that page looks like as well. So I am only one click away from returning to that webpage.

Grab Text from Images

Now, since we are grabbing information from so many different places, whether it is websites, whether it is images or other lists, this next tip is one of my all-time favorites, and that has to do with grabbing text directly from an image.

Here you can see I grabbed this image a little while ago, which is actually an advertisement, but it has a fair amount of text on it, and I don't want to just copy it down or type it out myself. I'd rather grab it directly from this image. So with this note open, I can come down to the bottom and select the More option. 

And this time we're going to select grab image text, and almost instantly it will scour the image and grab all of the texts that it can find, including words such as photography, even though it was overlaid over this person and has some different colors in the background.

It grabbed the button here. It even grabbed the Adobe logo, including the letter A within that logo. So if you want to take a picture of a document, a poster, a menu, or anything else that you come across, you can easily grab that text by using Grab Image Text.

Edit Images

Now, speaking of images, another feature is the ability to edit or annotate any of our images. Here's another image that I have here, and if I click directly on the image, I will be given a full screen preview. But up in the top right hand corner, you can see that we have the ability to edit this image by selecting Edit Drawing.

Here, we are brought into an editor. So if we want to highlight certain sections of the image, for example, or maybe I want to use an actual highlighter feature here, maybe I want to say something about the letter C and the letter R, I can do so here as well.

I can edit in a number of different ways, and you always have an Undo button here if you want to go back as well. And if you want to reset, you can choose this dropdown and say clear the page. This can be a great way to make some simple changes or simple edits to any of the images you upload to Keep.

Set Reminder Defaults

Next, let's don't forget the power of setting reminders. If you have a particular to-do or task, or something that you just don't want to forget, you can click on any of your notes. Come down here to the left hand corner and select remind me.

But in particular, we want to look at making it faster and easier for you to set these reminders. Now, you can always come down and select a particular date and time, but these defaults can be very handy, later today, tomorrow, or next week.

But wait a minute, 8:00 PM today, 6:30 tomorrow morning. Where are these times coming from? 

Well, if we come up here to the right hand corner and select Settings and then select Settings at the top, here is where we can change or adjust our reminder defaults. So maybe 6:30 AM is a little too early for me. I want to change that to 8:00 AM.

I'm going to hit Save, and now the next time I want to set a reminder tomorrow at 8:00 AM or next week at 8:00 AM, that suits my schedule that much better. But there's one important warning.

The changes you make within Google Keep when it comes to your reminder times also affect the snooze reminder times within your Gmail account. 

For example, if I want to come over here and snooze this message, I'm going to select these Snooze icon, and here you can see the 8:00 PM and the 8:00 AM applies over here as well.

So you may want to ask yourself, where do you use reminders more often, within Google Keep, or by using the Snooze function within Gmail? Either way, you'll need to make that change within Google Keep Settings. 

Now, I would love to hear from you next. Did you know all seven of these Google Keep tips? If so, let me know in the comments, or share with me some of your favorite tips right here within Google Keep.

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.

Do you want a faster way to manage all of your email and spend less time in your inbox? In this video, I'm going to show you how to combine two email apps so you can deal with email at lightning speed.

So today we're going to take a quick look at something called Fastmail, something that is not only lightning fast, but also adds privacy to your email so you don't have to share your details, your information, with big time marketers such as Google and Microsoft.

Fast Mail Demo 

Here I am within my fastmail.com account and maybe nothing special. It looks like an email account. I can easily read everything here. I've got my search bar at the top, and I've got my folders in different sections down below.

But as I click on my different sections and my different folders, you'll notice something different. It is lightning fast. And here within my inbox, I'm not only viewing just my first 50 or first 100 emails, no, it's loading nearly 300 emails.

Even as I go between my pinned, my VIPs, and my all mail, it's not wasting time loading these messages. And if I click on this message and start to scroll through, if I want to go and reply to this message, it is also lightning fast. 

I'm not waiting for dialogues to pop open. I'm not waiting for things to send. So it truly is a very fast, a very quick experience. but there's a number of other things which you may benefit from by using Fastmail. Here on the right hand side, we too have a sidebar.

So we've got access to our calendar. I actually like the display of the calendar here within Fastmail, which to me feels a lot easier to read, a lot more easier to manage when it comes to looking at these events and seeing their details.

I also like that I have full access to all of my contacts here on the right hand side. But it doesn't stop with just a side window. Here in the top left hand corner of the screen we can go directly to our contacts or our calendar without opening up a new tab. 

So if I go to my contacts, I want to go directly to this contact and pull that information, or I want to go directly and create a new contact. If I want to go to my calendar, again, lightning fast without having to add unnecessary tabs at the top of the screen.

And for those of you which may be familiar with other Simpletivity demos, you may notice that this is actually my Google calendar. And yes, if we go back to our mail, this is actually my Gmail email as well.

It is super easy to sync your existing email provider, including Gmail and Google Calendar, so you can access all of your messages and all of your events in a faster environment.

Fast Mail Privacy

But let's not forget the other bonus of using FastMail, and that is your privacy. If you are using Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo, your information is being shared with advertising agencies and big marketing companies.

That means that they can read the details of your messages and use that to market ads and information to you. But with Fastmail, your messages are completely your own so they are hidden from sharing it with others.

Sanbox

But of course, getting through your email has a lot more to do than just clicking and loading things fast, we also want to make sure that we can get rid of all of that junk and hide things to work at a more opportune time.

And for that, we're also taking advantage of using SaneBox. Here on the left hand side of the screen, you will notice that I have several sane specific folders, meaning they all start with this at sane.

Because I've combined SaneBox with my Fastmail account, I have an opportunity to teach what is important, what is not, or what I would like to work on a little later in the future. So for example, here is a sane black hole. Maybe I want to stop receiving these reminders. 

All I need to do is drag that over into the black hole, and I will no longer receive those reminders from that messenger. I didn't even have to open up that message and hit the unsubscribe button or create some other filter or rule, I can simply drag it over.

Maybe I want to deal with this security alert a little later today and this email as well, no problem. I can go back and work on these messages later. And perhaps I don't want to see a particular message until next week or even next month.

Nothing is faster than simply dragging things over here to a folder on the left hand side. It saves me time from opening up the message itself, and I always know where to go when I want to go and review that message.

So if you want to spend less time in your inbox, go to fastmail.com and sanebox.com or click the links in the description 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.

Is your desktop in Windows 11 getting out of control? Are you tired of seeing all of these files, shortcuts and way too many things down here on your taskbar?

Well, I'm going to show you how to turn this into this, and it's only going to take you just a few minutes. Let's get started with all of the files and shortcuts, and even the recycle bin.

Desktop clean up

Everything else that tends to hang out on our desktop.  Now, if you have a particular way in which you like to group or organize all of your files or shortcuts on your desktop, go ahead and do so.

But for many people, including myself, I never really make use of this area unless I want to put something there temporarily. So you could group things together either manually by dragging them together.

We could right click and we could say sort by name or size. For example, let's say sort by name and everything's going to be vertical over here on the side, but over time, it's going to start to creep over.

Well, did you know you can right click, hover over view, and come down to the bottom and uncheck show desktop icons. 

And in just a second, they are all gone. Well, they're all gone visually. They're still there. If I open up my desktop folder, here you can see all of those same files and shortcuts exist.

I still have access to all of them, but they will never appear, nor will anything else appear here on my desktop. It will stay completely clean. If I want to go back, I can right click and then check that box. And then of course, everything else will return.

But if you want a super clean desktop and never have anything appear, you want to make use of that option. And don't forget that you can personalize this image if you want something a bit brighter or a different image altogether.

I'm going to choose this secondary theme just to sort of brighten up my screen a little bit.

‍Taskbar clean up

Next up, let's take a look at how we can clean up our very messy and busy task bar down below. I've got a lot of things going on and I never really make use of this search bar.

Well, what you can do is right click anywhere on the task bar and select taskbar settings, and this is going to give us a lot of additional options and really clean up this mess down below.

First off, as I mentioned, I don't use that search box, so if you want to hide it completely or change how it appears, you can do so.

Now that search bar is gone, and if you have any other default windows items you'd like to hide, such as the task view, widgets or chat, you can toggle them off here as well. But down at the very bottom, there's a section called taskbar behaviors. 

If we expand this, this gives us probably one of my favorite features when it comes to cleaning up our task bar.

At the very bottom, there's an option called combine taskbar buttons and hide labels. I currently have this set as never, but if I select this dropdown and say always, suddenly everything is minimized and centered on my taskbar.

It hasn't closed any of my files. You can see here, I still have two PowerPoint files open. It will give me a preview if I hover over that application. The same with any other application here as well. 

And if I want to just hover over the two previews here, I can quickly see which one I want to deal with next. But this makes everything so much cleaner, so much easier to get to. 

And if you want quicker access to your favorite applications, this is a much better area to include the shortcuts. Let's say, for example, that I use the calculator application on a frequent basis. I don't want to have to go searching for it or create some other quick key.

I'd rather have it always available here within my task bar. If I right click on this application or any application, I can select pin to the taskbar. And now even when I close this application, I'm only one click away from reopening it.

So think of your favorite applications, think what you would like to have access to most often, and you can pin them right here to your taskbar.

System tray clean up

Next, let's make sure that we clean up any unnecessary icons that are visible here on the right hand side. Here within your system tray, there's probably a number of things that you are using, but you don't need to have access to.

Well, the easiest way to minimize them is to put them here in this collection of hidden icons.

Well, all you have to do is select that icon, and drag it over the arrow and then release. And as you can see, I can quickly drag them over top, leaving only the one or two icons that I want to have direct access to. 

Now, I'd love to hear from you next. What are some of your favorite tips for keeping your desktop and your workspace clear and focused so you can work at your productive best? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching this video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Do you run a business or are thinking of starting a business and your email address looks something like this? If so, keep watching.

Why you need a business account

There is perhaps nothing more unprofessional than using a generic email address for your business, so why would you do that to your brand and your reputation?

Well, one of the challenges in our way is that it can be complicated to search and buy a domain name and then connecting that with our email provider, and there's a good chance that you're either using Microsoft 365, or perhaps you're considering using Google Workspace, but you know what the problem is with these two providers? 

They're not designed for small businesses or entrepreneurs or solopreneurs, as a result, they make it very difficult for you to connect your new domain and even use your email in the long run.

So, what if there was a simpler way? Well, there is, and it's called Neo, business email built especially for entrepreneurs and small business owners, and best of all, you can get started with your own custom domain name and your own fast, reliable inbox in just a matter of minutes.

So let me show you how easy it is to get started with Neo.

Getting an email address with Neo

Here I am at Neo.space and I'm going to come up here and select get started.

Now, if you already happen to have your own business domain name, you can still take advantage of the simplicity and speed of Neo, but in our case, we are going to start with a new domain name, so I'm going to select this option here and select ‘get a new domain’. And now all we need to do is search for something that is going to fit with our brand. I'm going to type in SimpleScott because that is going to be the name of my business.

I'm going to select search and perfect, it is available, SimpleScott.co.site and best of all, it is absolutely free for my first year, so I'm going to come here and select ‘get this Domain’. 

Next, it's time to create our account so I'm going to enter in my full name, my existing email address. This is going to be helpful so I can transfer over and even reply to existing emails from my current email address, and of course, create a password.

Next, we need to finish creating our mailbox. We already have the domain name, but what's going to come in the front of our default email address? Well, I got to keep things nice and simple.

It's just going to be my first name. We're reminded that this is going to be the default admin email address, but we can update and assign more admins later on.

 And then we'll need to set a password for this mailbox. Next, we can add additional mailboxes for members of our team, so if you have a staff or if you have other members of your business, here is where you can start to add them as well. 

I'm going to say done and continue to the next step and here's an additional bonus. Not only do we now have a professional email address, but we have this domain to use at our discretion, and Neo comes with a free one-page site. More on this later, but this is going to be an extremely helpful tool as you continue to build and grow your business.

I'm going to hit continue and our final step is to choose if we want to go with the Business Starter Plan or the Business Plus Plan.

Using Neo with Gmail

And with setup now complete, we are brought into our Neo inbox where we can start to use our custom email address, but also start to work with email a lot smarter and a lot faster.

So, for example, email tracking is built right into Neo. We don't have to install an additional extension. We don't have to enable something special. In fact, you can turn it on or off for any particular email. We also have templates, not only built right into the email, but they're up here upfront under the subject line.

I think that makes so much more sense when I'm crafting a new message or a new email, and lastly, contact groups. Rather than trying to remember, "What did I name that contact group?" 

I can simply select from my list, here's my VIP coaching list, and it's automatically put into the recipient line. But wait, you're probably asking, "What happens to all of the emails I have been using, for example, in my Gmail account?"

Well, the great thing is you can add accounts to Neo so you can continue to work seamlessly and reply and read all of your regular Gmail emails right here from within Neo. You'll notice just below my inbox, I have a Gmail address.

This is my former gmail.com address, and I have all of my messages available to me here, so I can continue to read and review what's going on from this account.

Simple 1-Page Website

Last but not least, let's don't forget about that bonus site that we talked about earlier.

Now, when you're first starting your business, you may be spending way too much time crafting that first website, or perhaps you've even been putting it off, but with Neo, we get our own custom one page website, which is attached to our custom domain name so we can easily share this with others and give them only the most relevant information they need.

And don't worry, you can customize the layout and the look, upload your logo, give a brief description, and then include custom links. 

So in my example, maybe what I really want them to do is book a call with me, so here I have a link to my Calendly booking calendar, but then down below, if they're not ready to book a call, maybe what I want them to really do is to get in touch so they can send me a message here, a message which will go directly to my Neo inbox.

And if I want to add some further details, I can always add additional links, maybe such as links to my social media profiles. All I need to do is hit save and publish and now this site is ready to go live. I can share this link with anyone.

AI & marketing features

Finally, Neo's team is constantly launching new features and functionality. I had the chance to get a sneak preview of two new features, SmartWrite, an AI email generator that can write and reply to emails for you, and email marketing, which you can use to send out beautifully designed custom marketing emails to all your leads.

So if you're tired of looking unprofessional with that generic email address and want to be able to manage your messages in a much faster and simpler environment, you can go to Neo.space or click the link in the description 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.

The first rule of the Simpletivity method is to work on what really matters. And recently, Google has added a new view right here within Google Calendar, which makes it that much easier. Historically we've always had to access Google Tasks from the side panel here, which is okay.

That's fine. But often we are so distracted by the long list of tasks. It's probably a lot longer than what you see here in my example. Well in the top right hand corner of Google Calendar, we can now switch between our calendar view and our tasks view, which makes managing and adding and organizing our tasks a lot easier. 

First off, you can have access to all of your different lists on the very same screen. And you know what that means? It means that you can easily drag and move tasks in between your different lists. T

his is especially helpful if you would like to create a con bond method, a method of moving your tasks from the left hand side to the right hand side of your screen. And of course, you can always add a new list whenever you like.

If I have four or five or more lists, I can still see them here on the exact same screen. But here I've created an even simpler and I feel a more effective way to use this new view. 

Here you can see I have both a work list for all of the things related to my business and then over here I've got a family list, things that are related more to my personal life or things outside of work.

And at the very beginning, I have a list called My Tasks. And the reason why I've set up my list this way is that I only want to focus on three tasks at a time. I want to accomplish those three tasks, not be distracted by everything else going on in my life, and then come back here and pull in another three or another few tasks for that day.

So for example here, I can continue to add a very long list of all of my work tasks, maybe just a number of ideas as well. But when it comes to planning for my day, I can review my list and say, "Well that phone call is very important. 

I want to accomplish that and then I want to send out the newsletter, but I don't want to forget to call Mom and talk about spring break." So these are the first three tasks. These are my most important tasks right now.

Now when I come back to my calendar view, I'm going to come up here and switch to My Tasks. You'll see that you still always have access to your multiple tasks, but now I only have those three.

I can go about my day and focus exclusively on these three tasks, make sure that they are completed. And when I'm done or when I'm ready to add some more, I can go back to my master view, or my new Google Tasks desktop view, and start to drag in a few more tasks.

In this way, I'm not distracted by a lengthy or long list and I can focus on just one or three things at a time. 

Now if you enjoy tips like this to get the most out of your software so you can work a little less and enjoy life a little more, join us at Streamline Academy. It's the private Simpletivity community where you can get more done and enjoy less stress.

To learn more, go to simpletivity.com/streamline, or click the link in the description down below.

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

How often do people visit your website or Shopify page and then leave because they have a question? Well, in this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to add a free AI chatbot so you can make more sales and keep customers on your site.

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

And in this tutorial, we are going to be using an app called Tidio, which not only is going to provide us with a professional chatbot that we can put on any website or Shopify page, but we can also use the power of AI, so we or someone else on our team does not have to be answering things directly.

‍Create a Tidio chatbot

So here on the Tidio website, we want to go to the top right hand corner and select get started. And here we can go ahead and create our own free account. And once complete, our very next step is to start configuring our live chatbot.

So it's going to give us a preview here on the right hand side of the screen. First, we're going to have to decide on a name. Now, this could either be the name of the avatar that you are going to be using.

Sometimes businesses like to use a fake name or a fictional name, or, depending on where you are going to be placing your chatbot, it could be something like chat with support, or maybe you want to say chat with customer service, something along those lines.

In this case, I'm going to use my name because, remember, we don't have to use the AI capability all of the time. 

You can actually chat directly with your customers if you want to. Now, down below, we get to choose our color scheme. Now, you can choose from a number of presets.

If we hit this more button, we have a number of others to choose from, or we can of course customize what we want as well. And last but not least, and I highly recommend this, we get to upload our avatar.

So here you might want to either choose a logo, a picture of yourself, or, in my case, because I'm going to be selling coaching services, I'm going to use this coach icon here. So they maybe recognize me as Coach Scott.

So this is going to be helpful to them. And I think I'm going to go back to this. I kind of like this default blue here. Lastly, you just want to confirm your default chat language 

Customize your AI chatbot

Now, in order for Tidio to personalize your experience, there's a couple of questions we need to answer. So, for example, what is your main focus? Do I want to increase sales or do I want to solve customer problems? In my case, I'm going to say increase sales.

And how do I want to do that? Do I want to talk to the customers or do I want to automate conversations? I'm going to select this one here. You can actually select all four of these if you like. It's not an either or situation, but the more particular you are, the better that Tidio will be able to help you.

Next up, how many support agents will use Tidio? You don't have to be the only one involved. In my case, I'm just going to say one. But if you have other team members, you can specify that here. And then lastly, what is your industry? 

Well, in my case, I'm going to call myself a service. And how many inquiries do a get a month? I'm going to estimate somewhere in the realm of 26 to 250. Step three in our setup process is how we want to greet our customers or greet our visitors on our page.

So how would we like to engage with them at first? Do we want to ask them if they'd like to get a closer look at your offer? Ask them if they'd like to order a phone call or request a phone call or just greet them warmly.

And you can see the example here on the right hand side, the differences between them. I'm going to say this last one here. “Hey, if you need any assistance, I'm always here”. I like sort of the gentle nature of this.

But again, depending on your goals, depending on what you're wanting, you can choose another option. You also always have the choice to customize this message if you like as well. We're going to select Continue. 

And lastly, our final step is to actually set this up with our site. Now you can either do this manually or use one of the popular integrations down below. In our example, we are going to set this up for our Shopify store.

So at this stage, all we need to do is insert our Shopify store name and then connect it to our Shopify account. And once Tidio is configured, I can log into my Shopify account.

And at the very bottom here under apps, you can see that it has been installed as an application. So there's nothing really more I need to do here within my Shopify account.

Now that things have been connected, every time that I launch this particular site, this particular store, that chatbot will be visible on the front.

‍Setup AI answers & knowledge

So here within our Tidio account, we want to come down to this icon here called Lyro. Lyro AI is the engine that powers the responses, but also allows you to configure the answers and the questions that may be presented to your customers and those who are visiting your website or Shopify page. Here within the data sources menu, we have two different ways in which we can start to add knowledge.

Knowledge is going to be the information that we tell our chatbot to use so that when a visitor asks a question, it can confidently give a number of answers that are accurate and on brand. Now, there are two different ways in which we can do this.

We can either import or generate a number of Q&As. And if you already have an FAQ, a frequently asked questions, part of your site, this is super simple, but we can also simply give it a website URL, where it will take all of the information from your sales page and then use that to answer questions. 

So let's use both of these in this example. So starting with the website option, I'm going to select website URL. And here I just need to paste in the name of the website I want to refer it to. In this case, I'm going to use my Streamline Academy website page.

I understand that there's a lot of information here within this page, and although I think it's clearly laid out, I realize that many of my visitors will simply scan and browse, and maybe just read the bolded lines here. But if they have a question, I want to be able to refer them to the actual information, the accurate data, which is included on this page.

Now, it may take several minutes for Lyro to scan and grab all of that information, but, at this point, you can also consider adding additional websites if you need to as well. Next up, while we're waiting, let's go to the Q&A section. So if you already have an FAQ section, you want to use this option here, but you can also use this in conjunction with generating Q&As. 

So I'm going to click this option here, and I'm again going to state that Streamline Academy page. I'm going to say generate.

And what it's going to do is scan this site. And after a few minutes, it's going to create 25 questions and answers, things that I can review and edit if I need to, so that it can give the best possible answers to those who visit my website.

And once completed, it's going to give me a summary of each of the questions along with the answers below that I can choose to add. Or if I don't want to include it, I can uncheck a box here. I'm going to go ahead and say Add Selected for everything on this page because I can still edit it here.

So I can go through it one at a time. So for example, can I reschedule my appointment or reservation? Here's the answer that the chatbot is going to give. Yes, you can do so.

Please contact our customer service team. Hmm, I don't have a customer service team, so here I can come in here and modify this to include an email address or give it some other instructions if desired.

Review handoff settings & test

Once we're happy with providing it with the information that we need and editing any of these questions if necessary, we also want to come down to the configure option here. And, in particular, look at the handoff section.

Remember, you can still use the chatbot as a one-to-one conversation tool. So if you are monitoring a conversation, you can choose to take over from the chatbot.

The two options here are when operators are online, meaning when you are online, do you want to be transferred to the conversation or do you want to keep the conversation within AI? 

And secondly, when operators are offline, what do you want it to do as well? So these are two important questions for you to consider. Lastly, just before going live with your Shopify or website integration, you can come up here and select Test Lyro.

Here, you can actually see how the chatbot will respond to any questions that you give it. So here, it's going to start us off with a sample question. Can I get personalized advice for my specific software? Of course you can.

This is perfect. This is exactly the type of response I want to give it. What if I ask something like, "Who is Streamline for?" something along those lines? 

The answer, Streamline Academy is intended for individuals who want to optimize their software-specific needs, a plethora of technology tools, and wanting to simplify their technology. This is a perfect answer that really encompasses everything about what Streamline Academy is all about.

So you can try and challenge your chatbot, give it some simple, give it some more complicated questions just before you give live, so you can be confident when real-time visitors go to use your chatbot. And don't forget, you can do so much more than just answer questions.

You can also use your chat bot to capture leads, including email addresses, and then create email marketing campaigns all from within the Tidio platform. 

So if you want to keep people on your Shopify page or your website, make sure you install Tidio, and give them the answers they deserve. To get started, go to tidio.com/get/simpletivity or use the link in the description down below to start using Tidio for free and upgrade anytime with 20% off.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive doesn't need to be difficult.

ClickUp 3.0 is here and is more powerful than ever, but don't waste your time fumbling around. In this video, I'm going to show you how to use the best new ClickUp features, including Home, Hubs, Universal Search and ClickUp AI. Are you ready?

Home

So let's get started with the new home screen. This is really going to be your productivity home base as you get to customize the look and feel of everything that is happening.

So whether you want to see your agenda, whether you want to see those tasks that are assigned to you, you can create this space any way that you like. Here in the top right hand corner, we have our manage cards button.

And by selecting this, you can see the different types of cards in which we can add or which we can hide from this screen. So for example, if I want to remove the agenda, I just need to select this button here.

If I want to remove the lineup, which is a very customizable card here, I can remove that here as well. And if I ever want to add something back, I can simply just add it to the home screen. Let's go ahead and add those two back. 

Now, by default, you will notice that they will bring them back at the bottom of the screen. So here is my lineup card, here is my agenda card. But the additional benefit of this home screen is that we can edit this entire layout to our heart's content.

Just beside the manage cards button, we have this edit layout toggle. By selecting this, we can take any of these cards and we can reduce their size, we can lengthen their size if we want to see more, but I really do want to see my agenda. So I'm going to click and drag, and maybe I'm going to bring that to my top right hand corner and maybe that lineup something where I can customize and add tasks specifically for me.

I'm going to grab that as well, and I want that front and center, but I don't need it to span the entire width. There we go, I'm going to put my agenda there and maybe that assigned to me maybe on second thought. There is a lot of detail there. So let me go ahead and expand that. And now my other cards will be brought down below. 

Now, some other features within the home area you should be aware of is that depending on the card, you may have some other views or some other settings. So for example, here in my agenda view, I can view my agenda here.

You can see that it is linked to my Google Calendar, but I can click the gear icon and select the calendar view. So if I want to see that calendar view, and maybe if I expand it out here, I can see it here as well. But I kind of prefer that more condensed agenda view.

So I'm going to use that here. In addition, as I am clicking on and maybe looking at further details within any of my tasks, by default, we're going to have this standard pop up or dialogue view. But in the top right hand corner, we can switch our layout to either a full screen or a sidebar view. A

nd I personally like this sidebar view. You can drag and decide how wide of a sidebar view you want, but as I'm clicking on different tasks here, if I'm reviewing certain things and remember, I can immediately start to work on them here. I still have access to my tasks and my home view here on the left hand side.

Universal Search

Next up, let's take a look at a new feature, which makes finding what you're looking for that much easier, not only here within ClickUp, but with other apps that you can connect. At the top of the screen, we have our Universal Search.

And of course here we can search for anything within ClickUp, including things across our multiple spaces and our multiple projects. But what's better yet is that we can now search files and other folders in our connected apps. Here you can see that I've already connected my Google Drive.

Why would I want to open up a new tab, log in somewhere else, and search or find that file when I can do it all here from within ClickUp? So in my example, I'm looking for a particular consulting form, and here you can see the three results here are actually all coming from my Google Drive account. 

This first one is what I'm looking for. So I can click on it and immediately I'm brought to the form that I want. I can start editing, I can start reviewing, and I didn't have to open up another tab or switch back and forth.

I can do it all here from this Universal Search. Here within the apps section, if we select this plus button, you can see the number of different apps which we can connect. So whether you use Drive, Dropbox, GitHub, Figma, or some other service, you can search within these applications from the convenience of your ClickUp account.

Hubs Now, speaking of finding things fast, ClickUp 3.0 has introduced something new called Hubs. Here within our menu, below home and inbox, you will see things such as docs, dashboards and whiteboards. 

These are referred to as Hubs. So if I click on docs, I now have a high level view of all of my docs across all of my spaces, and they're conveniently categorized in a few different ways, including my most recent docs, docs that I have favorited and docs that are created by me.

And I particularly like that they've kept these nice and short, they're only showing the top three. But if I want to see them all, I'm only a click away. Down below, I can see a full list of all of my docs, but I can also quickly filter these as well. I

f I want to find out things that are specifically private in this case, maybe things that are specific to a workspace, I can do so here as well. So very much like the universal search, a quicker or faster way to find all of those documents, dashboards, and whiteboards that you are looking for.

ClickUp AI

Last but not least, an overview of ClickUp 3.0 would not be complete without looking at ClickUp AI and AI is built into a variety of different places. For example, if I come here and open up this task within the description field, I can immediately start to write with AI by selecting this option here, I can immediately give it a prompt, ask it a question, and start to create a number of different types of content.

But if I don't want to click that or depending on where I am, I can always use that forward slash and I can choose that option here as well.

So there's a variety of different places in which you can give it this prompt, but what's better yet is the different ways in which we can get started. At the very top of the screen, just to the right of your search bar, you will see this AI button.

By selecting this, we will get the same prompt, but what I appreciate is how specific we can get with what we are creating. 

Now, by default, we are going to be shown some of the more popular prompts, such as writing an email, creating a template, maybe we want to generate a table. But what if you want to do something a lot more specific?

You probably know by now that when it comes to getting the most out of AI, it all comes down to the prompt. So here with this dropdown, we can select a particular department or the type of work in which we are working on.

So for example, maybe I'm working on some marketing, I'm going to select marketing, and immediately I am given a number of different scenarios, a number of different things that I can use right away to create something so much more valuable than just giving it a one-liner here at the top of the screen.

So let's say I want to create a customer survey. I'm going to select this option, and it's going to give me just a few simple questions that I need to answer. So I can create a high quality survey. 

So in this example, I'm selling a bath soap for seniors. I'm telling it what my target audience is and what my survey objectives are. Last but not least, I can choose a particular tone of voice. I'm going to keep it at default, and I can also choose my level of creativity.

I'm going to tone this down to medium, and then all I need to do is select, generate. And of course, in just a number of seconds, it's produced a great survey, something that I can get started with.

Maybe I'll only need to change a few different things before I issue it, or maybe pass it along to someone else on my team. But of course, ClickUp is going to make it that much easier for us.

I can immediately create a task or create a doc. I can now turn this into something so much more actionable. I can give it an assignee. I can give it a due date and create that task. So in a matter of seconds, I didn't have to open up another tab.

I didn't have to go to ChatGPT, I didn't have to go to Google Drive. I can do it all here within ClickUp and get on with my very next task. 

So now that you know how to use some of the best features here in ClickUp 3.0, I'd love to hear from you next.

Which features are you most excited to try out next? 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.

There has never been a better time to build online courses. But you may be saying to yourself, "I don't have the content, the skills, or the software to do something like that." Well, I think you're wrong. And if you just know some basic PowerPoint skills, you can create professional looking courses and start selling them online. 

Use your PowerPoint presentations

But first, a quick warning. Don't take the easy way out and do what others are doing. Earlier this year, I purchased an online course. And you know what I got? A collection of Loom videos,kind of like what you see here with the presenter's face here in the lower left-hand corner as they just went through their slides, one slide at a time.

In fact, these videos were recorded live, so I could actually hear them advancing on their keyboard as they went from slide to slide.

This is the fastest way to present yourself as unprofessional and someone who is not as knowledgeable in your particular field of teaching. 

Instead, you can take your existing PowerPoint slides, the presentations that you probably already have or perhaps that you're putting together and add something to it. And what we're going to add is iSpring Suite.

iSpring Suite is an add-on to your PowerPoint slides so you can add interactive quizzes, role plays, screen recordings. You can even let AI do voice narration for you if you don't want to be on camera or if you don't want to be reading the script.

So let me show you five of my favorite features and why you should consider using iSpring Suite. Number one, do it in an application that you already know. 

You already know how to add content and create new slides here within PowerPoint, so why waste your time learning a completely new piece of software? You can create your course here and add all of these additional add-ons, interactions, and produce the course at the end within a software that you already know.

Not only is this going to save you a lot of time, but it's going to save you a lot of effort because you don't have to convert your slides to some format that you're not familiar with. You don't have to worry if your font types or your layout is going to carry over into the new software.

Everything that you build here within PowerPoint is going to look exactly the same way to those who take your course.

Add user interaction

Number two is adding interaction. Why narrate over a boring slide when you can get your users to click on particular elements within your course. Get them to interact with what's going on so they can really absorb your material and make it that much more engaging for the learner.

This way, you can get them to interact with your content rather than just listen to you speak over a number of boring slides.

Include quizzes and surveys

Number three, adding quizzes or surveys directly to your content. Here with iSpring Suite installed, we have a new ribbon where we can add all of our learning features directly to any of our existing slide decks.

All I need to do is come up here and select quiz and I can go ahead and start adding a quiz to this slide. And best of all, we're not limited to just some boring form where everything is text-based.

You can make your quizzes as colorful or as interactive as you like. In this example, not only can I ask the question here, but I can have a nice bright visual related to it here as well. 

I'm going to select true and then select Submit. And I can even give the learner a reason for their correct or their incorrect answer in this case. And what about interactivity? How about this? Sorting your food in terms of what is healthy and what is not.

Think of the possibilities that you could create. How much more fun, engaging, and how much more real learning will take place when your users get to interact at this level? And best of all, you get to create it all within the comfort of Microsoft PowerPoint.

Record narration or use text-to-speech

Number four, recording your own audio or using text to speech. Now, iSpring Suite makes it super easy for us to record audio over any of our slides. So for example, maybe I want to give a brief introduction to this slide.

All I need to do is select Start Record, and I can do as many takes as I'd like, making sure I get the perfect one to put together as a part of my course.

But instead, if I don't like the sound of my own voice, or maybe I want to save some time and have some professional narration, I can come up here and select Manage Narration. 

This time, instead of recording my own audio, I'm going to select text to speech. And then all I need to do is either type in or maybe paste what I would like to be said here within this slide. I have a wide variety of languages, which I can choose from, and also a large variety of voices, which I can try.

And before I insert this narration, I can always come down here and preview it just to make sure I've got everything right. Not only newbies need a mentor, but also employees who are moving to a new position within the company.

And now this crisp and clear narration will be played when this slide is presented during the course.

Add characters and royalty-free backgrounds

And number five, adding high-resolution characters and backgrounds so that your slides pop and look more professional. Here within our iSpring Suite ribbon, you can see that we have access to icons, objects, backgrounds, and characters.

Characters can bring your courses to life and make things so much more interactive. If I click on characters here, I have a massive library of different characters which I can use, and I can search and sort by different age groups if I want, if I'm looking at more of a casual audience or maybe a business audience, and let's say I want to choose Carmen here. 

I have Carmen in literally hundreds of different poses, different positions. So no matter what type of training, no matter what type of course that I'm using, I can add it directly to my training.

In addition, I don't have to come up with my own scenarios or physical spaces for my training. Let's say that I'm delivering some specific leadership training for those who work in restaurants. Now I have access to a full library of different areas of kitchens, restaurants, bars, and setups, which I can use as a part of my course development.

So stop just thinking about creating that course. Make it look professional with iSpring Suite. To get started with your free trial, click the link in the description 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.