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It is so important that you have a capturing tool to gather all of your new ideas, all those new requests that you either receive, or those things that just pop up into your mind throughout the day.

A few weeks ago, I created a video asking the question if you should switch from Evernote as your primary capturing tool to Google Keep.

The reason why I asked this question and why I created this video is that I found that I needed something that was quicker, something that was faster and easier than Evernote.

I just found that Evernote was a little sluggish to me as I would whip out my phone or log on to my computer and try and capture that note. I found that Google Keep is actually quite quick, quite efficient in capturing these new thoughts.

It generated a lot of discussion, a lot of great questions, and today I wanted to zero in on one of those questions.

Martin from Northern Ireland asks, "I noticed that you can create a Google Doc from a note, but can you create the link to it, say in Google Drive?"

Great question, Martin. Let's take a closer look.

So if you are an Evernote

Evernote Copy Note Links

You are probably already familiar with this function: at the top of your note, if you select "More," there's a "Copy note link."

You select this, and it's going to copy the link to your clipboard.

Now you can go paste it anywhere.

You can paste it in a document, you can paste it in an email, and then you can come right back to this note.

You can reference that note from other places on the web or in other documents.

Can you do the same in Google Keep?

Google Keep Copy Note Links

You just have to do it a little more traditionally. However, it doesn't take any additional clicks.

If I click on this note, for example, there's a "More" section. I'm looking for "Copy link" or how I can take this link and put it somewhere else.

There's "Make a copy," but that's just going to copy this note within Google Keep.

The last option is "Copy to Google Docs," and this is what Martin was referencing in his question. If I select this, it will actually create this note in Google Docs. Essentially, it's going to replicate it in Google Docs.

If this is a large article or a lot of notes that I want to do some further editing in Google Docs, that's what that function is for.

But where is the ability to copy the link?

Well, all you need to do is look up at your web address or URL. Copy this link, and you can paste that anywhere that you want.

For example, if I go over to my Google document, I've already pasted that link in my document here. If I select it, it's going to open up a new tab, open up Google Keep, and there it is. There's the note that I copied and pasted.

I can reference that note from my Google Doc. If you want to paste it in an email, the same type of example. I'll hit that link, and it's going to automatically open up that note so I can reference it. I can even start editing it if I like.

So yes, you can use that. However, there's one caveat that I discovered.

If you copy that link and paste it somewhere outside of your web browser, here's the example: I need to open up my Word document, and here I have pasted both. I've pasted my Google Keep note link here, the one we've just been using, and I've also pasted my Evernote link as an example.

From within my Word document that is not online—this is not Microsoft online; this is my Microsoft Word application, which is native to my desktop—if I click this to follow that link, let's see what happens. It opens up a new tab. Huh, I gotta sign in.

It's not taking me directly to the notes. So if I say sign-in, it's going to continue to go forward, and it's going to bring me within Google Keep. But then that's it. It's not even going to bring up that note at all.

So it looks like there's a bit of a hiccup with Google Keep and linking your notes outside of your web browser.

If I go back to my Word document, here's the Evernote link. I'm going to Ctrl-click that. Let's see what happens here. It opens up a new tab and brings me straight to the note. There is the note that I wanted.

It didn't ask me to log in. It didn't just bring me to my Evernote screen or my Evernote homepage. I can actually access that note here.

So something to think about: if you're using these links exclusively within the browser, yeah, you can copy and paste these anywhere you want—within an email, within Google Drive, within other areas of the web.

But you may want to be wary if you're pasting that link outside, such as in Microsoft Word or some other document that sits outside of your web browser.

Thank you, Martin, for the question, and thank you for watching. I would encourage you to take either Google Keep or Evernote for a test drive if you haven't already. I recommend this to a lot of people.

If you've used the same application for more than two years, things change. The way you use the application may have changed. So spend some time with something that's new to you or that's unfamiliar. You may actually find a faster or more efficient way to do things.

Remember, to be at your productive best is not that difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

you just have to do it a little more traditionally however it doesn't take any additional clicks so if I click on this note for example there's a more section and I'm looking for you know copy link or you know how can i how can I take this link and put it somewhere else there's make a copy but that's just gonna copy this note within Google cube the last option is copied to Google Doc and this is what Martin was referencing in his question if I select this is actually going to create this note in Google Doc essentially it's going to replicate it in Google Doc you know say this is a large article or you know maybe it's a a lot of notes that I want to do some further editing in in Google Docs that's what that function is for but where is the ability to copy the link well all you need to do is look up at your web address or your URL copy

this link and you can paste that anywhere that you want so for example if I go over here to my Google document I've already pasted that link in my document here if I select it I'm gonna select that link it's going to open up a new tab open up Google keep and there it is there's the note that I copy and paste it I can reference that note from my Google Doc if you want to paste it in an email same same type of example I'm gonna hit that link and it's going to automatically open up that note so I can reference it I can even start editing it if I like so yes you can use that however there's one caveat that I discovered and that is if you copy that link and paste it somewhere outside of your web browser so here's the example I need to open up my word document and here I have pasted both I've I've pasted my Google keep note link here the one we've just been using and I've also pasted my Evernote link as an example so

from within my word document that is not online this is not Microsoft online this is my my Microsoft Word application which is native to my to my desktop if I click this to follow that link let's see what happens it opens up a new tab huh I gotta sign in it's not taking me directly to the notes so if I say sign-in it's gonna continue to go forward it's gonna bring me within Google keep but then that's it it's not even going to bring up that note at all so it looks like there's a bit of a hiccup with Google keep and linking your notes link your notes outside of your web browser now if I go back to my word

document here's the Evernote link I'm gonna ctrl click that let's see what happens here opens up a new tab and it brings me straight to the note there is the note that's the note that I wanted it didn't ask me to log in it didn't just bring me to my ever known-- screen or or my Evernote homepage I can actually access

that note here so something to think about if you're using these links exclusively within the browser yeah you can copy and paste these anywhere you want within an email within Google Drive within other areas of the web but you may want to be wary if you're pasting that link outside such as you know Microsoft Word or some other document that sits outside of your web browser Thank You Martin for the question and thank you for watching I would encourage you to take either Google keep or

Evernote for a test drive if you haven't already I recommend this to a lot of people if you've used the same application for more than two years things change the way you use the application may have changed so spend some time with something that's new to you or that's unfamiliar you may actually find a faster or a more efficient way to do things remember to be at your productive best is not that

difficult in fact it's very simple

Trello is such a powerful tool for collaborating with others when you're managing a team project. When you want to make sure that your entire group is all on the same page, Trello is a fantastic tool for managing those projects or managing various tasks.

One of the great things is that if you attach people or if you assign people to certain cards, the other people on that card will receive notifications. You can set up email notifications within Trello.

That means if I click on this card here and I start to add a due date to this card, anyone else on this card is going to receive a notification as well. If I add or maybe change the label of this card, they will receive an email notification.

If I add a comment, anyone else, any of the members attached to this card, will receive an email notification. However, this can sometimes have a negative effect because suddenly everyone on this card has an awful lot of emails and an awful lot of additional Trello emails notifying them of several things within the same card.

Very quickly, your inbox and the inbox of your teammates may be flooded with Trello notifications. So today, I want to show you how to change the email frequency for your Trello notifications so that you don't receive an email for every single change on your Trello board, but perhaps reduce the frequency to just those things that are most important to you.

To do so, you want to click on your name, your account here at the top, and select settings. You want to scroll down roughly halfway down the page and you'll see an area called notifications.

Here, we see a link that says change notification email frequency. Now, when we click on that, we get three options.

By default, Trello selects instantly, so when you first sign up to Trello, it's going to be set as instantly send emails as soon as possible. I find that this can be really challenging and often a bit of a turnoff to brand new Trello users because suddenly they're getting many, many email notifications even for several small changes on a single card.

So I usually recommend that you select periodically, and here it says it sends emails about once an hour. So what exactly does that mean?

Am I going to receive a Trello email every single hour? No, no, of course not.

Only if changes are made. Essentially, what happens when you select this option, the middle option periodically, Trello is going to take a look at all of the changes that are being made, and at most, it's going to send you an email notification on the hour.

So I'm just going to select this option here. Of course, the third option there is never if you don't want to receive any notifications at all, but I'm going to select periodically.

Then let's go back to my teamwork board. What this means is that I can go into this card and I can make several changes, many of the changes that I made before.

I can add labels, checklists, add comments, add other people, add an attachment, and my other members, my other team members that are attached to this card will only receive one summary email. And not just for this card.

If I make a bunch of changes within the hour, they will only receive one email notification giving them a nice summary of all the changes that were made to cards that affected them, cards that they were assigned to. Now, if I come back into Trello an hour later, right after I made those first changes and I start making other changes, that will count as a second change or a second batch of changes.

Then Trello will send out another email to those people that it affects. But it's a great way to still keep everyone in the loop, keep everyone on top of what's going on and what's being changed within the Trello board, but without flooding their email inbox with dozens and dozens of Trello notifications.

I find this is a really big turnoff for many brand new Trello users. Despite all the advantages of using a Trello board and collaborating with others, a number of people are turned off by the amount of email notifications that they receive because by default, it is set to instantly.

So share this video with your Trello team members. I'd recommend that you share this with people who are brand new to Trello so that they can know how to change their email notification settings.

Of course, if you would like to stay up to date with things relating to Trello or relating to other parts of productivity software or just productivity and time management in general, be sure to subscribe to Simpletivity here on YouTube. And if you haven't had a chance to visit the Simpletivity website, I encourage you to do so as well.

We've got free guides, we've got other tips and other tricks to help you be more productive. Until next time, it's very simple.

There is absolutely no shortage of to-do list apps that are available to you and me. Doing a quick search for productivity or to-do list in the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store will give you a very long list of apps and task managers that can help you be more productive, help you be more efficient.

Some of the more popular ones include Wunderlist, Any.do, Clear, and Todoist, and in most cases, they're more than just an app, but they are cloud-based, so you can access them on your desktop as well. A few others that many people use to manage their tasks are Evernote and Google Keep.

Now, these are not really task list managers at their core; they're really more note-taking or note-capturing applications, but many people use the ability to create a checklist and to manage their tasks within such apps. Now, I don't usually recommend any of these apps for managing their to-dos because I find many of them overcomplicate the process of both adding new tasks and editing and managing those tasks.

If you're a longtime fan of Simpletivity, you probably know that I highly recommend Trello as an excellent to-do list. It is a great way to customize the way that you manage your tasks and, more importantly, be able to see your to-dos and your projects or bigger goals on the same screen.

But today, I want to show you an even simpler tool for managing your tasks, and you already have it. In fact, I can almost guarantee that you already use it, and it is your calendar.

That's right, it is your calendar. Whether it's Google Calendar as you see here and what I'll be using for an example today, whether it's Microsoft Outlook as your calendar, whether it's Apple's iCloud calendar, it doesn't matter what you are using; you can use your calendar as a very effective and very simple to-do list.

So as we look at my hypothetical week here, you see that I have a few events that I've listed here throughout the week: a couple of meetings, a couple of phone calls, including an all-day conference on the Tuesday. But way up top, you'll see on the Friday, I have in my all-day event row something called "weekly review."

Now, does that mean that I'm gonna spend the entire day doing a weekly review? No, certainly not.

I will not be spending all day doing my weekly review, but I use this area as an area to capture my to-dos and my tasks. So it doesn't really matter to me if I do my weekly review first thing or later in the day.

If I have a few things and meetings that get scheduled between now and then, I do know that I'm gonna make weekly review a priority. I use this area primarily as a to-do list, and you can too, to help you see the relationship between your to-dos and other things that are going on in your life.

To do so, you just need to click on this area and you can add a new task. So I'm going to put in a few here: "call Kevin regarding the meeting," hit enter, it appears.

I'm going to add another one here: "write the marketing report." And I'm going to "email Julie regarding the conference."

Okay, so there I have a few tasks that I want to be able to accomplish on that Tuesday. And now I can see the relationship between those to-dos and other things that I have on my workday, on my work week, the other things that are happening that are scheduled as a part of my day.

So, for example, I have an all-day conference that I'm going to be attending on Tuesday. The chances of me accomplishing all of these things, particularly writing this marketing report, are quite slim.

So it's so easy for me to simply click and drag, and I'm gonna defer that until Wednesday. I can still see it, I can still see how it relates to the rest of my week, but I've decided to move it from this Tuesday.

So it's really, really simple to be able to move around your tasks and give them an assignment on a specific day. And this can help you be more effective by managing several smaller to-do lists rather than one large giant to-do list.

So for example, you can manage as few as maybe four or five key tasks on a specific day instead of managing one really long list that maybe has 27 or 40 some items on them. You can break out your to-do list by specific days and see how they relate to one another.

So for example, here I have "call Kevin regarding the meeting." I can see that I'm actually meeting with Kevin on Thursday, and maybe that's why I decided to put that task on that Tuesday.

For example, I can see the relationship between my tasks and other things that are going on in my work week. So a few other things that you can benefit from managing your tasks in your calendar.

On the top level or on the front of your task, you can keep things nice and clean. You can keep the description of your to-do very short and sweet, but within it, you can add further details.

Now again, regardless of what calendar app you're using, you are going to have some type of description field or a notes field. So here you can add a URL to a website that you need.

You can add contact information for someone that you're going to call maybe for that particular meeting. You can copy and paste information into this area.

Often what I like to do for a number of my tasks is I'll be putting the next step. Okay, after I've completed writing the marketing report, what am I going to do next?

Sometimes I'll even just abbreviate that to "NS" and I'll say, you know, "send to Julie for review." So I can have all this detailed information within the task itself.

I'm just going to hit save. But of course, when I come back to my main calendar view, I can just see the task at hand.

This can be great when you're calling someone or sending that communication to someone. You can keep the description short and sweet, but you can have all the details in the description below.

Now lastly, you're probably thinking, Scott, isn't a key part of managing a to-do list or managing a task list having the ability to prioritize your list? How can I sort my list or highlight certain things?

Now, if you have followed some of my videos in the past already, you will know that I am not a big fan of prioritizing things by numbers or by letters or by multiple colors. The most important thing, and what's going to make you most effective in getting more done in a single day, is separating the "should do's" from the "could do's," really separating your most important work from everything else.

So what I recommend is that you only highlight your one or two most important tasks. Don't try and sort the entire list.

Now, from a calendar perspective, it can be difficult to reorder these items in the way that we want if we wanted to sort things, you know, top to bottom. We want to prioritize things one through seven.

However, there's a very simple tool, a very simple addition you can use to make sure your most important things appear at the top. So let's say, for example, that "write the marketing report" is the most important thing.

I want to make sure that I do that first or I at least see that first. By clicking on the title of this particular task, all you need to do is add a period or almost any other symbol.

I use a period since it's very small, still very easy to read. If you add a period and hit save, it will automatically bump it and sort it to the top of the list.

And this goes for most applications, including calendar applications. Let's say, you know, emailing Julie about the conference is the least important, just so I can show you in the example.

I go down to "email Julie," again I'm going to add a simple period, and now that is sorted to the top along with "write the marketing report." So as I said before, I think it's a waste of time giving a stack ranking of every single one of your tasks.

But if there are one or two that are most valuable or most important, you can simply add a period or some other symbol so that it will sort to the top of your list. So if you are looking for a very effective way to manage your tasks and to see your tasks in relation to everything else that is going on in your day or going on in your week, I suggest you use the all-day event area as a part of your calendar.

Whether it's Google, whether it's Outlook, whether it's Apple, it doesn't matter. They all have the same type of functionality.

You can manage your to-do lists right within the calendar. Until next time, it's very simple.

I have been a longtime user of Evernote and I have recommended Evernote to hundreds if not thousands of people as their primary note-taking tool.

It is so important that you have an application that you can quickly grab those ideas, grab a new image, maybe you have a quick conversation in the hallway or a quick conversation with someone and you need to grab that information quickly and easily.

However, in the past year, I have grown somewhat frustrated with the Evernote user interface and it's not so much that they've made many changes with Evernote, I'm just finding myself that there's too many clicks I need to take, too many steps in order for me to capture something new or to go find something new.

So recently, I took a test-drive of Google Keep and I have been most impressed.

So today I want to give you a short demo of Google Keep, how you can use it, and where I think it actually has an advantage over an application like Evernote when it comes to capturing notes.

The most important thing is how quickly you can capture those ideas, how quickly can you enter them, whether that's on your mobile device or whether that's on the desktop.

So right from the beginning, I love that it is upfront, right, it's upfront, it's easy to find.

I don't have to click on anything to get to search.

I probably shouldn't be so surprised since this product is from Google.

Also, the ability to take a note is upfront, right.

I don't need to select a plus symbol, I don't need to go find something else.

Very easy to capture a new note.

So let's add a few notes as an example.

I'm gonna call Jenny about dinner plans.

I can either hit done or just click outside of the box and it's gonna capture it there.

Like an email, Ted about the Tuesday meeting.

This time I'm just gonna hit done and you can see it sort of displays the notes in a bit of a post-it note style.

Most of them tend to be in sort of a square shape depending on what you're capturing.

Some other quick ways of capturing notes if you want to add a new list, I think this is a really big advantage over Evernote.

A quick way to create a new checklist.

So let's say I'm creating a grocery list, for example.

I'm just hitting enter, it's gonna grab me my very next item on that list.

So there I've got my quick checklist and not only was it easy to create but I can start interacting with that list without actually opening it up.

So I can just start crossing things off here without actually opening up the list in this view.

So it's very easy to check things off or uncheck things in that list.

The other quick way of capturing would be an image.

Now of course, on your mobile device, you can quickly take a photo but here on the desktop you're going to need to add an attachment.

I'm just gonna double click that, grab an image from my computer.

I can add a note here if I want, not necessary but let me just put that in there, hit done, and you can see it's nice and visual.

I can see the entire image or most of the image here, a great way to visualize my notes.

Now, one disadvantage, especially for those used to the Evernote infrastructure, is that Google Keep does not allow you to sort by creation date or the last day that you edited a note or by alphabetical order.

It's very much a drag-and-drop application, so you sort of need to manage which notes you want to see up front and which ones you want to perhaps group together.

But I'm gonna show you in just a minute how you can filter, how you can create labels, how you can create tags that makes filtering and finding your notes that much easier.

Well, let's go into some of the additional features that you can add or change to a note.

I'm gonna bring this one up here which involves a phone call.

So you can add a reminder time to a phone call.

It gives you a few defaults here which you can change in the settings section here.

So I'm gonna say, let's say tomorrow at 8 a.m. I want to be reminded of this task tomorrow at 8 a.m.

I set it there, it said I can see it listed at the bottom of the note, it's gonna remind me tomorrow at 8 a.m.

But the great thing, the great bonus if you are a Google Calendar user is that this reminder that you've set in Google Keep will also display there.

You see it there, it is in my Google Calendar, will also show up there.

So I love that integration within the Google ecosystem is that you can create a reminder here in your notes very quickly, very easily while you're on the go and it will appear in your Google Calendar.

A few other options, you have the ability to share notes.

This grocery list would probably be a great example of that.

So let's say, you know, you and your spouse or maybe someone else that you live with, the first one in the grocery store, you want them to pick up these items.

Well, I can add one or more email addresses to this particular note and then they can edit that note and interact with it as well.

So a great way to collaborate with others is the ability to share.

Now you can also label your notes in a few different ways.

One is by color.

So let's say I want my grocery list to be red, I want it to stand out a little bit.

Maybe my domestic things, right, things around the house or errands, I want a particular color so I can make that red.

And maybe my phone calls, I want all my phone calls to be blue.

Whatever type of color scheme or whatever makes sense to you, you can very quickly and easily change those colors.

Now by default, it gives you the option to archive, which I highly recommend with any note-taking or note-capturing device just in case you want to go back and retrieve it later.

But if you select the more option, you can actually delete that note altogether.

Now the one additional label or way that you can add a tag to a note is by adding a label.

I've only just created the one so far, here's the work label.

So now you can see if I click on that, it's going to filter anything that has work on it.

Let's maybe add work to this one as well.

So now it's just free, it's quick and easy, I can either select work on the left-hand side or if I go back to all my notes, I can select work on the note itself and it's just gonna filter out everything there.

Let me show you one other way that you can add labels quicker and easier than actually selecting this drop-down menu.

So I'm gonna say change labels, I'm gonna uncheck that so it doesn't have work anymore, and within the note, I'm just gonna add a hashtag.

Right, and there comes up all of my labels.

I've only got one at the moment, but now I can select that, hit done, and now I've got my label in there.

So as I'm typing a new note, let's say, you know, sent out the meeting agenda and I'm gonna say hashtag work.

Okay, there it is, I don't have to select anything, I can just put in the hashtag and now that's gonna be a part of my collection of notes that I want filtered under work.

So last thing I want to show you is the ability to sort of filter and search.

So up here, if you just click the search bar, you'll notice that it starts to categorize a few things already for you.

So you can filter by just reminders, and I only got the one, there's my reminder.

All your lists, I only have a couple, right, only have a few in my Google Keep anyhow, I've only got one list here.

But a quick way to sort of filter out which of your notes have images, if you just want to see the notes that have images, quick easy.

All your labels will show up here.

Here, you can see that Google actually starts to categorize some of the themes, notices that you have some things related to food or groceries and also the different colors that you are using.

But of course, you can just type in text and right away it's gonna show you all of your notes that contain text.

Now one really important thing to keep in mind if you are considering moving from Evernote to Google Keep is that there is no such thing as a notebook in Google Keep.

So there's no such thing as a folder structure within Google Keep.

It's really sort of one main space to collect all of your notes and then either by color, either by label, or this tag formatting you can add these things to your, that's really the only way that you can filter out your notes.

But unless you're an author, unless you're a writer and you're keeping very, very large documents in your notes, Google Keep is an excellent choice for capturing those quick ideas, capturing those quick photos and being able to retrieve them very quickly when you need to go back, see what is to become a project, what needs to be turned into a reminder or a task.

So check out Google Keep, let me know how you find Google Keep or how it compares to Evernote, and make sure that you always have some way of capturing those ideas right away.

It's very simple.

It's just after 6 AM and I'm exactly where I should be: on the ground, doing my crunches, starting my morning exercise routine.

There's a couple of different reasons why I choose to exercise first thing in the morning.

Number one, it's so much harder to defer that exercise when it's the first thing on your list.

You see, in the past, I've had good intentions of hitting the gym or going for that run after work, after 5 PM.

But I often found that my motivation was lacking at that time of day.

After a full day of meetings, phone calls, email, and travel, I often didn't have the energy to hit the gym or go for that workout at that time of day.

As a result, I'd defer it, I'd cancel it, and maybe go several days without missing my workout.

But by fitting in my exercise first thing in the morning, I've made time for it, and therefore it's that much harder for me to ignore it, for me to simply defer my morning routine.

But there's a second reason why I choose to exercise first thing in the morning.

And that's for the mental benefits.

For the mental and productive boost that exercise can give you.

By raising your heart rate, by sweating a little bit, it actually gives you some additional mental power, some additional mental focus as you start your workday.

And if you're already exercising routinely in the morning, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about.

After exercising for several days in a row and then missing a day, you'll find that you may be missing that mental boost or that mental energy as you begin your day.

So find time for exercise.

Find time for a workout first thing in the morning.

It may require waking up about 30 minutes earlier, but it's worth it.

Especially if you want to have the most productive day possible.

Until next time, it's very simple.

Boomerang: Never Forget to Followup on an Email

‍

today I want to talk to you about my favorite add-on for email which makes followup so easy we're going to be looking at a product called Boomerang

About Boomerang

now Boomerang makes its product in a few different flavors here we see Boomerang

for Gmail but it also makes their product for Outlook as well although this says Outlook classic they also make versions for Office 365 and for outlook.com but because I'm a Gmail user we're going

What is Boomerang

to be looking at it from the lens of Gmail the functionality is essentially the same no matter where you use it but we're just going to look at it from a Google perspective so what is boomerang how can it help you well one of boomerang's main features is the ability to snooze a message and you may see this in other email clients as well such as inbox by Gmail there's many other apps that also add this feature as a part of their email management Suite of tools

Snooze a Message

and what does snoozing a message mean well it means if you receive a message

and you say to yourself you know what I just don't want to deal with this right now can you remind me later or can you bring this back later that's the whole idea of the name Boomerang you can select a time frame that's appropriate for you and it will return that message it will show up as an unread message back into your inbox but the feature I

Followup

I want to show you the follow-up feature in Boomerang because I think it's so, so powerful.

Once you've installed Boomerang with your email client, you're going to see a little bit of an addition at the bottom of your composition window or composition box.

Here, we see the blue send button, which is still Gmail, but you'll see down below, with the Boomerang add-on, you have this "Send Later" button and a new checkbox.

Let me give a scenario that I'm sure you're familiar with.

You're asking a question of someone, or you're making a request, and you need an answer.

You want to make sure that you follow up with this person sometime in the future if they don't answer because the question is that important.

So what do you do?

Do you send the email and then go to your calendar and write a follow-up event?

Do you make sure to follow up with so-and-so on this date?

Do you go to your to-do list and make a task for a few days in the future to ensure you follow up with so-and-so about this item?

Well, with Boomerang, you don't have to do either of those steps.

You don't have to get your to-do list or your calendar involved.

At the bottom, we have this checkbox called "Boomerang this."

If I check this box, it says "Boomerang this in 1 hour if no reply."

That means that this message will return to my inbox and show up as an unread message.

That will be my trigger that I have still not heard from this individual.

Now, 1 hour in this fictitious case is too soon, so Boomerang gives you the option to select from a variety of different defaults.

There's also a little pop-up calendar where you can pick a specific date and time.

But for this example, let's say it's two days.

I really want an answer within two days.

I'm going to select two days.

The second drop-down also gives you a few different options:

• if no reply
• if not clicked
• if not opened
• and regardless, which is basically all of the above.

I find that "if no reply" satisfies my needs in almost all cases.

I want an answer, so I don't care so much if they opened or clicked or what else they did with the message—I really want a reply from this individual.

So if I go ahead and hit send, what's going to happen?

If this person replies to my question within two days, that's great—nothing else happens.

I will not have this message returned to me.

But if there is no reply given within this time frame, it's going to show back up in my inbox as an unread message.

Then I can take the next step, maybe it's a phone call, maybe it's a second email, but I am automatically reminded.

This is fantastic for follow-up, regardless if you're messaging with people within your own team, within your own company, or if it's potential clients or people that you don't know so well.

You can choose a time frame that's appropriate for that message or appropriate for that person you're corresponding with and automatically get those follow-ups built into your email client.

So whether you're a Gmail user or an Outlook user, try out Boomerang and make email follow-up easy and simple.

Trol is one of my favorite tools for managing projects and managing tasks whether I'm just managing my own personal to Do's or if I'm working and collaborating with other team members. But one of the best ways to use Trello and to add information to a Trello board or to respond to comments on Trello is to use your own email client.

And today I want to show you two different ways that you can use email so that you can both add new information, maybe it's an email, maybe it's an idea that you have while you're replying to email, and give you a way how you can respond to comments for questions that other people that you are collaborating with on Trello.

How you can use your email to do just that. There's so much you can do without even having to jump in to the application itself. So first, let's start with using the email, the unique email address that each Trello board comes with.

When you click show menu, you're going to get a variety of options here. And I'm going to go to the main menu just to show where you need to go because you're going to have to hit the more option here. Under more, you'll see options such as settings, labels, archived items.

And roughly halfway down, you'll see the email to board settings. If you click on that, you'll notice there's a big long, doesn't look very friendly, email address here. You don't have to worry about all the random numbers and letters here.

This is the unique email address for this Trello board. So if I send an email to this address, it's going to show up here on my Trello board. Now you can copy and paste it directly from here, or you can select this option to email this address to the email that's associated with your Trello board.

They also give you the option to generate a new email address. Now you may be wondering, why would I want to do that? Well, if you're collaborating with others, and perhaps there's someone in that group who you no longer want to have this functionality or give this access, you can always generate a new address in the future.

But if you're working just, you know, just for yourself, if it's just a personal Trello board, you'll never really need to use this option on your end. Now, the only other decision you need to make at this point is where are your emailed cards going to appear first?

You need to select the list that you want it to appear in. So for myself, I want it to appear in my first list, notes and ideas. And the only other thing I have to consider is do I want my new emails, the things that I forward to my Trello board, do I want them to appear at the top of that list or the bottom?

Am I going to select bottom? That's the default option here. I don't have to do anything else here. I can close this window. I can minimize the menu here. And now when I go to my email and let's say I've got an email here from someone, it's about a conference.

It's got some information here, you know what? I'd like to consider that. I'm not gonna reply just yet. I'd like to throw this in my ideas list. Well, all I need to do is select forward. Find that Trello email address here. I've saved it here as part of my contacts.

It's my Trello board. I can add some more messaging to it if I want to, but I'm just going to forward it as is. I'm going to hit Send. And now I'm going to jump back to my Trello board. And look at that. Almost immediately, it's arrived in my notes and ideas list at the bottom, like I specified.

The subject of the email is in the top. And if I click on it, I get all the information of that email within the description. So the contents of the email are going to show up under the description. The subject of the email will show up at the top.

And of course, I can always go in and edit this. I can change this now if I don't want to leave the default email subject header. But what I love about Trello is that it keeps all of the links, it keeps all the information.

And here we see a link to the conference. I can click on that right away and see the information that my sender wanted me to see. Now you can forward emails that you come across to your Trello board.

But you can start a brand new email as well. Let's say I've got an idea while I'm in my email inbox. Find that Trello email address. I'm going to say, you know, new project idea. Remember, this is going to be the title of the Trello card.

How about refreshing the log web page? Alright, I'm just going to hit Send on that. And again, jump back over to our Trello board. Immediately, it shows up there. There's the subject heading. I open it up and there's the question.

It shows up in the description. Any other information in that email is going to show up here. Now yes, it's also going to bring in an email signature into the description area as well.

You may not always want that information, but it may be helpful depending on if you're forwarding that information or if you want to remember where that idea, where that information was coming from originally.

So find out your unique email address for your Trello board, email to board settings, and start forwarding or creating new emails and sending them directly to Trello.

Now, the one other email-related item I want to show you today is responding to questions or comments in Trello using your email client. So you may realize if you have notifications turned on, you get updates from time to time in your email inbox, especially if someone is asking you a question.

So here's an example where I've got perhaps a teammate, and they're wondering what the status is of this particular project. And they've said, hey, have you called this person yet? If I go to my email inbox, look at that, I got a reminder earlier today telling me that I've got this question in Trello.

Now I can click on this link and go directly to that card. I could click on this link, which is the name of the board, and go directly to that Trello board. But depending on what I'm doing right now, I probably want to stay, or I might want to stay in my email inbox.

I want to continue replying to emails and reading unread emails. I don't want to jump into Trello right now, but I would like to answer this question. Well, you can either select this link, reply via email, or if you use an email client such as Gmail, which already has your reply text box already open,

I'm just gonna reply like I would any regular email. Yes, I will call her later this afternoon. I hit Send just like a regular email. I'm gonna go back to my Trello board just to see what happened there. And look at that, immediately it's replied under the comments section.

Now anyone else who has access to this card, anyone else who is on this card can see my reply, and I didn't have to jump into my Trello board. I didn't actually have to open up Trello to make use of this functionality.

So if you get questions or if you have updates that are coming through your email inbox, make use of the reply feature. Just reply directly like you would any other email, and get to know your unique email address for your Trello board so you can quickly and easily add things to your board.

It's very simple.‍

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Decisions, decisions, decisions.

We all have so many important decisions to make. Well, today I want to share with you a tool to help you decide which project or idea you should pursue next.

As you can see here, I’ve created a little Excel spreadsheet, which I call the Decision-Making Matrix. This particular matrix is based on one developed by Chris Guillebeau in his book The $100 Startup, and I’ve found it to be a very useful tool as I decide which project or idea I should tackle next.

It doesn’t matter if you’re making decisions for your organization, your team, or even personal decisions—this tool can come in very handy.

So, how does the Decision-Making Matrix work?

You can see on the left-hand side, I’ve got a selection of hypothetical ideas—these are things that I’m considering pursuing, but I’m not sure exactly which one I should tackle first. Where should I put most of my effort right now?

The Decision-Making Matrix helps us add quantitative data so that we can get a score—a point total—that can help us decide which task or project we should tackle next.

At the bottom of my spreadsheet here, you can see I have some definitions of the four different criteria that we’re going to run these ideas through.

1. Impact is defined as how much of an impact this project will make on my business and customers. All we need to do is plug in some numbers between 1 and 5. A value of 1 means little impact on my business or customers, while a 5 means a huge impact.
   • There are a couple of different ways to go about this. You can give each one a subjective number, say, this is a 4, that’s about a 4, and this is a 3. But what I like to do with the matrix is to use a stack ranking approach. I look at how many ideas I have on the left-hand side (in this case, I have five), and I make sure that each value from 1 to 5 is represented in the Impact column.
   • This way, I avoid ending up with scores that are too even, and I compare the ideas against one another. This approach works well if you have between three and six different ideas. You could go beyond 1 to 5, depending on how many ideas you’re evaluating.
   • Let’s start with Impact, and I’ll randomly throw in some numbers here for this example.
2. Effort is defined as how much time and work it will take to create the project. It’s important to note that the numbering system here is different from the other three criteria. A value of 1 means a ton of work, while 5 means almost no work.
   • Why is that? We want to pursue the project that gives us the highest score at the end of this exercise, so we want to prioritize projects that take less effort but yield great outcomes. Therefore, less effort (closer to 5) is rewarded.
   • I’m going to plug in a few more numbers here. Again, this is just a hypothetical example.

Before I add values for Profitability, here’s another tip to make this tool really useful. As you can see, the values are summing up in real time, but I’m going to hide that column.

Why? Because I want to be as unbiased as possible as I go through this exercise. I might be biased towards one idea, and if I see that it’s only one point behind the leader, I might intentionally give it a higher score in Profitability or Vision than it deserves. By hiding the total score, I ensure that the final score will be a surprise and more objective.

3. Profitability is straightforward—how much money will this project bring in? I’ll plug in a few more numbers here.
4. Vision is something we often forget when evaluating our projects or ideas. We tend to focus heavily on Profitability, which is important, but Vision considers whether the project aligns with our overall mission and vision.
   • A score of 1 means not close, while a 5 means very close. Let’s plug in some numbers here as well.

Now that we’ve given everything a quantitative value, we’ve run it through four sets of important criteria. Let’s go back and unhide the total column. Now, we have some total scores.

Looking at this, we see that Sales Training and Hire More Staff are tied with a score of 15. This doesn’t mean I should pursue both tasks simultaneously, but it gives me some great food for thought. These two are probably much more important and impactful to my business than the other ideas on this list, so I should seriously consider pursuing one of them immediately.

It’s also helpful to look at the ideas that didn’t score as well. In this case, both Customer Conference and Build a New Product scored a 9. You might want to review why that is—perhaps the Impact was minimal, or it didn’t align well with your Vision.

I’ll provide a link in the description below to this Excel spreadsheet so you can download it yourself. Try it out and plug in your own data and ideas. Check out the Decision-Making Matrix to help you make more productive decisions.

Whether you use Trello for team collaboration or for your own personal projects, adding checklists is a great way to enhance your use of Trello.

Today I want to show you how to add checklists and how you can repurpose those checklists, especially if you have a process that you want to replicate if you want to repeat time and time again.

So to add a checklist, simply click on a Trello card and on the right-hand side, under "Add," you will see "Checklist."

Here you can give the checklist a name, or you can go with the default. I'm just going to go with "Default Checklist" for now, and you can see a checklist appears below the description area.

Now I can just start typing the steps or the process that I want to follow in my checklist. Just by hitting Enter, I can add the items in my checklist.

If I'm unhappy with the order that I've displayed them, it's just drag-and-drop. I can reorder my checklist any way that I like. I was happy with my initial order, so I'm going to go back to that.

And immediately I can start using this checklist. Let's say I've already contacted the client, and I've made the appointment. You'll see Trello gives you a nice visual indicator here at the top—a percentage of the amount of things that you've completed within this checklist.

This comes in very handy, especially when you have a very long checklist. Let's say you have seven or perhaps even more items in this checklist. It also gives you the ability to hide completed items, which is great. It can keep your display here on the Trello card nice and clean.

In parenthesis, I can take a quick glance at how many items I've already checked off. But if I have a lengthy checklist, I can just see the things that I have yet to complete.

Now when I close this card, you can see there's a nice visual indicator on the front of the card as to how many things I've completed, how many are yet to complete. There's a little checklist icon followed by a fraction—two out of three are complete on this card.

Now when I complete everything in this checklist, not only does the status bar go to green and show 100%, but on the front of the card, it gives me a nice visual indicator. It changes to green, and here you can see the contrast between a card just above, which is not yet complete, and the one that is 100% complete.

So again, I can take a quick glance and know that I've completed everything in that process.

Now let's say the checklist that I just created is something I want to replicate. It's something I want to use again. So I've got another new client. When I click on that card, let's say I want to add that same checklist.

I hit the "Checklist" button, and below there's a "Copy Items From" option. Here I can see I've got two different checklists. I've got one I created called "Meeting" under my potential client card, and here's the one we just created called "Checklist."

If I select that one and hit "Add," boom, I've got the exact same process. The exact same checklist appears on this card. I don't have to re-enter anything. I don't have to start from scratch. Immediately I can start using the items in this checklist.

One last feature that I love about checklists in Trello is that if I copy this card—maybe there's another part of this card that I want to replicate—if I go and copy this card, you'll notice that I've completed two out of three.

If I hit "Copy," let's say I'm going to call this one "New Client Three." It gives me the option if I want to keep the checklist or not. I'm going to say yes, I'm going to say "Create Card."

It properly resets the checklist. Here you'll see I'm now back down to zero out of three, which I believe is the right functionality. I don't want to copy the steps here. This is a brand-new card. This is a brand-new process or project.

However, I'm using this card, and I want the checklist to be reset, and you can see I'm back down to zero. I can now follow this process in the order given.

So again, whether you're collaborating with teams, maybe you're using Trello for your own to-do list or for your own personal projects, add checklists. It's a great way to add more functionality to Trello—a great way to manage subtasks as well.

It's very simple.

I teach people and organizations to be more productive. But what exactly does that word mean: productivity. I find that most people feel it means getting more things done in a shorter amount of time. But I don't particularly like that definition. That puts too much emphasis on quantity and not enough on quality. You see I think the best type of productivity is about getting the right things done, not just about getting more things done. Let me give you an example.

Example

At the end of your work day, let's say you have two employees approach you.

The first one proudly says that they had 27 things that they crossed off of their to-do list.

The second one says that they only crossed off 3 things off of their to-do list.

Now which of these two employees was more productive?

If you think it's the first one, you need to dive a bit deeper as into what did those activities involve.

If most of those 27 to-dos included email, short phone calls, and other menial tasks, it would be hard to argue that they were the more productive individual.

Especially if the second employee, the one who only had 3 things checked off, really pushed things forward.

If they really brought a lot of value to their big projects or to their teams.

In that case we would clearly state that the second employee was the more productive individual.

Conclusion

Remember, any fool can be busy. You don't need an education or experience to be busy and therefore have a lot of things on your plate or get a lot of things done.

But to be a productive individual, you need to be able to get the right things done.

You need to be able to focus and achieve your most important work. So remember the true definition, the best definition of productivity to ensure that you get the most out of yours and your organization's day. It's very simple.