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Hi, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity. I want to thank you for all of your comments and questions on my last video.

It's been great to see people get so excited about spending less time with their email. You know, for nearly a decade, I've been helping people be more effective and efficient with their workday, and that's exactly what I want for you.

I want you to be at your productive best, and sometimes it's email that gets in the way of our most productive day. On average, we spend 6.3 hours checking email each and every day, and that doesn't leave an awful lot of time for our most important work or our most important projects.

In my last video, I showed you how to get through a large number of emails in just a matter of minutes. I showed you how to quickly identify which messages deserve your attention and then get rid of everything else so that you can reference it later but get it out of your inbox.

Managing Email Folders

Now, one of the most common questions I received was, Scott, what is the best way to manage all of my email folders? Well, this is a fantastic question, and I get this quite frequently.

We tend to waste an awful lot of time and energy managing all of our folders, subfolders, and subfolders of subfolders as we try to deal with all of our email, and it's simply not necessary. Here's why.

The search capability in your email application is far too powerful for you to categorize and label every single message that hits your inbox. In fact, you shouldn't need to search more than two times to find the exact message that you're looking for.

So don't waste your time dragging and dropping every single message into a new folder or labeling a new category. Start using search to find your email.

If you have further questions or comments, I would encourage you to add them in the comment section below. I'd be happy to answer them in an upcoming video.

Now, I want you to think about more than just email. I know I've been talking about spending less time in email, but this is really about spending more time elsewhere.

Spend More Time Elsewhere

What else could you accomplish today? What else could you do if you spent half as much time in your inbox?

How many more projects could you complete this month? How many more quality conversations could you have with a customer or maybe someone else on your team?

Remember, the less time we spend with email gives us more time to spend elsewhere. In my very next video, I have something special to share with you.

Learn More

I'm about to release the Own Your Inbox online training course. That's right, I've put together everything that I've learned and everything that I've taught over the past 10 years about email management and about spending less time with email in a single course.

Now, I want you to spend so much less time with email that I've decided to offer the Own Your Inbox program at a very special price. But I won't be able to keep it at that price for very long.

So if you would like to learn more, be sure to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity YouTube channel or join our email list at simpletivity.com. And if you have further questions or comments, be sure to include them in the section below.

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

There are so many different places on the internet where you can go to find productivity app reviews. I mean with the hundreds upon hundreds of solutions that are available to us, it can be hard to keep track of what's best for you and what is the latest news when it comes to task apps and other things to help us get more done.

Well, when I am looking for the latest news and reviews when it comes to productivity apps, I only go to one place. That is the channel of Francesco D'Alessio.

Francesco has been reviewing productivity apps for nearly two years now and doing a fantastic job. Not only does he have in-depth tutorials of all of the applications that you see here and many, many more, but he keeps his content really fresh and up-to-date.

When a new release or a major new feature is introduced, Francesco is very quick to share that news with the rest of the world. Well, today I am very excited to have Francesco here on Simpletivity.

Recently, Francesco has been experimenting with the bullet journal, which actually is not a productivity app at all. In fact, it's probably the most traditional format of managing our to-dos and where we need to be.

So, I'm excited to hear about what Francesco found out with his experiment with the bullet journal. So without any further ado, take it away, Francesco.

Hey everyone from Simpletivity, thank you for letting me on this channel to share a few of my bullet journaling thoughts. Now, for those who don't know, bullet journaling is a technique used by a lot of people.

There are some amazing Instagrammers out there, and I'll share a few photos now of those Instagrammers that are sharing some amazing bullet journaling techniques. Some really beautiful illustrations and some really coordinated good uses of bullet journaling.

I was able to experience bullet journaling about three weeks ago. I started using the classic technique by Ryder Carroll, and I tried to really distill a basic experience of that.

I didn't get along brilliantly with it, so what I did is I started out with a bullet journal. I'll go get it.

So we started out with this bullet journal, and it's a great bullet journal. I started out with the pages, and really, the great qualities are fantastic.

The one thing that I experienced was that when I was setting up, I'll show a few things of me setting up, I did set up in the basic way. But I didn't quite get to grips with it because I'm so reliant on using Todoist as my task manager and also my calendar, which is Readle's 5.

I didn't quite enjoy the experience of doing it as much as I do with digital. Now, I did go all-in, and I did obviously put everything I did with tasks onto my bullet journal here.

But I didn't really have the same experience. There are a few things that I didn't enjoy about the bullet journaling.

So number one would be that it was sort of tough to keep up with it. Obviously, you have to scribble out when you've done and re-put it when you've done in my calendar.

Tasks are always changing, so I wasn't having much movability with some of the tasks inside the bullet journal. Number two, if you're someone like me that has really poor handwriting, then this is something that's quite difficult for you.

I had to write in capital letters on most of the content inside this bullet journal. That was tough for me because it made the bullet journal look less cool, like some of those Instagrammers out there.

Number three, a couple of concepts like the future log and things like that were quite hard for me to get my head around. I've been using task management apps and digital formats for quite a few years, so I've sort of been quite consistent with this.

Getting to know a new system was tough to understand, like every system is, but it was sort of a lot different from general productivity setups. The one thing I've learned from my bullet journaling experience is I won't be bullet journaling anymore.

I am now using this book to plan videos, plan content, and plan blogs and things like that, write ideas up. But I will be sort of using this very similar setup on my digital side because I do like the way it’s set up.

So I have transferred a few tips and tricks into my digital experience. But overall, I recommend bullet journaling for anyone that wants a digital-free experience, has an interest in using a notebook around the day, and has fun organizing their events as you go.

Anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed this video. Please follow me on my channel.

Thank you very much, Scott, for having me on the channel, and I'm looking forward to sharing a few more videos with you here. See you guys very soon.

Please, in the comments, write about whether you are using bullet journaling across your day. See you guys very soon.

Cheers.

People often ask me, "Scott, you are a productivity expert. What is your secret weapon on your smartphone? What is the one app that you can't live without? The secret sauce, the secret tool that helps you stay focused and productive?"

And when I share with them which of my apps is my most frequently used one, they are often very, very surprised.

Often they'll guess, "Is my calendar that my most used app?" No.

"Is it email?" No.

"Twitter? YouTube?" No.

And you'll notice that I don't have a dedicated to-do list manager or a task app here on my home screen.

No.

When I reveal to them that my favorite and most used app is the exact same app that they have on their phone, often they look at me a little dumbfounded.

And that's because my secret.

The Clock App

Weapon is the clock app.

That's right, the clock app, the default app that comes with every single smartphone.

Whether you're an Android user or an iPhone user, we all have the clock app.

So what's with the clock app, Scott? Why is that your productivity secret or your most favorite tool on your smartphone?

Well, it's not because of the alarms.

Sure, you can preset a few different alarms to help you get up in the morning. Most of us are using our smartphone as our alarm in the morning.

No, I'm not just glancing at the time on a regular basis. That would not be a good use of my time.

The area of the clock app that I use more frequently than anything else is the timer function. This helps me stay focused. This helps me stay on top of my tasks and my work throughout the day.

So let me give you an example. Here you see I've got a timer set for 45 minutes. Often, when I sit down at my desk and, let's say, I want to focus on email for 45 minutes exclusively, I don't want to be distracted by anything else. I don't want to be glancing at the clock or the calendar or anything else. I just want to deal with email.

I'll set it for 45 minutes, hit start, and now I don't have to worry about anything else. I don't have to keep glancing at my phone or maybe the bottom right-hand corner of my tray on my desktop. I know I've got enough time. I've set it to that amount of time, and now I can focus exclusively on that task.

When 45 minutes is up, a small chime will sound. Then I can reevaluate—do I want to spend a few more minutes with email, or do I need to move on to something else? Or maybe I set it for 45 minutes because I had a meeting coming up in an hour, and I wanted to give myself just a little bit of time between finishing up some emails and getting to that meeting.

Now, a few other great things you can do with your timer within your smartphone app are setting a number of presets. Maybe there are certain lengths of time that you use quite frequently. I'll give you a few examples on my own phone.

Here you see I have a 15-minute length. I will use it for two purposes. One, you see it's even listed as my nap length. I try to fit in a power nap early in the afternoon when I can. I also usually take a 15-minute break once or twice throughout the day.

I've also got a shorter break that I may take more frequently. Here, it's set for five minutes.

So the great thing about punching in or having these predetermined times is that you don't have to go tapping in the time amount each and every time. You can just swipe to the length or the selection that you desire and hit go.

And you're often using that timer. The last one here is two minutes, just a short one. And you can see it's listed as power pose. If any of you have read Amy Cuddy's book Presence, you know exactly what I mean by a two-minute power pose.

So yes, more than a task app, more than email, more than even calendar or my Trello board, I use the timer. I use the clock app more than anything else.

And I would encourage you to consider using the timer function on your smartphone to help you stay more productive, help you stay more focused and engaged with your work.

Conclusion

If you liked this video, I would encourage you to subscribe, like, and comment.

We produce new videos each and every week here on the Simpletivity YouTube channel.

If you would like to learn more about how Simpletivity can help you be more productive, check out Simpletivity.com.

You can find free guides, more videos, and lots of great tips and techniques to help you stay productive.

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

Warning: The following video contains a statistic about email that some viewers may find disturbing.

Viewer discretion is advised.

6.3 hours—what do those 6.3 hours represent?

Is that the amount of productive time we spend each and every day with our most important work?

No.

Is that the amount of quality sleep we get each and every night?

No.

6.3 hours represents the average amount of time we spend checking email each and every day.

I hope that scares you just a little bit, because it certainly scares me.

6.3 hours represents one third of our waking hours and that certainly doesn't leave us much time for anything else.

What do 6.3 hours of checking email each and every day look...

How long do you spend checking email

Like.

Well, it looks something like this.

Spread out over a 16-hour day, a 16-hour waking day, it looks something like this.

From the time that we leave our bed to the time we return in the evening, we are checking our email frequently, and I would argue much too constantly.

Look at this image.

There's not much time for anything else.

There are just slivers of time here, there, and everywhere to have those quality conversations with your customers or with your employees.

Where is the time to have some really good strategic meetings or some time just to think for yourself as to what's the next big thing, what's the new project you should be focusing your attention on next?

No, by checking email 6.3 hours each and every day, it leads to an awful lot of unfocused work, and we don't have much time left over for more important things.

I'm sure you know the routine.

How many hours is too much

Start your morning and you flip through your inbox as you're sitting at the breakfast table.

You either drive to your office or maybe you sit down at your home office.

And the first thing you do is open up your inbox.

Too many of us leave that inbox open.

Even when we take a break, we open up our smartphone and start sifting through more email.

And the cycle continues on and on and on as we're checking email throughout the entire day.

Well, I don't...

What would your day look like

I don't want your day to look something like this.

I hope that you're currently not spending this much time on email, but if you are, I hope to motivate you to spend that much less time with your inbox.

What would your day look like?

How much more could you accomplish if you dealt with email only three or four times a day?

If you only dealt with email once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening, how much more could you accomplish?

How much quicker could you get to those big projects and meet those important deadlines?

It's not going to happen overnight, but you can achieve much less time dealing with your email.

Question

So in the comments below, I would like you to answer the following question:

What would you do if you spent half as much time with your email?

If you spent only three hours a day checking email, what would you do with that additional time?

Write your answer in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this video, please be sure to LIKE and subscribe to the Simpletivity YouTube channel.

And if you haven't checked out Simpletivity.com, be sure to visit the website.

We have many more tips and techniques to help you stay productive.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it’s very simple.

hi Scott friesen here at simple tivity and today I wanted to do something just a little bit different because today is a very special one why is it special

Why is it special

well it's special because I'm wearing a simple tivity t-shirt but no I'm not about to start selling merchandise today is special because it marks the one-year anniversary of the simple tivity calm website yes it's been exactly one year

Thank you

Since we started offering training and other consulting services to help you and organizations be more productive, help you to get more things done, and enjoy less stress at the same time.

So thank you for subscribing.

Thank you for joining the email newsletter.

Thank you for all of your comments and questions as we continue to produce new content to help you be more productive.

Now, if this is your first time visiting Simpletivity.com, I encourage you to stick around.

Browse some of our other content.

We have workshops.

We have webinars.

We have some upcoming online courses to offer in just a few weeks’ time.

If you are looking for a quick and simple way to get more things done right now, I encourage you to download the To-Do List Guide.

It's a free guide, and I'll provide a link for it right here in the video so you can access it and get started right away.

It has been an amazing year and I want to thank you for being a big part of it.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it’s very simple.

There have been a total of seven US presidents over the course of my lifetime.

That should probably give you a pretty good guess as to how old I am.

And to get to this level of leadership, or even just to be considered the US president, you need to know a thing or two about how to get things done.

Whether that's from a personal productivity standpoint or just from the ability to motivate others to get things done.

Now, arguably, my favorite US president of all time was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

And that may sound surprising because he was the leader of the United States long before I was even born.

But this quote has really stuck with me since the first time I heard it.

He said, "What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important."

And from this brief quote, we get our important-urgent matrix, something that was made quite popular by Stephen R. Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Now, the important matrix gives us four different quadrants where we can group together our tasks and our projects and give us a bit of a better idea of where we should be focusing our attention and what types of tasks or what types of things we should maybe try to avoid on a daily basis.

We first have our important and urgent quadrant.

Now, this tends to be our reactive tasks, things that have a sharp deadline, something that's due right away, a crisis, some type of fire that we need to fight.

Next, we have our important and not urgent quadrant.

This tends to be more of our proactive activities, things that don't need to be accomplished today, this week, or maybe actually never need to be accomplished, but provide a lot of value if we work on them and if we bring them to fruition.

Down below, we have our tasks which are not important yet urgent.

And these tend to be made up of a lot of interruptions.

Think of phone calls that you receive or people who drop by your desk.

And perhaps what they have in front of you is not that important, but it may seem urgent, or people are making it sound more urgent than it actually needs to be.

And then our last quadrant are our activities which are neither important nor urgent.

And these tend to be our time wasters.

Now, we all need some downtime, we all need to get away, maybe spend some time binge-watching Netflix.

But hopefully, during our working hours, when we're trying to get things done, we're spending little to no time in that last quadrant.

And what President Eisenhower was trying to get us to focus on was that we should be spending most of our time in the important and not urgent quadrant.

This is where we can be proactive, and as a result, we have an opportunity to minimize the number of things that fall into that reactive quadrant, that important and urgent quadrant.

Now, another president which I think had a lot of valuable productivity advice for you and me was our most recent sitting president, President Barack Obama.

And you're probably wondering why I'm showing so many pictures of President Obama on the screen here.

Well, do you notice anything different between these images, or maybe I should say do you notice anything similar?

Yes, Barack Obama was known to wear only two different suits: one grey suit, as you see here on the left, and then one navy blue suit here on the right.

He had the exact same cut, the exact same style for both suits, but just two different colors to choose from.

No, no, I'm not suggesting that he only had physically two different suits.

He had multiple copies of each suit, but only two colors: one grey and one blue.

So why was this helpful to him?

How did this help him improve his productivity and his ability to get things done?

Well, when he was asked the question, he responded with this: he said, "I'm trying to pare down my decisions. I don't want to make decisions about what I'm wearing because I have too many other decisions to make."

You see, the concept that President Obama was tapping into here was decision fatigue, specifically avoiding decision fatigue.

Now, decision fatigue states that people tend to make worse decisions after having made a lot of decisions.

This is precisely why many judges will give out harsher penalties, harsher rulings later in the day, later in the afternoon than they do earlier in the morning.

And President Obama was trying to minimize the number of decisions, unnecessary decisions, that he needed to make first thing in the morning when he got dressed, when he decided what to wear for the day.

Because he had much more important things to focus on.

So I think a valuable lesson for all of us.

Now yes, we are not the leader of a nation, or at least most of us watching are not leaders of a nation or a country.

But I think we can use this advice to our advantage.

So my question to you is this: how can you reduce the number of unnecessary decisions in your day?

We all have decisions to make, but how can we reduce the number of decisions, the number of unnecessary decisions that we need to make so we can be sharp, so we can be clear on our most important decisions?

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

Thank you so much for watching.

If you enjoyed this video, please give it a like, give it a thumbs up below.

And if you've not yet subscribed to Simpletivity, please do so.

It's absolutely free, and you'll get updates of new videos here on this channel.

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

In fact, it's very simple.

Are you tired of feeling busy all the time? Are you sick of feeling stressed as a part of your day? Is there an ideal way to manage a to-do list? Is there an optimal way to manage your schedule or your calendar?

It's so easy to make things more complex or more difficult than they need to be. It is so easy for us to put the blame on our technology. It's so easy to say it's my smartphone or it's the apps or there are all these people who are trying to get a hold of me.

If you want to have your most productive day yet, you have to stop being a slave to email. You are the one who's in control; you get to decide when you check email next and how you interact with your inbox.

I think focus is what we lack on a day-to-day basis, and when we lack focus, we start to hurt ourselves, hurt our organizations, and hurt our clients.

I want to show you three steps that you need to include as a part of your morning routine. Three things that you should do every single morning to set yourself up for a fantastic day.

If you want great results, you need to ask yourself great questions, and this one simple question is going to help you reveal what you should be working on next.

When we keep things basic, we drown out the rest of the noise around us and it allows us to work at our productive best.

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

hello Burnap simple tivity it's Francesco here

thank you to Scott for having me back on your channel it's really amazing to be here I love all of Scott's videos especially loved his Trello videos and his Google Calendar videos as I've said in the past they are some of the best resources so I'm actually gonna include in the description a few of my favorite ones that Scott has put out and I'll be great so you can dive into that one

Scott is also gonna be doing a video on my channel so jump over and join in the fun because there'll be a video of his back

as you can see by the title I'm gonna be talking about how you can use Evernote and Todoist together now this is a sort of topic that I'm gonna be diving into a bit more detail on the channel but I wanted to give you sort of like a basic overview of how you can use them together in sort of three contexts

so a short introduction on Todoist and Evernote to-do list

TODOIST

it's basically for to-do lists, so your tasks, and that's basically where you can store all of those activities

well if you haven't tried it out it's a really good task manager it brings together some really strong features with a really simplistic and flexible experience so that you can get things done across a day with a bit of ease

and Evernote is the same it's very flexible and you can use it and structure it in a way that you like I I am a big fan of Evernote and I use both of these in tandem

now Evernote is really for your notes and so you can use it for clipping meeting notes all the way over to your ideas and bringing together presentations and things like that

now when it comes to using both of these together in like a situation for example the first situation you can use them is

CREATING A PROJECT

Starting a new project now inside of Evernote, what I tend to do if I'm starting a new project is create a new note and start documenting a few ideas or a few things like a checklist or to-do list to help bring together this sort of outline of the things I need to do next.

I tend to just block out a bit at the top so that I can have a few like checklist items there, and it's a good way for me to get started.

But once, as you can imagine, you've got started, you need to be able to connect that to your task manager.

So I do not use Evernote as my task manager. What I do is with those checklist items I tend to just copy over, and I can either be selecting the whole copy of all of the items or just individual items and pasting them into an editor to do this project.

This way I can basically take all of my notes in like pre-actions and bring them into reality where I have a tick-off and I can add a due date and information like that.

So bringing them from Evernote to Todoist makes some more of a reality.

What I do then is, for example, if I have a task like "film this video" and I made some notes inside of Evernote, what I do is I copy some of those notes over and put them inside of the comment section of the Todoist task.

In this way, when it comes around to doing the task, I don't necessarily have to go back to Evernote. If I wanted to, I could, which is great if it was a lot of detail and I couldn't store all the comments.

What I do is I add a link to the Evernote note. That way I can click out and go straight into the full information without any need of actually, you know, making it too complicated.

So once you start a project inside Todoist, you could actually use the comment abilities as well to communicate with people.

USE COMMENTS TO COMMUNICATE

Great, so that's one of the ways that I use Evernote.

I introduce it together when starting new projects.

I tend to use my Evernote as my canvas for getting all of those ideas and tasks out, and Todoist is my action board for getting those things done.

The good thing is with Todoist, you can add other people, start actioning them, assigning them as well, and delegating to other people.

So the next sort of context area is clipping things across my day.

As you can imagine, when you're in a day, you end up clipping a lot of things.

A lot of people, what they do is, instead of clipping things, they just watch them.

For example, it could be you find a really good article or a YouTube video and you're like, "Okay, I'm gonna watch this now."

That can potentially be distracting to your routine or your workflow.

So grabbing that YouTube video or that article and saving it for later does help because it helps me come back to it later, clipping all the information but not actually getting distracted at that given time.

So I will do that using

2. CLIPPING THINGS

The Todoist inbox in my day, if I see a link that I like, I'll clip it into the Todoist inbox and get it there so that it's ready. The same with Evernote. If I find a bit of research or a bit of information on the web, I used to use Web Clipper to bring that in.

Now, let's say I'm working on a project, and I get an email with a bit of information about the project. I want to clip it to both Todoist and Evernote. Both Todoist and Evernote have a specific email address you can use.

You basically can clip the email address for Todoist for a specific project and also into your Evernote inbox as well.

You put them in the BCC of the email, and all of the information, including attachments, will be sent over into Todoist and Evernote.

In Evernote, it will appear in more of a full-bleed format, but in Todoist, it will appear as a task, and in the comment, you'll have all the information. You’ll find those inside projects.

That's a good handy way to start sending things into projects or sending conversations into projects and catching that within Evernote or Todoist.

In terms of planning, planning is an important part of your day. What I'll do is use Evernote as my big vision planning tool. I tend to plan inside of Evernote, that's anything like a month onwards. Literally, I will go there to plan and action stuff.

PLANNING THINGS IN BOTH

Things ready as a big picture, but I'll use Todoist for literally my next seven days all the way up to the end of the month. I've never really stored too many tasks past a month in Todoist, so I need Todoist because I want to keep things short-term in Todoist and things long-term in Evernote.

Mainly because I feel like Todoist is more about actions and Evernote is more about vision planning and getting things ready for the future.

Actually having Todoist for actionable items helps to make it faster. It helps me to not store necessarily because I used to store my main ten goals in Todoist, and it just got messy.

So having Todoist for short-term action items really does help. Now, of course, you may have seen a couple of experiences that you can set up with Todoist and Evernote in applications like Zapier or IFTTT, which are great. I'll probably be exploring them in a future video, probably in more detail.

There are other apps as well on iPhone, like Workflow, that will help you bring those together. For me, at the moment, just using them like this, using the sort of ability to use the context and planning and visioning, is pretty much my scope of it.

But there are lots of different ways that you can do that. I'll include a few ways other people are using Todoist and Evernote to sort of go a bit further.

Anyway, guys, I hope that you enjoyed today's video. Thanks to Scott for having me here on the Simpletivity Channel. It's great to be here. I'll probably be back, and Scott, I'll be over on my channel, so feel free to subscribe to both of us in the description below.

It's free; we put out regular videos, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Just before we go, if you want to join the new Facebook group for the Keep Productive community, which is the name of my channel, feel free to add it and join in the description below. There are lots of other like-minded people that will be sharing apps and resources like this, so feel free to jump in and become part of the community.

Thank you so much to Scott at Kudos on all of these videos as normal. He is a great guy, definitely check them out. But thanks everyone for watching. Feel free to use the comments below, and I'll be there to answer any questions or queries or just check with you guys.

So guys, thanks very much. Make sure to have a great week, keep productive, and I'll see you guys very, very soon. Cheers.

hello everyone

Scot Friesen here at Simpletivity

and today I want to share with you seven websites to help you stay more productive

now in today's video I'm gonna be focusing on websites where you can get some instant gratification

where you can start to get some instant results to help you stay on task

or to help you in some other productivity area

I'm not gonna be looking at applications

so we're not gonna be looking at things where you need to be managing a project

or referring to your calendar

but things that you can use

things that I use on a regular basis

to get more out of my day

Time Date Comm

and to be more efficient so let's start off with the first one and that is time and date comm

time and date comm is where you need to go for anything related to time related to calendars time zones if you want to know when the sunsets or sunrises in a particular part of the world and I want to show with you two things that I use time and date calm most frequently with

the first one is the world clock meeting planner and I am often meeting with people around the globe and I want to try and find the ideal time to schedule that meeting so when I come to the world clock meeting planner I can pick the date where I'm planning to have that meeting or wanting to have that meeting

my first location is usually yourself so I'm gonna put in Vancouver here and then the second location perhaps I'm meeting with someone in well let's say Chicago for one of them and then let's pick someone maybe on the other on the other side of that were let's say Hong Kong

okay so we've got our three locations here this is where the three people are going to be resigning my next gonna select show timetable and then what it does is it gives me this nice sort of color coded form letting me know green as standard working hours yellow would be either early morning or late in the evening but still waking hours and then red would be typically when people are sleeping

so as I scan here obviously Vancouver and Chicago I mean we're on the same continent there's gonna be a lunging though with our friends in Hong Kong so I might say well look at this here we go maybe five o'clock my time that is a little bit later in Chicago but it's 8 a.m. in Hong Kong maybe I would propose you know one of these two times here 4:00 p.m. my time 4 or 5 p.m. my time to see if that might work with my colleagues in the other area you can even add more than three cities if you need as a part of this planning tool

now another one that I use often is their calendars here in time and date comm and the first one is the date to date calendar a duration and so here you can input any two dates and instantly find out what is the distance between those two days so let's say I pick something in the in the future here November 15th maybe that's when the project is scheduled to to end I'm going to say calculate duration and here I know instantly that's 51 days or if I want to convert that into minutes hours number of weeks and so forth I get all of those time units here as well

so if you're managing a project or if you get a date on your agenda and you want to see how many days or how many weeks in advance is that actually I often use this calculator there's a number of other calculators you can use here as well so let's continue with time and

Rescue Time

that brings us to rescue time calm

now rescue time is all about analyzing where you spend your time on your computer

rescue time you install it on your desktop computer you can actually install it on multiple devices and then what it does is it just silently tracks what applications are you using what is the active window on your system and then you get a very detailed report showing you you know what websites you visited what applications are open how long you spent in email again a very detailed report which you can dig down to

here's just an example from their homepage blue is indicating work-related activities and red is maybe fun or maybe time wasters so in this case software development that's great this person seems to be spending a lot of time on that but 15% of their day in news and opinion websites may be spending too much time there

so you can even block distracting websites by using rescue time as well so a very simple application you really don't have to do anything else other than install it let it do its thing and then you can review the results and see how you might want to change your workday change on where you focus

now speaking of blocking distracting websites and obtaining that focus we desire let's take a look at forest app dot CC

now forest first and foremost is an application for either your iOS or Android device but there is a Chrome extension so you can install this on your desktop computer as well

and forest app is all about focus so what Forest does is that when you start the application it plants a little seed just this little bud in this little pot of soil here and the goal is for you to ignore your phone or if you're using the desktop version to ignore certain websites that you determine for 30 minutes 30 straight minutes

and if you can do so during that time your little sprout here will start to grow it will start to grow into a tree and be a full-fledged tree at the end of those 30 minutes however if you pick up your phone if you do something with your phone or if you go to one of those websites that you've identified as distracting you're gonna kill your tree

so yes there's a bit of gamification going on here with the forest app your goal is to to build a forest all together right build multiple trees by obtaining your focus over multiple sessions

so again this can be a great way for work right if you have to write that article if you need to review an important document start it on your phone started on your application or identify websites such as Facebook or other websites that may tempt you and distract you and see if you can focus for 30 minutes and grow that tree next

Buzzsumo

up is buzzsumo calm and you may have heard me talk about buzzsumo before

buzzsumo calm is all about finding content that is shared the most online so you can type in a topic I'm going to type in productivity and here on the I've selected in the past month I want to take a look at you know what articles what pieces of content have been shared the most on social media

so here it gives me a nice list here I can see that this article here from inc.com has been shared the most when it comes to the topic of productivity I can even break it down by you know which social media platform so you can see an awful lot on LinkedIn quite a few on Facebook not so much on Twitter

whereas if I go down a bit further here let's take a look at this article from HBR you can see still the most on LinkedIn but it's almost even between Facebook and Twitter

so if you are looking for great content or maybe you just need some content ideas for your business perhaps you write a blog or you create content yourself buzz sumo can be a great resource to see what else is trending what are other people sharing it might give you some great ideas for your own content

next up is interacting

Survey Monkey

with our customers or really just getting anonymous feedback from anyone and that's surveymonkey.com

now chances are you've probably already heard of Survey Monkey maybe you've used it already but something that constantly surprises me is how few businesses or how few team leads make use of anonymous surveys

it's so great to be able to get that information to get feedback in real time and of course people like being honest they tend to be a lot more honest when they know that their email address or their name will not be associated with that feedback

so survey monkey makes it so easy for you to create a new survey it doesn't have to be too lengthy it can just be a few questions and then you get those responses immediately and maybe change your course of action

I've done some changes right here on simple tivity based on some of the wonderful feedback from viewers like yourself and and again try and use Survey Monkey as often as I can as long as it's appropriate

but don't forget to reach out and quiz your customers your subscribers even it's even if it's within your own company or within your own business even if it's a small team I've sent out surveys to a team five or seven individuals to get their feedback on certain questions

so Survey Monkey can help you do it all very quickly very efficiently

next up we have

Most Dangerous Writing App

the most dangerous app the most dangerous website on this list and yeah it's titled the most dangerous writing app and you'll find it at the most dangerous writing app calm

so what makes this website so dangerous well sometimes I suffer from writer's block right I I'm often a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my writing so I'll write a couple of sentences and then I'll just stare at that flashing cursor what should come next what should I write next

well any professional writer will tell you you should edit later just write just get into flow just write the content and that's where the most dangerous writing app comes in

so what you do is you select either the length of time in this case the number of minutes the number of consecutive minutes you would like to write or the number of words the number of total words that you would like to write

so when I'm writing a blog article I will often select 500 words then I select start writing and I've been given a blank canvas here where I can start writing so let's start writing something and then if I get stuck and I wait maybe I should maybe I should go in this direction if I don't input I failed it's gone everything that I've just written and remember it might have as many words as maybe 400 words on that previous screen is absolutely gone

yes the most dangerous writing app is so dangerous because you need to keep writing for that specified length of time or number of words or you will lose it all

I have used this more frequently more often than you may think many of my articles on the simple tivity comm blog actually started right here it's more important just to get those ideas out and then you can always go back and cut and paste and edit it later

so go ahead and try out even if it's just for fun the most dangerous writing app comm

and last but not least let's talk a little

Sleepy Time

bit about sleep and that brings us to sleepy time or more specifically sleepy ti.me and there's a dot or a period between the TI and the ME in time and this is all about getting the ideal length of sleep

so first we say I have to wake up at or maybe I want to wake up at let's say let's say 7:00 a.m. I'm gonna select 7:00 a.m. here and then I'm gonna select calculate and it says I should try to fall asleep at one of the following times 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. or 1 a.m. or 2:30 a.m.

well which one is it what when should I try to fall asleep well sleepy time is all about sleep cycles and you may be familiar with sleep cycles that we typically have a sleep cycle which lasts about 90 minutes so what sleepy time is doing is calculating those sleep cycles based on the information that you give it and saying these would be sort of the ideal times for you to fall asleep

now again we all have different different rhythms when it comes to our sleep and some of us need more sleep some of us need less sleep but sleepy time can be a great resource to find out when should you go to bed so you can get your optimal number of sleep cycles

you can also use this last one here at the bottom find out when to get up if you go to bed right now so if I hit that right now now remember it's in the morning when I'm recording this video it's telling me I should consider waking up at these times or at these intervals throughout the rest of the day

so those are the seven websites I'd encourage you to check out I hope you found it useful and encourage you to test out some of the websites that you've seen here

I'll also include a list and link to all of these websites in the description below if you like this video I would encourage you to give it a thumbs up and if you have not yet subscribed to simple tivity please do so we have many more videos coming up releasing new videos each and every week

thanks again for watching and remember being productive does not need to be difficult in fact it's very simple

Hello everyone, it’s Francesco here. Thank you very much to Scott for having me on the Symphony channel here on YouTube, and I really do appreciate him having me on here.

I’ve been up here before, and I love talking to you guys about productivity apps and resources. If you haven’t checked out Scott's content, if you're brand new to this video, go over and check all his stuff out. There’s everything from inbox to calendar features; it’s really amazing, so definitely worth checking out.

But in today’s video, what I wanted to do is cover Todoist. I run a very simple YouTube channel to Scott, covering productivity apps and going a bit deeper with them. So in today’s feature, we’re going to look at five Todoist hacks that you can use that will help benefit you for any day.

So let’s get stuck in.

Start Page

Over here, the first one I wanted to talk about is in the settings: it is Start Page.

Now, many people don't know about this tip, and it's actually one of the best ways to really optimize your experience.

So once you're in settings, whether you're using the web, mobile versions, go over to Preferences and you'll see Start Page.

Now Today is obviously set by default—that’s what I use personally—but you can actually create a specific thing.

So you can actually have Next Seven Days appear, so whenever you open up the app on Mac, Windows, etc., you’ll get this page.

So this is a Start Page that you land on.

Now you can see everything from Overdue, Today, or you can actually delve into a project.

Now, I previously used Todoist for my project, which had all of my sort of main targets there, but it got a bit too weird sometimes, so I just kept it with Today.

And that’s one of the best ways to start, but if you want to modify that, that’s available in Preferences and can easily be changed.

Labels

Moving down to labels as well, this is one of the things I'd recommend to everyone because, as you can see on my actual timeline of tasks for today, you can see their association to time.

So replying to all YouTube comments will take ten minutes. I have these labels set up.

So if you're in Premium, you can actually see these labels appear, and once you sign up, once you create the color, it will actually appear for five minutes when you create a task.

So, like "Eat cheesecake," for example, you can assign it with the label “Complete in five minutes.” Once that appears, you can actually click in and see all of the other tasks that you can complete in five minutes.

Now, this is actually a really effective way to keep productive and a great way if you've got five minutes to be able to spend it wisely and actually help plan in advance.

So that's one of my top tips for people who want to optimize their Todoist account.

So the other thing as well...

Project Comments

Here is the paragraph with sentences separated:

Is the idea of this project comments.

So for those who don't know, you can collect projects down the left-hand side. I have mine for all of my different activities.

But the one thing that people don't know is and do, like for example in the project.

So it can be home.

If I click project comments, you can actually add any comments here, any attachments as well, audio files, and emoji if you like.

So it's a good way actually having project comments there to add to me, maybe if you want to add targets to a specific project, or an attachment, or a voice recording telling you what that project's about for example.

So virtually a very handy way to have that, especially when you're working in teams and you want to add some more information, members, and guidelines, and information about how to use to do.

You can just pin it there, so it's actually a very useful resource.

So the other thing that I want to recommend is being able to segment to do.

So if you go over to your settings page, you'll be able to see that you obviously got your account and login information there.

But you also have this thing in projects called email in.

So you can actually email tasks into the project using a specific URL, sorry not URL, email address.

So if you copy this email address to the clipboard, all you have to do is whenever you go into email.

So if I'm on my email here and I want to send it to that.

So if I open it up, you can see that it's specific to this account.

And I say, get groceries, groceries.

Howdy's for groceries, this is a learning point for me today.

And there we go, I send that into the Todoist account.

It takes a few moments to appear, but obviously the sync works really well on Todoist.

But once that appears, I, so here we are, the email appeared and actually links back to all the other information inside the email.

So it's a great way for you to actually just quickly email in tasks, or if you want to add a thread.

Very helpful as well, so there are some of the useful.

Conclusion

Here are the sentences separated:

Tips I have inside of Todoist.

The only other recommendation in the final hack is actually on your iPhone.

To make sure that you've got Todoist saved in an extension.

I'll include the link to that in the description so you can go away and install that.

But every time you see an article, save it into Todoist.

Because it's actually a great way over here in my section.

I save any articles that I need to read and have actually been very helpful of them to clip them for later.

And it was.

I hope you enjoyed this feature.

If you haven't subscribed to Scott yet, do subscribe.

Again, subscribe to myself.

Do subscribe as well because I put out regular content which I'm sure you enjoy if you enjoy Scott's channel.

And we do regular columns as well.

So Scott will come on my channel.

He's just done a feature on Trello hacks.

So there's even more benefit to subscribing to a space.

Anyway, guys, thank you very much and thanks very much to Scott for having me.

I'm looking forward to seeing you all very soon.

Cheers you.