The Podcast is a weekly conversation between Michael, (our CEO) and Radek, (Nozbe VP Apple) about the things they’re interested in. They talk about books, insights, business, productivity, technology, and whatever else comes to mind, really.

94 - Insanely Simple

Today’s topic: simplicity concepts in our day-to-day communication with other people, inspired by a book on Steve Jobs by Ken Segall - Insanely Simple. Michael tries to understand how to use empathy in a very productive way.

Simply listen to this episode

When your Priority list is bloated with tasks, it’s time to find a better way to organize your next actions. Hardly anyone can manage more than 30-40 priorities in one day or one work session. Most of us can really handle fewer tasks than that. Why, then, does the Priority list get longer and longer? As productive people, we tend to be too optimistic about our capacity to get things done.

This is a fantastic guest post by Fokke Kooistra – a Nozbe user, a Dutch productivity guru and a coach. See what functions projects play in his personal way of using our app.

You’re never alone. But even if you don’t want to share your tasks with anyone, you can still have a great productivity experience with Nozbe. The very first releases of Nozbe weren’t intended to be used by teams. A spirit of individual work, focused on your very own stuff, is still at the core of Nozbe. Your projects are always private by default; Inbox and the Priority list are visible only to you.

An interview with Dominik Juszczyk, Gallup-Certified Strengths coach, who helps teams increase their productivity and efficiency.

During our last Nozbe reunion you conducted a workshop for our team. It was all about our talents :-) The workshop was based on our results from the StrengthsFinder test created by the Gallup Strengths Center that we took beforehand. What are “talents” anyway?

Hearing the word “talent,” we usually think of someone who can sing, dance or do something different, unique. We think of them in terms of the popular “Got Talent” TV show. Working according to the talents and strengths-based development method, we use a different definition. A talent may be an ability to make quick decisions, adopt a cautious approach to a problem, analyze other people’s emotions, or talk to strangers. Each of these traits is a talent. The Gallup Organization’s official definition of a talent is an innate and recurring pattern of reaction, feeling and action.

On your desktop, on your mobile device, on Apple Watch. There are a few ways to always keep your Priorities on top. Although Nozbe isn’t intended to organize tasks (it’s to get them done), some management is necessary to make sure things keep moving. When you’re trying to stay focused, keeping your Priority list available at the click of a button or a a quick shortcut is extremely useful. Michael uses Nozbe’s responsive user interface and additional screens to control his Priority workflow.

This article is for you if you miss the sub-projects feature in Nozbe or you just want to see how project labels can make your life easier.

I need sub-projects!!!

When promoting Nozbe at conferences we end up talking to many interesting people. Once, a professional event manager came up to Nozbe’s stand and confessed that she tried Nozbe once but gave it up pretty quickly. She was disappointed not to find a sub-projects feature.

She explained that she deals with dozens of various aspects of event management and she runs many events at the same time. Each event requires at least several linked projects. “I really need sub-projects!!!” she claimed!

But maybe not.

We think it’s possible to modify the workflow so that sub- and sub-sub-projects aren’t that necessary. We recommend using project labels!

Too big to fit into just one project

We totally understand how complicated your job can be and that it consists of many aspects and stages. We also deal with such complex processes at Nozbe. Have you tried to think outside of a vertical hierarchy though and link related projects differently?

One of the basic productivity rules is to do less but do it better or, in other words, don’t work more, work smarter. Reinventing the wheel is counterproductive. That’s why Nozbe comes with a super-handy feature: project templates… that can be published and shared with others whenever you want. Nozbe.how templates let you create recurrent, editable projects that are pre-populated with tasks. You can use them to show your friends and followers the way you plan, get organized and get things done.

Here are a few project templates that Nozbe community members have created lately.

Do you already use project templates for repeating actions? Even if your answer is “yes,” you might have overlooked this cool feature. You’ll be surprised how it can simplify your work! After the last “Ask Michael” episode about Evernote, Michael presents an example for how to use relative dates as “start dates” for tasks in project templates. It’s a really nifty feature when you are planning or creating a recurring process for you or your team.

Following the series launch last month, we have picked another frequently asked question to tackle today. The issue has been raised in a past post, but it keeps surfacing in different versions in our FAQ list.

I’ve been helping our customers since just about the beginning of Nozbe. The direct contact with our users has always been very valuable to me and to the creation of the support team. Throughout the years, some questions resurface time and time again.

This particular one seems to arrive in several versions: