Not too long ago, I asked you what kinds of videos you'd like to see more of here on the Simpletivity channel.

And Mihow had a great suggestion. He said he wanted to see the best books, podcasts, and resources that helped me to be more productive.

So today I wanna share with you seven of my favorite books and podcasts that help me stay on top of my game.

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

And let's jump right in with Mr. Daniel H. Pink.

And my first book recommendation is his latest and it's called "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing".

Now you may be familiar with Daniel Pink. He's the author of books such as "Drive" and also "To Sell is Human". I've read both of those books and a few others and I've thoroughly enjoyed his style of writing.

But until recently he had never tackled the topic of time management or personal productivity. And what I love about "When" is that he backs it up with research and with real data.

So for example, did you know that you should try to avoid hospitals between the hours of 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.? In fact between two and four in the afternoon, you should probably try to avoid a lot of important things, including important meetings or important phone calls.

That's just a little bit of a teaser. You'll have to find out why by reading it for yourself. But I thoroughly enjoyed "When" by Daniel Pink.

Now I'm gonna be alternating between books and podcasts. So my first podcast recommendation might be a little surprising to some of you because it may seem as though it's not focused on productivity at first glance. I regularly listen to Freakonomics or more specifically Freakonomics Radio which was loosely based or is loosely based on the book by the same name.

Now the authors of Freakanomics go into some really interesting topics. And as you glance at some of these, you may again say, "How does this help you, Scott, to be more productive?"

But if I scroll down just a little bit further, you'll see that there are episodes such as "A Better Way to Eat", "The Zero-Minute Workout", "How Does the Behavior-Change Revolution?", "How Goes the Behavior-Change Revolution?", and "Long-term Thinking in a Start-Up Town". I love that Freakonomics interviews a wide variety of experts and professors, not just economics professors but a wide variety of professionals. And I found that it's given me some really interesting insight into my own business and my own behavior, as I'm thinking of new routines and changing the way that I go about my day.

Freakonomics releases a new episode roughly once a week and they are very very well produced. So you'll certainly, it's certainly worth your time to check out Freakonomics.

All right, back to a book recommendation. And for this I have to go to Mr. Cal Newport. Now Cal Newport's latest book is entitled, "Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World." A lot of it has to do with taking a social media fast but the book that I wanna recommend by Cal Newport is "Deep Work".

Now you've may have heard me talk about "Deep Work" in the past. It's one of my all-time favorite productivity books. "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World". And it really does come down to how do we keep and achieve the focus we need to be as successful as we can, whether that's in our work or even when that's in our personal lives.

Now Cal Newport is somewhat famously known for having almost no social media presence. I don't believe he has a Twitter or Instagram account. He's not active, even if he does, he's not active in any of those places and that's really surprising for a multiple best-selling author. But if there's one thing that Cal knows a lot about that is focus. And I really enjoyed "Deep Work", immediately started to apply a number of the things that he talks about within his book.

All right back over to a podcast recommendation and for this one I have to go to the Five AM Miracle Podcast by Mr. Jeff Sanders. Now I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff Sanders a few years ago. And I was actually a guest on his podcast at the same time. And what I love about the Five AM Miracle Podcast is that Jeff is just such a positive guy. He really gets you going, whether you're listening to this early in the morning or some other part of your day, he gives you actionable tips and a great interviewer as well. As you get to hear from a wide variety of professionals on a wide variety of topics. But it really is focused on productivity, on technology. As you see here, the episodes run typically, probably about 45 minutes in length, a pretty typical podcast length. But something that is a great way to either start your day or to keep you on that positive side as you go about your workday.

All right, it's time for another book recommendation and this may just be my favorite on this list. It may be a little bit surprising to many of you that I've included it on this list but it's quickly become one of my all-time favorite books. And that is "Never Split the Difference" by Mr. Chris Voss.

Now first, let me talk a little bit about the author, Chris Voss. I wanna highlight some text here. Chris Voss was the FBI's hostage negotiation representative for the National Security Council's hostage working group. He led international kidnapping negotiating for the Federal Bureau of Investigation for many many years. In essence, if there was ever an American who was taken hostage in a foreign country, Chris Voss was either directly or indirectly involved.

So if we're talking about negotiation, he's certainly the expert we wanna be listening to. But the focus here is not just on the author but the book itself, and it's called, "Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It". And what I love about this is that very early in the book, Mr. Voss talks about, in a hostage negotiation there's no such thing as let's meet halfway, right? There's no such thing as, "Hey, why don't you release one of the hostages and then you can go ahead and kill the other hostage." That's never ever acceptable from a hostage negotiation standpoint. And he uses the things which he learned over his decades of hostage negotiation and applied it in a real-world sense.

Now you may think if you're not in sales, is this book really gonna be helpful to you? And I would say, absolutely. We are negotiating day in and day out, regardless if you're dealing with contracts or not. Even in your personal life, you're negotiating constantly with a spouse, with your children, with your neighbors, with good friends, with family members. But especially within our work world, whether it's clients, whether it's your own boss, or coworkers. The things that are discussed, the things that are provided in this book are invaluable and I was able to apply a number of them in my own business almost immediately. Like I said before, "Never Split the Difference" has quickly become one of my all-time favorite books and I think it will help you with your productivity. You'll be able to accomplish more because you get to start thinking in a slightly different way.

Back over to my last podcast recommendation on this list. We've got one more book recommendation to go but my podcast recommendation is the Productivityist Podcast. Now I know that's a bit of a mouthful at first, Productivityist. Who is the Productivityist? Well it's Mr. Mike Vardy and he's been doing this podcast for a number of years and I like his take and I especially love his interviewing style within the podcast. He releases his podcast typically on a weekly basis and it is an interview format. He interviews a number of authors, a number of other productivity coaches and consultants. But some really great topics, some really great things that you can start to apply right away. And what I love, whether I'm reading a book or whether I'm listening to a podcast is hearing someone else's story, someone else's journey. And a lot of times that's what Mike Vardy focuses on. What was someone else's journey? How did they improve their productivity? And I love grabbing just the key tidbits or the things that really resonate with me and I try to start to apply them in my own life, see what works and see what doesn't. So if you want some helpful tips, a very entertaining podcast, be sure to check out the Productivityist Podcast.

And that brings us to my final recommendation in today's video. And with this I have to go with Angela Duckworth's book, "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance." Now again, you may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with productivity? Well I think it has all to do with productivity because it has to do with how do we push through certain barriers? What separates the most successful from everyone else? And how can you apply those techniques within your own day today?

You might wanna start off by watching Angela's TED Talk which is very good. It gives you a bit of a summary of the book itself. But again I'm a big fan of books that can back up their claims with real-world research and data. And Angela Duckworth and her team have done a number of studies in a variety of places, some of the most prestigious universities and businesses in a variety of countries. And she's come up with some great insight on how you can be more grit-worth. How you can bear down but also be more successful in the end.

Well there you have it, there are seven of my favorite books and podcasts. Books that I've read recently and podcasts that I continue to listen to, to help me be more productive.

I would love to hear from you. What are some of your recommendations? What are some of your suggestions? I'd love to hear some of your favorite books, some of your favorite podcasts. Maybe there are some other resources that you use.

Be sure to share them with me and share them with others in the comments below.

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

(logo wooshing)

• [Scott] Let's be honest, you have a lot of choice when it comes to project management tools. Whether it's Trello, Asana, or maybe Monday.com, and they all do an excellent job of managing tasks and giving you the ability to collaborate with others. However, Hive Project Management is doing something a little different. In fact, I think it is game-changing when it comes to communication. And so today, I want to show you three ways that Hive is allowing you to communicate directly, from within its system so you don't have to go anywhere else.

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

And I've talked about Hive Project Management before in the past. I really love their clean and simple layout. I also enjoy the different types of views that it gives you for managing and taking a look at all of your different projects, but the real game-changer that I wanna show you today has to do with messaging.

So here on the left-hand side, let's start with "direct messages." And you can see I've got two areas here: there's "groups" up top and then there's "direct messages" down below.

So if I wanna have a complete conversation here with Jessica, I can do so. I don't have to leave anywhere. I don't have to do it within a particular task. I can do it right here from within Hive. And beyond just simple text, I can also drag in certain tasks.

So if I drag in this task, I can talk directly about this task, so she knows exactly what I'm talking about. And of course you can click on it and go directly to that task as well.

But up top, I can also have a direct messaging conversation with my entire team, or I can create subgroups, very much just like in Slack. I can create a marketing team, and we can have our conversation here.

So this is fantastic for keeping everyone in line and not allowing them to be distracted, or to be engaged in so many other different channels, especially it reduces the need to have multiple tabs open, or other things open on the screen at the same time.

But maybe the biggest game-changer that Hive has introduced is email integration. So here in the top left-hand corner, you can see something that's labeled "inbox." And when I open this up, do you know what this is? This is my actual Gmail inbox. And you know what, it's more than just a teaser. It's more than just a view of my inbox; I can actually do everything that I can within my regular email, right here from within Hive.

So if I want to go into this email here, for example, and I want to reply to it, I've got a reply button, and I can say, "Yes, let's meet Friday." All right, and I can send it directly from within Hive. I can send my emails directly from within the Hive interface.

It gets better than that though. Probably I want to attach this to an existing task or maybe I wanna create a task. So I can create a new action if I want, but I can also create a link to an existing one here. So let's see here, I think I've got something that's called "marketing," or is it "call client back"? So I'm gonna say "call client back" here on my test project. I'm gonna say "add," and now I can go directly to this existing action.

So Jessica, for example, she's already on this one, but this conversation, this email I thought was relevant, and so now I've got that email directly here. It's embedded directly into this particular card. Here it is, "Yes, let's meet Friday." And I can continue that conversation. As I get more responses to this, it's not just gonna stay static. This message isn't going to end here because it's directly linked to my email; I'm gonna continue to see those new messages here as well. So I never have to leave Hive. I can continue to be productive, reply to my emails, see new emails, especially if they're assigned to a particular task. I can have that happen directly here from within Hive. I think this is absolutely fantastic.

Now the next thing that I wanna show you when it comes to emails: how many times have you been in a particular task and you've said to yourself, "Well, oh you know I forgot to write this email," or "I need to tell the client about this"? Well, why waste your time going to another application? Why not just hit "new message"? And now I can start to craft a brand new email, right here from within Hive.

And again, it's gonna stay connected to this particular task. So I don't have to worry if this person, after I've sent this message, I don't have to worry if someone has replied to it and I'm not going to see it. It's gonna show up right here within this particular task. It's also gonna show up in my inbox here on the left-hand side as well. So no longer do you have to send an attachment, right? Or send something that looks a little funny into your particular card or your particular task. It's gonna be the real email, and the best thing is, you can reply to it, you can forward it directly here from within Hive.

Now, if that wasn't good enough, I want to show you another communication feature which Hive has, which I think is great for keeping everyone on task. Down in the bottom right-hand corner, you can see that there's a little pop-up here that says "notes." Let me click on "notes." Now these "notes" are always available at all times. I can have personal notes, I can have notes that other people have shared with me.

Let's open up these meeting notes and see how we can effectively use this feature.

So here are a couple of meeting notes that we collected a few days ago, and I'm sure this sounds familiar to you, right? You've faithfully had someone on your team take these notes, or maybe you've taken some of these notes, and you know, you start to write things like, "Okay this one here, I think we want to get Jessica to do that one." So we're gonna put Jessica's name beside it, and maybe afterwards, you email out this list, or something like that. And you just hope, right? You just cross your fingers that Jessica opens it up, reads it, and sees that this is the thing that she is supposed to do. And maybe, you know, you got one down below here, and this one's assigned to me. And you just hope that people follow up with this and they see it.

Well, why do this? Why just add a little text-based name? Why email things after the fact? Why not take your notes and then assign it directly? So if Jessica is meant to do this, I'm just gonna highlight this, and I'm gonna create an action. And over here, I'm gonna assign Jessica to it. And let's give it a due date. Let's say we'd like this done within about the week. We've given it a due date, we've assigned it to someone, all within the meeting. This can all happen before the meeting is over.

How about the one below? The one that's supposed to be done by me. I'm gonna create an action here as well, or you can see, we can link it to an action as well. This one, I'm gonna take on. And let's say that I'm supposed to do this by the end of the year.

So now we've got something actionable here, and it's also gonna track it here below as well. So let me just minimize this for a second and let's go back here to see what is happening here.

So if we look at Jessica, here is the one that's been assigned to her. It's already shown up in her list. She didn't even have to attend that meeting. It's gonna show up here because we assigned it within those meeting notes. And when we come in here and check it off, what's gonna happen is if we open our notes back up again, let's open up those meeting notes. It's checked off, right? She didn't have to come back into the meeting notes. She didn't have to tell someone else. She came in here and checked off this task.

How about this one, "Follow up Ted about the Dallas office"? Well, let's go back here and let's see where it is with me. Here it is. It showed up in my task list. And here I can add a description, I can add, I can change the due date, email new comments, everything that you would do with a typical task. And when it's over, I'm gonna check it off, so maybe the next time we get together in our follow-up meeting, yeah, everyone's gonna see that it's been checked off, that we followed up with those particular action items.

No longer are you gonna have meeting notes or meeting action items that fall by the wayside or just get ignored. Why not convert those notes directly into actions in the middle of the meeting or immediately after?

So I am pretty excited about the way that Hive has integrated communication, whether that's email, whether that's direct messaging, or assigning things directly from their notebook. I think this is an amazing way for them to keep everyone in line and on top of what they need to do.

So, I'd love to hear from you next, what did you think about these features here within Hive? Let me know, down below, in the comments.

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

Hello everyone Scott Friesen here at simple tivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress and today I am excited because I don't do a lot of contests I don't do a lot of giveaways but I wanted to say thank you for all of my many many subscribers we just recently hit the 100,000 subscriber mark so thank you so much for being a part of this journey and for continuing to support the simple tivity channel what

Special Announcement

I've got here today is a copy of the self genil bye best self and although I talk primarily about technology and apps and tools sometimes we need some analog

tools to help us work at our productive best now just before I tell you how to enter this week's contest I have another special announcement starting this next Monday registration for the reset productivity boot camp is going to open up now if you have not heard of the reset boot camp before this is an online course that I deliver live twice a year

Reset Boot Camp

Yes

Live that's what makes it so unique and it's one of the reasons why I enjoy delivering it so much

This isn't something that I pre-recorded in the past

It's not some collection of videos that I did back in 2013 and I just hit play

This is something that I continue to revise and change over time based on the the needs of our surroundings and the needs of Technology and applications and your day to day

So if you would like to join me for the spring class of the Reset Productivity Boot Camp be sure to check out Simpletivity.com/reset

You can also find a link in the description below if you'd like to learn more about the program

And if you want to be notified when registration opens on Monday

All right back to the contest

Giveaway

Back to the giveaway

If you would like to receive this for free all you have to do is three things

Number one make sure you're a subscriber here to the channel it can't be a subscriber giveaway if you don't actually subscribe

Number two make sure that you give this video a thumbs up

And last but not least in the comments down below tell me why you would like to receive this copy of the Self Genil

Those are the only three things that you need to do

Now this contest is only gonna be open for 72 hours so make sure that you get those comments in soon

And I will be notifying the winner right here in the comments in just a few days

Thank you so much again for subscribing to the channel

I hope you check out the Reset Productivity Boot Camp

I hope many of you join me for this spring class

And last but not least remember being productive does not need to be difficult in fact it's very simple.

If you manage your own business or are promoting something special, you know how important it is to have social media on your side, and producing something that is professional-looking yet won't take a great deal of time so you can promote that event or that product or that special sale.

Well, in today's video, I wanna show you how to create some great social media marketing in just minutes by using PosterMyWall.

Hello, everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And one of the things that I love about PosterMyWall is not only that it takes just a few minutes, but check out all these cool video templates in which they have.

In fact, PosterMyWall has over 150,000 different templates to get you started. No, these are things that you're just gonna use off-the-shelf, but you can replace your logo, your name. You can do whatever you want and upload your own content as well in just a few minutes and produce something pretty special.

So let me show you some of my stuff and some of the things that I've created in just a matter of minutes, and I wanna show you how easy it is to replace your logo, use your own branding, such as your own color, etc. So that you can produce great social media images, whether that's Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter or wherever you are posting this type of content.

So to get started, all I need to do is select New here on the left-hand side, and in this case, I'm gonna choose a new design. Now, like I said, there's over 150,000 different templates to choose from, and they've categorized it by the different purposes that perhaps you are after. I'm gonna choose a small business here because I wanna show you something here that I was working on a little bit earlier and just how easy I can take a template here within PosterMyWall and create something special.

So I'm gonna use this one here which is labeled Big Sale, something like that. Now, of course, I can preview all of the things that I see here. I can just click on them. It shows me a bit about a better preview. That seems pretty enticing, right, to have a video actually as a part of your promotion here, but I'm gonna go back to this big sale here, and I'm gonna choose customize my template.

So here within this window, I can now fully edit every aspect of this template. So I can edit out the text. I can even go so far as move these little images. If I don't like where that little green arrow is, I can just click and drag and move it around. Don't need this text? Well, let me just click on it and delete it and so forth.

So as you can see, I can have as much control as I want as I go about editing this image. So let's say I actually like the first part of this. Big sale up to. Well, I'm not gonna offer 40% off. I'm gonna offer let's say 25% off, sounds good, and for this one here, I'm gonna say. I'm actually gonna give them a date in this case. So I'm gonna say until April 30th. How about that?

And you know what? I want that to stand out a little bit more. So if I go over here to the right, I can add some more editing options as well. I'm gonna change the size of this. Punch it up a little bit there, and, yeah, let's drag it down, maybe just away from that little pink background there, until, or maybe just overlaying it there, until April 30th.

And then down below here, I don't want everything here. I don't wanna give this address. That's obviously not my address, but what about if I put my website address? I'm gonna type in simpletivity.com, and no one's gonna see that. So let's pump up the size of that, as well. You know what? On second thought, wouldn't it be great if I had my logo in here?

So let's actually delete that. I'm gonna go over here to the left, and here I can upload a photo to my images here. So if I say add from my photos, I already uploaded my logo a little while earlier. I'm gonna select this and say add photo, and so now, I've got my actual logo here, but you know what? That might clash a little bit because it's got a bit of a darker blue here in the background.

I wonder how I could fix that? Here you can see the background color. I'm gonna click on that. I know my branding hex color. 0079BF. I'm gonna hit enter, and now I've got that blue there. So it's gonna blend in with that, but I still have these darker images. So I'm gonna click on that. I'm gonna hit delete. I'm gonna click on this one and hit delete. Now that's starting to look a bit better.

I'm gonna go down here, and the only thing I don't like is that this is sort of bleeding over top of these images. See the sharp corner here and how this is over this little graphic here. If I click on this and say send to back, that should be able to fix, there we go. Now I'm sort of overlaying it. Now I'm over top of that. If I don't like this here, again, I can just cover this and drag it over to the left so that my logo is better seen.

Now the last thing I wanna do here is add something extra special to my graphic. I wanna add a little extra pizzazz. Here you can see on the right-hand side that PosterMyWall has a brand new feature called animation. So if I select an option here, let's start with fade, you can see that it's gonna bring it even that much more to life when my viewers see it. I particularly like slide. I think that's really eye-catching, and I can further make changes here, including the speed, maybe I want it to come from the left-hand side. I can do that.

This is a fantastic way to add just a little extra oomph to your social media marketing. However, you're probably looking at this with me and saying, "This looks a bit more like a traditional poster." Now that is gonna look fine on a place like Facebook, but what about some of the other places where I intend to post this, like Instagram or Twitter?

Well, one of the great things is that you can see there is this resize button at the top of your screen. So if I select resize, it's gonna open up this little window, and I can start with more traditional marketing, right, like a flyer or a poster or a banner, but if I come down here, if I scroll down to social media, I'm gonna select Instagram post, and I'm also gonna select a Facebook shared image. It even tells me the dimensions right here.

So we can tell Instagram, of course, is a square, one by one, and then Facebook has its own specified dimensions here as well. So I've got both of them listed down below. I'm gonna say copy and resize, and in just a moment, it's gonna take the image that I had, it's gonna keep the one that we just had, but it's gonna show me other versions of this image.

So this is what I love here. We now are looking at the Facebook-optimized image right here. Now as you can see, it's blown it up a little bit. So I've got a bit more of a widescreen view here. You can actually see more of these graphics, right? That yellow didn't used to be. We only used to see a sliver of that in the poster one, but if I drag things out even a little bit more, maybe I wanna bring the yellow down a little bit like this. I can make it a little more eye-catching like that. Maybe drag something like this over there. Anything like that that I wanna touch up just for the Facebook post, I can do so, and of course it's gonna produce an Instagram post of this as well, more of a square, one-by-one dimension, as well.

So if you're needing to create great high-quality images for your social media marketing, be sure to check out PosterMyWall. Now I'd love to hear from you next, which social media platform are you spending more and more time on these days? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching, and remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

hello everyone Scott Friesen here at simple tivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress and I've got a question for you do you like to win free stuff well in

today's video is just for you because

What is Time Tracker

I'd like to send you the time euler time tracker haven't heard of time euler

Before well let me tell you what it is and how it works tanja ler is actually a physical device which sits on your desk and you get to decide what are the different things

What are the different work activities that you want to track and when you're

Engaged in that activity all you have to do is just flip the time Euler device and it will track it for you whether you're doing it on your computer or maybe you're just taking a phone call or doing something else so all you need to

How to Use

Do is write down those different activities or you can add these stickers that come with time Euler itself then just flip time Euler face up to the activity that you're actually engaged in and remember this often makes it a lot more reliable than some of our desktop trackers because just because an application is open doesn't necessarily

Mean that you're engaged with it and what about if you're in a face-to-face meeting or something away from your desk you can always turn time Euler and record that as well but last but not least because time Euler is bluetooth and it connects directly to your phone or to your computer you can track all that information see where you're

Wasting time and see how you can adjust your schedule so if you would like to

Win time Euler yourself this is an $89 value all you have to do are these three

Things number one make sure you're a

Giveaway

Subscriber right here to the simple activity channel number two give this video a thumbs up and three last but certainly not least in the comments down below tell me why you would like to receive the time Euler tracker do those three things and I will be picking a winner one week from today so make sure you get those comments in right away for your chance to win best of luck to everyone and remember being productive does not need to be difficult in fact it's very simple

There are so many different tools available to you and I when it comes to managing our projects, but sometimes, simpler is so much better.

In today's video, I wanna showcase with you a very simple yet very effective tool for managing projects and especially for communicating with your team or perhaps with your clients.

I want to give you a full tour of an application called AirSend.

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

And one of the things that I like about AirSend is that it combines sort of three major components that I think truly we are all looking for in a project manager.

We want effective communication.

We want to be able to track and manage our tasks and our actions.

And we also want a place to store our files and to be able to reference those files as well.

And I think AirSend does a really great job of combining all three of those components.

So let me give you a little lay of the land here.

Here I am within my AirSend account.

On the left hand side, we have our different channels.

Now, you may be familiar to channels when it comes to other applications such as Slack.

This can be very, very helpful because you probably have either different departments or different themes or different projects that you want to keep separated.

You don't want all of that information coming at you in the exact same channel or the exact same messaging feeds.

So, whether it's a marketing project, whether it's a PR team, or here I've selected something that's called the Simpletivity Community, I can now focus on this task or this area of my business, and then jump into the other ones as I need to with just a simple single click.

Now, in the middle of the screen here, and the bulk of our screen here, is really our communication feed.

But it's a lot more than just comments.

It's a lot more than just texting.

This area is also going to give us updates on when people add or complete actions, when they upload files, and when they respond to other things as well.

And what I love about this type of activity feed is it allows you to catch up very quickly and easily.

I can just scan up perhaps a few hours and see what were the most recent comments that were related to this particular channel, or who completed a task, and it's going to show up right here in this feed.

So often I hear complaints from people saying that they didn't get a notification from their project management tool, or they didn't know where to find out the latest information and what was going on.

It's really hard to ignore that.

It's hard to miss that in a layout such as this within AirSend.

We're going to dive into this in a little deeper in just a minute here, but let's look at the right hand side here where we have our actions.

Now, it is a fairly simplified task list.

I'm going to show you how to set up an action in just a moment.

But the nice thing is is that nothing here feels too squished, right?

I can see my channels, I can see the feed, and I can see my actions as well.

And this area on the right also will give us our full file folder menu.

And yes, you can upload as many files as you like, both the ones that are attached or mentioned in the comment, or you can add additional files as well.

And we also have a Wiki available to us as well.

So if you want to create something that is maybe semipermanent, or maybe you just want to post an update, a weekly update or when the next weekly meeting is, you can do so here as well.

And again, it doesn't feel too squished.

When it comes to the file format here, I can easily dive down and select the file that I'm looking for.

I can preview it here.

It also comes with a handy search bar as well.

So if I want to search for that recent file that I just pulled up, I can search and quickly and easily pull it up.

And here you can see sort of the full file folder structure that is available right here within AirSend.

So let's dive in a little deeper into some of my favorite features here within AirSend.

First thing first has to do with the comment section or the activity window here.

Of course I can quickly and easily reply or react to any of the messages up above, and I can start and I can attach other documents right here to a new message.

But one of the things that I like here is that I can actually choose if I want to post this message just here within the activity feed, within AirSend, or if I select this option, I can also post the message and send an email.

The reason why I like this option is that you're probably aware that we all work a little differently.

And you probably work with some individuals who just don't spend much time in your chosen project management tool.

So depending on the message, you can choose this option.

You can see the icon turns to an envelope, and now everyone within this community is going to receive an email in addition.

Now, it is going to stay with this until you change it back at your own choosing.

But what I've been doing recently is that depending on my message, I may select it to an email, just if I want to ensure that everyone is going to get that message regardless of the last time that they've logged into AirSend.

Now, the other thing that I want to look at here has to do with our actions.

Here on the right hand side, you can see a combination of some actions.

Some are overdue, in fact, a number of them are overdue.

That's why they're listed with a red color.

This one is an orange color because it's coming up in about a week's time.

But let's start by adding a new action.

And it is fairly simple, right?

Let's email out our latest newsletter, and I can add an additional description here if I want to.

I do like that it's fairly easy for me to find people.

I don't need to know their username.

I can just go and grab them here and attach them to my list just by typing in their name.

And then I'm going to say, yeah, let's include a due date to maybe a week from today and set okay.

I can create that action.

And of course it is going to be added here at the bottom of my action list.

But of course, you'll also see that it is updated here in the activity feed.

And I think this is what's so helpful is that others can be notified immediately of what's going on or the next time that they jump into the channel, they can see what's happening as well.

Sticking with the actions, you can also separate between an actions, all of the actions for your community or your channel, I should say, and also your individual actions.

So here you can see, here is a task that is assigned just to me.

So if I want to work in this mode, I can do so as well.

But another nice thing is that you can create those actions directly from the activity feed.

So here you can see this little icon.

If I select it, all I need to do is select reminder, and I can immediately start creating this new action.

I can give it a name, but it's already helped me out in a few ways.

In the description, it will reference, or it will include the comment that I just clicked on.

And it already has my dummy username here because I was the one on who made that comment.

So it's assuming that I may want to assign that task or assign that action to that individual, something else which is really helpful just to save you a few steps when you are creating those new actions.

So if you are looking for something that is not only simple, but something that's going to keep everything on the same screen so that you don't have to jump back and forth between a project management tool and a communication tool, or, chances are, your project management tool already has some communication built in, but it's buried in the back, AirSend may be a great alternative to you.

If you want to learn more, you can try AirSend for yourself at AirSend.io.

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

In fact, it's very simple.

After five years here on YouTube and more than 250 videos later, one of the most common questions I receive is, "Scott, how do you get that yellow highlight around your cursor?"

Well, in today's video, I'm going to show you how I do it and how I use Camtasia to produce my videos.

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

This particular question about how I apply this yellow highlight is usually followed by comments such as, "It makes watching your videos so much easier, Scott. I love that I can always follow your cursor, know what you're doing," and especially if I'm doing other things, such as maybe zooming in on particular content and zooming out.

This is especially helpful if I'm highlighting certain fields or maybe a dropdown menu in one of the software that I'm covering.

So, in order to do this, I use a software called Camtasia.

Now, for some of you, this may be brand new and you have not heard of Camtasia. For others, you may associate Camtasia exclusively with training and producing training videos.

But I actually use Camtasia for almost all of my video content right here on the Simpletivity channel, both for screen recording and for editing that content afterward.

Recording

So let's get started right here within the Camtasia interface.

Now, at first glance, this may look a little intimidating. There's an awful lot of options that are available to you here within Camtasia. However, compared to many more expensive and more complicated software, I find that Camtasia boils it down to its essentials. And I especially like their menu layout, the choice of words, and the design that they've used so that even a novice—even someone with very limited skills when it comes to video editing—can produce polished and professional content.

But let's get started with the recording process.

Here in the top left-hand corner, we've got this big red recording button, and if I select this, what it's going to do is give me this recording console down below. Now, I can make a few different choices here if I want to record my entire screen or maybe I just want to record a certain section of my screen. I can also choose if I want to record my webcam. And sometimes you may see that I'll have my image in the top left-hand corner as a part of some of my videos. Lastly, you can choose the microphone that you need and adjust your levels. But other than that, you're pretty much ready to go right out of the gate.

So if I hit this record button, it's going to give me a brief countdown: 3, 2, 1, and now everything that I'm doing here, as I navigate, as I go from website to website, whatever I do on my computer screen, it is going to be recorded. Now, none of those effects are going to appear while you're recording; we're going to have to apply those afterward.

But let's just go through here for a second. Maybe I scroll down here, maybe I want to open up this note. I'm going to do something here, I'm going to show you something, and then I'm going to close it down.

When I'm all done, all I need to do is open up this recording console, and I can either pause if I want to go to the next step in my recording, maybe I wasn't happy with this recording, so I can delete it and try again. But if I am pleased with it, all I need to do is hit stop, and that's going to bring me right back here to Camtasia. And here it has actually added it to my media bin. So now I can drag it onto my timeline down below, I can start cutting out parts that I don't want and start to build it in with everything else in my video workflow.

So let me take something that we recorded earlier, and I'm going to drag it down onto the timeline.

Now here you can piece together a large number of files, whether it's a collection of videos or you can also import pictures and images if you want to include them in your files as well.

One of the first things that I like to do is yes, add that little highlight, and I also like to add a bit of an accent to my cursor so that you know when I have clicked on something.

So let's go ahead and do that. Here within Camtasia, I'm going to click on this little more option here, and we see an option here for cursor effects. The first one we see here is this cursor highlight.

So if I apply this, all I need to do is click and drag it onto the image or the part of my video file that I would like to add it to, because maybe I don't want to add it to the entire video. Maybe I just want to add it to a portion.

Here in the middle of the screen in the preview pane, you can see that that yellow highlight has been added. So as I go around, as I preview and drag through this video, you can see that we now have this yellow cursor highlight.

But let's go to the left click here, and you can see that there's some other options that we can add. So, for example, maybe I want a little red highlight to happen whenever I click the cursor, or maybe I want this little crosshairs, this little scope when it happens.

In some of my earlier videos, I used to use this little ripple effect, but I found that it was a little too distracting to have that much water ripple happening on screen. So what I settled on was this one called left click warp.

And just like we did with the cursor highlight, we can just click and drag it onto the part of the video where we want to add it. So the next time that I click something here, let's see when I go to open up—let me drag this over a little bit.

Just before I open this up, you will see, there we go. There's that little indentation so you knew that I clicked on that particular icon.

Last but not least, the other effect that I use most frequently is the ability to zoom in.

So for here, I'm going to click on animations, and this I find is most effective, especially in my tutorials, when I may be showing you something that is only a fraction of the screen, but I want to make sure that you know which checkbox or dropdown or what I'm doing in that given moment.

So here, what I can do—we have sort of two preview panes on the right-hand side or the main preview pane. This is what you're getting to see or what viewers are going to see within your video.

But on the left-hand side, all I need to do is actually drag the little box here to see what do I want to zoom in on. So now you can see this is what it's going to look like when the video is finished.

I can zoom in for this period of time, and then after, when I'm done, let's say I've gone in here and I've hit close, all I need to do is hit this button, which is called scaled to fit.

And so if I go back, let me just preview that for you for a second. So I'm just going to pull it back a few seconds before I zoom in. I'm going to hit play so I can actually preview the video. There it's going to zoom in, it's going to show you what's going on, and then a few seconds later, when I tell it to, it's going to zoom back out.

Adding Text

But of course, Camtasia is so much more than just mouse effects. And one of the things that I use Camtasia for frequently is adding text to my videos.

So here under Annotations, all I need to do is choose one of these pre-set layouts, which are all customizable. I can change the color and just need to drag it onto the video where I want it to be placed.

So here I can come in and give it the new video title. Something really exciting like that. I can change the size of it, I can change the font, and I can add some additional effects to this as well so it whooshes into the screen or maybe it fades in at a particular time.

The other thing that I use quite frequently within Camtasia is also the ability to spotlight different areas of the video.

So if I want to highlight a certain area, however, without zooming in, I can use the spotlight feature, and sometimes I also use this one which is pixelate. So let’s say that I’ve got something here—let me drag this out of the way for a second.

Let’s see, I’ve got something personal here, such as my personal email address or email account. I can drag this onto the screen and cover it over a certain section that I don’t exactly want you to see all of those details.

On the right-hand side, you can make further adjustments. So maybe that’s too extreme; that almost looks like I’ve blanked it out with a white square or something like that. But I can bring this down, so you still can’t read it but it is blocking out that information.

So a large number of effects and things that you can add to really polish up your video.

Now, if Camtasia is too pricey for your needs and for your business, I would encourage you to check out my video on Chrome extensions. Included in it, I share with you a free alternative for recording your screen.

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

Why your calendar is so important

- Is your calendar helping you to be more productive or is it more of an obstacle as a part of your week? Well, in today's video I wanna show you how to prioritize your calendar and get so much more out of your schedule.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And I honestly feel like our calendars are the bedrock or the foundation of any productivity system.

It all starts with our schedule because this is not only where people are inviting us to different events and appointments and meetings but it's where we create time for ourselves. So let me show you how you can do that.

And in today's video we're gonna be using Woven as our calendar. So here within Woven we are actually viewing my Google Calendar

How to analyze your scheduled time

but Woven gives me a lot of extra superpowers. And one of those things is allowing me to see where I am actually spending my time. Here on the left-hand side you can see that I've got a bunch of great analytical data that I can analyze or I can review from time to time to make sure that I'm being the most efficient with the time that I have.

So for example here, I can see that I've got 10 events scheduled for this week a total of just over 10 hours I've got 34 hours available of focus time. Meaning if you subtract out all of these events my working hours are going to allow me for a 34 additional hours.

That seems like a lot of time but we know that that can get eaten up pretty quickly. And then I can also see here at a glance that I've got a total of three hours of video calls which let's be honest in today's environment

is very, very little. But down below it gets even better here I've got a variety of different tags actually telling me where I am spending my time. So for example, I've got three hours worth of education, two hours worth of personal appointments or personal meetings,

Using event tags with Woven

I've got something called management and team. So let's dive into this a little bit deeper. Let's say I need to schedule an event here later today on Tuesday. So I'm going to click here to open up a new event.

And let's say this is a meeting with Jen, okay? So I'm going to schedule a meeting here and I can choose more options or I can come back and choose this a little bit later.

So what I like about Woven here is that I can add additional tags like you just saw in my analytics area so I can categorize this particular meeting. So if I click on private tags, I can say well this is team related because Jen's a part of my team.

I can start just typing in the first few letters. And yeah, I've already created that tag so I can put team. I can add additional tags if I like but in this example I'm just going to leave it with this one. Why I like this over other calendars or basic calendar features is that yeah you can color code any of your other calendars. Google Calendar is a very good example of this

but you can't get a nice summary of those different calendars and you have to toggle through them at all times. Here I can add tags directly to my meeting events themselves and now I can see where I'm spending or where I'm a lot in my time here.

Viewing the Busy Bar in Month view

Now, another feature that I love here about Woven that helps me especially identify if I have conflicts or if someone calls me up out of the blue and say, "Scott, when can you meet later this week?" Is something called the busy bar. So let me show you this,

I'm going to convert to my monthly view here for a moment. And here you can see, I don't have a lot scheduled for the remainder of this month but for this week you can see that I've got this little bar at the top of each day. It's actually giving me a summary of my time. So for example,

I'm free early in the morning and later in the evening and between eight and five, I've got two hours and 30 minutes that have already been scheduled. You can see as this bar slowly moves to the right my day will become more and more filled.

So I can see at a glance that Thursday is probably my busiest day so far, right? I've got four hours booked already but Friday is pretty open let's be honest. I've got a fair amount of available time on most of my other days but here on my Wednesday, I've got this little red color and what that's telling me is that I have at least one double booking.

I've got 30 minutes in conflict here. So if I click on that, of course it's gonna take me directly to that day and sure enough I can see that I've got this one-on-one meeting with Brian but it's scheduled where I have this budget review meeting as well.

So I better update this meeting maybe I need to push it back maybe push it a little bit later in the day so I can schedule that meeting with Brian and I will no longer have any conflicts there as a result. But there's another thing that really helps me prioritize

How to use meeting templates in Woven

my calendar as well and it makes dealing with my calendar so much more efficient

and that is using templates. And that's one of the great features here within Woven

is creating recurring meetings or the types of meetings that you will be using on a regular basis, fill it in with all the information you need such as a video call link, such as the participants there and you can instantly create those meetings in a matter of seconds.

So for example let's say I need to create a quick 20 minute check-in meeting. Well, I've already created such a template. I just wanna be able to add it here on Friday afternoon. So all I need to do is click on one of these spaces here

as if I was going to enter in a new event but you can see here before I enter in the event name, down below I've got a summary of some of my top templates. So these are templates that I've already created in the past and one of them here is my team check-in meeting. You'll see it even has the people pre-populated within that. So if I click that it's instantly going to create that meeting it has the video link.

Let me schedule it and we'll go into those details here. If I open this up, you can see on the left-hand side I already have the different people that have been invited.

Yes, I'm going the three have already been sent their invitations here, I've got my custom video link here for the video call down below, I've got the password information down below here as well. I could custom at a tag or anything else that I want to this

in just a single click I've created that meeting with all of the contents, all of the people, all the information that I need for that particular meeting. So templates can be really, really powerful.

Adding Tasks as All Day Events with templates

Now, one of my favorite tips for being more efficient and more productive is to use your all day events area of your calendar to manage your tasks at least your most important tasks. Why? Well, 'cause you can't ignore it.

Here you can see I've got an example called call Bill regarding the sales flyer and no matter how far I scroll up and down it's always going to be visible at the top of my day. And it doesn't matter what view I go into whether it's a daily view or a monthly view it's always going to be here.

So this is another great use of using templates within Woven. So I can create special tasks at the top of my all day event area and not have to remember to check or uncheck certain things as I'm doing it.

So let me walk you through how to create a template right here within Woven this time especially for tasks or to do's. So all you need to do is hit this plus button here at the top and select template.

Now, in this case I'm going to give it a simple name. You can give it a different name than the task itself, right? Because when we create this particular event we wanna add in the details of the task ourselves. So I'm gonna call this one task that's gonna be the name of the template but down below we can leave the event title blank, right?

Because it might be an email, it might be a project whatever that task is going to be.

Next we're gonna look at the duration and no I don't want it to be an hour or a couple of minutes I'm gonna select custom and I get to say one day because remember I want it to appear up here at the top. I'm going to say done, I'm gonna come down

and maybe pick a different color. I'm going to choose that same dark gray that we had for this existing one here. And if I don't wanna reminder I can just come over here, I can select this and actually click it off and remove it or just adjust the existing reminder there.

The last thing that we want to make sure we do if we are using this template for tasks is we don't want to show it as busy because that would mean as soon as we add a task to any day it's gonna block off our calendar from other people

from either booking it or for showing our own availability. So I'm gonna come here and say free.Now I could add a private tag, I could add other information as well

but I'm going to leave this is at the moment. So now that that task is saved

if I want to add a task here on Thursday all I have to do is click this all day event area,

I'm gonna select task and now it's waiting for me to input that information. So maybe I need to email Jen regarding our new meeting or something along those lines. I'm going to hit schedule and boom! There it is at the top of my Thursday, it's listed as free.

So it's not going to be in conflict with my other meetings. And I can add other tasks that I need to there in the all day event area.

Sharing your best calendar tips

So I'd love to hear from you next. What kind of tips do you have for me and the Simpletivity community to be more productive and efficient with your calendar?

Be sure to share your best ones down in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching. If you got value out of today's video make sure you subscribe right here

to these Simpletivity channel. And remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Pros and Cons of Asana

[Scott] There are many project management tools which are vying for your attention, and near the top of that list is Asana.

Now, Asana is an excellent project management tool, but sometimes I feel that some other features are lacking.

On top of that, it can get really pricey when you start to add more and more team members.

So in today's video, I wanna introduce you to Backlog, a tool which has many more features and the price is better as well.

So let's dive in.

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

Today we're taking a look at Backlog, and here we are within the dashboard.

Tour of the Backlog Dashboard

Now, one of the things that I like about Backlog is just how clean the look is, yet it gives us some fantastic functionality.

Here I'm taking a look at my dashboard, and it breaks it down by my projects here on the left.

You can see I'm a member of three different projects at this point in time.

On the right-hand side, we have recent updates, so I can always be in the know when it comes to these projects.

I can see that Melissa has been updating a number of issues here within a few different projects, in particular the marketing project here.

Yes, even if I hover over some of this information, I get some further detailed information to the left.

Down below, I've got my issues, so these are the things that I'm currently assigned to as well.

Again, a nice, quick snapshot of what's going on today and where I should be putting my attention.

But let's stick with navigation because what I really love about Backlog is this menu bar here at the top.

For example, if I click on projects, not only does it give me this expanded view and remember I can access this almost anywhere, but I don't have to just dive into the projects themselves.

I can go immediately to a certain area or a certain view such as a board view or a Gantt chart view.

Viewing Issues & Tasks in Backlog

I can add an issue or just view those issues myself.

Let's start by clicking on those issues.

Here we are now within this marketing project, and I can see these are the two issues that I'm assigned at this given time.

Again, I can dive right into my day and start my work.

But I can filter this information in so many different ways.

If I wanna see all of the issues at once, I can do so here and I can quickly and easily filter this information by a variety of different tools.

This is where I find things like Asana and Trello are really lacking when it comes to reporting and filtering out all of this information.

I can even quickly adjust my view options for what I'm seeing here in terms of the results per page and the different columns that are being displayed to me.

This view down below actually reminds me a little bit of monday.com, which I am actually a fan of.

It gives me lots of nice visuals here.

I can sort by a variety of different ways when things were created, if I wanna sort by priority or who it's assigned to, and I can even save these filters as well.

Sharing Reports & Filters in Backlog

In fact, one of the features that is so simple but I think is so powerful is that not only can I save this as a filter, I can save a customized filter here on this screen, but I can share it quickly and easily with a short URL.

If I wanna share this with someone else in my team, I can do so by just texting them this link or adding it to an email or putting it in some other document.

I can do so here as well.

Again, we go much further than just the view that we are looking at.

Board & Gantt Chart Views in Backlog

Here in Backlog on the left-hand side, you can see we can also view this information in a more traditional Kanban style here of a board.

Here, I'm just looking at Katrina and the things that she's assigned to here.

Maybe for a second here, this actually needs to go back.

We need to go back and do a little bit more work there, so I'm gonna drag that over here.

I always have this Assign to Myself button available on almost every screen, which is great.

I don't have to remember a quick key.

I don’t need to come here to a dropdown menu.

I can quickly see what's going on here and say, you know what, I'm actually done that campaign brief.

I'm gonna move it over here to in review.

But we also have a Gantt chart view which is available to us.

It’s built right in.

No, this is not an extension.

No, it is not an add-on.

You have the Gantt chart built right in, and we can still filter it by some of these categories and some of these options up above.

Creating Issues & Tasks in Backlog

But let's back up just one step, because I wanna show you how easy it is to create a new issue or new tasks from scratch.

Here we are back on the dashboard page, and I already showed you how to access projects up here.

But even if I'm looking at my project list down below, let's say, I wanna add an issue here under support.

I love that I don't have to click on support to get into it first.

I can just add an issue to it right away.

Here we are, perhaps I'm reporting a new task and I'm just gonna say, "Email team about the virtual conference that is coming up."

I can add as much detail here within the description area, including mentioning others as I want.

But down below, this is where I think Backlog is really stretching its muscle.

For example, I can quickly and easily assign it to myself.

I don't have to go find myself here in the dropdown menu.

I can select from a variety of different priorities if I want.

But these two fields in particular, milestone and version, I think are most helpful where you can customize these selections.

For example, if I'm a part of a development team, maybe I wanna track the different versions where this task is assigned to.

I'm gonna say 2.7.3.

I can quickly and easily add more versions or add more milestones if I want.

I can also add customized categories as well.

I'm gonna quickly slap on a due date to this issue.

I can attach a file, and then this last one I find is very helpful as well.

I can notify someone else on my team as well.

I don't have to assign them.

Create Reference Material with Wikis

Remember, I'm not assigning them to this task, but I'm just letting them know what's happening here as I create this issue.

Another great feature of Backlog is the ability to create reference material without having to create a dummy issue or a task which really isn't meaningful.

How often have you been in Asana or Trello and you've had to just create something that wasn't really a task, but it just had reference material?

Or you had to set up some type of extension that reached out to Google Docs or some other cloud-based service.

Well, within each project, you have your own Wiki page.

This is essentially a place where you can create as much reference material as you need to.

For example, here, if I'm a part of a marketing team, you can see here on the right-hand side, there's a Wiki here called Design Guidelines where it's actually telling me the proper font type and the proper colors that we use for our particular brand.

Here's a Requirements Template.

You can see the different project names, the goals, and the key metrics.

So everyone on your team can have access to this, and they can find it in an easy-to-use location.

It’s not gonna be messed up or it's not gonna cloud out other issues, which are not real issues when you're trying to add this information within your projects.

Backlog vs Asana Pricing

Last but not least, let's talk a little bit about pricing.

I think Asana's pricing is fairly competitive when we're looking at other tools such as Trello or monday.com.

Here you can see their premium plan starts at $11 per month, but that is per user.

In fact, that $11 is if you choose to go with their annual plan.

If you bump up to business, you're going to $25 a month, and that is per user.

I know there's a lot of people who are very tentative because, who's a new user?

Can I afford to add a new team member?

Depending on the size of your operation, sometimes this can get very expensive.

Alternatively, let's take a look at Backlog's pricing.

Now, they both have a free option, and that may be enough for you at least to get started out.

But if you want a little more users and a few more projects, you're gonna need to upgrade to their starter plan, which starts at $35 a month.

You may think that that's more expensive, but let's look at the fine print.

That $35 a month includes 30 users.

So even if you have a team of 10, you're paying as little as $3.50 per user.

If you jump up to their standard plan at a hundred dollars a month, that's unlimited users.

So you're capped out.

You don't have to stop at just 10 members of your team or whatever your budget can handle, a hundred dollars a month with unlimited users.

So if you're frustrated with tools such as Asana or Trello, I encourage you to give Backlog a try.

You can find out more by clicking the link in the description below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.