Podcasts about keep productive

This week I'm excited to welcome Francesco D'alessio for a really insightful chat about finding the right productivity tools and apps to meet your unique needs. Francesco is the founder of Keep Productive and co-founder of Tool Finder, the world's best place to discover and learn more about productivity tools. Both Keep Productive and Tool Finder aim to make productivity software easier to understand. There is a tool for everything so they create videos and courses to help you match to the perfect productivity tools for you. Tool Finder's resources are designed to make productivity software easy to grasp and go deeper if you want to. Built on an independent philosophy around reviews and matching people with the perfect tool, Tool Finder is a growing directory, network, and source of knowledge on the ideal productivity software to pick and adopt for your work, family life, or personal time management. Their 120,000+ readers a month gain insight into what apps are best for them, and what features matter and gain real insight into whether the tool is right for them. Tool Finder has reviewed over 750+ productivity apps and constantly updates its database.  In this episode Francesco provides his unique three-part framework on selecting and sticking with productivity apps, emphasizing the importance of research, trial, and optimization. We also discuss the risks of the "shiny object syndrome" and the future of AI's role in productivity tools – a conversation that promises to give you a glimpse into the future of task management. In addition we touch on the importance of 'rules over tools'—a philosophy that prioritizes frameworks and strategies over the apps themselves. This is a vital episode for anyone looking for professional insights on what makes a great productivity tool and where the future of productivity is going. Connect with Francesco: Website YouTube Twitter ______________________________________ Connect with Erik: Sign Up For Our Newsletter LinkedIn  Twitter  Facebook  Instagram  ______________________________________ This Podcast is Powered By: Descript Descript 101 Castmagic Ecamm Podpage Rodecaster Pro Top Productivity Books List Make sure to support the show by checking out the sponsors! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this show, Derek Liddell, an engineering leader from the Loop team at Microsoft presents the end-to-end experiences with the new Microsoft Loop app, available both on the web and in mobile. The Loop app is a transformative co-creation experience that brings together teams, content, and tasks across your tools and devices. It gives you a central place to bring people together to create real-time content in a simple, collaborative and structured way, from using intelligent search to build your first shared workspaces, where you can enjoy super-fast synchronized collaboration to leveraging AI with Copilot in Loop, to generate ideas with others on your team to get in your flow. Copilot capabilities in Loop will begin rolling out in the next few months.  If you're using Loop components today, you might familiar with how you can embed live, auto-updating content seamlessly across apps like Microsoft Teams, Outlook email, Word and even the Whiteboard - all from the same source, freeing you up to work in your preferred collaboration modality. The Loop app builds on this and gives you a new hub to create and find all of your shared Loop components, workspaces, and pages. ►QUICK LINKS: 00:00 - What is Microsoft Loop? 00:30 - Loop components in Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and Word 01:28 - The new Microsoft Loop app 01:39 - Getting started with Loop  04:47 - Working with others in their preferred apps 06:45 - Using AI with Copilot to generate and refine content 09:28 - Notifications, getting back to your Loop components, and ideas 10:09 - Wrap up ► Link References: Start using Loop at https://loop.microsoft.com Get the mobile app at https://aka.ms/getLoopmobile Admin steps to enable at https://aka.ms/enableLoop ► Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? As Microsoft's official video series for IT, you can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. • Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries • Talk with other IT Pros, join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog • Watch or listen from anywhere, subscribe to our podcast: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/podcast ► Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: • Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics • Share knowledge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ • Enjoy us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msftmechanics/ • Loosen up with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@msftmechanics 

There are so many productivity tools out there; how do you know which tool is the right one for you? How do you avoid “Shiny Object Syndrome”? What are the latest trends in productivity? In this episode, we are joined by Francesco D'Alessio from Keep Productive and Toolfinder.xyz to talk about productivity tools, cutting-edge trends, […]

Justin takes a few moments to review his 2020. Shownotes Get the Annual Review Template! (https://annualreviewtemplate.com) YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkzyo69rqBoBJUyQ9jo53Bw) Remotely Working (https://remotelyworking.net) Obsidian Made Simple (https://obsidianmadesimple.com) Keep Productive (https://keepproductive.com) Obsidian (https://obsidian.md) Bullet Journal (https://bulletjournal.com/) Relaunching the ERW Community Discussion (https://bulletjournal.com/) Essentialism (https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Disciplined-Pursuit-Greg-McKeown/dp/0804137382) Annual Review Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNE_w7Gjp3M)

What's to come in 2021 when it comes to Productivity? Francesco from Keep Productive and I will give you our best guesses what the next big thing will be!

María es productivity coach y vive en Canadá después de varios años de haber migrado de Maracaibo, Venezuela. Su recorrido pasa por distintas etapas que transitan por el diseño y el marketing digital, sin embargo, es en el campo de la productividad donde ha dedicado su foco durante los últimos años. María nos comparte su experiencia como Productivity Coach, ¿qué significa y qué hace?, ¿por qué es tan importante conocerse a si mismos y definir un concepto de productividad adecuado a nosotros mismos? Con ella nos paseamos por distintos puntos de la productividad según su visión, así como por algunas de las herramientas y técnicas que utiliza para trabajar con sus clientes. Si quieres conocer más sobre el trabajo de María, puedes visitar el web site de su marca Groovy Winks (https://groovywink.com) También puedes comenzar a profundizar en el campo de la productividad suscribiéndote a su canal de YouTube y descubrir herramientas como Notion y cómo puedes configurar algo personalizado (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFF5Wt4tv2u5TW3eRZl18cQ) Si quieres conocer Notion, puedes ir y curiosear un poco sobre la herramienta aquí https://www.notion.so/ También, puedes ver el video de colaboración de María con el canal Keep Productive donde profundiza un poco la metodología PARA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZIMlWLW4gU Por último, aún no has visto el episodio junto a Andrea Flores, donde hablamos de la productividad abordado desde la disciplina, puedes ir a verlo para tener otro punto de vista sobre este tema https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23YuD8F-xOw&t=2303s Recuerda suscribirte al canal y activar las notificaciones de Chamba Talks para mantenernos en contacto y seas parte de la comunidad de personas que estamos construyendo cultura digital y negocios digitales.

Mental Health : How To Manage Stress And Keep Productive During Pandemic

See the tweet Amir sent here (https://twitter.com/amix3k/status/1305735890610814976). Brought to you by Keep Productive

Sources includes: * Airtable Blog Articles: here (https://blog.airtable.com/airtable-platform-launch-automations-sync-apps/). * Forbes Finance Overview: here (https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2020/09/14/cloud-start-up-airtable-raises-185-million-at-25-billion-valuation-and-launches-api-for-outside-coders/#57ab4d1041e5) Keep Productive production

My guest today is Rob Haisfield. Rob is a behavioral product strategy and gamification consultant. He's also an expert user of Roam, “a note-taking tool for networked thought.” In this conversation, we talk about Roam — what it is and how it can help you think more effectively. Listen to the full conversation Download episode 43   Show notes Rob Haisfield @roberthaisfield on Twitter Rob Haisfield on LinkedIn Influence Insights, Rob's consulting company Spark Wave Center for Advanced Hindsight Roam Research OneNote Rob's public repository Spaced repetition Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein DEVONthink GuidedTrack Rob Haisfield's Tour of Roam Research (video) Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links. Read the full transcript Jorge: So, Rob, welcome to the show. Rob: Thanks for having me, Jorge. Jorge: It's a pleasure having you here. For folks who might not know who you are, can you please introduce yourself? About Rob Rob: Yeah. So, I'm Rob Haisfield. I am a behavioral product strategy and gamification consultant. I run a consultancy independently around those two ideas, behavioral product strategy being, how can we build our products better? So that way they influence users to use the product better. You know, because ultimately, product can only do so much for a person's life. Like it can give you access to value, but people still of need to use the product in certain sorts of ways in order to gain value. I also do gamification, which to me is essentially just taking inspiration from behavioral science and from game design and applying it to software products to encourage voluntary behavior. That means I end up working on projects, like how to increase adoption for an app, improving onboarding, or coming up with a strategy around retention for users and through the act of influencing user behavior. And I also work as a behavioral product strategist for a startup studio called Spark Wave, which is a startup that starts startups, for lack of a better phrase. We come up with business ideas, build the first version of them, and then we find outside entrepreneurs to take over and run the company with our assistance and our support. I do the exact same thing in both gigs, it's just with the startup studio, it's with portfolio companies, of course. Jorge: And what is your background? How did you come to behavioral product strategy? Rob: Yeah. I studied behavioral economics in college. I was absolutely passionate about it, but when I was studying it… My school, we didn't have a default major for it; they actually had me create the major. And so that meant I had to combine courses from a lot of like different domains that attacked behavioral economics from like a sideways perspective, you know? And then I kind of had to put the pieces together from there. I also worked for a little while as a research assistant at the Center for Advanced Hindsight in Durham. And I've been working with startups for pretty much, as long as I've been working. Every internship that I had was with a startup; I had my own startup. And as I was studying, behavioral economics, and as I was working on startups, I was really just realizing the cross — the intersection — that's really there. Because ultimately, we're trying to influence people's behavior in order to use products better. Most product problems just come down to, why aren't our users doing this, you know? I've just been combining behavioral science and products for a while. When I graduated college, I had to make a decision for myself. Do I want pursue academia, PhD, or do I want to go straight into consulting for startups? And what I ended up coming to was that consulting would be a better path for me to learn and would be a better path for me to make an impact, because I can still read all the papers that I want on my own. In fact, I'm reading more papers than I ever was before, because now it's driven by curiosity as opposed to a professor giving me a syllabus and telling me this now. And I'm learning also more because I'm having to apply my ideas to the different companies and see, okay, does this actually work? Am I willing to put enough credence into this idea to bet my relationship with a client on it? Over the course of the last couple years, I've worked with over a dozen startups. Well, really just over a dozen companies. Not all of them have been startups and, I've learned so much, and I've been able to make an impact through their products. So that's really where a lot of my background comes from, started in behavioral economics, branched out into, I'm just going to read whatever I'm curious about within behavioral science and ended up in now I'm seeing those ideas in application. About Roam Jorge: That's such a rich area for conversation, and I wish that we could go down that path. This idea of modifying user behavior towards particular goals… there's a lot there to explore, not the least of which is the ethics of all of that. But instead, I want to focus on something else here, which is related to what you said at the end there, where you said, “I've learned so much.” I think it's fair to say that you're an expert user of a tool called Roam, which as I understand it, is where you are capturing a lot of this learning. And I was hoping that you would tell us more about Roam, how you use it, what it's for, et cetera. Rob: Yeah, so at a very high level, it's for tracking my thoughts through time, and acting on them. So, it's like one of my worst-case scenarios that I could imagine for my career is, like I'm really passionate about what I do. I think it's one of the richest areas of study out there. We're never going to get fully at the bottom of why people do what we do. There's always going to be more to learn. And I can see myself still wanting to be applying behavioral science to products 10 years down the line. What I don't want to happen is, I don't want it to be the case that 10 years down the line, that I'm working primarily based on recent memory, that my thoughts, my ideas, my questions are primarily recent memory. And that's what happens when you have a note taking system that you never reference or when you never take notes, right? And Roam is incredibly powerful at disconnecting your thoughts from time. By really prioritizing the connections between notes and between ideas, then it makes it so I have faith that 10 years down the line, I'm still going to be leveraging what I've learned in my first two years of consulting because I've worked with over a dozen companies. I've worked with 13 products in the last two years, and Roam really makes it powerful to connect the dots between ideas and between projects. I'm able to learn interdisciplinarily within my own work. That's pretty much what I use Roam for. I like that it's built around making connections. And I like that it's built around creating a lasting knowledge base for yourself, and really turning it into a conversational partner. Because once you get how Roam knows how blocks relate to each other — like you indent a block under another block in order to say, this idea builds on that idea or this idea breaks down this idea, and you can also put multiple page references within the same block to say, mental models and onboarding, and a feedback loop in game designs are all related to each other, through this series of sentences that I've written. And then you can query Roam. Like you can actually… like an Excel database, you can query it. And so, I can really talk with it. I can ask it questions and because I work with the way that Roam knows how blocks relate to each other, then that means Roam knows how to answer my questions. So that means if I am writing a note about you, Jorge Arango, if I'm writing a note about you, and in that note, I also relate that to information architecture and I relate that to podcasts, then that means later I'm going to be able to find the note where all of those ideas are connected. I'm going to be able to find the note where Jorge and information architecture are related. I'll be able to find the meeting notes from the time that I was talking with a client of mine about a certain subject. And so, I can ask Roam essentially, what have I written about this? What have I written where this connects to that? Or doesn't connect to something else? And so that really allows me to do some powerful things, like I'm taking in so much information from so many different sources, that's all segmented, right? Because I'm working with multiple clients at once, I might have meeting notes with one client, I might read a paper about a subject that's relevant to a project that I'm working on. And I'm able to just through queries, compile the information that I need in order to support my present work. It means that my past thoughts are connected to my present work. Jorge: I'm going to take a step back here because folks listening to this might not have seen Roam. Let me try to describe it… This is one of those “face made for radio things,” right? And I have to say, I have not used Roam; my understanding of the platform is based mostly on things like YouTube videos and the site itself. Note-taking is a kind of linear activity, right? I have a thought and I put down that thought and then I have another thought. And by the nature of the medium in which I'm taking notes, which is usually either paper or something like OneNote, those sentences get stacked in the order that I wrote them. And Roam presents an interface that is primarily based around the idea of an outline, where each one of those items is — I think you use the word “block” — but it's like its own object. And those objects can have connections to other objects that you've written previously. And those connections establish backlinks behind the scenes. So that enables the surfacing of relationships that might not be obvious at first… during your first pass, when you're capturing the notes. Is that fair? Rob: Yes, absolutely. A concrete example is, I might ask myself, how does behavioral product strategy relate to gamification? And I can see every instance in my notes where those ideas have been connected. Because it's all based on these blocks as opposed to full pages, it lets me really get granular. It means that I'm not constricted to this linear order that you described, because I don't know about you, but if I'm writing for 20 minutes and just getting all of my thoughts down, I'm not going to be on one subject for the entire time, right? And Roam really lets me get granular in talking about this relates to that, and this is what I'm looking for in particular. Public repositories Jorge: And I think that we're talking about it in the context of taking notes for ourselves, but I know that you've also made part of your Roam repository public, is that right? Rob: Yeah. Yeah. My public Roam repository… it was an experiment, right? I wanted to see if I could write nonlinearly in a way that other people could follow because I'm really fascinated by information search behavior. Like, how is it that people find what they're looking for? And one of the challenges that I've always had when I've gone to blogs before, is I don't always know what to look for when I get to the search bar. I can either scroll down linearly, which takes a pretty long time to find an idea, or I can go into the search bar and search for something specific. But if I don't know, what's in that person's blog, how am I going to know what to even put into the search bar? With my public Roam, what I wanted to do was give people a starting page. And then from there, everything should just be connected in the right ways, so that way people can find what they're looking for, even if they don't know what they're looking for. I want people to come onto my public Roam and find exactly the thoughts that are most relevant to them. And what was really interesting to me is that it seems like this is working to a degree. Like someone messaged me once, she's another behavioral science practitioner, and she messaged me saying, “Hey, I found your page on why you chose to go into consulting versus pursuing a PhD, and I'm also just now considering going into consulting.” Right? And then there was another person who came onto it, wanting to know how to integrate with Roam for their product. And they ended up coming to my page on how Roam knows how blocks relate to each other. Someone in the spaced repetition community got to my page pretty quickly through a few clicks on the rogue-like genre of gamification as applied to flashcards. So, yeah, it seems like it's working. That to me, I think, illustrates a lot of the power of Roam very well. Like, my public Roam is of course, much neater and much more intentionally designed than my private Roam is. My private room is an absolute mess. It's chaos that I've wrangled to a degree, right? That's what my private Roam is. But really, what Roam lets you do and part of what differentiates it from every other knowledge management app that I've found is that it really designs itself in a way that you're going to find what you're looking for, even if you don't know what you're looking for. Emergent structure Jorge: That's fascinating, especially in the context of this idea of designing for encouraging or discouraging particular behaviors, right? Which is something that in my mind, at least calls for very careful consideration of structures. I recently revisited the book Nudge, and I think the example that that book opens with has to do with the way that foods are laid out in a cafeteria and how the order in which food items are presented will influence the diets of the people using the cafeteria, right? And with a system like Roam, it seems to me that it is much less about creating such intentional structures and much more about enabling the structures to emerge organically from the act of building the corpus. Is that fair? Rob: Yes. Because just through the way that the bi-directional links are structured, and if you understand how the block hierarchy works to relate blocks together, then you end up with this structure that works out really well. One of the things that I've been working on and thinking about a lot lately, is that when people think about gamification, they tend to just think about points, badges, and leaderboards, that's their mental model of it. And so, I'm just going to go ahead and say, what if we just call that the four squares genre of gamification. It's a generally common set of design principles that work together on a generally common set of problems. Then what happens if we start coming up with more genres of gamification, you know? Like, what are these other repeatable structures that can be altered a little bit — within boundaries, of course — and what would those look like? It's like the four-square genre, the problem with it is, it's a homogenous set of solutions that's applied to a heterogeneous set of problems. And with this idea of genres of gamification, what I really want to do is over the course of all of the different projects that I work on, I want to be finding some of these common structures that I can use and that I can repeat and that I can start to understand what are the boundary conditions of when this is effective and when it isn't effective, right? And then eventually I want to understand those boundary conditions so well and over the course of the career have established so many genres that I can start breaking genres and combining them together. Because those are really the best games. Like the first-person shooter RPG or the rogue-like Metroid Mania, you know? Like those are a lot of fun. And what Roam lets me do is through all the ways that I just draw, these connections, I'm really able to start seeing these structures emerge, and I'm able to abstract out a little bit and say, okay, I'm working on this specific problem. Is there a little bit more general version of this that I can talk about that isn't specific to my problem? And then, what other projects can I apply that to? This is this idea that I call like lenses. Like where I'll just come up with a series of questions that I'll ask myself. I'll be like, ” what's the lens of progress monitoring?” Okay. “What's the person's goal? How are they being given feedback about where they are in relation to their goal?” Stuff like that. Those are a common set of questions that I can apply multiple different projects. And Roam allows me to do that and see how all those connections work so I can refine those lenses better and refine these genres of gamification better. It's a really powerful tool for connecting thought. Growing usefulness over time Jorge: I would expect that it's a tool that only grows more powerful the more you use it over time, just because of what you're describing. I'm going to call them serendipitous connections, although they might not be entirely serendipitous in that you have a framing question, for example. But the answers that those questions will yield will depend on the size of the corpus that you're dealing with… the amount of stuff that you've put into the system, right? And with something like Roam, my impression is that that would take some time to develop a robust set of notes. What has your experience been in that regard? Rob: My experience is that at first, I came into Roam with that idea of, okay, it's only going to get more valuable, the more that I put into it. But now I don't actually think that's necessarily true. I think it just takes much longer on Roam than it takes on other products, like much, much longer. But once you start dealing with a really high amount of quantity, then you still need to have practices in place. This is a great example of what sorts of behaviors should a user be doing in order to gain the most value out of the product. I think that allowing structure to expand and branch out more and more and more is really powerful, but you also need to be doing compression behaviors. You need to be consolidating your thoughts because, I mean, I just exported my backup of my private database the other day. It was like over 130,000 words over the course of my last, I guess, eight months now using Roam. But yeah, you really just need to compress that a bit. Like, if I have 20 different pages and a hundred different blocks that are all circling around the same idea, then I should just make a page for that idea. And know that anytime I'm referencing that, I'm referencing all of the ideas that support it as well. So I can go onto that page and I can put some block references and some page references to tell me like, okay, these are the sorts of things that lead into this idea, but that allows me to both attack problems from a high level, but also zoom in and get way more detail when I need more detail. Jorge: Hearing you describe that, it makes me think that for the system to work as well as it is working for you, you have to put work into it, right? You have to take time out to reflect on what you've written, what you've put into it, spot patterns, consolidate, like you were saying, right? In the past couple of years, I've started moving more and more of my note taking into DEVONthink, which is another one of these tools. And as I've started consolidating my various information piles into this thing, I've discovered that I have a lot of work to do in consolidating things like tag lists, right? And doing this sort of work that you're saying where it's synthesizing certain things so that they're not dispersed all over the thing, and it takes time. And it seems to me that the effectiveness of these systems depends not just on the tool, but also on the practices around the tool. I'm wondering if you could tell us about what other practices you have. You've already talked about this idea of synthesizing, are there other practices that you do that help you keep this on track and useful? Rob: Yeah. I mean… One, I just want to say you hit the hammer on the nail in the sense that, like, what do you do with tools? It's a tool for thought. What do you do with tools? You work with them, right? So, my job is that I think about things for a living. So, I need to track and develop my thoughts over time. I need systematic processes for myself to bring about creative insight and to consolidate all of the information I get from papers, from meetings, from lectures, all of that needs to be in one place. I will say that Roam makes it so you don't need to do quite as much work as you would do on other apps. In fact, way, way, way less work, because the data architecture, as I mentioned before, with just knowing how blocks relate to each other, it makes writing in Roam into an extremely expressive thing. If you're just operating intuitively under an understanding of how the data architecture works as you're writing, then that means later you'll be able to use queries and do a lot of this work in hindsight, pretty easily. That being said, I do think certain practices like making index pages for yourself is useful. Just like, as you go, just add things to index pages, right? And then there's also bringing things into outlines. Like, one thing that I do is, I actually have an article about this linked online. I have this like looking lens process where I'm like, okay, I'm working on this project, I need to come up with a set of answers on it. Like for example, I was working on the onboarding for GuidedTrack. How do we redesign the onboarding so that when people come into this app that is hard to use — or not actually hard to use, it's actually really easy to use, it just seems hard to use because it's based on a totally different UX than people are used to. Like people try to make surveys or experiments… they're usually in a drag and drop thing. This is just an extremely simple coding language that people can use where they write “star question” and then the question, and a question appears for people. But it seems intimidating and people come in with a wide variety of use cases. How do we redesign the onboarding? And so, I go into this page and I track open questions. Anytime I'm working on a project and I'm like, okay, here's this thing that needs to be answered. I'll tag that bullet with an open question and I'll turn it into a to do. And that means I'm able to see what's still unresolved and then from those open questions, I can turn that into a query. So, I might be like, “okay, how does search behavior relate to onboarding?” And I turned that into a course, and I pull in some past insight from my database where I've talked about those ideas in conjunction with each other. And then I'm bringing those together and just consolidating into new outlines and new understandings across a wide source of information. So yeah, I think just this idea of continuously consolidating… it doesn't need to be that complicated. It can really just be, I have this page and I'm just going to drag in some block references for the most important things that I've already written about this so it's just on the page. That can be a form of synthesis. It can just be, as you're writing, if you think you've written something before, just write double parentheses and start typing in words and see if you can find the thing that you've already written about it, and then, bam! You have a connection right there to your past thoughts. So yeah, just tag everything, and consolidate every once in a while. Closing Jorge: Well, this is a tremendously exciting, and I wish that we had more time to get into more details. What I'm going to do is I'm going to include in the show notes — and I'm mentioning it here so that folks will check it out — but there's a video on YouTube, I think it was an interview for the Keep Productive channel, where you actually show us your set up. And I'm just going to encourage folks who are intrigued by this to go check that out. Other than that, where can folks follow up with you? Rob: People can follow up with me on Twitter, you can follow me @roberthaisfield. It's just my name. You can also go to my consulting website, which is influenceinsights.io. You can go to my personal website, which is, RobHaisfield.com where it's sort of like… It's a digital garden, right? So, it's a bunch of thoughts that are all very densely connected to each other, and you can just bounce around through there. It's my ideas in motion. I'm not going to say everything you're going to read in there is going to be complete, but next time you come back to it, you're going to be taking an entirely different journey through it, and you're going to be learning about different things, and maybe even some of the pages that you already read will look different. So, yeah, those are probably the best places to follow me. You can also add me on LinkedIn and email me at rob at influenceinsights dot io. Jorge: Fantastic Rob! I'm going to include all those in the show notes. Thank you so much for being with us and sharing your knowledge of this amazing tool. Rob: Thank you, Jorge for having me. I had a lot of fun. I love talking about Roam. Everything that I publish about Roam is 100% a hobby for me. I just think that it's a cool tool, it's made my work way more effective than it was before, it's given me a knowledge base that I know I can trust 10 years later, it lets me build on ideas across projects and across time and I'd really just recommend anyone try it out. You know, like the way that I might be describing it, or the way that you might be seeing it online in YouTube videos or in articles, you might get intimidated, you might think, wow, this person's doing something really advanced. We'll just know, it's like Excel. You don't start out doing everything that you can do in Excel. The things you're going to be doing six months later are going to be different than the things you're doing one week in, and that's okay. Your systems are going to evolve over time if you just play around with it. So, have fun! Jorge: Thank you, Rob.

I have three steps you can take daily to put yourself on the path to completing your tasks every day. Get more done by preparing, executing, and being prepared to forgive yourself or others when it goes wrong.Watch the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IQmq8uzW4UU

Today's episode of All Things Jen chats about my morning and evening routines, the best toothpaste you've never heard of, the best age reversing cream ever, and how I keep productive at home. I spill my products, workouts, healthy meal ideas, and more! Follow me on Instagram jendeangelis Follow me on YouTube "Jennifer DeAngelis" Follow me on TikTok jenndeangelis --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jennifer-deangelis9/support

Figuring out which task management system works best for you can be tough. I discuss the different methods I have tried and what is currently working to help me complete more tasks. These task management systems are the best GTD methods I have found.Watch the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4kz1-X9Sn08

I have identified 7 Major Productivity Killers that are traps I fall into often. Thankfully, I have also identified how to get out of them. Let's talk about it!Watch the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OVSRDITPNNI

short and simple tips that can be put into action ahorita! -xo

This week, we host Ali Abdaal - a friend, YouTuber, NHS doctor and lifelong learner - we chat about his toolkit for work and life You can subscribe to Ali on YouTube here (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoOae5nYA7VqaXzerajD0lg). Thanks again for Ali for coming onto Keep Productive. You can watch the video edition over on the channel! Thanks for stopping by folks! Special Guest: Ali Abdaal.

Struggling to be productive while working from home? Here are 10 Tips for you.Get 2 Months of Skillshare for Free! https://jerad.link/skillshareProtect your identity with SurfShark VPN for $1.99/mo: https://jerad.link/surfsharkLike this episode? https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jeradhillDo me a huge favor and subscribe to this podcast and my newsletter. Links are below.- Subscribe ► https://jerad.show- Newsletter ► https://jerad.email- YouTube ► https://jerad.link/youtube- Blog ► https://jerad.blog

This week, Francesco D'Alessio of Keep Productive joins us to discuss 10 rapid fire productivity tips. Plus, we announce the winners of the GIVEAWAY! Apologies for the audio quality on this one! Shownotes FRANCESCO - Don't touch your phone for first 30-minutes of your day JUSTIN - Do it for two minutes if you’re stuck FRANCESCO - Capture it instantly in your task manager's inbox JUSTIN - Start simple and iterate FRANCESCO - 30-minute switch-off from 30-minutes before you finish JUSTIN - Turn off notifications for everything but phone calls and messages FRANCESCO - Introduce a lunch-time or afternoon run for a boost of focus JUSTIN - Reflect on 3 positive things for the day FRANCESCO - Make sure you have a 50,000 ft view planner JUSTIN - When you’re stressed, do a mind sweep Keep Productive (https://keepproductive.com) Francesco's Course (https://www.skillshare.com/classes/Taster-How-to-Find-Your-Perfect-To-Do-List-App/736568266?via=user-profile) Special Guest: Francesco D'Alessio.

In this episode Hector sits down with returning guest Bodega Mayor to converse with entrepreneur/fashion designer/GOOD IN ANY HOOD NIGGA Villainous New York. They get into graffiti talk, being original, getting locked up, meeting Sace Irak, and life is all about perception.

This week on the program I'm joined by a guest I've been looking to chat with for a long time. Francesco D'Alessio runs Keep Productive, a YouTube show dedicated to helping people find the most suitable productivity software for their work and life needs. From helping decision-making to curbing switching, Keep Productive is passionate about helping you make long-term decisions about your software. This episode is brought to you by TextExpander. With TextExpander, you can unlock your productivity with its many features. With TextExpander you can make everything you write repetitively available everywhere you type: text documents, spreadsheets, web forms, and more. Unlock your productivity with TextExpander. Visit https://textexpander.com/podcast?utm_source=productivityist-podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign%20=textexpander-Jan-2020 (TextExpander.com/podcast) for 20% off your first year.I'm hosting an event on Saturday February 29th, 2020 – the extra day that we get in a leap year – and I'd love for you to join me and a bevy of stellar speakers and great guests. It's called The BIG Ready and I'm holding this event in the first city I lived in when I moved to the west coast, Vancouver, BC! Early bird and BIG Ticket VIP tickets are now on sale, so visit http://thebigready.com/ (TheBIGReady.com) to get more details and grab your tickets! I remember the days of keeping up with all the latest and greatest productivity news and app updates. There came a time when I decided that wasn't going to be in my long-term plans, so I moved away from that kind of content (for the most part). Francesco, however, is another story. He loves doing exactly that: sharing all the productivity news and app-related content as possible, as evidenced by his extremely popular YouTube channel. During our discussion we get into why he enjoys producing content around apps and productivity news, how he maps out his content plan, and so much more. Talking Points Francesco shares his "productivity origin" story (3:45) This is what Francesco looks for in an app that he showcases on his YouTube channel (6:26) What does Francesco define as productivity news? How does he decide what to share? (9:27) These are the tools that Francesco actually uses (11:56) We talk about the way forward with transitioning between apps that avoid friction and promote flow (17:47) This is what Francesco has used in the past and he shares why he moved away from them (20:30) What about paper? (22:54) We discuss Francesco's content workflow (25:49) How does Francesco deal with content that can become dated? (31:22) Francesco shares THE productivity app that you should keep your eye on (32:34) Quote "Tools are going to change you marginally... but it's really the approach and the methodology that matter." - Francesco D'Alessio Helpful Links https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYyaQsm2HyneP9CsIOdihBw (Keep Productive on YouTube) https://keepproductive.thinkific.com/courses/Notion?ref=10459b (Notion Made Simple) https://www.crowdcast.io/e/getting-started-notion (Notion Office Hours with Mike Vardy) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9S5I3pWz94&t=163s (Thomas Frank's Notion Video) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLH7F4dM2fNtxy_Hr1Gtq0Q (Matt Ragland on YouTube) https://beyondthetodolist.com/290 (Beyond The To Do List #290 - Distractions: Nir Eyal on Becoming Indestractable) https://productivityist.com/podcast266/ (The Productivityist Podcast #266: Becoming Indistractable with Nir Eyal) https://twitter.com/FrancescoD_Ales (Francesco on Twitter) https://thefreenoter.com/ (The Productivityist Podcast Pick of The Week: The Freenoter) It's always gratifying to talk with someone as enthusiastic about productivity as me, and it's not very often that I get to "geek out" about apps since I've largely moved away from creating that kind of content. That's why I really enjoyed this conversation with Francesco. He...

This episode, we talk about Task Management Systems, a central pillar of any productive workflow. How can adopting one benefit your life? How can you implement one? What principles should you keep in mind when creating your own?

What’s up everyone! This week I’m joined by Francesco D'Alessio, productivity expert, YouTuber, and founder of Keep Productive. He’s here to talk about his course, Notion Made Simple, and how he’s helping people find the best productivity tools for their work and life.My mission is to help people find the right productivity software for their life and work.Francesco’s passion for tech and productivity tools paved the way for Keep Productive, a blog and YouTube channel that currently has 105K subscribers and more than 10 million views. His course, Notion Made Simple, is an 8-module program that teaches learners at beginner, intermediate, and advanced experience levels how to master Notion. The course is built to help people learn to use Notion effectively, from navigating the vast number of features to managing projects and databases.  Tune in to hear Francesco’s tips about tech and productivity, and how he created Notion Made Simple. Episode Quotes"Just be patient. Good stuff comes a couple of years after, not next week."  "There is so much more creative freedom when you are doing these individual courses." Listen to Learn00:54 - Getting to know Francesco D'Alessio, Rapid 5 Questions04:01 - How Keep Productive started, Keep Productive business model09:53 - What is Notion?12:01 - Notion Made Simple - Course goal and who it's for15:58 - Pros of using Notion18:12 - Notion Made Simple - Launching and lessons learned22:42 - Importance of timing with courses based on tools27:34 - Exciting things coming up from Francesco Connect with FrancescoKeep ProductiveKeep Productive YouTube ChannelNotion Made SimpleFollow Francesco on Twitter!   Looking for the Transcript?Episode 119 Grab the bonus segment!Francesco dives deeper into Notion and how he keeps his courses up-to-date.Grab it here: https://get.zencourses.co/extra  

A new look, a new course and a new vision for the next year! *This week, we've got Joshua Zerkel from Asana on! WooO! A bonus episode. *

Modular productivity tools are the new tools in the space, also known as no-code productivity tools are the rising stars. We discuss whether these tools can affect our productivity if you don't set up rules that guide us. *We're back next week to chat the Future of Keep Productive and what's next! *

An interview-style podcast centered on people and their relationship with technology.

It's time to answer your questions. We've put together 5 questions from the Keep Productive community and Patreon. Ranging from using productivity tools less, to tackling a 500+ long Todoist list. Our August Sponsor Sanebox is our first sponsor back. Time to get your email under-control! And get $25 off and 14-day free trial with our link (new accounts): https://www.sanebox.com/toolstheyuse (https://www.sanebox.com/toolstheyuse) Questions from you Should you remove productivity technologies when you do technology audits? - Adam Staples I have 500+ tasks in my Todoist account, how do I deal with that? - No name - RGauffman If you could build a new app from scratch - but with all the resources in the world - what would it be? (Alex) How do you guys externalise your productivity system? For example friends/family/SO who are less reliable, so even delegations become more stressful where you have to constantly check up on (how's the party planning coming along, how's your visa application, etc) - Edison Do productivity tools actually make people more productive? Or are they just making people less forgetful and enabling easier reporting on what you've done/have to do - No Name What is the recurring “pain point” that you see in task/productivity management, and what are some of the solutions that either you or others have come up with to address it? - Eric Bower

Two of the guys talk Aladdin with guest host Leigh! Time Codes: 1:13 - Leigh's 5 desert island movies Round Table 6:45 - Aaron hates previews before movies 9:45 - Robert Pattinson is Batman Main Topic 14:00 - Aladdin Review - spoilers throughout (it's the same as the cartoon) Shout Outs 51:18 - Aaron opens the shout out aperture - "Keep Productive" 54:00 - Leigh - What If? 57:52 - Guy 1 - Land of the Lost Find out more at https://we-scene-a-movie.pinecast.co

Episode 56 of The Teaching Space Podcast discusses some tools for productivity in an interview with Francesco D’Alessio. Introduction Hello and welcome to the Teaching Space Podcast. It's Martine here. Thank you so much for joining me. Martine: Today I am thrilled to bring you an interview with productivity expert Francesco D'Alessio. Francesco, welcome to the show. Francesco: Hello, Martine. Yeah, good to be here. I'm very excited. Martine: Not as excited as me. I'm a bit of a fan girl. I can't lie. I've been listening to your show for a while and following you on YouTube and things like that so it's a real pleasure to have you here. Could I ask you to introduce yourself to the Teaching Space listeners? Francesco: Yeah, I know that, it's great you've been following for a while and obviously I've seen you in the community so much helping others, which is amazing. Martine: Doing my best. Francesco: Definitely. Yeah, no, for the viewers out there, my name's Francesco. I run a YouTube channel called Keep Productive which is essentially helping people to find the right tools for their needs, whether that's work or life. It's a very fun pursuit and very recent pursuit of mine. Martine: Excellent. Productivity is your thing, really, isn't it? Francesco: Yeah, apps and software. Martine: Apps and software. How did this interest in productivity start? Francesco: It's probably quite a weird thing for a 24-year-old to be this interested in, right? Martine: No, definitely, no I think it's great. You're never too young to be into productivity. Francesco: That's it. Yeah, I think my sort of passion came ... I was in school. I think I was about 15 or 16. It was just before year, I think I was in year 12 and I had sadly failed all of my grades that year, minus Italian, but I'm figuring by the name I should have passed that one right? My AS levels were sort out the door which was a bit of a shame. Then I had the opportunity, like many year 12 students do, is to repeat the year which I was a bit annoyed about but after speaking with my mum she was like, "You need to get organised this summer and really got on it." I ended up reading a book that I'll probably end up mentioning a couple of times called Getting Things Done by David Allen. Martine: One of my favourites. Francesco: It's a classic, isn't it? Martine: Definitely. Francesco: I read that one and obviously with that book came all of the other useful software like Evernote and a couple more at the time. I came back to school and I started doing well in my grades and all in this sort of outside world of that. I ended up weirdly teaching some of my teachers about the productivity apps. Martine: Amazing. Francesco: I felt like I had a knack for teaching other people about how to use software. It sort of spiralled form there, I'd say. We've been working on the channel for about four, five years now and it's been growing ever since. Our goal really is to review as many softwares as we can and make sure we cover them in the most honest way, I guess, to help people find the best one that meets their needs. Martine: Have you always been into technology in a kind of a general sense? Are you quite a tech-y sort of a guy? Francesco: Oh, yeah, 100%. I follow all the tech stuff up so obviously that's probably where we clashed on Notion right? Martine: Yeah, totally. Totally. I'm an early adopter of many many tools and apps and things like that. So, yeah, I can totally understand that. It all started in school for you. That's super interesting. I love the idea of you teaching your teachers how to do certain productivity things. There's nothing like instilling confidence in a learner by getting them to teach you something. That's fab. Francesco: Yeah, and obviously they found a lot of benefit from those apps as well so it was really good to see. Martine: As you know, my listeners tend to be teachers or trainers. We face some quite unique productivity challenges. For example, often we end up trying to do administrative type work, in other words, the work that we're not doing in the classroom during short bursts of time between sessions. The main part of the job is being in front of the class and teaching but then we've got these little gaps in which to do our non-teaching work, so from a productivity point of view…that's really tricky. We've also got constant interruptions, too many meetings. Oh my goodness. I've never worked in an environment where meetings are so loved. These are just a few of the challenges that my listeners will be facing as teachers and trainers. We just wondered, bearing in mind that kind of set up, whether you have any tips or tools or anything that you recommend to busy teachers and trainers out there? Francesco: Yeah, sure. I've got a few notes in front of me that I'd like to cover. Some of them are some useful methodologies I think would work and also some recommended tools. Yeah, and as you said, teachers are… When I was in school and at least after school with a lot of my friends going into teaching they always seem to be quite timed for teachers. It's sad to see but obviously it's such an immersive job and it's such a passionate job that everyone wants to get very emotionally involved because they want to help the children so very much. It's a very noble pursuit definitely. I think methods are probably the backbone of productivity in general although I don't know all the methods and I tend to bring in experts to talk about that. I normally recommend a lot of good stuff that's helped myself and other people. I would say the first process that I recommend is going back to the Getting Things Done bye David Allen. Martine: Yes, definitely. Francesco: It's a fantastic book. What I quite like about it is it will teach you a way of processing anything new and that's quite beneficial for all types of work. Whether it's admin work or ad hoc work it actually can be scaled to any situation. What I recommend doing is grabbing a copy of GTD or listening to it at least on apps like Audible because it will give you a framework that then you can then apply to the admin side of stuff. Martine: I totally endorse that recommendation I must admit. One of the best things I took away from David Allen's book was the idea of just having one trusted place to keep everything. The idea that you don't have things all over the place in different apps and different locations in your office and things. That one trusted place thing for me was a massive takeaway. Francesco: Yeah, 100%. I can imagine that you kept quite strict with it and once you've kept that sort of rigidity to GTD I think it can be so beneficial like not storing things in different places and making sure to capture things in a specific way, organising it and then clarifying it. It can really help, really help. Then I would say like you mentioned those short bursts of times that sometimes can be interrupted or sometimes can actually be uninterrupted but more likely interrupted. The Pomodoro Technique by Francesco Cirillo, is a really fantastic one and that's a very simple method of 25 minute timers and then a five minute break and having that cycle repeat itself. [Check out Episode 12 for more on this] The goal behind this is you're wiring into that 25 minutes work without being distracted by other stuff. You've got one task or two tasks in hand that you'll be doing back to back and it's a real point, an opportunity for you focus. There's some great Pomodoro timer apps out there but you could just start by using your timer on your iPhone or Android phone. I highly recommend it to, from teachers to professionals to students because they all seem to find a lot of value from it. Martine: I think it's a great point about using it with students. I use it personally when I'm marking because I do have a tendency to get a bit distracted when I'm marking and having that enforced time block helps me zone right into what I'm supposed to be doing and I get into a state of flow a lot more easily and a lot more quickly. I think for marking it's brilliant but I love the idea of encouraging students to use it. Generally, they've all got a phone in their back pocket so they've got that timer available. You can encourage them to put headphones in to get themselves really sort of zoning in on their work and I just think that's a really good tool for students. So a top tip there for sure. Francesco: Yeah, definitely. The app that I would recommend for students as well is an app called Forest. Martine: Oh, I love Forest. It's one of my favourites. Francesco: It's so good isn't it? Martine: Yeah, really good. Do you want to explain a little bit about what Forest is because I love it. Francesco: It's such a friendly application. Any of the students can download it for IOS and Android, I believe. The concept is you set a timer. It can be 25 minutes, 40 minutes, however long you want your students to focus. At that time, it starts planting a tree over those 25 minutes. If the student decides, "I'm going to go over to SnapChat or Instagram," the tree dies if you don't get back to it within, it's a couple of seconds. The goal is they've got to create a tree and over time build a forest. I think it's a really healthy way to stop using your phone. Obviously you can set a timer and then forget about the timer and jump on your phone or go on your laptop or something and that's quite a nice way in making sure you're focusing. Martine: The gamification of focus. I absolutely love it. Francesco: Yes. Martine: One of the things that's really helped me with Forest, because I am a competitive sort. I can't lie. I've got a group of people that I follow and who follow me on Forest and we kind of compete to see who can have the best forest. Francesco: Oh I love it, yeah. Martine: This is what I do in my time. Francesco: It's a great app. Martine: Yeah it really is. I highly recommend it. I will make sure that I link to it in the show notes so people can refer to any of the apps that you mention. Francesco: I'll tell you my final sort of methodology or book is a book called, How to be a Productivity Ninja, by Graham Allcott. The reason I recommend this is it's actually a really beneficial for e-mail and admin. Although GTD's a very good framework this has like, it's packed full. It's a fairly meaty book and it's packed full of how to process e-mail, how to reduce stress when you're doing admin tasks. It's got a lot of good advice that can be used across the board. I can't recommend that book enough. Martine: Fantastic. Again, I'll make sure there's a link to that in the show notes. Those are your top methodologies or approaches to productivity. What about specific tools? Have you got any of those that you'd like to recommend? Francesco: Yeah, sure. I typically recommend three types of apps and I try to say that people should have these core apps at least and that's a to do list app, a calendar App and a note taking app. A to do list app really for your upcoming tasks, actionable stuff you need to get done. A calendar for obviously meetings and events and things like that. Then a note taker for all of that information that you're gathering. Of course it depends on, you know, you can't obviously store information so you'll have to check with your department's, what access you have of course. The to do list app site to start with, I always recommend two ones that I think are really strong. That's Todoist and TickTick. Martine: Okay. Todoist I use actually and I can definitely say it's a great app. Personally with that one I like that it integrates with Google Calender. What's TickTick, did you say? I've not come across that one before. Francesco: It's all one word, TickTick. It's very similar to Todoist in a sense but what people like slightly more than Todoist in some ways, is it has a calendar ability inside it so if you wanted to plot all of your stuff in a calendar you can do it. That's something that Todoist doesn't have just yet. Martine: That's super interesting, particularly if you like to time block your day, bearing in mind that teachers tend to work to a timetable, then actually that could be really useful. Francesco: Yes, 100%. I think that's why I tend to recommend it. It's a very beautiful application. The good news is they've only recently added a Pomodoro timer to it so I guess it even adds even more to it, right? Martine: That sounds like that it's really worth a look actually. I'm thinking to myself, "No, I've committed to Todoist. I can't change yet again." Francesco: Todoist, I'm still user of that and I love it. I think it's such a good application for determining ... I think it's better at a cleaner interface and making sure that you've got a list in front of you. You can organise stuff based on time which is quite lovely. I think that's a great application all around, so there's no need to switch. Martine: No, I mustn't, I really mustn't, but I do have a bit of a passion for to do lists apps in particular so I'm going to stay loyal to Todoist for at least the next month or so. One thing I like in particular about Todoist is the ability to kind of look at what the next week looks like, how may tasks that you've got coming up, for me to do a bit of foreword planning I find that particularly helpful. That and the integration with Google Calendar as I mentioned. So two good recommendations there. Francesco: Of course if you start using that GTD process both of those applications have what's called an inbox and that's essentially your task inbox for dumping all the stuff you haven't processed yet. It's a pretty neat experience. Obviously calendar apps, I typically recommend people stay with Google Calendar or Apple Calendar, normally because I guess sometimes the calendars either G-suite or it could be Microsoft in some institutions. I guess it's up to that department or that school, right? Martine: Absolutely. Interestingly, my college where I work, we are a G-suite for education establishment, however, and I don't know the reason why, I really must talk to IT support, we use Outlook for e-mail and calendar. It's really frustrating because we use Google docs and everything else is G-suite. The great thing about Google Calendar is that it talks to every other app in the suite so it almost feels like you're kind of, you don't have that seamless integration when you're doing a bit of Microsoft and a bit of Google. It's something I'm working on changing, put it that way. Francesco: You're filtering in and working out how to get it changed? Martine: I'm on it. I am absolutely on it. You're a Google Calendar or an Apple Calendar or whatever the kind of native calendar to what your use is, that would be a recommendation? Francesco: Yeah, I use Google Calendar but on my iPhone I have an app called Moleskine Timepage. Martine: Ooh, interesting. Francesco: It's a very nice app. It's a paid subscription app so I think it roughly works out at about $11.00 a year or something like this. It's just such a beautiful application. It helps to make everything look very attractive on the go at least. I would say the note taking side, obviously bringing together lots of information is really important. Of course a lot of teachers would be considering OneNote because that's obviously connected with Microsoft services but I would say Evernote is also a very strong option, especially for teachers that are looking to annotate pieces of work and be able to use the web clipper for deep research and just in general use some of the PDF abilities that Evernote has. Of course when it comes to note takers Notion sort of falls into that spectrum and that's obviously where our passions lie at the moment, isn't it? Martine: Yeah, absolutely. That's certainly how I discovered you, Francesco and what you do is through Notion. I have mentioned Notion a few times on the podcast but I really struggle to actually explain what it is. I tend to say it's like a personal intranet and it can be pretty much whatever you want it to be and it kind of runs on data bases but maybe you can do a better job of describing it than I can. Francesco: I think that's probably how I describe it. The way that I always say is it's like Lego building blocks. It's almost like that software you can create yourself. It's really weird because it's one of the ... I don't know whether you remember Evernote in its early days when it first launched. People were coming up with so many different uses and that was quite exciting. You had people using it to organise all of their work and even use it as their project manager to some extent. When I'm getting e-mails about how people are using Notion it's very exciting. There's a chap who e-mailed me the other day saying he uses it to organise all of his heart data so that whenever he visits the doctors he has all of the heart monitoring information that they need to know. When I was with the Notion team last week they said people were using it to organise their bowling society. Martine: Oh, that's so cool. Francesco: And all of the scores that they made. Yeah, so all of these use cases are like wild. At the same time it's quite an exciting application for note-taking because they're slowing adding stuff to it that makes it a really strong platform. Martine: Oh, that's really good to hear. I think probably one of the most creative uses I have for Notion, two of my favourites I think. I use it to manage the podcast, so from planning to writing out the notes, to sharing it with my VA so she does my social. I use it for complete podcast planning, but also for meal planning as well. That's one of my favourites too. I have a data base of recipes and I have a couple weeks set out like on a Kanban board. That really works quite nicely. Francesco: Yeah, it does. That's, I think, quite an exciting use as well. A lot of people like it for ... it's one of those apps that actually blends work and life and not in like an intense way either. You could be planning your podcast but then jump over to your meal planner within seconds. It doesn't feel disconnected in any way. Martine: I think that's a really interesting point because up until a good sort of year or so ago I was dead against mixing my day job stuff with my personal stuff when it came to productivity tools. I liked to have things totally separate. The reality is that those two things are very closely interlinked with my life, so now that I tend to look at everything through one lens I find it a lot better. I'm more productive. Francesco: Yeah, definitely. I think what's quite nice about Notion is it is like that personal intranet you mentioned. It's almost like it's even more so a second brain because you can almost lay out your home page like your brain of all of the different aspects of your life. I use my Notion as a way to track finances, health. I use it with my wife to plan what rooms we're going to have in the house and travel. It's literally like a consortium of information that ... It's like my brain. I'm not sure whether I'd be able to go much further without it. Martine: I love the idea of it being your external brain. That's a really good way to describe it. I think for me the one thing that I'd really like to see with Notion would be an integration with Todoist because I did try running my task management through Notion and there were just ... It's a brilliant tool but there were just a few too many clicks required for me to do task management in there so if there was an integration on the horizon I would be thrilled. Francesco: Yeah, yes. I agree. I agree. Notion does 80% of what the majority of apps do but it doesn't do, for example, Todoist amazingly because it's not a task manager. It can do task management. It's a very strange experience but I can imagine they'll be adding to this and hopefully building on it. I'm sure we'll have all our fingers crossed, right? Martine: Yeah. They're a very young company and from what I can tell they're very responsive to feedback. It's really interesting to see what they've got on the horizon. Francesco: Yeah. I'm hoping to do ... Well, I was out there last week with the team, actually two weeks ago now, blimey. They are a very fast moving team. They seem to put updates out pretty regularly and it's quite exciting what's happening. I think it's all keep an eye on them. Martine: Yeah, definitely. It's nice too, I was a reasonably early adopter with Notion. It's kind of exciting to see them developing. So yeah, we'll keep an eye out. Fantastic. Francesco: Definitely, definitely. In terms of planning projects I think that's a good way as well. Obviously Ever Note and Notion do a good enough job of being able to store the data and manage that but if a teacher was looking for a way to maybe visually plan, I'd recommend checking out either Trello or Asana. They don't necessarily have to use Notion at the same time. They could use like Trello and Ever Note or Asana and Ever Note. They're both really good ways to visually organise because they've got that boards feature that helps you to plan visually. Yeah, I wouldn't rule those out as a way to keep track of you and your department because if you want to share stuff with other people then you can assign tasks there pretty easily. Martine: It's definitely a tool that works well for collaboration. I would say the same goes for Trello and Asana, as I've used both of those. If you want to collaborate with a team then all three of those options are good ones, Notion, Trello, Asana. They're great for collaborative work. Francseco, is there anything else you would like to add to those amazing recommendations? Francesco: No, the thing is ... What I recommend is just trying to read as many useful pieces and books about the busyness and time and trying to learn as much as you can because there's a lot of good conversations about mindfulness in the workplace blended with the actually busyness and the concept of it. I recommend trying to keep track on Apple News of all of those good articles. There's another book I'd want to recommend now. Sorry. A good one is Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. Martine: I swear we read all the same books and play with all the same apps. We're separated at birth. Francesco: Yeah, we need to ... We'll just be starting to share now stuff for e-mail. We'll just be like, "Have you read this one? Have you read this one?" There's so many good books out there at the moment. I think it's just about taking in how you can calm down in the workplace. I think more employers are actually understanding that that's a thing as well which is good news. Martine: It's a big conversation in education at the moment, the work life balance approach and that's very much what I focus on with The Teaching Space. I want to help teachers be as brilliant at their job as they can be without having to take work home at the weekend. I think that Digital Minimalism book recommendation is a good one because it's all about balance. You and I love tech. We love apps. We love all that stuff but actually quiet time, fresh air and just tuning out from all that stuff is also incredibly important and very healthy. Francesco: Yeah, definitely. The final recommendation is just subscribe to The Teaching Space because it is definitely one of the best podcasts for education. Martine: Oh, you're very smooth, Francesco, very smooth. Well on that topic what I'd like to do is give you an opportunity to tell The Teaching Space listeners where they can find you on line. Francesco: Oh, that's very kind. You can just type into YouTube KeepProductive. We've done plenty of Notion videos and we try to help you match up with the best apps. Again, we'll give you recommendations and if you want to pop me an e-mail directly francesco@keepproductive.com. I happily recommend apps, to hear obviously your needs and then we recommend apps so feel free to reach out to me. Martine: That's very generous of you Francesco. Thank you for being on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure. Francesco: Thank you for having me. It's been really fun. Further Listening Why not check out these episodes for more on productivity tools for teachers and trainers?   How to Stop being Distracted and Interrupted by People and Things How to Use a To-Do List Properly Managing Your Teaching Workload With Asana Why The Pomodoro Technique is The Perfect Productivity Tool for Teachers 7 Books That Have Made Me A Better Teacher

It’s paper day! Dealing with your paper piles requires a unique approach that is more of a cousin to the four steps we’ve been practicing thus far. First thing to note: paper organizing has no end! Once you wrap your head around that, we can get started in building a system to efficiently categorize and stay up-to-date on the paper without becoming overrun by piles! Links & Notes Thank you for supporting The ADHD Podcast on Patreon! Take Control ADHD Course: The Paper Solution Luke Barnett’s Author Life chat with Pete Tools They Use Podcast from Keep Productive chat with Pete

Here I talk with Francesco D'Alessio who is the host of Keep Productive on YouTube. We spoke about using apps to be a more productive creator and to stop wasting Your life away like You are currently doing. Francesco D'Alessio: https://www.youtube.com/user/cesidalessio https://www.keepproductive.com/ Email Francesco: francesco@keepproductive.com

Today, we discuss Slack's London Event and what's next for Evernote after my chat with Ian Small, and to round this week off a little look at Coda's two new additions. Back next week, at the same time! We have Thomas Frank, YouTuber and Creator of College Info Geek. Review on iTunes to be picked for next week's read-out! Watch on YouTube by heading to Keep Productive and going to the playlist: http://bit.ly/2FjwNOn

Today, we discuss Notion and what's next for their blocks, a chat with Ryder Carroll, the creator of the Bullet Journal and explore whether Google Docs is the future of modular productivity software. Back next week, at the same time! Review on iTunes to be picked for next week's read-out! Watch on YouTube by heading to Keep Productive and going to the playlist: http://bit.ly/2FjwNOn

Wondering what task manager you should use? Today we’re joined by Francesco D'Alessio, a writer, blogger, and freelance marketer who Mike discovered because of his awesome YouTube channel, Keep Productive. Francesco does a lot of video reviews for different apps and tools and he recently put together the Task Management video course which was just […]

Wondering what task manager you should use? Today we’re joined by Francesco D’Alessio, a writer, blogger, and freelance marketer who Mike discovered because of his awesome YouTube channel, Keep Productive. Francesco does a lot of video reviews for different apps and tools and he recently put together the Task Management video course which was just […]