How KosmoTime integrates with your calendar
Blocking off time on your calendar is one of the most effective ways for you to get things done. However, most of our calendars do a relatively poor job of allowing us to block off distraction-free time.
Well, in this video I'm introducing you to KosmoTime, a beautiful calendar and task interface, which allows you to create Focus Blocks and manage those tasks seamlessly. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
And here I am within the KosmoTime interface. Now, KosmoTime integrates directly with both Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook, so you can sync your schedule together.
Now at the top of the screen, we have our calendar, our tasks, and our time reports. Now I'm gonna get to these other two a little later, but in order for you to work at your productive best you need to be focused right here on your calendar.
Now at first glance, it looks like a basic calendar and we have our tasks listed here on the left-hand side. "Big deal," you're probably saying, but here is where things work differently.
On your traditional calendar, you may block out time such as this titled Distraction-Free Work, right? You've set aside some time that you can do some particular tasks, but what tasks exactly are you going to fulfill within this hour?
Do you need to go over here and reference another task list or open up another task app? We'll take a look at this Focus Block.
Creating Focus Blocks in KosmoTime
When I click on this, I already have one task waiting for me here and if I need to add more it's as easy as editing this Focus Block. Maybe I need to email Jane about an upcoming meeting for example.
Maybe I need to review the marketing report for Q3 perhaps that's coming up like this. I can add my tasks right here, I can save this Focus Block, it keeps it nice and clean.
But when I get to this time in my day all I need to do is open up this Focus Block and I can start checking off the tasks that are waiting for me here. Now, as we saw at the top of the screen there is time reporting and time tracking built right in.
So if I'm going to review this financial report I can hit this Play button, hit Start, I can see the timer up here in the top left-hand corner. I can work on that particular task and when I'm done I can simply select Done.
And now that particular task is finished. I can still see it here in my task list.
If I wanna go to a more traditional view and see, okay here's where I reviewed that financial report, I can view all my completed tasks here. So let's see how easy it is for us to create our own Focus Block.
Let's say I've got a number of email tasks over here on the left-hand side of my task pane. Now I could go through them one by one here and there throughout the day but I know I'm gonna be much more efficient if I group all of those email tasks together.
So let's say tomorrow just after lunch I want to bang out a number of email tasks. All I'm gonna do here is click on this space, I'm gonna give it a name, I'm gonna say, "Email Tasks" in this case.
And I can either hit the Plus and Minus to expand the duration or I can click and drag it here. So I'm gonna block out a full hour for this focus effort.
And I'm gonna say, "Create Block." Now you will notice there's a Create Task option here as well.
So you can add your tasks directly to the calendar, but in this case I want to add several tasks for this Focus Block of time. So I'm gonna say, "Create Block."
Now at this point in time, this is empty. I could click on this and start to add other things directly from it but what's easier I find is to look over here on the left-hand side.
So let's pull some of these email tasks. Here's this email team about the summer vacation.
I'm gonna drag and release it in that Focus Block. I'm gonna reply to this marketing team email, I'm gonna put that over there.
And then this email about Karen and my meeting on Friday, I'm gonna put it in that Focus Block as well. Now, the great thing is that not only have I grouped all of these tasks together.
If I open it up you can see that they're all here waiting for me but they've also been removed from my master task list over here on the left-hand side. Now you can see my Focus Block is listed.
So if I want to expand this and see where those tasks are located and even add a few more tasks, if I don't want to open it up here on my calendar, I can do so here as well, but it keeps my tasks nice and clean.
It also keeps them all grouped together. So now when tomorrow afternoon rolls around, all I need to do is open up this Focus Block and I've got these tasks waiting for me right here.
Recurring Focus Blocks in KosmoTime
Another great feature of Focus Blocks is that you can make them recurring. So you could have this same Focus Block day after day or on a schedule of your choosing.
But what's so powerful about this is that any tasks that you do not complete within a Focus Block will carry over into the new Focus Block time based on your recurring schedule.
Tasks view in KosmoTime
Let's move on to the Tasks View here just to see how we can manage our different tasks right here within KosmoTime. Now it's nice KosmoTime by default is going to have this calendar available to us at all times, which I think is ideal.
If you want to be efficient and effective with managing your tasks, you want to be able to see your tasks and your calendar on the same screen as much as possible. Now you can categorize your tasks in a number of different ways.
If you want to set up projects, you can do so as well. Here we're just looking at today's tasks but we can also look at all the ones that maybe do not have a date yet.
You can see that we have some that are listed within my Focus Block time. So this is where they are slated for me to accomplish them but that's going to be different from an actual due date.
A due date in this case is something that is listed in blue here. So this newsletter template, this research new app for contracts, these things are now scheduled on the Monday.
KosmoTime also allows you to add different tags for different tasks. So if you want to group like-minded tasks together, KosmoTime makes it very easy for you to do so.
I wanna come back to this calendar for just a moment here and just to highlight why this is so important. Not only do we wanna be able to see what's going on and we can of course toggle into other days as well.
We're gonna go back to today for just a quick example but let's say I've got some spare time between lunch here. Maybe I want to add something to my task list here.
So I'm gonna put it here. I'm gonna drag it and drop it right on my calendar.
So previously this task was just due today but it actually didn't show up in my calendar, right? Because I hadn't slotted a time when I was going to accomplish it.
And maybe I can try and fit this one in as well. I'm gonna slot this one in right after it.
So this is part of the power, part of the effectiveness of viewing your calendar, viewing your task list, not only on the same screen but being able to drag things in between the two so you can actually slot that time in.
Time Reporting in KosmoTime
Now, the last section here that we'll see is Time Reporting. So if you need to track your time or see how much time you've spent on a particular task, you can do so right here within KosmoTime as well.
Let's go back to our Task List for example and let's say I'm gonna start with this Deep Work. All I need to do is hit that Play button and in the top corner I can see what is being tracked here.
Now I can pause it at any time if I walk away from my desk or do something else but now I'll have a record of that within my time report.
Now, while KosmoTime's primary features are around blocking off time on your calendar and the relationship with your tasks, it also has some additional features to help you stay focused.
Close Tabs and Mute Mode in KosmoTime
Here on the top left-hand corner we have two focus features called Close Tabs and Mute Mode. Something that can be very distracting is that when we're working with so many different open tabs within our browser it tempts us to click on things such as, oh, I don't know, social media perhaps or the NBA playoffs.
Yes, that's one of my things that pulls me away as a part of my day and it takes us away from our most important tasks. Well, here with the Close Tabs feature it is going to minimize all of those open tabs into a single tab.
Now, if I click on the Close Tabs here, I can see and I can still access any of these tabs. So if I want to open up just Twitter, I can do so and I can open up that tab.
However, if I'm done working on my most important task or my Focus Block all I need to do is say, "restore all." And now all of those tabs have returned here.
So I can interact and work with them again. This is a really nice feature and it comes with the KosmoTime extension.
The next one is something called Mute Mode. Now KosmoTime actually has an integration with Slack and Slack can be very, very distracting but also there can be the temptation to continue to open up new tabs.
So with Mute Mode turned on, if I come up here and try to open up a new tab, it's going to allow me to bring up this first tab here but let's say I click on YouTube. I just wanna get a bit of a fix.
I need to just watch a few videos to pull me away from my most important tasks. What KosmoTime is going to do is say, "Hey, wait a minute, you should be focused on something else, you have Mute Mode turned on."
"Do you need just a quick access?" And I can ask for just 15 minutes before it's going to block me out from viewing that tab or using that website.
So these productivity-focused enhancements go much beyond just your Focus Block. It can help you stay focused on what's most important.
And speaking of efficiency, KosmoTime does a great job of helping you get started quickly and easily. If you look at the bottom of the screen you can see it's actually telling me what the shortcut key is to creating a Focus Block.
In this case all I need to do is select the letter B on my keyboard and then I can create that new Focus Block. Once the Focus Block is entered I can see, I can hit Escape or Enter or Shift + Enter.
These helpful reminders yet they're not interfering with my day just so I can get started using KosmoTime that much faster and also not have to rely on my mouse all of the time.
Now, if you'd like to try KosmoTime for yourself and get started for free, be sure to click the link in the description below.
Thank you so much for watching today's video and remember being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.
