A few months ago, we’ve decided to double down our efforts on Apple platforms. Many of us at Nozbe are happy users of Macs and iOS devices, and so we wanted to bring more features, improvements and refinements to our apps there.

You might have noticed the results over the last few versions. We released one of the first apps for Apple Watch, then redesigned it just two months later. And in the lastest version, Mac users got a Today widget (just like the one we have on iOS).

But we’re just getting started. We have a ton of improvements in the pipeline. Here’s just a few examples of what we’re working on for the iOS 9 release in September:

Multi-tasking on iPad

If you’re on an iPad, you’ll love this one. In iOS 9, you can swipe your finger from the right edge of the screen to see your tasks in Nozbe. You don’t have to leave the app you’re using, go to home screen or double-tap the home button. Just swipe from the right and you can slide Nozbe over other apps. This is useful when you just want a quick glance at your priority tasks, or when you want to quickly add a task to your inbox.

It gets even better if you’re using iPad Air 2. After sliding Nozbe over, you can drag the separator to enable split view. This way, you can use Nozbe side-by-side with another app. For example, you can compose an email while looking at your notes in Nozbe.

Did you know that Nozbe can help you build a new habit? Let’s take learning a foreign language as an example. Who wouldn’t like to speak an extra one, huh? Say… French…

Before you start

Scientific researches have found certain mechanisms that rule the process of creating a habit. Based on that, we can formulate a couple of tips that will help you take off.

1. Set a big goal - have your vision of what you want to achieve and why. Talk to yourself for a while and make sure that learning a new language is something you really want and need.

2. Make it so easy you can’t say no. — Leo Babauta - start approaching your big goal with tiny steps. Try setting the tasks easy enough so that you can get it done without motivation (that is kind of moody and differs depending on a day, weather and other circumstances.)

3. Building sticky habits is a lot easier if you make use of the routines you already have rather than try to fight or modify them. It’s good to build your plan around triggers that will let you know that it’s time to work on your habit, e.g.: after I get up and have a glass of water I learn French.

4. When you fail, get back on track as quickly as possible. Don’t worry! Missing your habit once or twice, no matter at what stage it occurs, has no serious impact on your long-term progress. Instead of trying to be perfect, be good and compassionate to yourself. You’re doing a great job!

OK. Once you know the rules, let’s get to work :)

Chain tasks… what are they?

Quite often we come across a very particular set of tasks. I like to call them chain tasks, as they act as if they were a silver chain, one following the other.

To put it in simple terms, chain tasks are a group of consecutive tasks that need to be done in certain order and most often task B, C, D can’t be done without having A completed.

What can be done with them in Nozbe?

It is true that Nozbe does not have a direct/to-the-point option for them. Having been asked about them frequently, and having tried my best to work around that lack, I came up with and idea, that although not ideal, seems to work well.

In case you missed it, me, Michael Sliwinski, Nozbe’s founder and CEO together with Radek, our VP of Apple Technologies (and the guy responsible for our Apple Watch app) started an audio podcast called “The Podcast” because we wanted to chat about things we care about: gadgets, technology, business and productivity. Now, after 8 episodes I think we started getting into the grove and making it a better show with each new episode, and in time we started talking a lot more about productivity than we previously anticipated.

Last week we updated Nozbe to version 2.2. It brought some cool new features. With Nozbe 2.2 productivity level of our users who use Google Drive or Mac will be even higher ;) Want to know why? Keep reading! Google drive integration Nozbe users love our integrations with Evernote, Dropbox and Box. It gives a great way to attach notes or files from your cloud to tasks and work on them together with your team in Nozbe.

Hi, here’s Michael, Nozbe founder. I hired Magda two years ago for a position of an editor in the Productive! Magazine. As this wasn’t a full time job really, I also asked her if she could temporarily become my assistant. I’ve never had an assistant before and I wanted to learn to work with one. She said yes, and two years later she’s still helping me get things done. In this post I want to share how we work together. I hope this might be helpful to anyone thinking about working with an assistant or searching for ways to improve their collaboration. We’re actually thinking about recording a short video about it, soon. Here’s how we work together with Magda:

Magda manages my email

Although we said farewell to email in Nozbe long time ago, we can’t prevent the whole world from using it :-) I receive hundreds of emails every week and it is Magda who takes care of them.

How?

At the beginning of our cooperation, I set up all my Gmail accounts so that every single new message is being forwarded to one email address that we call “CEO”. I’ve also given Magda an access to the “CEO” account - in Gmail, it is called “delegated account”. This way we both have access to my emails and we both can receive and send emails from the “CEO” address.

There are various emails coming to that shared Gmail inbox:

• personal
• business - individual
• personalized business emails sent by companies to multiple receivers
• automated invoices, billings, account statements and other finance-related notifications
• etc.

Magda archives the emails that don’t require any reply or are just advertising; she sends regular finance-related messages to a dedicated notebook in my Evernote. If an email is not too personal and Magda’s competence is enough to reply to it accurately, she does it.

Now, the most important: messages that require my reaction, reply, confirmation or simply advice. Here’s how we deal with them through Nozbe:

Although the contrary situation is way more frequent, once in a while it is time to leave some shared project. When that time comes, questions arise.

1. Who can leave?
2. How can you leave a project?
3. What information will be retained on the leaving account?

This post will answer those for you.

Who can leave a project?

Essentially, anyone can. However, if your are the one who created the project the only way you can do so is by first requesting the ownership thereof to be transfered to someone else. You can of course simply complete it or delete… but that’s not the answer in some cases, such as leaving one company for another.

So, the owner can’t simply leave.

Anyone else can leave a project they have been invited to without any problem. To do so, go to given project, use the “i” icon at the top bar, click on the list of people in the project, pick yourself and use the “…” icon next to your name. Then “leave the project”.

As we’re ramping up our Affiliate program and we want to give you an even better product, I’m conducting interviews with our top affiliates, users and fans. One of them is Jeff Sanders, host of The 5 AM Miracle Podcast - and with Jeff we talked about a few things: how he discovered Nozbe how he uses Nozbe for his content creation how he tricks Siri into adding tasks to Nozbe via email he asks me what’s in the future for Nozbe what does “Nozbe” actually mean (hint - it’s not a Polish word) how I use Pomodoro and Unschedule with Nozbe and many more behind-the-scenes details about Nozbe It’s a longer chat (~ 20 minutes) but I’m sure you’ll find it useful.

One of most popular blog posts on my personal blog is the one I did on “Pomodoro Technique and Unschedule Calendar”, where I explain how both: Pomodoro Technique and “Unschedule Calendar” from Neil Fiore’s book “The Now Habit” can work together. But since I’ve done that I’ve improved the concept and moved from a paper-based calendar to a template in Nozbe which serves me even better. This technique is really powerful. I’ve used it for many days now and you practically can’t have a bad, non-productive day if you implement this, so be warned - this will make you more productive :-)

What is “Pomodoro” and “Unschedule”?

But before we start, let’s explain briefly the concepts of “Pomodoro” and “Unschedule”:

Pomodoro is a productivity technique that asks of you to set a timer for 25 minutes and work on something until the timer is done. Then take a 5 minute break. Then repeat. The premise is that knowing the timer is ticking and having the time-constraint of 25 minutes, you’ll work better, faster and with more focus.

Unschedule is a type of calendar where you don’t plan your work, you only put meetings on calendar and “fun things” somewhere in between. You plan only for those. Then you’re left with blank chunks of time that you can now fill with work. The premise is similar - time constraint of knowing you have only X more hours of work, and later a meeting, makes you more focused… and knowing that in a few hours you have your “jogging time”, motivates you to work harder and “deserve” your reward.

It’s been just over two months since we’ve released Nozbe for Apple Watch. (I’ve written more about it in a previous blog post.) At the time, Apple Watch hasn’t yet hit the market, so we couldn’t test it directly on the device. Since then, we got a few watches for ourselves. We learned a lot about this device, its strengths and weaknesses. And after using our own app extensively, we saw a huge area for improvement. Today, I’m happy to announce that the latest version of Nozbe includes a lot of improvements for the Watch.

If you have an Apple Watch, just update Nozbe on your iPhone to 2.1.8, and the watch app will automatically update as well.

And if you’re curious about what’s new, keep reading!

(at the end of this post there’s a cool video we recorded that showcases everything in this post, make sure not to miss it!)

Supercharged notifications

As I explained in the previous post, we started our development with notifications, because they’re the most common and most immediate interaction with the Apple Watch. You don’t really have to do anything, they simply show up when appropriate, and they allow you to respond instantly.

In that spirit, and with what we’ve learned, we redesigned notifications to make them look beautiful and much more useful. Take a look:

Before, when you were mentioned in a comment, the notification would only tell you who mentioned you, and in what task. But to actually see the comment, you would have to tap “Show task” and wait for the app to load. Now, we simply show you the comment right in the notification. And if you want to reply immediately, we added a new action under the notification: Comment.