Why Google Forms is so valuable

You may already be familiar with some of Google Drive's more popular tools such as Docs, Sheets, or Slides, but if you come down to the More option, you'll find perhaps one of the most powerful tools here within Drive, and that is Google Forms.

So in today's video, I wanna show you everything you need to know about creating forms, surveys, or participant feedback right here from within Google.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress, and if we select Google Forms, it's going to open up a brand new form for us.

How to access Google Forms

to start working with, so let's get started. Here's our untitled form and probably the first thing that you want to do is give your form or your survey or whatever, you're going to use this form for a title.

Add Title and Description to Google Form

So let's just call this one form number one, let's keep it nice and simple. Now below, you also have an option to add a description. Now, this is not a requirement, but sometimes it can be helpful to add a brief description just to let the survey participant or whoever is going to be accessing this form, you know why you would like them to fill this out?

Adding and Editing Questions

NNow down below, you will have an initial question already pre-populated. It's just titled Untitled Question, and we've got Option One number here.

So let's start with an easy one. Let's start with "What is your name?" right?

And the great thing about Google Forms is that you may have noticed that that multiple-choice option which was here just a moment ago has actually changed because Google Forms assumed that I was asking a short answer question. It actually automatically made that change for me, which is great because this is exactly what I'm looking for. I just want a short text box so people can enter in their name.

Now, of course, there's a wide variety of questions.

Different Question Types in Google Forms

In which we can ask including both short-answer and long-answer, such as a paragraph, multiple choice, checkboxes, and dropdown are among some of the most popular options, especially because it's so easy for the participant to fill things out.

Another great option within Google Forms is you can actually allow users to upload a file if you want them to send you a screenshot or upload a PDF. Maybe you need them to sign a contract or sign a permission form; you can do that here with file upload.

Then there's a few different scales and grids: a linear scale, you're probably used to seeing this, usually like a five-point scale, something like never, rarely, sometimes, often, and all the time; a multiple-choice grid; a checkbox grid. You can also allow them to choose a date or time.

We're not gonna go through every single option here, but I encourage you to experiment and use these different options as a part of your form.

So for this first question, "What is your name?" we want it to be a short answer; that's great. Let's take a quick look at some of the other options.

Changing Question Options

That are available to us here.

Here, we can duplicate this question. This is very helpful if you have something like a multiple-choice answer field, and maybe the answers are going to be the same for another question, so you can just easily duplicate that question.

Here we can delete this question if we need to, and then we have something that's called "Required." There may be some questions within your form that you want to force the user to respond to. So by selecting this slider, they will not be able to submit the form until they answer this question, or any other question that you may have selected this slider for.

All right, now that we've got our first question here, let's add a few more. To do that, we wanna go over to the right and we've got this sort of floating menu here, and we wanna hit the plus button. That's gonna add a new question. So let's add a multiple-choice question this time around.

Adding a Multiple Choice Question

How is your day going so far?

Alright, so option number one, maybe I wanna say, "It's great," you know, that's one option. If I wanna give them another option, go down to number two, "It's okay," and maybe a third option, I'm gonna say, "It's been a bad day."

Alright, so I've got three multiple-choice options here. I can continue to add as many options as I'd like, but you'll also notice that there's an "Add other" option, and you're probably used to seeing this in other forms as well. I can add an "Other" option so that if they don't relate to any of the choices given here, they can write in their own option. That can be very helpful. It may just depend on the type of question that you're asking.

Now, if you want to remove any of these questions, you simply just need to choose the X over here on the side. There, I've gotten rid of my other question. You can also rearrange your questions. You can see the six little dots. If I want the "Okay" option to be first, I can put that at the top, and maybe "It's been a bad day," I want that as the second option. I can move them in any order that I like.

You'll also notice that there's a little image icon here to the right as well.

Adding Images to a Question

Depending on the type of question you choose, such as multiple choice, you can add an image to these answers. So maybe I want a great big happy face beside "Great." Maybe I want a sad face beside "It's been a bad day." Or maybe, depending on my question, maybe the question is something like, "Hey, which of these pictures do you like the most?" or "Which of these logos do you think our company should use?" You don't even have to have any text; you could just have them as an image-based answer for the participant to choose.

Alright, let's maybe add—let's keep with the hover area here because there's a few more options we can use as well. The second choice here is to import questions. So this is great if you've already created some forms within Google Forms, maybe you want to repurpose some questions, particularly some complicated questions that you've used in the past. Here, I've got some other forms, I could import existing questions into this new form.

This one down below is actually not about changing the text or the text size, but it has to do with adding a title and description. Now if I select this, it's not going to replace the title at the top of the screen, but maybe you'd like to add a title or some additional description further on in your survey. So if I select this, you can see I've got a new section here. I'm just gonna say, "Keep going," and I can add a description if I want, "Don't give up." Or maybe you just wanna tell people what's happening in the next part of the section. If you wanna add a little more detail, but it's not exactly a question, you can do that by adding a title here.

I'm just gonna get rid of this by selecting "Delete."

Adding Images or Video to Google Forms

In this particular example, you also see the ability to add an image or add a video.

Let's maybe add an image just as a quick example. You can either upload an image from your device, take a snapshot if you know the URL, or look at some of your files within your albums or within your Google Drive.

So if I choose an image to upload here, I'm just gonna see if I can find something, something quick. Let's do this one, this bunch of Google Apps here. It's gonna upload that image and then insert it directly into my form.

Now you'll notice this is not a type of question. I can't add a question on top of this, but the way where this image or adding a video may be helpful is that if you have a set of questions relating to this afterwards. So you could tell them here, "The next three questions or the next few questions relate to this image," or "Look at this image carefully, and then answer the next few questions." And so they can always use this as a reference.

Adding a Section to Google Forms

The last thing that we wanna see here is that we can add a new section within Google Forms. So if I choose this option, you can see that it's created some separation. Now I've got Section 1 of 2 for the first couple of questions that I've created, and I can create a whole new section here.

Now this can be very valuable if you are wanting to break up a very lengthy form. A really good rule of thumb is to limit about maybe four or five or maybe six questions at most per page, and then force the user to click "Next" or to move on to another section. The reason being is that sometimes when people open up your survey, or your form, or your feedback, whatever you're using this form for, if they see, you know, 27 questions or a very, very long list, they might give up before they even begin. So breaking it up into sections can be very, very helpful.

Here's our new section, and I'm gonna actually add just one quick, quick sample question here. Just say, "Option one, option two, option three," just so we can use it in our preview, just so you can see what this looks like with the different sections.

Now before we see the preview,

Changing the Google Form Theme

Let's take a look at customizing the theme here within our survey. Up here at the top, you'll see that there's this "Customize Theme" palette, and if we select this, we've got a few different choices.

We can choose an image for the header section for the beginning of our quiz or our form. I've got an example over here—something very colorful. But of course, this could be your logo, it could be a brand name, or a title of the survey that you can add at the top of that survey.

You can also quickly change the theme color. So if I'm doing something for Simpletivity, well maybe I want something a little more blue in my theme or maybe I want something a little more bright, like this orange.

I can also change the background color, if I want it to be all white or if I want more of a contrast between the questions and what's going on behind the screen.

Our last choice is to change the font style. However, I would be careful about this. They've got this decorative text here and a few others that often make it a little more difficult to read. I would recommend that you either keep it basic or choose something that's very easy for your participants to read.

So you can change your theme here as well. Okay, now that we're happy with the theme, we've got sort of the basis of our quiz or our form here.

Previewing the Google Form

Let's take a preview, and here we have this little eyeball. If we click "Preview" in a new tab, it's gonna open up our form. So here is Section Number One. Remember, we only had a few questions here, right? So I can say my name is Scott. My day's been, you know, it's going pretty great today. I'm gonna select my last option there.

And now you can see I've got a "Next" button because I still have another question to go, right? So if I select "Next," I can go over here, and here is that additional question as well.

So this gives you a feel for what users are going to see. This is actually the exact same thing that they are going to see when you share this form with others. But there's one careful note here: If you hit "Submit," if I hit "Submit" right now, it is actually going to add this information to the results of this form.

So be careful; this is actually more than just a preview. It's actually a really, it's a real live link to your form. So not only does it show you how it's going to behave, but if you hit "Submit," it may skew your data, depending on what you're using your form for.

So I'm gonna close this one off, yes, I'm gonna leave this. Let's go back to our form as well, and let's take a look at our settings.

Editing Google Form Settings

Just before we send this out to our participants, what other settings are available to us?

Well, here under "General," we do have the choice to collect email addresses if we want to force users to submit an email address. And then, of course, they can choose to get a response receipt as well if you want to send them their responses, making sure that they've been submitted correctly.

You can also require users to sign in, and this will limit them to respond only once per email address. So this can be helpful if you don't want someone to, you know, repeat and continue to submit into that form time and time again. However, this can also sometimes be a barrier, right? And if you don't want people to have additional steps in filling out your form.

Lastly, you can choose if you want respondents to edit their submission afterwards, or if you want to allow them to see a summary chart or text responses afterwards as well.

Now, there are two other options here as well. Under "Presentation," we can choose to show a progress bar, so as you're looking at the different sections, you can let them know, "Oh, you're 33% of the way complete," or "You're 67% of the way complete," depending on how many sections you've set up.

You can choose to shuffle the question order. Now, you wanna be careful with this as well because this is going to shuffle up all of your questions within your form. So just be careful if this is a necessity or not for you.

The last one, and this one is checked by default, is "Show a link to submit another response." If you don't want people to submit multiple times, sometimes you can leave this unchecked, and then uncheck this one so they don't submit another response.

Last but not least, you can customize your confirmation message, you know, thanking them and letting them know that their form has been submitted.

Converting Form to a Quiz

The last one here has to do with quizzes, and I'm just gonna give you a very brief overview. If you are a teacher or an instructor, you can choose to make this form a quiz, and that allows you to actually grade the quiz as the individual goes through the questions. You can highlight missed questions.

Again, not for everyone, but there are some powerful tools here within the Settings window.

Alright, now that we've adjusted our theme, we've taken a look at the preview, we've adjusted our settings, let's send this form out.

How to Send a Google Form

And we're gonna select the "Send" button here, and we've got a few different ways in which we can do so. Again, we've got the choice here to collect email addresses if we want. From this screen, you can actually send that email directly from this dialog. You can just copy and paste your email addresses, and you can adjust the subject and the message if you want.

But I think perhaps the most popular way of sharing a form is via a link. So here's your unique link that you can copy and paste. You can put it within an email, you can put it in social media. It even allows you to shorten that URL if you like, as well. So you can copy and paste this and put it wherever you like.

Our last choice here is if we want to embed this in the form of HTML. So if you want to put this on a web page on a website, you can do so as well by copying this and pasting it within your HTML editor.

Viewing Responses in Google Forms

All right, well, last but not least, now that we've sent out our form, let's take a look at our responses. To view your responses, you can see that there is actually a second tab to the right of "Questions."

Now, for this form that we've just created, we don't have any responses. But I do have another sample that I want to show you. Here's the one that I showed you earlier with the header, and we've got three responses.

So if we click on the "Responses" tab, you can see a summary of all of our answers. For this multiple choice question here, what did they write? This was a short-answer question, so here are our three different responses. And then I asked them, "What date is it today?" and they all gave different dates, so I think only one of them was correct.

Now, this is the summary view. You can also view this by question. So if I just want to look at that first question, I can see all of the answers here. I can toggle to the next question, it shows me what the question is, and I can see what the responses are.

Lastly, I can actually look at the individual responses. So by choosing this option, I can dive down deeper and say, "Okay, well, what did Participant One say overall?" He or she said "Yes," and then this date. So depending on what you're after, you can drill down a little bit deeper.

You'll also want to know that within the "Responses" tab, this is where you toggle responses on or off. So if I turn this off, I can safely edit things and know that no one is going to be able to respond at that time. But be careful because anyone who has the existing link is not going to be able to access or submit those responses.

Viewing Responses in Google Sheets

So you can toggle that here.

The last thing I want to show within the "Responses" menu has to do with this little Google Sheets icon. This allows you to view your responses in Google Sheets.

So up here, this is exactly what it looks like. We still have all the same responses that we saw on the previous screen. It includes a little timestamp showing us when that person submitted that survey. But the great thing here is that you can take this information and manipulate it in so many other different ways, creating graphs, creating charts, or maybe you just prefer a spreadsheet view.

So in order to do so, you can just click this little icon here and view them within your responses.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this video about an overview of Google Forms. Remember, you can use this in so many different ways. Do you want to submit questions for a survey? Do you want to use it as a contact form on your website? Or maybe a permission form where people have to submit information to you? You can do it all right here within Google Forms.

Have additional questions? 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.

Have you sat down to your computer focused on your most important project for the day, and said to yourself something like, okay, we need to get this done by the end of today?

Let's just focus on this for the next hour, and we're gonna have a fantastic day, and before you know it, a few minutes later, you find yourself wandering on YouTube or maybe social media or some other website that is distracting you or pulling you away from your most important work?

Well, in today's video, I wanna introduce you to Cold Turkey Blocker, a website and application blocker, to help you combat all of those distractions.

Hello, everyone! Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And Cold Turkey Blocker may just be the most effective and hard blocker to beat so you can focus on that most important task.

So let's take a look. Here we are within the Cold Turkey Blocker dashboard. And Cold Turkey is actually an application that you install on your computer, on your device. It's available for both PC and Macs, and also mobile devices.

And the great thing about that is that you can actually block applications, more than just websites. But today, we're gonna be looking at probably the number one culprit for most of us, and that is websites.

So to get started, what you're gonna need to do is either create a new block list, or we can use the default block list in which Cold Turkey comes with. So you have about 54 sites here in this default list called Distractions.

I'm just gonna click Edit here so you can see what's going on within this list. So if I scroll through here, you can see here's the 50 plus websites. We've got all of the major social media websites. We've got a lot of video, including Netflix and YouTube, and a lot of entertainments, and I think a lot of funny websites in this list, as well.

Now, of course, you can add to this list at any time. You can just type in the URL here at the top. Or you can make your own, as well. Here, I've created one called No Video. It's pretty simple. All it has is Netflix or YouTube.

If I wanna create a new block list, I just have Add block list to the top left. I'm gonna call this one, let's just call this one Social. Let's spell it right, Social Media. And then I can just, again, I can just start typing in what social media websites. I'm gonna add Facebook. I'm gonna add Twitter. I'm gonna add LinkedIn.

Although it is business related, sometimes we can get lost on LinkedIn, as well. And I can always edit this over time. You can also import other lists. Because I know there's some great websites that have some great lists of their own, but what I like to do. You probably only have a good handful of websites that you know you are tempted to visit more often than you should.

So you might wanna just start with a list of maybe half a dozen, to 10 or 12 that you know are your biggest culprits and add them to a list. I can hit Save, and now I've got my block list here.

The next thing that we wanna do is we wanna go over to timers. So here you can see the different lists that we've created. And I'm gonna do a quick example here. So I'm gonna use the Distractions list. I'm gonna use that big list there. All you need to do is say when do you want to block all of these websites until.

So I'm gonna pick today, and I'm just gonna do it for a couple of minutes here. So I'm gonna say 10:30. Now you choose breaks if you like. Here, you've got a few different defaults here. Sprint A, B, and C, and Allowance A and B. I'm gonna show you more details about that a little later on. So I'm gonna say None for the time being.

And last but not least, when we're ready to go, we can hit Start, or we can turn this to On. Now you're gonna get a warning here. It's gonna say, "Are you sure you want to block 'Distractions' for about six minutes? "This action cannot be reversed "if 'lock timers' is enabled."

Now you can go into settings and change this default, but I think this is exactly what makes Cold Turkey such an effective blocker is because you can't skirt around it, right? If you need distraction-free time, you wanna make it extremely difficult if not impossible for you to go to that website or to go to those social media or video or whatever that website is and take you away from your most important goal.

So I'm gonna say, yeah, I'm sure. I wanna be distraction free. So now if I go to the internet, and look, I've already got YouTube pulled up here. I'm gonna go to that YouTube tab, and, oh, Vince Carter docs, let's go, oh. Nope, I've been blocked by Cold Turkey.

And Cold Turkey will even give me a bit of an inspirational quote: "Your time is limited, "so don't waste it living someone else's life." Okay, what about Twitter? What if I wanna go to Twitter? I wanna click on something here, and, oh, nope. Cold Turkey again. And I've got my inspirational quote here by Mark Twain.

You may think that this is kind of cheesy, adding these different quotes here when you reach a site which has been blocked, but sometimes it can stop and make you think about, oh, yeah. This is the most important thing I should be working on. I should really be coming back to this report. This needs to be done today. I need to be head-down.

Now you're probably thinking how can I work my way around this? Well, how about incognito mode? Yeah, let's go into private browsing. There's no way it's going to skirt around private browsing. Let's go to Facebook.com, and (groans) even in private browsing. "It doesn't matter how slowly you go "as long as you do not stop."

So this again, I think is one of the great things about Cold Turkey is that it's gonna block you even in private mode. It's gonna force you to get back or really strongly encourage you to get back to that task that you need to do.

So let's go back into the interface. This block is still on. It's still gonna remain on for a few more minutes, and I'm gonna show you what happens when the block is over. But until then, I wanna show you some of the other features here within Cold Turkey.

There is a scheduling feature. So if you want to have distraction-free time at certain points of the day, you can build that right into your schedule. So here, I've got a few different blocks here where I want to be distraction free. Let's say I wanna add in another one.

Maybe I wanna do some head-down writing tomorrow, let's say early tomorrow morning. So I'm gonna say 7:00 a.m., just click and drag. I'm gonna say 7:00 to about nine o'clock, about there. When I let go, I can see this little dialog. I can adjust the time here.

And here I can choose which distraction list, right? So do I want the bulk, the 54 site distraction list, or is it really video that hurts me the most in the morning? So why don't I say No Video at that time. We're gonna leave Breaks alone for now, and I'm gonna hit Save.

So now automatically, I don't have to start a timer. I don't have to initiate anything. I'm gonna have those particular sites blocked during that time tomorrow. And this is such a simple interface. I like the way they've designed it here is that this is going to be your weekly schedule.

So you can adjust it over time, but for many of us, you may have a certain routine or a certain time of the week where you really need that distraction-free time, you can build that in here as a part of the schedule.

Okay, let's get back to breaks. Under Settings is where we can edit our breaks. And there are two different types. There's our Daily Allowance, and then there's our Sprints down below. So the Daily Allowance, it gives you two different options.

Allowance A or Allowance B. Let's say you want to allow yourself 20 minutes of free time, or Allowance B I've got set here currently for 60 minutes, so you're allowed a certain amount of time to go to those websites to watch videos, to browse, and to contribute on social media. However, when that time is up, it's going to block those particular websites.

Sprints work a little bit differently. And if you think of the Pomodoro Technique, you can choose how long you want to work and then how long you want your break to be. So, of course, during the work time, you're not gonna be able to access those websites and those applications, but you will get a few minutes break if you need to get away and you want to watch a YouTube video such as this one right now.

The one other area that I wanna show you here in part of the interface is statistics. Cold Turkey does provide some high-level statistics here as to your top five apps that you have been using and the top five websites that you are visiting.

Now this isn't very granular. In fact, it's pretty basic stuff that it's showing you here in terms of those websites and the amount of time that you're spending there. But you might be able to see a bit of a theme over time.

Alright, so there we have the little announcement here on the bottom right-hand corner: Well Done! Your time block named "Distractions" is now over. So you will get a similar notification on your desktop when that distraction-free time is done.

Now you can adjust these notifications if you like. But it can be helpful if you're looking forward to that break and if you need to get away from that important task or that most important to-do, and do something a little more frivolous, maybe something a little more entertaining.

If you'd like to learn more about Cold Turkey, you can go to GetColdTurkey.com and try all of these features for free. There is a basic version, which gives you all of the website-blocking functionality, and if you'd like to block even other things such as applications and games on your computer, well, you can upgrade to the pro version and do that, as well.

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

What is the best mind mapping tool for you and your needs?

Well in today's video, we are taking a look at two very popular mind mapping tools, Mindomo and MindMeister, and I'm gonna pick an overall winner.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity Scott Friesen helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress, and in today's video, I'm gonna be using five different criteria to rate these two very popular mind mapping tools.

Let's get started with criteria number one, and that has to do with viewing options.

Viewing Options

We're gonna kick things off with MindMeister, and as you can see, MindMeister is a very simple interface, a very easy-to-use interface, but one of the drawbacks is that this is the only view that we have of what's going on here within our mind map.

Now, if you want to upgrade to a task management suite, MindMeister does have a separate app, but it is something that you will have to connect.

There's nothing that is built right into the interface.

You're essentially stuck with the mind map or mind web interface.

Now, if we go over to Mindomo, one of the great things is the multiple views that we have available.

First off, let's take a look at the outline view within Mindomo.

What this does is it breaks out a bulleted point list, but one of the great things here is that not only can you add checkboxes to a number of your tasks or really any bubble or any thought that you want, you can check them off and continue to work directly from this view, but another one that is often requested when you are dealing with mind maps is a Gantt chart view and Mindomo has that built right in.

You can add dependencies, you can change the duration of a certain task or a certain project, whatever your mind map represents, and have all that information available to you right here.

I have to give a clear-cut advantage to Mindomo in this particular category.

Second up is our interface, and let's stick with Mindomo for right now.

Interface and Ease of Use

Mindomo has a very intuitive interface as you're dragging things around, as you're adding new subtopics and subtasks within your interface, it's quite easy to make a style change.

If you click this little down arrow on any one of your objects, you can quickly add a comment, you can change the font, you can change the color, how you want to branch things out, a fairly intuitive interface.

Now, if we go over to MindMeister, one of the nice things is that they have this overlay available to you at all times.

If I need to change the font on this word small, I can easily do that with just a few simple clicks.

I wanna add maybe a greenish color here, maybe a smiley face or a checkmark or remove, let's keep the checkmark and let's remove the smiley face, I can easily do that with this interface here.

Now, I would say this one probably comes down to personal preference in terms of how you like to work.

In this case, I'm gonna give it an even draw between the two products.

For those who may want fewer options available to you but like this colorful window, you may prefer MindMeister, but for those who maybe like a bit more of a sleeker look, you might have the advantage with Mindomo.

Our third criteria has to do with adding notes because when you think of a mind map,

Note Editing

you often are thinking of a high-level view.

You can see that most of the things that I have added in this particular project, they're single words or something usually a little less than just a few words, but we wanna add further details.

Here you can see that I have a note beside this one listed Reading Material, and you can add an awful lot of detailed information, you can even do some rich formatting here, as well.

If you want to insert a link or a picture or a video, you can do that here, as well.

But one of the things that I did not like about the note feature here within Mindomo is that if I click on this, I can't click on it again and then hide it.

Yeah, I can hover over this or click on it and get a preview of this, but if I go to this second item or something else on my screen, I actually have to come up here and close this window or if I'm changing between two different things on the screen.

Conversely, if we go over here to MindMeister, here's something that I have with a note and I can hover over it and get the note, as well, but again, this is, I think, one of the advantages of having this hover or floating menu here.

If I need to add something to this Cookbook note, here is a note, I can quickly do that and then move on with something else and it's not interfering with my view.

Now, you may be asking yourself, well Scott, I didn't see all the same viewing options here as I saw in Mindomo.

Well, if you click on Advanced, you actually will get a very similar view.

Here you've got indentation and text size, many of the same things that we saw in Mindomo.

It's clear, it's straightforward if you need that.

Otherwise, you can just have this simple text box here down below.

Personally, I prefer this.

I'm gonna give the advantage to MindMeister when it comes to adding additional details and, in particular, adding new notes.

Now, the fourth criteria is most important when dealing with mind mapping software and that is collaborating with others.

Collaboration

I'm gonna give you this warning now, don't even entertain a mind mapping tool that does not allow you to share or collaborate with others.

Of course, both of these tools do.

If I come down below, you can see that I'm already sharing this with one person.

It's gonna show me the details of that individual and I can change things if I want to allow them to edit or maybe I only want them to view, and it's pretty easy and straightforward to add a link if I wanna add other members, as well.

Now, you can add comments to any of your objects within your mind map.

You can actually have a conversation with other people within your mind map.

Now if we go over here to Mindomo, you can see that I have been attached, I've got my initials, SF, here to a few different projects.

I can quickly unassign myself if I need to or assign someone else on my team if I need to, as well.

The other great thing with this collaboration assignment is I can use the search bar at the top of the screen and I can filter by those whom it's assigned to.

Maybe I just wanna take a look at the things that I'm assigned to, great, everything else is minimized and I can just focus on that task.

What about what my teammate is assigned to? Great, it's quick, it's easy.

You can also filter by other things, such as due date.

Remember that Gantt chart view and remember how we can use this like a task list?

You can do that, as well.

This search bar is a lot more powerful than just the text-based search bar that you may be used to.

When it comes to collaboration, I have to give a significant edge here to Mindomo.

Last but not least, let's take a look at access and the different apps available.

Apps and Access

Now, MindMeister has both an excellent iOS and Android app, so you can keep the collaboration going even when you are on the go.

Mindomo also has an app for both iOS and Android, but they do go one step further and that is with a desktop version.

If you need to be working offline, if you don't have access to the internet, you can keep working and then sync back to your original version or sync up with your online version.

This even works with collaboration, as well.

This is also very helpful for those who may just enjoy working in a standalone desktop app and not always working within a browser.

So yes, I'm gonna have to give the advantage here to Mindomo.

Overall, if you're looking for an excellent mind mapping tool, you can't really go wrong with either Mindomo or MindMeister, but for my money and for the features and the functionality in which I'm getting, I have to give the win to Mindomo.

What do you think?

Have you used either of these tools before?

Which would you pick in this showdown?

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.‍

Post-it Notes are a fantastic way to get all of those ideas out of your head and to collaborate with others.

There's just something about physically touching a Post-it Note, putting it up on a wall, and moving things around.

But what do you do when your collaboration is over?

When you're done all of that brainstorming with your team, how can you make sure that these tasks get accomplished?

Well, today I'm gonna show you how to turn your physical Post-it Notes into a brand new Trello Board.

Are you ready?

So let's get started.

First things first, let's select the Post-it app on our device.

Now you can see I've got a few sample projects here already, but I wanna start a new one.

So let's select that plus button down below and then we wanna select the camera icon.

This is gonna allow us to view all of our Post-it Notes through our camera, make sure everything's within range, and then select that camera button for just a few seconds.

And there we go, we have now captured all of our paper Post-it Notes.

So now that we've captured the Post-it Notes directly within the app.

The first thing that we're gonna wanna do is see if there's anything here that we don't want to keep.

You can notice that there is a green checkmark on all of the Post-it Notes, but I've got one here in the corner called New Project, and that's not really a task, it's not really a card I want to include.

So if I select that one, it's gonna zoom in and I can select the delete or the trash button there.

And what it does, you can see that that checkmark is now removed.

So now when I create this board that one will not be included.

The other thing that I may wanna do, just before creating the board, is at the top I can give this a new name.

So I'm just gonna call this one Team Tasks.

All right, I'm gonna say done and then select the Create Board.

And here we are, now I've digitized all of my Post-it Notes.

It's still in my own handwriting which can be important especially if you are drawing some diagrams.

If you've got some things that are not necessarily text-based and you wanna keep that within your project.

So there's a few things that we can do here.

If I select the name of this project, if I just select Team Tasks, I can either rename it at this point, but you can see that there are three different organizational options here.

Lemme click off of this for just a second.

Now I can click and hold and start to drag these Post-it Notes around if I want to, right?

I can rearrange them here in real time if I need to, but if I select the name at the top, I can select the grid option here which is gonna put things back into a grid format.

I can go back to the original if I want to.

The last one is gonna put it into sort of an orderly fashion just in sort of a linear fashion here.

But lemme go back to that first one here because I'd like to keep things in roughly the order that I captured them in first.

Now, if I zoom out a little bit more, what I wanna do at this point is actually create a few different lists.

If I go and convert this into a Trello Board right now, all of these are gonna show up in the Team Tasks list.

So let's create a few more.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click and hold on one of these Post-it Notes.

Lemme zoom in a bit more here, click and hold and I'm gonna drag it outside.

When I do that, it's gonna create a new group so these three that I intended to be together, I'm gonna put them, I'm gonna click and drag them all into this Group A over here, perfect.

And then I'm gonna do the same thing with this middle three.

I'm gonna click and hold, just gonna put it in a blank space and now essentially what I'm doing is I'm creating my Trello list or what are going to be my Trello lists here.

Now Group A and Group B, that isn't very descriptive at this point so let's call this first one, let's say rename this group.

These are gonna be Past as in these are things I want my team to review and Group B, these are things that we are going to look at in the Future.

So now I've got my labels here.

Again, I like that you can zoom way out, you can zoom way in right to the granular parts of the Post-it Note everything to a lot tighter together.

So let's see, I want your Team Task will be my first list.

I think I want Future let's move Future over here and then Past, let's click and hold that.

And I'm gonna move that just a little bit over here to the right 'cause that's how I'd like them to be within my Trello Board.

At this point, we wanna go up and click the share icon, we click the share icon, there's a few different ways that you can share within the Post-it app through either PDF or create an image.

You can go directly to some Microsoft apps as well but of course we wanna choose Trello.

So we're gonna select Trello.

Here it's gonna list it as Team Tasks, three lists and 10 cards, it's gonna go into my personal boards.

If you haven't done this yet at this point it's gonna ask you for permissions to use Trello and to integrate with Trello.

Of course, I've already done so, so I'm gonna select Create.

It may take just a few seconds and then let's open up our Trello Board.

And now within Trello, we have the exact same project that I started on within my board.

Everything that I brainstormed with my team, everything that I was working on, I now have a digitized format and of course, like we can always do in Trello, we can click and drag, we can move things around.

If I open these up, I can immediately start to add due dates or a checklist or notes or everything else that we typically do within Trello.

So if you love a paper format, if you love working and brainstorming with Post-it Notes either as an individual or with your team but you wanna make sure that you can continue that project, set some deadlines, add further information, create a Trello Board, you are going to want to check out the Post-it app.

It's available right now for both iOS and Android.

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

Do you want to save time working within Google Drive?

Do you want to spend less clicks and less time working with all those documents as you navigate all of your files and folders.

Well, in today's video, I'm sharing with you five tips to help you save time within Drive.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity Scott Friesen helping you get more done and enjoy less stress and let's start off with tip number one.

It all has to do with starting a brand new document Create New Files Faster or a brand new file within Drive.

So let's say I am browsing the web. I am on a completely different tab, a different screen of my Google Drive account.

Maybe I don't even have my Drive account open and then it dawns on me, "Oh, I should really start that document."

So what do I have to do? I'm gonna go over to a new tab. I'm gonna have to type in Drive or maybe click a bookmark link.

That's gonna open up my Drive account.

Once it's finished loading, I'm gonna have to go over here, click on the New button and then I got to find out, yeah it's Docs, that's the new one that I want to do.

Well, there's a much, much faster way to do this.

Let's close this tab.

Let's go back to the same scenario. We've re-round, I'm browsing the net and, oh, I need to start that new document.

Why not just go up to your browser and type in doc.new, hit enter and immediately what's gonna happen is you're gonna have a brand new document waiting for you to start editing.

To start inputting some text.

Don't want a document?

Well, there's other shortcut links you can use as well.

How about you need a new sheets, we can type in sheets.new, hit enter.

In just a matter of seconds, yes, Google Drive will present you with a brand new spreadsheet for you to start working with.

Now this works with other applications within Google Drive as well.

Including slides and forms so if you find yourself needing to start a brand new document immediately, you can just type it into the url address within your browser.

All right, let's go back.

I'm gonna actually create a new doc.

I'm gonna use that same tip to go back into my Google Drive document here and we're gonna talk about tip number two.

And this has all to do with voice typing within DocsAdd Text with Voice and this can save you a great deal of time.

It can especially help you if you're trying to format your thoughts.

For someone like myself, I find it so much easier to speak my ideas rather than sitting there at the keyboard and typing and re-typing and then going back.

I'd rather just spill out, often spew out a lot of ideas or write a few paragraphs verbally and then go back and edit some minor changes.

So to do so, what we need to do is go up to Tools and then select Voice Typing and what that's gonna do is it's gonna open up this little mini dialogue box here.

This little mini microphone window.

Now we can drag it anywhere we want, to a more convenient spot on the screen if we like and as soon as I click the microphone, it's gonna start dictating whatever I say.

Let's test it out.

In today's video, I am looking forward to helping you save time in Google Drive period.

I hope you enjoy all five of these productivity tips period.

New line.

For more productivity tips and tricks, be sure to subscribe to Simpletivity.com period.

All right, I'm gonna click off of that microphone there and let's take a look at what happened.

I think it did a pretty good job of interpreting exactly what I said.

Dot com I've noticed I think the dot, it's gonna replace there sometimes with a period.

I'm actually gonna just remove the dot com.

Now that I look at it again, I'm just gonna give it the proper name there.

Subscribe to Simpletivity.

So yes, you may want to go back and do some minor editing.

Just checking where the commas or if there's a comma that's needed, you can verbalize it as well.

If I had said, "Comma," it would input that just like I had the periods placed here as well.

But this can be a great way to get those thoughts, get those ideas on a page and maybe free up, maybe be a little more creative with how you're sharing that information as well.

Now, again, you can keep this dialogue window open at all times.

Maybe a little later on, I want to try it again.

I just hit this microphone button and go back to dictating my words.

All right, now tip number three, we're gonna stay on this page because I'm gonna use some of the words here for my next example.

Tip number three has to do with inserting links Insert Links via Search within a document which you may already know how to do but I want to show you how to not only insert links, but find those links without ever having to leave this screen.

So for example, here on this last line I've made mention of Simpletivity.

So maybe I want to add a direct link to my website.

Now depending on the complexity of the website you want to link to, you might have to open up another tab, go find the website, copy that website address, come back here and then paste it within this spot here but we're gonna save a lot more time.

I'm gonna highlight that word, Simpletivity.

I'm gonna right click that allows us to insert that link by selecting Link here and what I want you to pay attention to here is number one the suggestions that it gives.

Look at that, my website is the very first suggestion.

That's exactly what I want.

It gave it to me.

So I'm gonna select it.

There's the link.

I'm gonna select apply and now I've got that direct link within my document.

But you don't just have to select the suggestions here.

Let's go to the word, productivity in this case.

I'm gonna do the same thing.

I want to insert a link, it's gonna give me a couple of suggestions here.

Here's a productivity entry on Wikipedia, here's a productivity guide by James Clear.

I might recommend him actually, a very good author.

I just read his book most recently.

But what if I don't want either one of these?

I want something a little bit different?

Well, I can just type into the link line here, I'm gonna say productivity tips and let's see what comes up there.

Hey, Top 10 Productivity Tips from lifehack.

Maybe I want to add that link so that my readers or whoever's receiving this can get a few more tips themselves.

I can select that, I can hit apply and now it's directly in my document.

So you don't always have to be opening new tabs or going to other websites.

You can actually find those links directly from within Google Drive.

All right, tip number four on today's list has to do with organization and in particular, organizing all of our folders within our Drive account.

Organize Folders with Color

Now here you can see, I've got a mix of some folders at the top and a bunch of files down below.

Now you probably have a lot more folders than what I'm showing you here in this sample account but something that we often overlook is that we can add color to our folders and that can make it a lot easier to find the things that we're looking for.

By default, Google Drive is going to color all of your folders this gray color.

But what if I want this Gmail Notes folder to stand out a little bit?

I'm gonna right click on it.

I'm gonna come down here and hover over Change color and because Gmail is usually associated with the color red, I'm gonna select red.

Now that one just sort of jumps out a bit easier.

It's gonna be a lot easier for me to find that one.

If I go up here to my Budget & Finance folder.

I'm gonna right click on this one and we often associate budgeting and money with green so I'm gonna select green.

Now that one stands out and jumps out at me a little bit more as well.

Now you can colorize all of your folders if you want to or maybe, in this example, maybe if I have other folders that are money or finance related, maybe I'll color them all green.

So it's easier for me to find and associate with that particular category.

But experiment with some different colors.

Especially if you have a large number of folders.

You might find it helpful to add a splash of color to some of those particular folders.

Now the last tip that I have for you today in regards to Google Drive actually relates to Gmail and has to do with getting around a size limit Sharing Large Files via Gmail when it comes to attachments.

So let's open up, I've got a new message here within Gmail.

I'm just gonna leave things blank here for an example.

But you probably already know that when you go to attach a file.

If we select attachments here, it's gonna open up your system dialogue, right?

So that you can go in and select a file from your account but what you may have run up against sometime in the past is the limit.

You are limited to a maximum of 25 megabytes when it comes to attaching files and there's a reason for that limit.

You are going to probably blow up someone else's inbox or make it very, very slow as they try to access those files.

Even the attachment process might be a little bit slow if you attempt to maximize that 25 megabytes.

Well how about a 10 gigabyte maximum?

Would that be a lot easier for you to share certain files?

What we need to do here is instead of selecting attachments, we're gonna go over here and select the Insert files using Drive.

We're gonna select that little icon and what it's gonna do is it's gonna open up your Drive folder and what I'm gonna do in this example, I'm just gonna multi select a few different things here just as an example.

Let's grab, I don't know, five or six or something along those lines.

So I've got five files here and again, they might be ginormous, right?

They might be a gigabyte each.

And what I'm gonna do, you don't have to click anything else here in this window.

All we have to do is go to the left and select Insert.

Once you've selected the Drive files that you need, select Insert and here I now have them inserted as links within this email.

So whomever is going to receive this is going to have access, direct link access to these particular files.

And you don't have to worry about blowing up someone else's inbox or waiting for the time to upload all these files.

Now let me actually add one recipient here.

Let's add a sample recipient here because I just want to show you what may be prompted or what may come up.

I'm gonna say, let's just say, test link share and let's say send.

So what it's gonna do is it's gonna say, someone needs access to these files.

Here's the person that we're sending it to.

I can change, can they view it, can they also comment and edit?

No, I just want them to be able to view it.

So I'm gonna select that one there and I'm gonna hit send.

It's gonna send like a regular email and now that individual is gonna have access to those files.

So if you are needing to share a much, much larger file or a group of files, you have up to 10 gigabytes to share using the insert files via Google Drive within your Gmail account.

I hope you enjoyed all of these tips today and I would love to know which was your favorite.

Which one are you going to start using immediately?

Or do you have other questions about Google Drive?

Be sure to share them with me and the rest of the Simpletivity community down in the comments below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

At first glance, this Gmail inbox looks pretty typical. However, if I go over here and click to the left, you can see that I've transformed my Gmail into a full-blown customer relationship management system, or better known as a CRM.

In today's video, I want to show you how you can manage all of your sales, your leads, and your pipeline directly from within Gmail.

Overview

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

And today we are taking a look at NetHunt CRM for Gmail.

Now, NetHunt CRM is a browser extension available for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.

And yes, the great thing about it is that it integrates directly with your Gmail system so you don't have to open up another tab, you don't have to log in somewhere else, you don't have to go back and forth between your email and your CRM.

You can manage everything right here.

But let's start off at the beginning.

And I want to go back to my inbox.

NetHunt Labels

Again, it looks a little typical here, but if I scroll up, you can see that some of my emails have some special labels.

Now don't fool yourself.

These are not Gmail labels.

These are actually NetHunt labels.

And what they're helping me to do is to identify particular emails that are related to a lead in this case, or maybe that are related to a deal in this case, which is gonna give me helpful information.

If I click on this, it's gonna take me right to that deal called Speaking Engagement.

I can see what stage it's in, the deal amount, and all of my notes directly here.

So this can be really powerful stuff as you identify particular emails to help you determine where you should be putting your focus when it comes to your sales management process.

But let's go back here to the left-hand side, and I want to highlight some of the different areas that NetHunt adds to your Gmail.

We've got things like Deals, Contacts, Companies, and even Tasks.

NetHunt Pipeline

So going back to the Pipeline, this is often the core of any sales process. We've got different phases for our sales funnel, right? We've got new or prospective clients here,

we've got clients who we are going to be presenting to, and if that's successful, hopefully we move on to the negotiation stage, and if that's successful, hopefully we win it or we might lose some as well, and we can drag those records over here. Everything is drag and drop so if I need to move this over to Negotiating, I can do so.

I'm actually gonna leave that one here for just a second. But the great thing is I can click on that, and as I just showed you a few moments ago, I've got all this information at my fingertips about this deal. Here in the Timeline area, I can see comments that have been made, I can see emails that are associated with this deal,

I can review. I can see how long has it been since I last reached out, what was the conversation we had the last time we got together. All of that information is found right here.

Contacts

Now there's also a Contacts section here within NetHunt, and you can choose to sync your contacts with your regular Google contacts, or you might want to keep them separated.

So here I've got a list of a number of my leads.

If I click on Jane, for example, not only do I pull up more details about her record, but I can see which company she's attached to.

I can also scroll down and see that, yes, she is attached to this deal as well.

And I can add specific comments about Jane or pieces of information that I'd like to include with her account.

Companies

Companies is pretty straightforward, but the nice thing is you can also see the status of each of these companies—where they are in the pipeline, whether they are a lead or an existing client, and also what their source was, where you first found this client as well.

But another big benefit is the Tasks section because more than just the pipeline, you've got specific things that you need to accomplish in order to complete or finish these deals.

So you can have a very personalized task list associated with different deals within your CRM.

Now I'm gonna go back to the inbox for just a second again because, as we're dealing with so much email and trying to cipher through what needs our attention and what can wait till later, another nice thing that NetHunt adds is the ability to follow up on certain emails.

Follow Up

So for example, let's click on this email here just as an example.

And you can see at the top we've got a couple of different icons.

Here, if I want to attach this email to a particular record, right?

If I want to attach this to a deal, I can do that by just typing in and searching for a deal right here.

But in this case, I want to follow up on this email because maybe they are a prospective client.

Here you can see this little flag follow-up icon, which looks very similar to Microsoft Outlook, but don't be fooled, this is not something that comes native with Gmail.

No, this is something that comes with NetHunt.

So if I select this, I can choose the follow-up timeframe.

I'm gonna say I should really follow up on this today.

And now, if I go over here and select the Follow-Ups menu, I've got a great summarized list of all of the emails that I need to follow up with.

I can click on it and go directly to that email, manage all of those emails.

And the other nice thing is I can hide my inbox temporarily, right?

I can just focus on these follow-up emails while I'm dealing with it.

Google Calendar Integration

Now, the other nice bonus of using NetHunt is that it not only integrates directly with Gmail, but it also integrates directly with Google Calendar.

So if I switch over here to Google Calendar, you can see that I've got a couple of different meetings here, and you can see that NetHunt logo.

If I click on this meeting here called Demo Meeting, it looks pretty straightforward—it's just a calendar meeting—but if I open it up to see the details, check this out.

I've got that deal information at my fingertips again.

I can see all of this information and change this information while I'm on this call with this client.

If I select the Timeline here, I can say let's follow up with Jane in two days, right?

Like this is just a note for me.

I'm gonna hit Save.

So I can reference this.

If I scroll down, hey, there's that note that I just created.

I can see previous comments that I've added.

I can see the meeting.

And all of that information here right here from within Google Calendar.

So another nice benefit of using this NetHunt extension.

So I would encourage you to check things out.

If you are a business owner, if you're an entrepreneur, if you have some type of sales related to the way you work, you may want to check out NetHunt CRM.

Again, available for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.

I'll leave a link in the description below so you can test it out yourself.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

In order for you to work at your productive best, you need your devices working at their optimal level. And so in today's video, I'm gonna show you how to more than double the speed of your Android phone. Whether it's an older Android device or even if it's a brand new phone.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And as you're navigating through the different apps and different places that you need to be within your phone, you may notice that there's a bit of a zoom in or a zoom out feature. And this can take as much as a second, perhaps even a little longer depending on the age of your phone.

Well in today's video, I wanna show you how to change that so you can see a drastic difference in your phone's performance. What we need to do is we need to get into Settings. Now your settings may look a little bit different than mine. I'm showing you this example on my Samsung S9 phone, but I'm gonna tell you exactly what you need to look for and where you need to go.

So within Settings, you wanna scroll most likely to the bottom of your settings, and we wanna click on About Phone. And what we're looking for is something called Build Number. Now on my device, I see a bunch of other numbers here. I see Phone Number, Model Number, Serial Number, I don't see the Build Number yet.

So what I have to do is I have to click one more level down into Software Information. And when I click on Software Information, there I can find in the middle of the screen my Build Number. Now this is where it gets really really cool. We're gonna tap Build Number seven times.

So I'm gonna go one, two, three, and after about the third one I get a message, oh I'm three steps away from being a developer. Two steps away from being a developer. One step away. On my last tap, it's gonna ask me for my PIN number. I'm gonna enter that in just to make sure. And now Developer Mode has been enabled.

You're probably saying what on earth does that mean? Well if I go back to the main Settings screen, you will see that I now have one more option below About Phone, and this is called Developer Options. If we click on Developer Options, we get a slew of really cool tools and additional things that we can do to our phone.

Now some of these things you may wanna be careful about in terms of what you want to tweak just to make sure of your comfort level. But what I'm gonna show you today is perfectly safe. We wanna scroll down until we see something that may be labeled Drawing as you see here in my settings. It may be labeled a little bit different on yours, but the key words we're looking for are anything that says Animation in the title.

And here I've got three grouped together. Window Animation Scale, Transition Animation Scale, and Animator Duration Scale. You can see that they're all set to 1x. That's their default level, 1x as in 100% or one times. Well what we can do is we can go in here and we can actually turn the animations off completely.

Let me show you how that works. I'm gonna turn off the animations for all three of these, and now when I go back and I start going back and forth between my apps, it's instantaneous. Boom, boom, boom no matter where I want to go, I'm going immediately within those apps.

Now that's the fastest that you're gonna find here when it comes to turning off animation, but that might be a little jarring for some of you. So let's go back into our Developer settings and I'm gonna set it to .5 this time around. Now remember that's still gonna be twice as fast as the default setting.

So with those three set at .5, if I go back out here, I still have that slight animation effect, but it is so much faster. And what's better yet is that you're gonna notice this speed difference even within certain apps, right? Even as you're functioning as new things are opening, as you're transitioning within particular apps, you're gonna notice it's gonna be so much faster.

So I would encourage you to turn on Developer Options and tweak your animation scale. And better yet share this with a friend or a colleague, they're gonna think it's so cool that you're unlocking a special level in a video game or you're unlocking a special code. Show them how to turn on Developer Options. You will look like an Android pro.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope that you found it useful and helpful. 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.

No matter if you're a new user to Trello or perhaps you're an expert when it comes to boards, lists, and cards, today I wanna share with you some of the very best keyboard shortcuts so that you can do things quicker when dealing with Trello. Hello, everyone.

Scott Friesen

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

If you're not familiar with Trello keyboard shortcuts, well, you are not only missing out,

but you're probably wasting a lot of time when you're dealing with your Trello boards.

Now just before we get into eight of my favorite Trello keyboard shortcuts, I wanna start off with the shortcut question mark. If you hit the question mark key,

Shortcuts Menu

Which is usually Shift + Question Mark on your keyboard,

what you're going to get is the complete list of keyboard shortcuts,

this is the official Trello list,

so that whenever you are within Trello,

you can get everything that I'm talking about here along with some additional ones as well.

So, just hit the Question Mark on your keyboard.

With that being said, let's start off with one that I use all the time.

That has to do with assigning myself to a card or perhaps removing myself from a card.

Now it can sometimes be tedious to hit this little edit icon and then go down to change members and then uncheck myself here and then I gotta hit save.

I mean, that's one way of doing it.

I could open up the card and do something similar by selecting this members version over here.

Well, why don't I do it just from here?

Why don't I do it in just single click?

Well, if you select the Space Bar, you can assign yourself.

Add/Remove You

To any card.

Look at that.

In just a single click, I'm assigning myself to these cards.

If I wanna remove myself, well, that's just a Space Bar click away as well.

I mean, how often have you had several cards assigned to you?

And you say to yourself, I no longer need to be assigned to that anymore.

Boom, boom, boom.

It's as simple as just the Space Bar on your keyboard.

Let's stick with assigning members and assigning things to maybe other people on our team.

For that, we wanna use the keyboard shortcut key A,

A as in assign.

Assign Members

So, if I hover over a card here and select A on my keyboard,

it's gonna automatically pop up the assignment dialog.

So, I'm gonna select someone else.

I can go over to this card here.

I'm gonna select A, and I'm gonna select someone else as well.

Now I've assigned people to this card.

Now there's one other thing I wanna show you here.

I'm gonna actually open up this card as an example.

This goes for almost all of the shortcuts in today's video

is that you don't always have to be at the board level view.

But when you're opening up this card,

even if you're looking at other things such as the activity down below,

if I hit A on my keyboard, it will still bring up the member assignment here.

If I hit Space Bar for example,

it's still gonna remove me.

And if I hit it again, it's going to add me.

So, you don't have to use these members and labels buttons here if you don't want to.

Almost all of these shortcut keys can be used within the card but also here at the board level view.

One last shortcut key I wanna share with you when it comes to assigning people or unassigning people

and that has to do with you want to filter out the cards that are only assigned to you.

You may be familiar by going to the menu, going to the search cards feature,

and then selecting yourself to see which of these cards are assigned to you.

But there's a much, much simpler way.

If you select Q on your keyboard,

Filter Cards Assigned to You

Q is going to quickly filter all of the cards on your board.

Here we can see there are four cards that are assigned to me.

I can toggle that back and forth as much as I like.

Here, when I select Q, I can just focus on these cards.

I can maybe work on these for the next 20 or 30 minutes or however long I'd like to work on these tasks.

If I hit Q again, now I go back to seeing every other card on the board,

so a very valuable one, the Q to filter cards assigned to you.

Well, let's move away from assignment of cards and let's take a look at labels.

I got a few different label shortcuts I wanna show you here.

Now I often get the question about Scott, how do you see the label names here.

Scott, I've seen some of your videos.

How do you actually show the label names?

You may know that, by default, we just get to see the colors on the front of the card.

If I open up this card, I can see the full name.

New project is green, and orange is client request.

But sometimes it can be very helpful to see the name right here on the board level view.

Well, if you select the Semicolon key on your keyboard, all of your labels will be expanded.

Now I can see that, new project, client request.

Yellow is medium.

Blue means HR.

If I hit Semicolon again, it will collapse everything there for me as well.

Now one thing to note is that this view does not change how other people see this board.

So, if you have other members of your team, just because you're viewing it with these expanded labels, it doesn't mean that everyone else is going to be seeing that.

So, you might wanna pass this tip along to the people that you're collaborating with or the people that you're working with within Trello.

All right.

I'm gonna hit that one more time just to collapse that label.

Let's get to label assignment.

Well, label starts with the letter L.

So, I'm gonna guess something's gonna happen when I hit L on my keyboard.

I'm gonna hover over this card, hit L, and boom,

Assign Label Menu

I've got the label assignment right here.

I'm gonna put client request on this one.

I'm gonna maybe go over here to Idea One.

I'm gonna hit L again.

I'm gonna say that this one is urgent.

Quick and easy.

Well, let's take it one step further.

You'll notice if I hit L and we bring up this menu here,

this is the default colors that when you start a new board in Trello,

you're gonna see this default order of colors,

green, yellow, orange, red, purple, and blue.

Well, I want you to remember that order because these colors correspond to the number keys on your keyboard.

One is green, two is yellow, and so on.

So, if I wanna attach the green label here, all I have to do is hit the number one.

If I wanna attach the yellow label, it's number two, and so forth.

Let's go to a blank card.

Let's go to this one over here.

Let's just go one through six.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

I'm only hitting the number keys on my keyboard.

Six, five, four, three, two, one.

You may not need to or not want to memorize all of the labels that you're using,

but particularly for those that you use frequently or that you use quite often,

that might come in handy if you are needing to change those labels on a regular basis.

All right.

The next one on our list has to do with due dates.

Due dates are so important within Trello to help us stay on task.

Due dates, that's two D words.

So, I'm gonna guess the letter D is gonna bring up my calendar.

Change Due Date Menu

Here I can change my due date or remove the due date if so necessary.

Once again, if I'm here within the card, no matter where I am looking in the card, if I hit D, I can still get that menu.

You don't have to use these buttons here on the right.

And the very last keyboard shortcut I wanna share with you today has to do with adding new cards within Trello.

A lot of you may not be familiar with this one.

You're obviously familiar with the add another card, which is at the bottom of each and every list,

but you don't even have to click that.

No matter where your cursor is, let's say I wanna add something here within progress,

as long as my cursor is below in progress,

all I need to do is select N on my keyboard.

Add New Card

And boom,

I'm gonna have a new card waiting for me to enter.

I wanna add a new card over here.

My cursor is below it.

I'm gonna hit N.

I'm gonna add a new card.

But let's go one final step further.

Maybe I don't want to add that new card at the bottom of the list.

Maybe I want it as the second from the top.

Well, if I hover over this card here and select N,

I'm gonna get that new card directly below.

Maybe I need to add something in-between these two July 12 due dates.

I'm gonna hover over this one.

I'm gonna select N.

Now my new card is ready to be entered directly below that card there,

so another tip for adding new cards here within Trello.

Well, I would love to hear from you.

Of all of the keyboard shortcuts that I showed you,

which one is your favorite, or which one are you going to start using right away?

Make sure to tell me and share with others in the comments down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

When you're starting a brand new project,

one of the best things you can do is brainstorm,

whether that's just by yourself or maybe with other members of your team.

And one of the best tools to use is a mind mapping tool.

Now, there's an awful lot of mind mapping apps and software available to you.

In today's video, I'm gonna share with you three simple tools that you can start using immediately.

Coggle

Hello everyone,

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

And let's get this list started off with a tool called Coggle.

Coggle, that's C-O-G-G-L-E.

Now, one of the things that you're gonna notice immediately is that Coggle is pretty bare-bones.

But sometimes that's a great advantage when you're brainstorming and thinking up new ideas.

I mean, really, a mind mapping tool should really represent like a whiteboard or a blank piece of paper.

So, Coggle is very minimal in that respect.

The other thing that I really enjoy about Coggle which you don't always get with a number of mind mapping tools is that it's actually quite nice to look at.

I actually haven't even chosen these colors that you see here.

This is something that Coggle has chosen as I've started to branch out my ideas.

And aesthetically, I think that looks really, really great, which can be important if you're gonna be working with this tool on a regular basis.

If I add something else here, it's added a nice, attractive sort of a reddish-pink hue here as well.

But another feature that I like about Coggle is that not only can you collaborate with others,

you can share this so that other people can join and start to brainstorm as well,

but you can have a full conversation.

So it does have a discussion window here.

Here you can see I'm already asking some questions.

You know, what do other people think about the t-shirt ideas, and so forth.

This, I think, is a great feature for any mind mapping tool.

Mind Meister

Now, moving on,

the second tool I wanna share with you is called MindMeister.

Now, MindMeister is also, you know, relatively simple to drag and drop and add things around.

If I wanna add some more ideas here to "Book,"

all I need to do is hit tab on my keyboard.

And maybe I'm going to consider writing a self-help book.

Maybe I'm going to consider writing a cookbook.

Who knows, and if I wanna highlight some of these things,

MindMeister gives me a lot of options here as well.

If I want to add little icons,

if I want to change the color,

or the appearance,

or the size of some of my branches,

very easy to do.

In fact, one thing that I found very, very simple with MindMeister is that if I've grouped something in a different branch,

but then I want to either merge it or bring it somewhere else,

so here, for example, I've got "Poster,"

I've got something labeled "Bumper."

Well, I think I meant that for the "Stickers" branch over here.

All I have to do is click on "Bumper,"

and I'm going to touch it to "Stickers,"

and now it's brought "Bumper,"

along with the things that have proceeded it here with "Small" and "Large" over on this side of the mind map.

So, you know, very intuitive,

very easy to use,

things that are very, very important when you're selecting a mind mapping tool for yourself.

Drawio

Now, the third and final one on our list today is called draw.io.

And one of the things about draw.io is you don't even need an account to start using it. All you need is to go to the website, and you can immediately start creating a flowchart.

And you can save it either to your cloud storage, or you can save it to the computer that you're currently working on.

Now, I know draw.io may look a little more intimidating compared to the previous two tools that I just showed you, but don't let this screen look too intimidating. It's actually a lot easier than you think.

You know, here, if I want to add something new to this branch, all I need to do is click on that arrow, and now I can start adding a new idea over here.

Very much the same or similar functionality that we saw in the previous two tools.

Now, The nice thing about draw.io is that it's really optimized if you're wanting to create a flowchart, for example.

So, we've got some of the more common shapes here that you may be familiar with if you're in need of using flowcharts.

It does have a few more advanced features.

And another nice thing is that draw.io is really optimized if you decide to print out your mind map.

Or at the very least you may want to save it as a PDF.

So, that can be very helpful if you choose a particular paper size here, and if you want to share your mind map in that fashion.

So there you have it, three recommendations for some very simple yet powerful mind mapping tools.

Now, I'd love to hear from you next. What are some mind mapping tools that you have used or that you would recommend to others?

Be sure to share your thoughts 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.