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Why daily schedules can be helpful

Many of you have asked me, 'Scott, what does your typical workday look like?'

Well, in this video, I'm gonna walk you through hour by hour what an average workday looks for me.

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

And I'm gonna be using Google Calendar here.

I'm gonna throw on emojis and titles so you can see exactly how I sort of structure and break out my day.

I have always found it very helpful to take a glance at other people's schedules, whether they're famous people such as Benjamin Franklin, or just my next door neighbor, just to get some ideas and inspiration as I've experimented on my own schedule.

So hopefully, you find this valuable and maybe there's some ideas in here as well.

Morning Routine

Now I used to start my day off bright and early at 5:00 a.m.

This was particularly useful when I had young children and I wanted to get a number of things done before they awoke, and before the rest of my family awoke in the morning.

However, over the last few years, I've adjusted that a little bit, and I start my day off sometime between 6:00 a.m and 6:30.

So let's find something like a sunshine icon here, and I'm going to say, 'wake up.'

Now, you're probably asking yourself, what do you mean you're getting up sometime between 6 and 6:30?

Don't you set an alarm?

Yes, I do.

But it's a little different than what I did in the past.

About a year ago, I purchased what's called a wake up light, meaning that it tries to mimic the effects of a sunrise.

So this little light alarm starts off very dim, but over the course of the half hour it gets brighter and brighter and brighter.

So depending on how deep I am in my sleep, it will awake me sometime within that half hour range.

I really, really like this wake up light and prefer to wake up this way rather than adjusting an alarm or being tempted to hit the snooze button multiple times.

So I'm certainly up by 6:30, sometimes it's just a little bit earlier than that.

The next thing on my list, the way I like to start my day is to doing just a little bit of reading, and you know what?

I forgot to include the emojis.

So let's go add, let's go add something like a book emoji, something like that, a stack of books to start off my day.

Now, this is usually relatively short, sometimes as short as only 15 minutes.

I like to read something that is non-fiction and something that is uplifting in the morning.

And I make sure that it is not social media.

It is not a news site.

I would much rather read a physical or a tangible book, probably something that I was reading earlier the night before for example, or earlier in the week.

But I just find it a nice refreshing and positive way to start my day.

After I've done a little bit of reading, it's time for me to do some exercise.

And my favorite exercise is running.

So, it doesn't happen every single day, but if I'm not running, I'll do some other type of aerobic or body weight workout to start my day.

Now, when all is said and done, it probably takes me roughly 45 minutes to complete this step or to work out this entire time.

I'm gonna hit 45 minutes there and then drag it down just below where the reading stops there.

So 6:45 is roughly when I'm starting my exercise routine.

I used to be an outside runner, last year we purchased our very first treadmill and I've really enjoyed it, not only the convenience of being able to run in just a few minutes time, but I find it keeps me a little more honest as well as I'm going through the different inclines and going through the different programs on the machine.

Now, after running, if that's going to take me to about 7:30, well, next up for me is breakfast.

And let's see, let's type in something like, maybe an egg.

I'm not usually eating an egg.

In fact, I usually start my days with a smoothie, but I don't believe that there is a smoothie emoji that we can use.

So breakfast, in my case, probably when all is said and done is roughly 15 or 45 minutes in length.

And what I mean by that, it doesn't take me that long to eat breakfast, but this is also a time where I can spend it with my kids.

I can spend it with my kids before they're off to school.

I can spend some time speaking with my wife, sharing a few laughs, talking about what we're going to do later in the evening.

So, roughly 30 minutes to maybe 45 minutes of a family time slash breakfast.

Next up, because I'm still sweaty at this point, it's time to jump into the shower.

So I think there's a shower emoji here.

So, let's just say, 'shower and get dressed,' I guess is exactly what we're doing at that particular time.

And, no, it doesn't take me very long at all.

This should only take me roughly 15 minutes in total.

Let's see if I can drag that one down.

Start of the workday

There we go.

Perfect.

So, roughly 15 minutes to get myself ready, and now it's time to jump into work.

Now I'm fortunate that I get to work from a home office.

So there is no commute, there is no transit, there is no driving.

And the way that I start my workday off is jumping into email.

Now you might be surprised by this because I used to tell people to avoid email at all costs first thing in the morning, I used to advise people and coach people that they should be doing something much more productive than dealing with email.

But what I discovered, not only for myself, but for other people as well, is that if you avoid email too long in the morning, a lot of us start to worry about, well, what is there, what's going on in my inbox, is someone waiting for an urgent reply?

And we often struggle to focus on those first things as a part of the day.

So even though for a number of years, I would avoid email for at least the first hour of my day, now I actually start my day with 30 minutes of email.

But I am very strict with myself, meaning I only do a maximum of 30 minutes of email.

I wanna try and do as much as I can, but I know I've got a lot more important things to get to as a part of my workday.

So by roughly 9:00 a.m. I'm done with email, even if I haven't read everything that's come in overnight, or from the last time I checked my email, it's time to start my day.

So at 9:00 AM, I'm gonna categorize this as a deep work and I'm gonna grab something, this bulls-eye emoji here, and I'm gonna call this deep work a, a term that, Cal Newport, author Cal Newport has certainly popularized in the last number of years.

Now, this is a much bigger stretch of time.

In fact, I'm gonna put about two and a half hours here, and I'm just gonna define sort of what I mean by deep work.

Obviously, there's a variety of activities that I could be doing during this morning block, but it's often things that are a lot more focus intensive.

It's things that require a lot more energy on my part, maybe a lot more research.

This is often when I record many of my videos, such as this one here.

This is often when I'm delivering classes, virtual webinars, it's when I'm running the RESET Productivity Masterclass.

So, almost all of those types of activities are happening first thing in the morning, I realize that it's a big block of time, right?

It's two and a half hours, and it certainly doesn't look the same each and every day.

But if there's something that I think is at risk of being deferred into another day, so for example, if I don't get to it until later in the afternoon, and I know that there's a high chance that I'm gonna push it to another day or another time, I'll try and do it first thing in the morning, that's where I wanna do my toughest work or my most focus intense work at that time of day.

Then at around 11:30, I'm going to return to email.

So let's grab that email icon again and type in, I think I need to get rid of the emoji, the emoji window here and type in email.

And we're only doing that for another half hour, sometimes not even a half hour.

In fact, often I'll work right up until about 11:45 or 11:50.

This is just a super quick check-in with email.

In fact, I'm often not even replying too many of the messages, I just wanna scan through my email, see if there's anything urgent, if there's anything that's going to change what I'm gonna be focusing on for the rest of the afternoon.

I'm a firm believer that we should be spending as little amount of time, as less time as possible within our email inbox, and that only a small handful of us actually need to be dealing with email on a regular basis.

So, again, after my morning half hour, this is sort of a quick check-in, again, a half hour at most, but I'd say on average, it's only taking me a roughly 15 minutes.

Afternoon schedule

At 12, it's time to break for some lunch.

So let's put in something that, especially over the winter, I eat an awful lot of, I'm a big fan of soup, not only eating soup, but making soup as well.

So this is gonna be lunch slash break because I certainly don't spend an entire 45 minutes eating and, or making my lunch, but I wanna be able to step away, get out of my office, eat something, hopefully, nutritious, and hopefully delicious as well as I step away from my work.

But there's a few other things that I'll include in this block of time.

Often I may go and check the mail or do some other household chores such as empty the dishwasher or throw another load into the washing machine.

Just try to tidy up a little bit, help the rest of the family.

And again, just sort of physically get away from my office and get away from my work.

Now this last little 15 minute increment, roughly, roughly between 12:45 and 1:00 p.m. is something that I rarely, rarely miss, and that is a quick power nap.

So let's throw in some Z's here, and I'm gonna call this one nap.

Now I used to nap for close to a half hour.

I've reduced that to only about 15 minutes.

And what I mean by that is that in fact, most days I don't even get to sleep.

That's not enough time for most cases for myself to even get into a sleep state, but I simply just lie down, dark room as quiet as I can make it and just, just relax, right?

Just sort of relax and be still for 15 minutes.

Now, depending on where you are in the world, there are different cultural norms when it comes to napping.

And I know that especially here in North America, we still sort of frown upon taking a nap, even if it's a short nap in the middle of the day.

I find this has been one of the biggest boosts to my personal productivity.

This is something that I've been doing for nearly 15 years is including a short power nap.

It gives me the energy, it rejuvenates me for the rest of the afternoon and really for the rest of the day, even if you don't get to sleep, just taking that short break can have a massive impact on the rest of your day.

Next, we've got another sort of section of work in here, and this would really what I would call sort of slash creative or admin work.

So, maybe I'm gonna do something like files.

We've got like a sort of a file folder here.

I almost feel that I also want to put in something like a, a paintbrush or something along those lines.

I'm gonna say this is admin and creative work.

It's gonna change day by day, but this is sort of roughly what I'm doing in the afternoon.

Now I'm gonna be doing this for roughly an hour and a half.

So I'm gonna put that 1 to 2:30 p.m.

So these are things that I need to get done.

It's not exactly crucial like the deep work I'm doing in the morning, but these may be things related to budgeting for my business.

It may be taking a look at invoices and doing some more administrative tasks.

The creative side of things is when I'm having to maybe edit a video or maybe revising a PowerPoint slide deck, or maybe posting some social media content to be scheduled in the future.

I find that I really have a lot of energy, much more energy for that type of work later in the afternoon.

Now that I've done all that focus work in the morning.

So whether it's more admin tasks or creative tasks, I'm gonna save that for later in the afternoon.

Lastly, at roughly 2:30, we are going to return to email for the third and only time that I will touch email for that day.

So this is only gonna be, again, a maximum of half hour finishing up at around 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon.

This is where, again, I will be replying, I'll be trying to get through as much as I possibly can, but I space out the times that I deal with email so I can focus as much time as I can with my work.

End of work and evening activities

Now I try my best to end my workday at around 3:00 p.m.

Why?

Because by that time, most of my boys are home from school and I wanna spend it with them.

I wanna hear about their day, maybe help them with their homework and also start to get ready for the evening, whether that's some food prep for dinner or whatever else is going on in the evening.

So it's a lot harder for me to fill in the blanks here on a typical average evening.

I will tell you that I avoid work at all costs, and I stop my workday as much as I can at roughly three in the afternoon.

Why?

Because I wanna be completely refreshed when I returned to work the following morning, and not just get into this cycle of checking my work emails and replying to things and working on other things during the evening.

I have an awful lot of activities and often a lot of driving to do when it comes to my boys' activities.

The only other two things I will add, two things that I rarely miss out on my daily schedule is a return to reading later in the evening.

So let's grab this book here, and we're gonna call this one reading.

I try to read for about 45 minutes to an hour before I finish my night.

And for me, it's my goal to get my head on a pillow, no, not a pill, a pillow, let's put sleep here by 10:30 at night.

So that is bedtime for me to try and get into bed at 10:30.

So I can get as close to eight hours of sleep before the start of the next day.

So now that you know what an average workday looks like for me, I would love to hear from you, what was the biggest surprise as you take a look at my typical schedule?

In addition, I would love to hear from you and what does your workday look like?

I'm sure others would be interested to know, so they might want to adjust their own personal schedules.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Jotform vs Google Forms

When it comes to creating online forms and choosing the best form builder for you, you have a lot of choices.

However, two of the most popular form builders are Google Forms and JotForm.

So in today's video, I'm gonna help you decide which of these form builders are best for you.

I'm gonna give you three good reasons as to why you should either choose Google Forms or JotForm.

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

So let's get started with Google Forms.

Why you should choose Google Forms

Now Google Forms, of course, is integrated directly within your Drive account.

Whether you use a Google Workspace account for your business, or if it's just for your personal use, if you're already using Docs and Sheets and Slides, it's gonna be very easy for you to find Forms here within Google Drive.

Now, my first reason for why you should choose Google Forms is if your form needs are relatively basic.

And what I mean by that is if you just need a simple contact form for your webpage, if you just need to send out a very simple survey or a very simple questionnaire like what we see here, Google Forms might be ideal for your needs.

It's quick and easy for you to get started and to add those questions and rearrange those questions as well.

If I wanna move things around here, everything in there is essentially just drag and drop.

So if you want to quickly and easily create that form and add those basic needs, well, Google Forms might be the best solution for you.

The second reason why you might want to choose Google Forms is if you need to create a large number of forms that are temporary in purpose.

And what I mean by that is if you're quickly sending out little quizzes, or sending out a few things in a form that may only last a week in duration, for example, well, then this might be the ideal form builder for you.

Here, I've just thrown together a very quick and easy Beatles Trivia form.

This is just something fun that I wanna send out to my followers, but I'm not needing to update this in the future.

I'm not gonna be needing to come back and analyze this data.

It's sort of quick and easy, and I can almost forget about this form in a few weeks' time.

So if you're needing to send out a number of forms in short order, but you really don't need all of that data in the future, Google Forms also might be the best solution for you.

Now, the third reason why you may want to select Google Forms is if you're okay with your forms looking like Google Forms.

What do I mean by that?

Well, yes, we can customize a number of things here.

I could come up here into my theme options.

I could change this header.

I can change my colors, including the background color as well, but at the end of the day, all Google Forms essentially look like a Google Form.

It's gonna look very similar to this.

If I jump over here into preview mode, you can see it's sort of this column look in the middle.

I've got this submit button down here, and it's always going to say Google Forms at the bottom of the page.

Now, if you're okay with that, that's absolutely fine.

However, if you want to stand out from the crowd, if you want to perhaps look a little more professional, well, then maybe there's a better solution for you.

Why you should choose Jotform

Now, JotForm is not only one of the most popular form builders, but it's also one of the highest-rated form builders, currently with a score of 4.7 on the G2 website.

But numbers aside, let's dive into the software itself.

Now, the first reason why JotForm may be a better solution for you is customization.

JotForm lets you customize every single aspect of your form.

Here we are within the form builder area, and on the right-hand side, you can see under Form Designer, I can swap out any single color or image.

I can adjust the styles and formatting to my heart's content.

But that customization doesn't just end with the colors and look, it also has to do with the types of elements in which we'd like to add to our form.

So, yes, you're gonna find all these standard things such as a dropdown and multiple choice, but maybe you need to add a signature to your form.

When someone completes it, you want to collect or add a digital signature.

You can do that.

How about an appointment?

Well, it's just drag and drop.

If I want someone to book an appointment after they've answered all of my questions, well, I can add that to my forms as well.

So there's just so many different things and different ways in which you can customize your JotForm.

But the customization doesn't just stop at the things that you can put inside your form, it also continues with how you want your form to be displayed.

So in this case, I'm gonna view this form that I created earlier.

And check out this one.

"Join our newsletter and receive a FREE guide."

Yeah, this looks very enticing the way that this form is laid out.

I'm gonna input my name and hit Next.

I'm gonna input my email address here and hit Submit, and now I've got a beautiful thank you page here as well.

Didn't that look a lot more flashier, a lot more enticing for your participants or your clients?

A lot of customization here that you can use to wow your audience.

The second reason why JotForm might be ideal for your needs is when it comes to integrations.

When you're collecting information, when you're sending out all of these surveys or request forms, or however you're using your forms, chances are you want that data to go somewhere else, such as a project management tool, maybe a CRM system, or a variety of other pieces of software.

Well, here under Integrations, we can see that JotForm integrates with more than 100 other applications, many of the tools that you're already using.

So if you want your information to directly store within Dropbox, you can do so as well.

In fact, look at here on the left-hand side, just under our Categories.

Let's take a look at CRM Integrations.

So whether you use HubSpot, or Zoho CRM, or Salesforce, or Pipedrive, you can have those forms directly be sent and input into your CRM system.

How about Project Management?

We've got most of the popular tools here, including Trello, Asana, ClickUp, monday.com, Wrike and Basecamp.

So when someone fills out that form, you can convert that information directly into a new task or into a new project.

So you can look at all of the various different integrations and make sure that your collected data doesn't just end up on a spreadsheet somewhere.

Now, the third reason why JotForm may be the better solution for you is if you need to collect payments.

Over here on the left-hand side of the form elements, you can see we have a Payments tab.

And look at the number of different ways in which we can collect payments.

Now Square, PayPal, and Stripe are perhaps among the most popular, but there's a variety of other payment processors in which you can add as well.

So, for example, if I wanna add my PayPal Business account, all I need to do is drag it onto my form.

And in a matter of seconds, I've got my payment method right down here.

So people can choose if they want to pay by debit or credit card, or if they want to pay directly with their PayPal account.

So not only can I collect information about my prospective clients right here within my form, I can turn them into actual customers by providing them with a payment method and providing them with payment processors that they know and trust.

So when they submit that form, not only do I get the information, but I get paid as well.

So in summary, if your form-building needs are relatively basic or you need to create a number of short-term forms and you don't mind it looking like everyone else's forms, Google Forms might be just right for you.

However, if you're needing customization, if you want your forms to integrate directly with other apps that you're already using, or if you need to collect payments, JotForm may be the better choice for you.

Now, if you have any other form builders that you'd like to recommend, or share your feedback on JotForm or Google Forms, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Intro

No matter how often you deliver PowerPoint presentations, you want your audience to be amazed and impressed with whatever it is you have to share.

So in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven tips to help make your PowerPoint presentations look awesome and that much more memorable.

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

Change Cursor Pointer

So let's start off with tip number one, and this has to do with our mouse cursor.

I'm just gonna go into presentation mode for this particular slide.

How often do you see someone using the standard basic mouse cursor to draw your attention?

I want you to look at this word over here, and then I want you to come over here and look at something else that I'm wiggling around or swirling my mouse cursor around.

Well, there's a much better way.

If we right-click on the screen and come about halfway down on this menu, we have some pointer options.

The first one is called a laser pointer.

And if I select this, I get a little red laser.

So if I wanna draw my attention to a particular word or an image or a diagram, I can do so here with this laser pointer, but I've got other options available to me as well.

I can use this pen option for example.

And if I want you to really focus on all the apps on your phone, I can do so here.

If I want to underline this automated word, I can do so as well.

The last option we have available to us here is a highlighter, and we can actually change that color if we want to.

But by default, if I want to maybe highlight this word "web," I can just sort of run over it a few times.

Maybe highlight this word "you" for example, I can highlight certain things on my screen.

So not only do things come more to life, it is much easier for your audience to follow you along.

Align All Your Objects

Now our next tip has to do with making you look great on every single slide.

And one of my pet peeves is when I'm watching someone else's presentation, and they have things out of alignment.

Whether it's text or images or whatever it is on their slide, they've got things out of place.

This is such an easy fix so that all of your slides can look great.

Here in this example, I've got four different images that are really all over the place.

In fact, these two are sort of overlapping a bit and they are certainly not in alignment.

So in order to fix this, all I need to do is select all of the objects that I want to align.

So in this case, I'm gonna select these four options.

Oops, I didn't get that last one there.

I got all four images at this place, and then I need to come up here to arrange, and under arrange, we have the option to align.

Now, in this case, I'm gonna align in the middle and you can see everything automatically gets aligned into this middle.

But let's go one step further.

I'm gonna come back to arrange and we're gonna come back to align, and another one that I use quite often is either distribute horizontally or vertically.

Well, in this case, I wanna distribute horizontally, so I'm gonna select this option and now I've got even spacing between all four options.

So when I go to present this slide, it looks professional, it looks neat, it's quick and easy.

Often just takes you a few clicks, and you can make sure everything is in line on your slides.

Animate Text or Images

Next up, let's talk a little bit about how we can add some polish and pizazz to some of our slides.

One of the things that I like to do is make some of my images move just in a little subtle way.

Animate Text or Images So if I'm talking and I'm going to be on this slide for a few minutes, there's something else that is going on.

This can really add a little bit of oomph to your slides and really make you stand out from other presentations.

So in this case, what I want to do is I want this image, this bell icon to sort of teeter back and forth just very slowly, just very gently as I'm talking about this concept.

So what I need to do is select, select the image or images that I'd like to move, and you're probably already familiar with some of these basic animations here.

I'm gonna select for more options and what I want to look for here is emphasis.

These are things I don't want to fade in or fade out, I just want to emphasize this particular image.

So I'm gonna select teeter in this case, and you can see it just teetered there for a little bit, but that's not what I want.

I don't want it to teeter once and I also don't want it to do it at that speed.

So in order to get some more options here, I'm gonna select it and then select the animation pane.

So now to adjust some of my options, all I'm gonna do is select this down arrow beside the animation.

Now by default, when you add any animation, it's going to start on a click, but I just want to transition into this slide and have it happen automatically.

So in this case, I'm gonna select start after previous.

So now it's going to happen as soon as I transition into this slide.

I don't have to press the space bar, I don't have to click anything else, but then we also want to come down here and select effect options.

So in this case, we want to come over here to the timing option.

And we're gonna say we want the duration to be a lot slower, in this case, I'm gonna say slow so about three seconds in duration, and I'm also gonna come down here to repeat, and I'm gonna say repeat until the end of the slide, meaning I want it to happen the entire time that I'm on this slide until I transition out.

So let's hit okay on this one, and now we're gonna go back into presentation mode.

So now you can see, I haven't initiated anything, I've just simply opened up this particular slide.

It just gives this slide a little something extra special, something else that's going on as I'm presenting my deck.

Morph Transitions

But if you really want to wow your audience, then you're gonna want to learn how to morph between two slides.

Morph Transitions Morphing a slide is designed when you want to emphasize something that is already on this slide.

So in this example, what I want to happen is have this image, this bell icon grow larger and move to the right-hand side.

Then I want this text here at the bottom to move to the left-hand side of the screen and be larger.

So the first step that we need to do here is actually duplicate the slide.

So I'm simply going to copy and then paste this slide so I've got two exact versions of this slide.

Then all I need to do is select the top version.

This is the version that we're starting from, and then I'm gonna select transitions.

Instead of fade, I want to select morph.

Fade is usually my particular default as I'm naturally fading in between my slides, but in this case, I am going to say morph.

Now what I want to do is go to my second slide.

Remember, it's identical at this stage, but now I'm going to make those changes.

So for example, I'm gonna take this image.

I'm gonna move it to the right and I'm gonna make it significantly larger.

Then I'm gonna take this text over here.

I'm gonna move it to the left-hand side.

I'm gonna change some of its dimensions.

And I'm also going to make the text quite a bit larger.

So instead of 40, let's bump it up to maybe something like, oh, I don't know, something like 66, something like this.

I really want to emphasize this point.

I really want to get my audience's attention.

So it's the same content.

It's the same content on both slides.

It's just rearranged in a different manner.

Now in order for this to work, you need to make sure that both of the slides that you want to morph have morph selected as their transition.

Let's select this first one and go into presentation mode and see what happens.

I'm now gonna transition to that second slide.

And did you see how everything moved nice and smoothly?

This bell icon got nice and large and my text very smoothly moved to the left and then transitioned into a larger font.

Let me just go back and forth here just to show you what is going on.

Isn't that gonna wow your audience?

Remove Image Background

Now, of course, any awesome PowerPoint presentation is going to have a variety of images and pictures.

But another one of my personal pet peeves is when everyone is using these standard square or rectangular images within their slides.

So let's take a look at this one here for an example.

I want to quickly and easily remove the background of this image, but I don't want to have to load it in some other application.

I don't want to have to search for a transparent background.

I like this hand with this phone, I just want to get rid of this background.

Well, all I need to do is select this image and then come up here and select picture format.

And the very first option on the left-hand side is remove background.

If I select this, you can see it actually makes the entire background purple.

However, I can make a few tweaks and modifications.

I can see that the lower part of the arm here is actually going to be removed if I select keep changes, but I have the choice to mark areas to keep, but also mark areas to remove.

So in this case, I'm gonna select mark areas to keep, I'm gonna come down here with the stylus and select that part of the arm.

I'm gonna do it maybe one more time, there we go.

Now I've got the entire arm and I get to select keep changes.

Now the background is removed and I can add this to any part of my slide as I want.

This is gonna look a lot more clean and a lot more professional as I add text here on the right-hand side.

So don't forget to remove the background of certain images, which you find online.

Add a Countdown Timer

Now the next one on our list has to do when you're giving a presentation and perhaps there's either an exercise or a break that needs to be included in between.

I think one of the biggest challenges as a presenter is that even though you tell people that we're only gonna take a 10-minute break, everyone's watch is a little bit out of sync.

And maybe there's not a clock in the room, or depending on where you're delivering this, perhaps virtually, not everyone is getting back in time.

Well, let's make that easier by adding a countdown timer to do the work for us right within our slides.

So all I need to do is come up here to insert and select get add-ins.

And this is gonna open up the Office add-in store.

Now in the search bar here, we can type in things such as timer or in my case, I'm gonna type in countdown and then hit search, and there's gonna be a variety of ones for you to choose from.

I'm gonna select this one, which is called a break time and say add.

Yes, I'm gonna give it permissions here by selecting continue, and now I've added a timer directly to my slide.

Now I can make some changes here.

Let's say I want to only make this a five-minute break so I'm gonna select five minutes there.

It even comes with a few different themes, so if I want to add something here like this glass of water, I can do so as well.

So now when I open up this slide, I can start this timer myself, initiate the countdown, and that control panel will fade away into the background so it looks clean.

It looks professional, and now everyone knows when we will return to the presentation.

Live Polls with Slido

Now engaging your audience is so important, maybe even more so if you're delivering your presentation virtually.

That's why I've been adding live polling to every single one of my PowerPoint presentations for the last few years.

Now in this case, I'm using an extension called Slido.

Slido allows me to insert polls directly into my PowerPoint slides so I don't have to open anything else up.

First, let me show you how it works.

So let's say that I'm on this slide that we created earlier.

I'm gonna go into presentation mode, but I'm just going to transition to my very next slide, which happens to be a Slido live poll.

So now I can ask my audience what's their favorite shoe brand, and they can participate in this fun poll in real time.

Slido also makes it very easy for people to join the poll.

All they need to do is go to this website, enter in a code, which you get to choose, or they can scan their by using this QR code.

This is an incredibly fun and engaging way to keep your audience participating and engage with the content which you're delivering.

Conclusion

Now I can't go into all of the details of how to use Slido, but if you would like my full tutorial of how to integrate live polling into your PowerPoint presentation, be sure to click the video you see on the screen now.

And if you have some favorite tips and tricks for using PowerPoint, I'd love to hear from you.

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

CRM Software

Are you a small business owner or an entrepreneur? If so, you know how valuable it is to save time and money. That's why in this video, I'm gonna share with you seven different types of software that every single small business needs to know, and I'm gonna be giving you a recommendation in each of those categories.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And if you own or operate a small business, well, then you have customers. And if you have customers, you need a customer relationship management system, better known as a CRM.

Why is a CRM system so important to you? Will you need a centralized place to keep track of all of your clients, even if many of them are just prospective clients? And when you're dealing with clients, you need to deal with, well, deals getting to the end sale, no matter what that product or no matter what that service is that you're selling.

Here I am within the Bigin CRM system, which is especially designed for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Now, Bigin is developed by Zoho CRM, which is one of the most popular and well-reviewed CRMs on the planet. However, Zoho CRM, along with some other CRMs, such as Salesforce, may be much too much for your needs and also a little expensive.

So at the fraction of the cost and with small business owners in mind, Bigin might be the ideal solution for you. So, here we have a list of different deals that I have going on. And why is this so important within your CRM system? Well, you want to know exactly where someone is within your funnel, within your pipeline as we see here.

So for example, I've got a client which is qualified. Maybe they've reached out to me for an initial conversation, but then I've got other clients here where I've actually given them a quote or a proposal. I can quickly and easily see where people are within this stage and hopefully, move them on along this process until the deal is won and they actually become a paid customer.

But the great thing here is that all of your contacts and those contacts, if they belong to other companies, stay in a single place. So for example, if I open up this deal right here, I can see further details in terms of the history of this deal, when it was added and what was going on within this deal. I can take notes and even see an email history here right here within Bigin.

But the great thing is, is that my contact information stays here as well. So if I click on Alison over here, I'm gonna jump over to the Contact section. I can see all that information here as well. So whether she is a brand new customer, whether she's a returning customer, I've got a complete history here, right within my CRM system.

Calendar Scheduling

Now, the second type of software, I think every small business needs is a scheduling tool, a quick and easy way for you to book things with your clients, or maybe just people that help you with your business. In my case, my recommendation is Calendly. I've been using Calendly for a number of years to make booking, meetings, and also booking consulting sessions with myself that much easier.

And you've probably booked a Calendly meeting with someone else, even if you're not currently a Calendly user. So for example, I can share this link, and my users can go directly to this screen and book times that are most convenient for them. Now, the great thing is, is that I can set up a number of rules as to when someone can book me, not just the times of day, but also which days of the week and how far out they can book.

In this example, you can see that no one can book me on Mondays or Wednesdays, I've reserved that for other activities, but you can also see, they can't book me beyond the 13th of October, why? Because I've set up a rule that I only want to allow people to book me 21 days in advance. So it's convenient for me, the person sharing that link, but it's also convenient for the user who can pick a day that suits them.

They can pick a time and select Confirm, and then enter in their details here. And added bonus is that Calendly makes it very easy for us to add payments directly to our booking. So in this case, if I am hosting or inviting someone to a consulting session, and I want to make sure that they complete payment as a part of the booking process, I can do so right here within Calendly.

Video Conferencing

Now, setting up your meetings is one thing, but next up, you're gonna have to actually have these meetings. So the next essential piece of software is a video conferencing tool. Now, there's a number of tools for you to choose from, but for me, my standard has been Zoom Meetings. In fact, I've been a zoom user since roughly 2016.

I use it for virtually all of my meetings and also for hosting my webinars and other events. Zoom is my choice because not only is it easy to launch a meeting and manage an admin and set all of the controls here, but I also find it's easiest for my clients to engage with. Let me start this new meeting right here, and let me say hello, there I am within my Zoom Meeting.

So of course, you want to choose a tool where it's easy and quick for you to set up either a one-time meeting or recurring meetings, but maybe just as important is how easy it is for your clients or the people that you're meeting with to join that meeting. And in my experience, Zoom is the easiest of all of the major players.

It doesn't matter if the people that I'm meeting with have advanced technology skills or they're basic users. I find that everyone finds Zoom very easy to deal with, and it has become just such of a standard over the past two years. So you're looking for something that is quick, simple, and easy, Zoom Meetings would be my video conferencing tool of choice.

But now that you're having all of these meetings, you probably have a number of projects on your plate. So let's see what I recommend when it comes to project management.

Project Management

Now, there are many different project management tools to choose from but if you're a small team, if you have less than 10 employees, my recommendation would be to start off with Trello, why? I find that Trello has the shortest learning curve so that you and other members of your team can get going and actually get stuff done in the first few days.

You don't have to wait weeks or months to get used to the system, you can start seeing the benefits right away. Now at first glance, you may think that this looks an awful lot, like the CRM we looked at at the beginning of the video. And in many ways, most Trello boards are designed for a similar concept of dragging a task or dragging a project from left to right.

But unlike the Bigin CRM that we talked about earlier, in this case, we are talking about projects. So these don't represent new deals, in this particular example, this represents things that you're actually working on. So maybe you need to redesign your website, maybe you need to use a project management tool to manage all of your content, for example.

Trello is an ideal place to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that you can move things through their different processes. Trust me, as someone who's been providing Trello consulting services for nearly 10 years, I have yet to find an industry that cannot benefit from using the Trello system.

Email Marketing

So now that your business is up and running, and you have customers, and you're selling products and services, it's so important for you to keep in touch with your customers or to reach out and communicate with prospective clients. And with that, you're going to need an email marketing tool.

Now, there's a number of tools out there at various price points and different features but Mailchimp might be the best place to start. It's almost that perfect balance between costs but also with how easy it is for you to set up and get going. So here I am within my Mailchimp dashboard, and the great thing about an email marketing tool is that, it manages all of those subscriptions and people who sign up for your newsletters or future announcements, which you want to send to.

But the great thing is, is that not only does it make it easy for you to send out mass communications, you can see detailed statistics on those messages. So for example, here, I'm taking a look at some data from a previous campaign, I can see quickly and easily, what was the open rate, for example, on this particular email, What were the clicks per unique open?

How many total clicks? And other statistics that are gonna be helpful for me. But if I click this campaign in particular, I can go into a little more detail as well. Now, one of my favorite pieces of data that I like to look at right here within MailChimp is Click Performance. Meaning, where did people actually click on the email itself?

So in this particular campaign, this particular message which I sent out, I was encouraging people to go to this link. In fact, there was only one destination within this email, but if I view the click map, you can see, I actually gave them a few different places to access that link, a few traditional links here, I also included a button.

And now beside it, I can see what percentage of the people who clicked, chose which option, so this is gonna be really helpful for me as I'm creating new emails and new campaigns in the future. So for example, it looks like this Register Now button with this green color right in the middle, was perhaps the most successful but not too far behind was this very first link here as well. So great data, great details that I can use to market to my clients and my customers.

Social Media Management

But of course, email is not the only way in which you run your business. You want to make sure you have a presence on social media as well, so you're going to need a social media manager. In this case, we're taking a look at Buffer, which I use to manage and schedule out all of my social media in advance.

So, if you're not familiar with a social media manager, what you can do, is connect your various social media accounts. So for example, here, on the left-hand side, I have a Facebook account and Instagram account and a LinkedIn account, and then I can create content and schedule it or set it up in a queue, so it goes out at specific times or specific intervals.

So here you can see in the next few days on the next week, I've got some specific pieces of content, which will be posted on my Facebook channel. And if I want to, I can post the exact same thing across my channels, or be a lot more specific. If I click on the calendar up here at the top, I'm just gonna take a glance at the month view.

Here, you can see a history of all of the things, which I've posted in the last month. So I can go back and review and also see the data from those postings as well. Something like Buffer makes it so easy for us to create new content, all I need to do is click up here on this space, select which channels, for example, I want to include, maybe I want all three, maybe I want just two.

Write my content down below, maybe add an image or a video and then schedule it or just send it all right here from within Buffer. So not only is it going to save you time, it's going to keep you engaged with your audience on your various social media channels.

Accounting Software

Last but not least, if you run a small business, you need accounting software, you need a tool, which is going to give you an accurate representation of where your money is going and where your money is coming from. Now, my recommendation for you is to use QuickBooks online, not only for its ease of use, but also for the number of integrations in which it connects with other tools that you may already use, including your bank accounts, credit cards, and other tools that you're using to receive payment.

Trust me, you don't want to wait too long before starting to use a real accounting piece of software. You don't wanna miss out on those tax advantages and you also don't wanna come up short at the end of each month. Now, if you have questions about any of the app categories or the specific tools in which I've mentioned here in today's video, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel and give this video a like. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Battling background sound in meetings

If you work with a computer, I can pretty much guarantee that you're involved in a lot of online meetings, whether that's Zoom, Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, or any other app you're meeting with others virtually.

But even if you have a great camera, even if you've invested in good audio, what about all of those things that are out of your control?

And yes, I'm talking about background noise. I'm talking about noisy neighbors.

I'm talking about a spouse or a roommate or a pet or maybe even construction that is going on outside.

Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at Krisp, a simple but very easy-to-use technology which is going to remove all of that background noise.

No matter how noisy it is in your environment, you're going to sound clean and professional to everyone that you're meeting with.

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

At first glance, you may think that your home office or your home environment is the only application for Krisp.

But I think there's two other areas that we need to keep in mind.

Number one, what if you happen to be working from a different remote location, such as a coffee shop or maybe a noisy airport?

A location where you need to take that call but you have very little control, if no control, over those background noises.

Krisp is fantastic for those situations.

Lastly, even if you work in a traditional closed-door office, that doesn't make it immune from an awful lot of noise.

More and more of us work from an open office concept, and that means a lot of noise from your coworkers, from people walking by, from maybe other meetings or other phone calls within the vicinity, and you can't control that noise either.

So whether you're at home, at a remote location, or even in the office, Krisp might be the best solution for you.

How to setup Krisp on your computer

So how does it work?

And maybe more importantly, does it really do what it promises when it comes to removing background noise?

In order to install Krisp, all you need to do is go to krisp.ai.

The great thing is that they have a free forever plan, so you don't have to pay for anything if you don't want to.

Krisp is available for both Mac and Windows.

Once you've installed it, you can open up the app.

Here I am within my Windows machine, and I'm opening up the taskbar and selecting the Krisp icon.

It's just a small application that sits on your computer with a very, very simple interface.

The idea is that you're going to run or choose which microphone is going to go through the Krisp software.

So, for example, here within the Krisp dialog, I've got a microphone section here and I've got a speaker section down below.

Here I can choose which microphone I want to be using.

I want to keep it with my Yeti.

I actually do want to keep it as my default here for my speakers as well, but you can choose whatever you have connected with your system.

It'll even give you a little helpful idea here as to what is currently being used with that microphone.

In my case, because I'm recording this video, it's using Camtasia to record what's going through my microphone at the moment.

Below you can see there is a very simple toggle switch where we can remove the noise.

We can turn this on or we can toggle it off, so you don't always have to be using Krisp if you don't want to.

But I think what you're gonna find out is you're probably going to want to leave this on, especially when you're in meetings.

Now, the Krisp interface does give us the ability to test out its noise cancellation ability in advance.

This is probably a good choice before you use Krisp for the first time just to see how effective it is going to be within your environment.

But why don't we take Krisp through a real task?

I wanna use the actual toggle here and not just the test functionality.

Testing how effective Krisp is with noise

What I've decided to do is to pull up a video on YouTube.

It's something that is called 10 hours of busy coffee shop background noise.

No, we're not gonna use 10 hours to do so, but something to recreate that background noise.

When I turn this on, I'm gonna put this just a few inches, like literally maybe 9 to 12 inches from the microphone just to see how effective this can be.

I'm gonna press play and I'm sure you can see what or you can hear what's going on at the moment.

You can hear that there's some dishes clanging in the background.

There's some muffled conversations that are happening there as well.

Now remember, remove noise is toggled off.

This is basically just my live microphone with this noise going on in the background.

Now with that background noise continuing to go, let's hit our remove noise toggle and hear the difference.

Is it gone?

It's almost gone completely.

I can't hear it at all.

Can you hear it on your end?

You may notice that my voice sounds slightly different than it did before or earlier in the video.

There's a reason for that because Krisp is having to use that technology to remove that background noise.

But now you can focus on me and what I'm saying and what I have to share within the video conference.

Let's stick with this and I'm gonna hit the remove noise toggle again, so now that background noise has returned, right?

It's back in the picture.

You can hear it.

It's probably distracting you in addition to distracting me as well.

If I turn it on, once again, instantaneously, it's removed all of that background noise even though this video is still playing just a few inches from the microphone.

How Krisp removes participant noise

Not only will Krisp help you to sound and look more professional, but you can actually remove background noise from other people that you're meeting with.

You're probably curious as to why under the speaker section there is also a remove noise option.

What this is going to do when you toggle is going to remove the background noise from the people that you're meeting with.

Perhaps your colleague just can't keep their dog quiet.

Or perhaps someone else is working in an area where there's a lot of construction going on outside.

You can hit this switch and remove their background noise as well.

Keep in mind, this is not going to have any effect on anyone else in the meeting.

This is just for your speakers or for your earbuds.

But it's gonna help you to focus on the conversation at hand.

You won't have to go searching for the mute button or asking someone to mute themselves constantly despite their noisy background.

Krisp plans and pricing

Taking a quick look at pricing, great news!

You can use Krisp absolutely free and free for forever.

Their personal plan costs you absolutely nothing and gives you 240 minutes a week of noise removal.

That's four hours each week for either microphone or speaker noise removal.

If you're needing more than that, more than four hours per week, you can upgrade to their Personal Pro plan, which is just $5 per month billed yearly.

You can see that their Teams option is the exact same price as the Personal Pro option.

It's just easier to manage and gives you a few more team management features.

So if you'd like to stop worrying about all that background noise and also stop getting angry at your kids and pets, you can download Krisp for free and start using it right away.

Be sure to click the link in the description below for more details.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Everyone uses a calendar

It doesn't matter if you're a student, a business owner, an employee, or a stay-at-home parent, you've got a calendar to manage.

If you use Google Calendar, sometimes those things and events can get out of control.

So in today's video, I wanna give you some tips and tricks to get your calendar back into control so you can get the most out of your day.

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

Perhaps your Google Calendar looks like a bit of a rainbow.

Maybe there's a number of different colors, a number of different events, appointments, and engagements.

Reduce the number of calendars you manage

My first tip for you is to ask yourself, how many calendars do you actually need?

Let me explain, here in Google Calendar, one of the benefits is that we can have multiple calendars and by doing so, we can toggle them on or off at any given time.

This can be a great advantage to see just a certain type of events at any given stage.

But far too often, I see that people have way too many calendars, whether it's something that they've subscribed to or calendars that they've shared with others.

My question to you is, how many do you actually need?

For example, I've seen people create a separate calendar just for their baseball practices.

However, those practices just happen two times a week.

Do you really need a separate calendar for something that happens as little as once or twice a week?

You could probably add that to your personal calendar or to some other calendar that also includes those events.

The other nice thing by reducing the total number of calendars that you have to manage is that if you do happen to unable or hide one of these calendars here, and then you won't forget, or at least you reduce your chances of forgetting something that should have been made available to you here, but was actually hidden here on the left-hand side.

So this might be a great time to audit all of the calendars that you've created, or perhaps the ones that you've subscribed to, and actually remove some of them, so you can remove some of the clutter here.

Events are not your only option

My second tip for helping you keep your Google Calendar under control is to keep in mind that not everything needs to be an event.

Often, we're so quick to add things on our calendar that are not necessarily time-specific and really what we're wanting is a reminder instead.

Let's remember that Google Calendar has a reminder function built right in.

The great thing is, is that if you don't acknowledge that reminder, it will carry over into the next day.

So let's say, for example, I want to call someone later this evening.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click on the desire time, I'm gonna click on 7:00 PM.

But instead of creating an event, I'm gonna come over here and select Reminder.

Right away, it's a lot easier because I've got much fewer options to choose from.

I'm gonna say Call Bill in this case and I can make it repeating if I want to, but I'll gonna leave it as is and hit Save.

Now you can see, I've created this reminder for 7:00 PM.

I will receive a notification not only here on desktop but especially on my mobile device, so I can make that phone call.

But if I don't acknowledge it, if I don't check off the reminder, here you can see if I open it up, I can select Mark as done.

If I don't mark it as done, this will carry over into tomorrow and will show as an all day event.

The great thing about reminders is that they don't get left behind.

Keep in mind that reminders do not have to be time-specific.

Maybe there's just something that I'd like to do tomorrow.

All I need to do is click on the all day event area, select Reminder, and I'm gonna say Email Craig regarding the meeting.

It's as simple as that and I can get on with the rest of my day.

Many times, I'll have many more reminders as all day events keeping the rest of my schedule nice and cluttered free.

But again, these won't be left behind because if I don't accomplish it on Thursday, it will automatically transition to the following day.

Customize your notification settings

Now, another great way to get your calendar under control is to change when you receive reminders and notifications.

For example, if I click on this event here, I can see that I'm gonna be notified 10 minutes in advance.

This is the default when you first signed in to your Google Calendar.

However, you can not only change this default to something that is more meaningful to you, you can also change it for the different calendars that you manage right here within Google Calendar.

In order for us to do so, we wanna come up here to the gear icon and select Settings.

On the left-hand side, we first need to start with the calendar in which we want to change those default notifications.

Here I've selected my personal calendar and under Event notifications, I'm gonna say, you know what, I'd rather be notified just a few minutes in advance.

Three minutes is a enough, so I'm gonna leave at three.

I don't have to hit Save or anything else on this screen, it's now gonna be a default of three minutes.

However, if I go to something like my Exercise Calendar, maybe I want a notification further out.

In this case, I'm gonna ask for a 45-minute notification.

You can also add multiple notifications if you like, including email notifications.

So maybe I want to remind myself a full hour and a half via email that I'm gonna be exercising later today, I can do so here as well.

So don't be afraid to change your default event notifications if you find your existing ones are not as helpful as they could be.

Now, if you're dealing with a very busy calendar,

Quickly find the event you're looking for

you're probably also wasting a lot of time because it can be difficult to find that particular appointment that you're looking for, whether it's far into the future, or maybe sometime in the past.

You're probably already familiar with the search feature here in the top right-hand corner.

If we select the magnifying glass, the cursor is ready and waiting for us to input some information.

However, don't forget about the dropdown area here, which will give us some more advanced search options.

For example, we can just search the active calendars, meaning the ones that we've checked on the left-hand side, or we can search all calendars or just a specific subset or a specific calendar.

We can also choose to include a specific keyword, search who is a part of the event or where that event is happening.

We can also eliminate some words but perhaps the most powerful of all is to set a date range or a date spectrum to see where you want to search.

So if you're having trouble finding that particular event, be sure to use the advanced search feature.

Of course, I'm very interested to hear on how you manage your calendar as well.

And if you have tips and tricks to provide to the Simpletivity community.

If so, be sure to include them in the comments down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Is your project software too simple or too complex?

You have an awful lot of choice when it comes to your project management tools.

However, some may be too simple for your needs.

Even though Trello, Asana, and Notion are very popular, they may not give you all the features that you're looking for.

But on the other side of the spectrum, something like Microsoft Project may be too advanced.

And let's be honest, your parents probably used MS Project, maybe even one of your grandparents.

So in today's video, we're taking a look at GanttPRO, which is maybe the ideal middle ground.

It gives you more features than Trello and Asana yet is not as complex and much easier to use than MS Project.

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

I'm going to assume that you're somewhat familiar with what a Gantt chart is.

A Gantt chart gives us a view of our projects, our costs, and our time commitment here on a timeline view.

However, don't let the name GanttPRO fool you because GanttPRO is so much more than just this view and just looking at your projects and all of your tasks here.

Why a Gantt Chart view is so important

First, let's answer the question: why is a Gantt chart view so important?

You may recognize with some of the other tools that you use, that they will have a timeline view or some type of Gantt chart view, but it's usually an afterthought.

They started to build their project management system, and then they've got requests to give them a Gantt chart view.

However, you probably are not seeing as many details as we see here.

The fantastic thing about a Gantt chart is that you can see the dependencies in terms of what has to happen first before something else can happen.

And then on top of that is allocating all of your resources.

In most cases, those resources are human-based—who is working on this project?

Do they have enough time to commit to it?

And if everything goes as planned, when should this project be due?

The great thing is that it's very, very visual.

Here we can see in this case, if I drag over to the right-hand side, we can see that this project should be finished by October 20th.

If everything goes as planned as we've estimated here, we can finish up near the end of October.

However, as things change and as certain things are either delayed, or maybe if certain things finish earlier than others, then this due date is going to be dynamic, and that it's going to adjust forward.

So you can see these things in real-time, and every member of your team can update their status and see what is going on.

Different views of your project and resources

However, if you don't need a view like this, or don't want to see this view at all times, GanttPRO has you covered.

There is a board view, so if you are more familiar with a kanban style of working with your projects, the idea of dragging things over into a done column is available.

For example, if I want to open up this target markets task, I can open up and see all of the details within.

Here I can change the status of it.

I can add a description, add attachments, and even add dependencies here at this level, not always needing to view that Gantt chart view.

In addition to our board view, we can also see what the workload is for our staff members.

You don't know how many times someone has asked me, "Scott, how can I allocate resources appropriately within Trello?"

Well, here within GanttPRO, allocation and workload, including cost and time allocated, are built right in.

Here we can see how many hours everyone is scheduled or projected to work on this particular project.

The bonus is that we get to see when someone is over-allocated.

For example, here I can see that Ralph has a few hours over top of what he's actually available on those days.

I can either have a discussion with him and say, "Are you willing to work some overtime, or do we need to spread this out?

Or maybe can we assign some of these tasks to someone else on the team?"

In fact, it's perhaps the resource management and the people management which is such a great bonus here within GanttPRO.

Reports and budgeting in GanttPRO

For example, I'm gonna come over to the left-hand side of my screen and select reports.

Under reports, one of my favorites is called budget analysis because with any project that you're involved with, you're dealing not only with time but also cost.

I'm gonna minimize some of the other projects that I've been assigned to and take a look at our product launch.

This is what we were just looking at previously.

The great thing here is that I can see that it's going to take my team a total of 200 hours to complete this entire project.

I can also see that because of this and the different rates of each of my staff members, it's going to cost us just a little over $10,000.

However, up to this point in time, it has actually cost us $3,000 based on how much time and effort everyone has put in so far.

So with just a few clicks, I can see our resource management.

I can see if we're within budget, and I can appropriately and accurately tell my clients or tell my management team how much this project is going to cost.

In addition, if I return to my product launch screen, I can click on the people tab and actually see each member who is a part of this project.

In turn, I can adjust the cost per hour for each of my resources.

This is where that costing and budgeting information is coming from.

Now as someone who is responsible

Viewing bottlenecks and critical paths

for the outcome of a project, you wanna be able to quickly and easily see what is overdue and where you need to focus more of your team's attention.

GanttPRO makes it very easy for us to do so.

Here in the top left-hand corner, we can quickly and easily see which are the overdue tasks in this particular project.

You can see that immediately this required materials task is highlighted as being overdue.

So again, I may wanna have a conversation with my team members and investigate as to what is going on here.

GanttPRO also makes it easy for us to identify what is the critical path, meaning what is going to prevent us from moving forward.

In this case, I can see that this features and functions area of the project is currently our critical path.

Meaning that if something is delayed here, it is going to back up the rest of our entire project.

Share project status with public URL

Another great feature here within GanttPRO is the ability to share your project with others.

What I mean is sharing with those who are not directly involved with producing the project.

Obviously, all of the team members that you see here have access to GanttPRO and they're updating things along the way as they progress along their project.

But what about upper management or perhaps what about a client who would also like to have some insight as to what's going on here?

You may be hesitant to give them access because you don't want them to start adding notes or to adjusting certain columns or other attributes within the project.

But what GanttPRO allows us to do is to create a public URL.

So within this dialogue, I have the choice to either share without a filter or use the current filter that we're viewing this project with at this time.

I'm just gonna call this one, maybe project updates, something along those lines.

I can either create a snapshot in time, or I can give them a public URL, so as things change, maybe between the time when I send them the link and when they receive it, they can see those updates as well.

All I need to do is select this button, and as you can see down below, it's added to my list of other public URLs.

Now, at any time I can either delete or just turn off one of these URLs in case of privacy, in case I don't want to make them available to those who I've sent it to.

But in this case, all I need to do is copy this to my clipboard and then paste it within an incognito window, just so you can see what another individual will actually view here within GanttPRO.

It'll take just a few seconds to load the project depending on the complexity and the size, but here you can see now they can view the project and see the details as well.

People who now have access to this public URL can see the entire project, including the GanttPRO view and other details listed here.

However, it is a true read-only view.

You can confidently share your project with others outside of the given project team and know that they will only have a read-only view and can see those details

Importing data from Excel or MS Project

but without the ability to change them.

Best of all, if you're already using Excel, MS Project, or JIRA to manage your projects, you can quickly and easily import your project directly into GanttPRO.

And if you use something else such as Trello or Asana, you can export that information into a CSV file and then easily convert it into a GanttPRO project.

So if you're needing a project management system with advanced features yet still keeps things simple, be sure to check out GanttPRO.

You can start absolutely free using the link down below.

If you have any follow-up questions, be sure to let me know in the comments.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Why backing up Trello is important

If you use Trello, you know how important all of your cards, lists, and multiple boards are to your business, your organization, or maybe even your personal life.

But what happens if something goes wrong?

What if someone on your team makes a mistake and deletes a whole bunch of cards?

Or what if you make a mistake and can't get something back?

Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at how to safely and securely back up all of your Trello data with Rewind Backups.

Hello, everyone.

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

Backing up our Trello data is so important.

For many of us, Trello is the lifeblood of our business or our organization, or even how we manage our personal life and our daily activities.

But what happens if something really, really bad goes wrong?

How are you going to get it back?

How to manually backup Trello boards

Well, there's a few manual ways in which you can back up your data.

But I'm gonna tell you upfront, it's going to leave you not only wanting more, but it's probably going to waste a lot of your time.

The very first option is for us to manually copy our boards from time to time.

If you open up the Menu on any of your boards and go to More, we can come down here and copy this board.

Now, I could give it a name such as Version Two or maybe the date in which I made this copy.

However, I'm gonna have to do this for every single one of my boards.

And I gotta have to remember to do this every, I don't know, every couple of days, once a week.

I've gotta come in here or assign someone else on my team to do this manually.

The other manual process we have available to us is to export our boards.

If I come over here and select Print and export, I can either export it as a CSV file, which you'll be able to view within your spreadsheet, or a JSON file, which is a lot more technical and a lot more advanced.

And you know what?

Congratulations, if you even know what a JSON file is.

In both of these cases, you are gonna be able to export this information, but not only are you only going to be able to do it one board at a time, Trello has no import functionality.

So, even though you can get this information out of Trello, there's really no way for you to revive that information other than manually heading this back in a worst-case scenario.

Automated Trello backups with Rewind

So, what do I recommend to my clients?

I recommend that they use Rewind Backups for Trello.

Why?

Because Rewind has been providing backup solutions for other products, such as Shopify and QuickBooks Online for years.

So not only can you trust them, but this is all that they do is back up resources for business owners and users like you.

Let's take a closer look at what Rewind Backups looks and feels like when it comes to backing up Trello.

Here I am within my Rewind Backups Vault, and what we're viewing here is actually all of my cards across all of my backed-up boards.

I can go through and look at the individual changes and make sure that certain things have been backed up.

The way that Rewind Backups works is that it will automatically back up all of the boards which you select on a nightly basis.

You don't have to remember anything at all.

Rewind Backups will always back up all of the boards which you select on a 24-hour basis.

However, maybe you've made some very significant changes, and you wanna make sure that they're backed up earlier than perhaps midnight this evening.

You will always have this Backup Now button available to you here, so you can do so at your own choosing.

As I go through and look at some of these individual cards, here I can see that this card was updated.

If I wanna view the versions, I can see the live version here on the left-hand side and the selected version or the version which was last backed up.

If I come over to this dropdown, I can see that there is actually a previous version, which did not contain a description.

So, this can be a quick and easy way for me to find out if I want to revert back or to see what's going on through the updating process.

You'll have a full history whenever you do so here within Rewind Backups.

If you're looking for something specific, you can always use the search field here to search for a certain keyword.

So if I type in something like vendor, I'll bring back all of the cards which have either been added or updated right here.

It'll also give us a filtering option.

So, if we want to filter out specific content, label changes, or a date range, we can easily and quickly do so right here within the Rewind Backups dashboard.

But perhaps the most powerful feature when it comes to Rewind Backups is the ability to restore our boards.

How to restore Trello boards to a previous version

Let's take a look at a quick example.

I've decided to use a split screen view so you can see this happen in real time.

On the left-hand side, I have one of my travel boards, and on the right-hand side, I have Rewind Backups opened up.

Let's say within my Trello board here, I'm gonna do something like archive everything in this list.

Everything in this list is going to go, and maybe I'm gonna start moving some other things from this pending list into that new list.

And of course, I could make a number of other changes as well.

I could delete cards, change labels, due dates.

Do absolutely anything here.

Once I've changed everything, what if I say to myself, "Oh, you know what I really would like to go back."

I shouldn't have done any of those changes, or maybe someone on my team made a big mistake.

All I need to do is come over here to Rewind Backups.

Under the Advanced Restore tab, I can come down here and select which of my boards I would like to restore.

In this case, yes, I want to select the example board, and I can now choose the date in which I'd like to go back to.

So here, I've got a choice of a number of different times.

I wanna go back to my last backup, which was actually just a few minutes ago, right?

Just a few minutes ago before I made those changes.

So, 11:58 is the most recent backup.

I'm gonna select that.

Then, I'm gonna select Restore Items.

It is going to give me a prompt, which I think is great.

Letting me know what is going to happen at this point.

It's going to try and restore everything back to exactly as it was just a few moments ago.

I'm gonna say yes, go ahead and start the restore process.

Now, it may take a little while…

Actually, nope.

We're back.

(Scott laughing)

Didn't even take a few seconds, no more than maybe three or four seconds, and we are exactly back to where we were before.

We've got the four cards that we had in this list.

And those two cards which I'd moved over are now back in this list as well.

So, that's how easy and how quickly you can restore any Trello board to its original point, depending on how frequently you want to restore your boards.

Remember, Rewind Backups will do so every single day, every single night, but you can choose to back up more frequently manually if you like.

Selecting which Trello boards to backup

Now, within the Rewind Backups dashboard, you have the power to select how many of your boards you would like to back up at any given time.

Here you can see, I currently have 26 boards selected, and I can either easily select an entire Trello workspace, or I can select or de-select individual boards.

In this case, these two boards will no longer be backed up.

The great thing about this is that you only have to pay for what you actually need.

Rewind Backups for Trello is only $1 per board per month.

That's right.

It doesn't make any difference as to how many users are on those boards.

It's $1 per board per month at a minimum of $5 a month.

Special offer for Simpletivity viewers

However, I have an extra special offer just for Simpletivity viewers.

If you go to rewind.com/scott-friesen, you'll receive $50 in cash when you sign up for Rewind Backups.

And no, that's not $50 off of your subscription.

Rewind will send you $50 in cash for you to spend any way that you like.

So, if you're looking for a safe, secure, and easy way to back up all of your Trello boards, be sure to click the link in the description down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

How Text Blaze saves you time

If you wanna save time while working at your computer, you need to stop touching your keyboard so often.

So in today's video, I'm gonna show you how Text Blaze can help you reduce the number of keystrokes and make your life so much easier.

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

In today's video, I wanna show you what Text Blaze is, how it can save you so much time and help you complete your emails, your chats, your documents, that much faster with text expansion.

So, let's dive in.

How often are you asked the exact same question via email?

Here's an example where someone is asking me about my pricing options.

At first glance, I may say, ah, this is gonna take me a few minutes to properly describe my packages, give the pricing, maybe include some links.

Well, there's a much better way.

When you have something like Text Blaze installed, all I need to do is type in just a few key letters and I've got everything here, and now I can hit send and move on to my very next email.

Yes, I just hit three keys on my keyboard, and I've got a complete response here, including formatting, including links, I've got all my pricing information, and now I can move on to the rest of my day.

So, how does Text Blaze work?

Well, let's jump over into the Text Blaze dashboard.

Text Blaze dashboard and snippets

Here you can see I've got a number of different snippets that are already set up.

The one that we just used here is called Quote Options.

So I took a little bit of time crafting the ideal message to the questions that I most commonly receive.

In this case, it has to do with my packages and my pricing.

So I've spelled out the different packaging, I've included the links, I've even formatted things, including bolding certain things and maybe italicizing certain things so it looks great and professional.

But all I need to do is select this shortcut key /QO.

I've chosen the letters QO to represent quote options so I can input this wherever I go.

If things change, I only need to go to one place here and maybe update some links or adjust my pricing, and then I can use this going forward.

Email is a classic example where text expansion can come into play, but let's take a look at a few other examples before we look at how we can set this up for ourselves.

Here's another one that I've created called /VC for video conferencing.

So many of us are sharing the details of our meeting rooms, whether you use Zoom or Teams or Hangouts, and here I've just taken a moment to include those details here.

So let's go back to an email example, I'm just going to delete the contents here.

This time I'm gonna go /VC, which stands for video conferencing.

Now I can input this wherever I want.

If someone's asking me for my details via a chat, I can do so.

If I wanna include this within a document, I can do so as well; just a couple of keystrokes on my keyboard, and then they have direct access to my meeting room.

Use Text Blaze for labels or common phrases

Another example that I love to use is for using Text Blaze for labels and here I'm gonna use an example within my calendar.

As you can already see here, I like to add some emojis to some of my calendar events, just so they stand out a little bit more.

One of those other examples is I like to use an emoji and maybe a term or a word in all caps for certain tasks just so they stand out and I can recognize the difference between them.

For example, let's say I wanna make a phone call later this afternoon.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click on my calendar to open up this event, but I'm just gonna type in /P.

This brings up my emoji and call, and I can say call Jane regarding the meeting, that's exactly what I want to do at that time.

So this is really helpful to me because whenever I want to add something like this, let's do another one, maybe on a different date here.

Again, it's as easy as just typing in that letter, and I can call Bill regarding the email discussion we had last week.

So now that you know some of the benefits of using Text Blaze, let's take a look at how we can create our own and add even further functionality so that your snippets, the things that you input into your documents, your chat window, or anywhere on the web, can be that much easier and that much more customizable.

How to create Text Blaze snippets

Here within the Text Blaze dashboard you can see that I have a list of my snippets here on the left-hand side.

You can see the names which I have given those snippets, and then on the right-hand side, you can see the shortcuts which will be used.

Of course, Text Blaze also gives us the option to create multiple folders.

So if we want to create our snippets in different categories or different themes, we can do so to make it that much easier to manage.

But to start your snippet, all you need to do is hit this plus button here, and we will be provided with a new window to give it a new label.

Again, this label is gonna be something just for yourself.

So in this case, I'm gonna call this one review process.

Next, we need to choose a shortcut key.

You'll notice that many of mine start with a forward slash, and there's a purpose or a reason behind this.

It's often not a great idea to use shortcut keys without some type of special character prefacing those letters.

Why? Because what if I create a shortcut key such as TH?

Well, TH is probably risky because anytime I spell the word the or that or those or any other TH word, then this snippet is going to be put into place.

So I'm gonna stick with a forward slash here, and why don't I just put RP for review process?

It can be as short or as long as you like.

Now down below, we can put in whatever we want into this snippet.

In this example, I'm going to assume that someone has sent me a document and maybe as a part of my business, I need to review these files or review this document and I promise to get back to my clients within three days.

Using Forms and Dynamic Content with Text Blaze

So watch how I'm gonna create a customized response, including some dynamic dates, into this message.

First off, I want to address them by name.

So I'm gonna say hi, but what I'm going to do is add a dynamic field here.

I'm gonna add a text and I'm gonna say that this is a name field.

Now this field name is optional.

In fact, all of these three options, the default value and the columns, meaning the width of that text field, are all optional.

I'm just gonna input name at this point, just so I know what this field is for when it comes up and I am prompted.

So I'm gonna say hi, and I'm gonna put a comma after it and then I get to start, oops, that's a period.

I'm gonna put a comma afterwards, and then I'm gonna start my message.

I'm gonna say, thanks for sending over these files.

I will review them and get back to you by…

Now here I wanna put in a dynamic date.

Remember it's all about saving time and making things easier for me.

So I'm gonna come back down here, but instead of using this forms and dynamic content, I wanna use this one, which is called Time and Date Shifting.

You can see there's a variety of different options we can include, including the current date and the current time and other insertion context.

But in this example, I wanna use time and date shifting.

So I'm gonna say in three days, I'm gonna promise or tell them that I'm gonna get back to them within three days.

So now I can insert this, I'm gonna put a period at the end because it's the end of a sentence.

Now that date three days from now is going to be input directly into this response.

But I'm not quite done here because as you can see, the date format is a little, shall we say a little strict or maybe a little too formal.

It's not gonna sound that natural if I tell them that I'm gonna get back to them in this date format.

So all I need to do is select this and come down here and select time-date format.

Here I have the option to change it.

First, what I'm going to do is I'm gonna remove the format that is currently there.

Then I'm gonna come down here and select this one.

This is going to give me a preview so in this case, it's going to say September 10th, 2021.

I like that for the most part but you know what, including the year that might sound a little rigid or maybe someone will clue in that I'm some automation.

So all I'm gonna do in this case is I'm going to eliminate the year and because it's the end of the sentence, I'm also gonna eliminate that comma.

So let's test it out and see how this is going to look.

Text Blaze makes it very easy, you can see we're in the edit version or the edit tab here, all I need to do is come over here and select Preview; and this is what it's going to look like.

I'm gonna have the ability to fill in the name and then thanks for sending over the files.

I will review them and get back to you by September 13th.

That looks really nice and clean, doesn't it?

Okay, let's remember what was the quick key? /RP.

So let's pretend that I've received those files and I'm replying to this client.

I'm gonna hit /RP on my computer and I'm presented with a new dialogue.

And here you can see I've got that name field that I created.

So I can say, hi Bill.

That's all I need to do at this stage and hit enter on my keyboard.

Now it's entered directly into the email and as you can see, September 13th, which is exactly three days from now, is entered into my response.

I can immediately hit send and get on with the rest of my day.

So if you have certain processes, if you have certain replies, if you have certain responses that you'd like to add, you can do so right here.

Adding calculations to Text Blaze snippets

One of the more complex things that you can do, if you really want to take your text expansion to the next level, is by adding calculations.

Here's an example called Forms where you can actually input drop-down options and it will calculate the price for you.

Let's take a look at this example back in our email version here as well.

I'm just gonna clear this and I'm gonna use the /form.

Once again, I'm presented with this dialogue so I can enter in a name.

Here you can see I can enter that name in once, but it could appear in multiple places.

And here I can say, well, a customer bought 13 widgets at a price of 12 per widget and now it's calculated the total price down below.

I can hit insert and now it's right here within my email response.

So you can actually get quite advanced if you like right here within Text Blaze.

Pricing and Plans

Now not only will you save a huge amount of time with Text Blaze, but you will also save money.

Why? Because Text Blaze has a free forever plan.

Now you are limited to only 20 snippets, but you can have up to 2,500 characters in each of those snippets.

If you need more and a few more features, the pro version is only $2 and 99 cents per month.

And for the amount of time that you're going to be saving, this is absolutely nothing.

For the cost of a coffee, a regular coffee, you will be saving so much time using Text Blaze.

If you'd like to start saving time right away with Text Blaze, be sure to click the link in the description below.

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

Crmble CRM

It doesn't matter if you pay for Trello or if you're just using a free Trello account, you now have unlimited access to Power-Ups.

That's right, you can use as many Power-Ups as you like.

So in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven great Trello Power-Ups that won't cost you a thing.

And let's dive right in with Crmble.

Many people have asked me, Scott, can I use Trello as a CRM system, as a customer relationship manager?

I'm often hesitant to say yes, because Trello really wasn't designed for a CRM as the end goal, until now.

With the Crmble Power-Up extension, you can use Trello as an excellent CRM system.

When we first open up a Trello card, you can see that we have some Crmble fields, which allow us to enter in customer information.

Now you can customize which of these that you want to display, or even add some of your own.

Here you can see, I can add in all of those details that I'm used to seeing when working with a traditional CRM system.

So whether this represents a new client or a deal, I can move it through its different stages of the sales process or the pipeline, or however you'd like to set up your CRM and have that information accessible here.

You can also see on the front of the card, I can see the size of the deal, I can give it a rating.

I can see if this particular client or this lead is warm or not.

Maybe it's a little cold like this one here, but it gets even better.

If we click on the Crmble link here in the top right-hand corner, we've got our full CRM dashboard.

I can see exactly where things are within that process.

I can even click on the Leads option here, and I can see all of my customer information here all in one place.

So if you want to use Trello as a CRM system, be sure to check out Crmble.

Bulk Actions

Now the next free Power-Up on my list has almost become standard for all of my Trello boards, and it's called Bulk Actions.

How many times have you wanted to make changes to multiple cards right here within Trello, but Trello doesn't allow you to do that?

Well, with the Bulk Actions Power-Up, you can do just that.

Let's say that I need to change three cards in three different lists, and I need to change their labels.

I want to change this one and I want to change this second one, and I also want to change this third one here.

I'm going to waste an awful lot of time by clicking on each and every one of those cards.

But if I select Bulk Actions at the top of the screen, it's going to show me a slightly different view of that Trello board.

Now you can see I've got these little check boxes.

So if I click this one and this one, and then this one, now I've got all of these options available to me here.

In this case, I want to relabel.

I'm going to select relabel, and let's say I want to make sure that they're all changed to an HR project.

I'm going to say Relabel.

I can say Relabel and Keep Selection if I want to do further changes on these three.

Why don't we do that in this example?

I'm going to select that.

First, it's going to add that blue HR label, but they've remained selected because maybe I also want to change their due date.

So I'm going to select their due date, and I'm going to say that everything here is due by the end of next week.

I can even make that time nice and uniform, and I'm going to say Change the Due Dates.

Now you can see, not only do they all have the blue HR label, they are now all due on September 3rd.

Bulk Actions is such a massive time-saver no matter how you're using Trello.

List Limits

No matter what you use your Trello boards for, sometimes you may have a list or more in which you want to keep in check.

What I mean by that is perhaps there's a part of your phase that you want to make sure that you don't have too many cards at any given time.

That's where the List Limits Power-Up comes into play.

Here you can see under my Pending list, I've got some numbers at the top.

It says three of four.

Because I have List Limits enabled, and I've told it I only want a maximum of four cards in this list, it's going to give me a warning if I exceed that number.

So let's say, for example, I'm going to drag over this card into this list.

You can see it says four of four, and maybe one of these In Progress cards I have to bring back.

So I'm going to bring it back to Pending.

Now, not only does it tell me it's five out of four, but this entire list is now shaded in a different color.

So this is telling me and other members of my board that, wait a minute, we've got too many in this Pending state.

What's going on? What's the bottleneck? What do we need to do differently?

You can apply these list limits and change the number for any of your lists.

Or, as you can see in my example here, you can just apply it to one particular list.

So don't feel that you have to apply this to everything in your workflow.

Now I can say that, you know what, maybe we can still work on this particular task, and now that color changes back to its normal shade.

I can still see the total, the four out of four.

If you need to add your list limit, all you need to do is come up here and come down and select Set List Limit.

Once the Power-Up is installed, and now we can set our number here and say Save.

Now I can see it's three out of five for this in progress list, and I can continue to work with my Trello workflow.

Card Priority

When it comes to managing all of your tasks and cards, setting a proper priority can be one of the most effective ways to get the most out of Trello.

You're probably familiar with using labels where you can use labels, not only for different categories or perhaps departments, but you can also use them for priorities.

For example, here I've got a red Urgent label and I've got a yellow Medium Priority label.

But sometimes this can get confusing because I also have things like departments and other categories mixed in here.

Well, now you can use Card Priority by Screenful to set a true priority.

Here, you can see on a few of my cards, I've got things like Highest, and I've got one here that is labeled Critical.

These are separate from the labels themselves.

If I open up this card, for example, you can see that it has its own client request label, but it also has its separate priority level.

Under Power-Ups, I can select Card Priority, and here, I can choose or edit the priority levels given here.

Now these are the defaults that Card Priority gives us.

I think they're most helpful.

If I want to bump this up to Highest, I can do so.

It's going to change it here.

It's also going to change that on the front of the card as well.

If you select the Card Priority option here in the top right-hand corner, it can also give you a summary of where those levels are and where they exist amongst your different lists.

In fact, you can even look at it a few different ways, based by label or by assignee as well.

Now, the nice thing is, under Settings, you can really customize this Power-Up.

For example, maybe you don't want to see it on the card front, but you do want to see it on the card back, or vice versa, or maybe both as we see in this case here.

The other nice thing is this option, to only show the high priorities on a card front.

You very well know that by adding more information, maybe other custom fields, maybe other Power-Ups as well, the front of a card can get very, very busy.

I think this makes an awful lot of sense, that maybe we only want to show the top two priorities, we can still give these other high priority levels or these priority levels to other cards, but we don't necessarily need to show them everywhere.

If I uncheck this option and hit Save, you'll see that I have a few more that appear because these are below my top two priority levels.

But if I ever need to come and change that, I can do that here under Settings.

I can also come in here and actually change the text of any of my priorities as well.

A very flexible tool, a great way to add true priorities and not waste all of your Trello labels.

Card Dependencies

Now let's stick with another power-up designed by Screenful.

This one is called Card Dependencies.

How often have you been working within a Trello board, and you know that something is a parent of something else, or maybe this task is a child of another card?

Maybe something needs to be accomplished before something else can get started.

Well, with Card Dependencies, we can do that.

Let's open up this card as an example here.

If we want to add a dependency to this particular card, all we need to do is go over to the Power-Ups section and click on Dependencies.

Here we have a number of different ways in which we can add a dependency.

For example, maybe you work in blocks, meaning that it is blocked by another task or it's related to something else.

In this case, I'm going to say it's a child to something.

I'm going to select that option here, and now all I need to do is search for the name of that other card.

In this case, I'm going to say it's a child to New Idea 2.

What's going to happen is I'm going to have its own Card Dependencies section right here so I can see the relationship between these two.

The other nice thing is that it's quick and easy for me to remove if need be or to check it off, so that once this connection or this dependency no longer remains, I can check it off at this level.

Let's add something else here, just as an example.

I'm going to click on Dependencies here.

In this case, that's a child too.

I'm going to say it's also a parent of a different card.

In this case, I'm going to say this is related to something called a new listing.

I'm going to select that one.

Now you can see the different relationships here as well.

The other bonus of using this Power-Up is that we have direct links to these other cards.

If I click on New Idea 2, I can go directly to this other card and see what's happening here.

If I need to go back, I can see that oh, this is a parent to Get Quotes From New Vendors, and I can go back to that original child dependency.

A great way to make and see those relationships between your cards.

Card Duration

The next Power-Up in our list has all to do with getting more out of due dates right here within Trello.

Of course, applying due dates is so crucial to staying on track and making sure that your projects can complete on time.

Sometimes it can be difficult to estimate how far out is this particular date?

If you've included both a start and an end date, how long is this actually going to take?

Well, with the Card Duration Power-Up by Placker, it can give us both sets of information in a different and more digestible way.

For example here, this card is due on September 3rd.

How close is that?

Down below, it's telling me exactly, that's in one week, seven hours, and exactly 21 minutes from now.

This is maybe a little more relevant to me.

As I glance at other cards as well, such as October 31st, okay, that's one week and a day, this is one week and three hours, now I've got a bit of a better grasp of how close I am to those due dates.

If you've also included a start date, here you can see the Card Duration Power-Up will tell us the total amount of time.

So this card should take us about four days, in this particular case.

This one has a very long duration.

It's 27 weeks and one day.

I wouldn't be able to do that math quickly in my head, but now I've got the exact number here, thanks to this particular power up.

So if you're wanting to see this, of the card, but you can also see this inside the card as well, be sure to install the Card Duration Power-Up by Placker.

Costello

The seventh free Trello power up on our list has all to do with tracking costs.

Whether you're tracking a budget or financials here within Trello, Costello makes things so much easier.

Even before I open up any of these cards, you can see here in the top right-hand corner, I've got a total cost of roughly $2500.

What it's doing is summing up the different cards where I've added cost data.

In this example, I'm going to come over here to the Power-Ups section, and I'm going to add a total cost.

Let's enter in a number, something like $1500.

Now you can see I've got this number attached to this card here.

If I close this and I come to the front of the card, you can see that that cost is visible here as well.

But the great thing is, is that my total cost has increased, because, of course, it's going to be dynamic, so I can add cost to any of the cards on this board, and when I click on this option here, I can summarize it by a few different ways.

Not only will it show me the individual cards where I've added cost data and include the number, but I can summarize it by column.

Here I can see my biggest expenses are under the Pending task here, but I can also summarize it by label as well.

Here I can see that both HR and the client request are very close at around $2,000.

So if you're working with money, budgeting, or financials, be sure to install the Costello Power-Up.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's Trello tutorial and tip video, and I'd love to hear from you next.

With unlimited Power-Ups for everyone, what's at the top of your Trello Power-Up list?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

I hope you give this video a thumbs up, and subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel for more Trello tips and tricks.

And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.