Google Tasks has come an awful long way over the last few years and in particular over the last few months as they have added new features to help you and I be more productive.
So in today's video, I wanna share with you my five favorite tips so you can get so much more out of Google Tasks.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
And let's jump right in to tip number one.
Now, this is something that is more recent so you may not be familiar with these first two tips.
The first thing that Google Tasks has added recently is the ability to have repeating tasks.
So I can add a task here and let's just do something.
Repeating Tasks
Really basic like take out the garbage, something that I certainly need to do on a regular basis.
But before you hit enter I'm gonna edit this particular task and you will see that I have the ability to add a date and a time.
I wanna start with that and I wanna do this every Sunday.
Sunday evening is when I wanna take out the trash but you can see at the bottom that there is now a repeat function.
So I can choose to have this task happen each and every Sunday.
I'm gonna select that and I've got multiple choices, if I wanna do it by day, week, month or year.
In this case, I wanna do it every week and I want it to appear on the Sunday.
Yeah, I wanna start it on May 26th, I could change that there if I want to.
I'm gonna leave the time alone so it's just gonna appear at the beginning of May 26th, the beginning of Sunday and I'm gonna select OK.
And so now we have it there.
If I go back to my task with this, yes it's going to appear for this coming Sunday, May 26th but the great thing is I can see the little icon.
It's telling me that it's a recurring task.
This time if I go and mark it as complete, it is now gone from my task list but yes, it will reappear here in the coming Sunday.
So it's always going to come and show up when I have that repeating task.
Of course we always have the Completed area down below here.
So I can always go back in here, and if I want to remove that repeater, that's where I would wanna go into this Completed area and then I can remove future completed tasks.
But let me minimize that for now and let's get to tip number two which is also something which is rather recent, something that was recently added and that's the ability to add a specific due time.
Adding Due Date Time
Not just a due date but a due time.
So let's say I wanna email Susan later in the day.
First of all if I'm gonna update my time here.
This is something way in the past.
So let me bring it up to something a little more current.
Let's say I'm gonna email her tomorrow morning but I don't wanna just set it for the 22nd, I wanna make sure I do this before noon.
So I'm actually gonna come down here and select 'Set time'.
I could either enter it from a text based perspective or I can just punch it.
I'm gonna say 9:30 a.m. and I'm going to say OK.
Now the great thing with this is that I will have, there you can see it, it's just popped up here to the left on my calendar.
It will appear on my calendar as well.
As long as I have my tasks calendar enabled down here within Google Calendar, anything with a specific time will also show up here within that calendar.
So not only will I receive a reminder but I'll see it there on my calendar as well.
So another helpful addition, something that Google has added recently.
Tip number three has to do with using subtasks.
In many cases you may be managing a project.
Create Subtasks
Or even just a mini project here within Google Tasks.
So I'm gonna say, let's just call this one 'Mini-Project' for our example, shall we?
What I'm gonna do this time around, I'm gonna hit the edit button and we can see below Add date/time there is the ability to add subtasks.
So I'm gonna say this is Mini Task.
Mini Task one, really original Scott, Mini Task two and Mini Task three.
So I can have these other additional tasks, these things all work their way up are all a part of this mini project, I can add them here within my task list.
So something very very powerful.
Now, when you see the front of the task what you'll notice is that they do appear as individual tasks.
This is actually quite helpful because I can now go into Mini Task 1, for example, and I can give it a distinct due date, I can give more details, specific details for this particular task as well.
But it will keep them together.
So for example if I want to…
Let's give this a due date, let's give the Mini-Project a due date, for example, of let's say like maybe the end of next week.
I'm gonna come back out here as well.
So here you can see that Mini-Project there.
They're still attached.
Even though these ones have no due date, these are the subtasks, they're still joined.
If I open up this Mini Task here, I can still deal with it the way I want to but it's still attached to this Mini-Project up above.
There you see all of our tasks here below.
And I can start checking them off.
I probably would have done task one first but let's say I did task two first, I can see them all here within that Mini Project.
All right, tip number three.
It has to do with something that I'm sometimes surprised that I have to remind so many people about but it's very very helpful is don't forget that you can use more than just one list within Google Tasks.
By default, Google's gonna create this My Tasks list but you can see here, I have a new project list and I can create something else as well.
Let's call this one the Brand New List, for example.
And I can hit Done.
So I can separate my personal from my business.
Here's my Brand New List.
I've got nothing in here just yet.
So maybe I wanna start out and I'm gonna say New Task for Monday.
So I've got my brand new task in here but let's say that I created it here and then I forgot.
Oh no, brand new task list, I don't want it here, I actually wanted it in my tasks list.
Well, it's actually pretty simple.
If you go over to the edit function here, you can see you can change the list down below, right below the details, you can always move your tasks in between different lists.
So in this case, maybe I put it here by mistake, I'm gonna say, let's put it back into my tasks.
I come back out, this is empty once again and now I can go back here and find that one under My Tasks.
I didn't give it a due date, right?
There's my new task for Monday.
So I can find it down below as well.
Well, the last task I wanted to share with you today is maybe one of my favorites and something that you'll find very very powerful has to do with using Google Tasks with Gmail.
So if I go right here to Gmail,
Create Tasks from Gmail
Often we want to convert a particular email into a task and we can do that quite easily.
Up near the top of any of your emails, you'll find the little three dots that give us some more options and here we have a choice to add it to tasks.
So you can see it's automatically gonna up my tasks bar here and it's gonna add this particular task.
Now it's going to use the label here.
Here we go, under no date, it's gonna use the subject line of the email, it's gonna give that the title of the task.
So Winter is gone.
Something that I wanna here with this Sheetgo notification.
Maybe there are some things that I wanna look at here.
Now of course I can come in here and I can relabel this, right and I can say, let's just call this SheetGo tasks to complete, something like that, then I can add further details if I want to but the real bonus, the real plus here is that it gives me a direct link to this email.
So if I go back out here, you can also see that from the front and in fact I can access it from the front as well.
So I'm gonna just click on my inbox, I'm gonna get out of this particular email here just to show you an example.
So let's say as I'm going through my to-do list, I come across this one and say, oh yeah, I wanna review.
What were those tasks in that email?
I'm just gonna click on this link and immediately that email will appear here on the left-hand side of the screen.
So really powerful if you want to automatically attach an email to a particular task, you can convert it by just using the more options and selecting Add to Tasks.
Well, I would love to hear from you next.
Of these five, which one was your favorite?
Which one do you find is going to be most useful for you and do you have some additional tips that you'd like to share with others?
Please be sure to add them in the comments down below.
Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.
In fact, it's very simple.
