However interesting your podcast episodes are, recording a podcast is a repetitive procedure. Planning, producing and promoting first podcast episode usually involves the same steps as for the second and fifth, so writing it all out again every time would be a painful waste of time. Check out a list of steps - a project template - prepared by Chris Kołacz, the author of a Polish podcast, Bo Czemu Nie.
Over the last almost 17 years of running Nozbe we’ve developed our main values that dictate how we run our business, how we build our product and how we treat our customers and each other.
In today’s fast-paced world, effective cooperation is key to success in any project. Whether you’re working with in-house teams or contractors, finding the right tools and methods for collaboration can streamline your processes and boost productivity.
Is your team struggling with chaotic cooperation and communication, an increasing workload or disorganization that’s affecting productivity and office morale? So, you notice this and decide to implement Nozbe. The goal is to organize your projects and make sure everyone’s on the same page and knows what tasks they are responsible for. Unfortunately, you may face resistance.
Nozbe is your simple work management app. We are constantly listening to your feedback and trying to add new, practical features that will make your life easier.
Find out all about “task ping-pong” which is how we call a model process of getting tasks and projects done in a team, using basically any collaboration app out there.
You’ve just decided to move your work to a project&task management app but you are not sure, how to start? See what are projects and how you can break down your work into tasks and projects! Further down, you’ll also find practical examples of projects you might want to set up in your work management tool.
I love talking to Nozbe customers. Thanks to the fact that Nozbe is so versatile and can be used by anyone, I get to talk to people from many different industries like Real Estate brokers, Lawyers, Startup founders, Marketing Agencies and more.
We have two hot news for you! 1️⃣ New Nozbe Business plans for growing companies. 2️⃣ New limits for Nozbe & Nozbe Personal free accounts.
Your team wants a simple project management tool to know what to do and that’s it. Give it to them and let them work instead of wasting time on management. See what Blaze Goraj, an experienced project consultant, says about Nozbe.
When working in a team, no matter how hard you’re trying to push projects forward, the outcome doesn’t entirely depend on you. Sometimes it can feel frustrating. There is a way for your teamwork to thrive, though. You need an environment that supports teamwork. A sound communication system and a well-designed collaboration tool will help you reach your goals faster together – no matter whether you work in an office or remotely.
Check out how a simple project and task management app works even for the most complex projects. Your team wants simple tools, not overwhelming platform they will never get a hang of.
See how comments work in our best project management app, and how task activity is recorded. Thanks to task activity, you can see exactly what was happening with a given task from the moment it was created.
Looking for a simple productivity tool to manage your tasks and projects? Look no further than Nozbe, the popular project management software used by teams and individuals worldwide. And if you’re looking to get more out of it, we’ve got great news for you: Nozbe affiliate expert and ambassador Mike St Pierre has recorded a series of practical videos sharing his tips and tricks for using Nozbe effectively.
Running a small law firm can be challenging, but it can also be very rewarding. As a small law firm owner, you want to provide your clients with the best possible service while also being productive and profitable. In this blog post, we will share 10 tips to help you improve productivity and profitability for your small law firm. These tips are designed to be simple and actionable, so you can start implementing them right away.
There are many good task and project management apps out there. See, why so many users all over the world choose Nozbe to manage their private and professional life, and what makes them stick to our productivity app.
See what you can do to work even more efficiently! Watch our product vlog and see what new features and improvements we offer in Nozbe and how to implement them.
As a manager, you want to make sure that your team performs their duties and gets tasks done on time. Whether you run a law firm, agency, or other business, you delegate tasks to employees and expect them to complete them, right? How to track work progress in Nozbe?
🎉 Today marks the “sweet sixteen” birthday 🎂 of Nozbe - a to-do app that I launched on my own way back on February 1, 2007 from my small rented apartment in Warsaw, Poland. 🎉
See what can you do to work even more effectively! Watch our product vlog and see what are the new features and improvements in Nozbe and how to use them.
Simplicity in project management and communication lets you increase your productivity and save time for what really matters to your business. We designed the sidebar of Nozbe - our task and project management tool - so that it makes navigation in the app easier and more intuitive.
Comments in Nozbe are your main communication tool. You give feedback via comments. You attach files, images and documents as comments. Checklists and task status updates are comments too. Learn how to use this powerful collaboration tool.
Widgets are all about making your work easier. They are shortcuts to the app views you use the most frequently. See how Nozbe widgets will help you save your time and energy.
Watch our product vlog and see what are the new features and improvements in Nozbe and how to use them. Let our Product Manager and the CEO of Nozbe to take you on a short app tour.
Perhaps you want to add tasks even faster in your favorite project management app? Learn how to use hashtags to define the new task’s parameters!
Here is how we connect people who want to teach Nozbe with those who need help introducing the tool to a team. Nozbe Certified Experts Program is an excellent solution for both coaches/consultants and business owners!
Email is (unfortunately) an integral part of our lives. Although made for correspondence, it soon became a task and project management system for many local business and huge corporations. See how to bring order to your emails and make them actionable.
See how to get reminded, informed, and updated about your tasks in Nozbe. Check out the magic of the Incoming view and have Nozbe do and remember things for you.
No more starting from scratch. Have a blueprint for success thanks to ready-to-go templates for regularly repeated projects.
Nozbe is a tool designed for every entrepreneur and business owner - no matter whether you work alone or with a team you can use its features and create workflows to boost your productivity. Read on to learn how to use Nozbe for effective self-management.
If you want to act even more efficiently in your favorite project management app, learn how the search feature works and how to use it! This way you’ll be able to access all the information you need in no time.
One of the secrets to productivity is process automation. It sounds a bit like corporate lingo, but it’s worth taking a look at. See how cloning projects in Nozbe helps you save time and streamline your workflow.
Here is a way to ditch email at work and still get the most complex projects done. Learn more about Joint Projects in Nozbe! This feature will help you reduce the number of emails you exchange and get the job done faster.
Check out why I hate asking people for status updates and why the “Activity” view in Nozbe helps me become a better CEO.
See exactly how the new features in Nozbe work: project templates, calendar view, advanced recurring options and export to CVS. We will also show you how to use the Activity view, filters and how to do your weekly review in our app.
Here is a feature that is a great productivty booster and everyone waited for it eagerly. Bulk edit mode! Use this option and edit numerous tasks at the same time. For automation and optimization are key for personal and team productivity…
When we celebrated 15 years of Nozbe we ran a special promo - that just for signing up for a new Nozbe account or migrating your Nozbe Personal account to the new Nozbe, you’d get an extra credit of $15 which you could then spend on extending or upgrading your Nozbe subscription. It was a pretty great deal. In fact, it was so good, that we decided to make it permanent for everyone who is recommending Nozbe to a friend. Here’s how it goes:
On the February 24, 2022 - exactly 21 days ago, Putin’s Russia, together with help from Belarus, attacked a sovereign nation of Ukraine 🇺🇦. As a team that’s based in Poland (which borders with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine) we couldn’t be just a bystanders of this.
We want to do what we can as a company to help Ukraine. We offer Nozbe Premium to all the Ukrainians for free. For single users, companies & organizations. 🇺🇦 Українська – нижче ⬇️
As promised we deliver all the answers to the questions you have about switching from Nozbe Personal to Nozbe. Learn all about the differences between the two apps and the way the two-steps data migration process looks like.
We’re excited to showcase The Migrator - a nifty feature created for those of Nozbe Personal users willing to switch to Nozbe or simply to try out our new app and see whether it could become THEIR app. Scroll down for the video demo.
To celebrate the 15th anniversary of Nozbe, our newest product: Nozbe becomes our top tool. Nozbe evolved into a great product which is as good as Nozbe Personal in some respects and much better in others.
Today I’m proud to announce that Nozbe is the future of team work.
Next week, we will be celebrating Nozbe’s 15th birthday. We have something prepared for all of our users, so stay tuned. Today, I wanted to share some insights from the Product Development field.
When teams initiate the search for the perfect collaboration tool, they often seek help from more experienced and well-organized friends in the business. That’s when you step in! You advise and earn!
“Being productive is one thing. Being nonprofit productive takes something more.” - says Mike St. Pierre, productivity geek with over 25 years of nonprofit leadership. Together with his team, he aims to equip nonprofit leaders with simple productivity strategies to help them maximize their team efficiency and avoid burnout. Watch and read to learn more.
We keep trying to convince everyone that asycnhronous communication, writing things down and simple yet effective tools are key to productivity - both personal and in a team. Because we believe in this so much, we regularly add features that make it easier. Watch this episode of our product vlog and check them out!
Nozbe is designed to improve team collaboration. But if you run your business on your own or with a partner, you also want to have your work organized and know what to do, why it matters, and how to get it done, right?
We want to make Nozbe the most practical collaboration app for you and your team. Our main goal is to make communication much more effective and help everyone stay in sync. We also want you to easily handle various facets of your professional and personal life. Multiple spaces in Nozbe will help you here! Read on to find out more.
See how you can save time by linking somehow related tasks using active task links. Simple as it may seam, this feature proves super-practical and saves you precious minutes by letting you have quick access to the reference materials and information.
Sometimes, a task may rely on other tasks to be performed before it is marked as done. In this article, we show a neat trick that will help you handle such chains of tasks using task links.
We want to show you something. (You’ll find the video below ⬇️)
👉 Something that we worked on for a long time
👉 Something that makes Nozbe even more outstanding collaboration platform
👉 Something that is uber-simple & helps teams stay productive.
The Nozbe app gets more and more powerful tool for entrepreneurs and teams. We keep adding functions that let you reduce the time you spend on work management and do more actual work that will push your projects forward.
We regularly get questions about T-shirts and other gadgets with the Nozbe logo. And saying: “next year” started to be pretty awkward… So here you go!
We don’t boast enough about the Nozbe new features and updates, so here we go. Now you can create single tasks for your teammates, invite contractors or clients to share a project with you and clone projects that you want to repeat regularly. Check it out!
If you want to get started with Nozbe in your company and you need someone to guide you, here is a solution! Augusto Pinaud, a world-class business and productivity coach has a Nozbe courses for you!
See, how you can make money or gain free months of Nozbe and Nozbe Personal by referring friends and other teams to use our apps.
You want to take care of your productivity or boost your business efficiency? You need a good to-do software. Find out which of our two apps will better suit your needs.
Since the Nozbe launch in March 2020, we’ve already shipped 33 updates. We keep adding new features, improvements, and fixes almost every week. Let’s take a look at the essential Nozbe features we released in recent weeks.
Here is Michael, the Nozbe Founder and CEO, presenting the key Nozbe features, the app’s interface and the best ways to use our team-work-boosintg software.
If you want to see how our team collaboration app works and how you can use it to boost communication in your team, watch this video.
When we released Nozbe, we knew we had to do as much as possible to introduce our new app and show how it can help small teams do great things.
We decided to hire a video professional to help us in this endeavor, and the product video was his first assignment. The final effect exceeded our expectations, and I’m proud to announce that the new Nozbe clip is ready to watch! 🎉
CEO of Nozbe loves sharing his thoughts and observations. In the video below, he answers some questions about Nozbe Personal and Nozbe, working remotely, and doing business after turning 40.
Your team needs a safe place to work and exchange feedback and a space for natural organization to keep everything in order. You want to communicate effectively, move your projects forward, and be sure that nothing gets lost, right?
I want to show you a tool that will let your team stay productive under any circumstances.
In this blog post I’d like to explain why the security and safety of your data is our priority, what we’ve done so far and what we’ll be doing in the near future to actually make it even better and more secure for you to get things done and communicate effectively through tasks in Nozbe.
As recently announced, we are slowly becoming a two-product company. We’re planning to launch the Open Beta phase of Nozbe Teams very soon, which means we’re currently putting a lot of effort into the new app’s development. However, please bear in mind that we will still support and improve the existing Nozbe app for many years to come. See here what we’ve been working on:
You keep asking at what stage are the works on the new collaboration and project management app we’re developing for small and medium-sized teams. Well, there’s been a lot going on and we want to share the Nozbe (aka Nozbe 4) progress report with you right here and right now. Let’s do this:
When working in a team, your productivity is affected by the decisions and habits of the other members. Even if you are all uber-efficient and always stick to deadlines, the team as a whole might struggle to communicate and deliver things on time. If you and your teammates/employees find it hard to get things done together, read on and see how Nozbe can help you out.
Welcome back to our FAQ series in which we answer questions that our users ask in their e-mails. This month, we’re presenting labels.
I will answer a few of the most common questions about labels to show you how useful they are.
First things first: I’m heavily biased toward Nozbe. This post will demonstrate where my bias comes from. To me, Nozbe is much more than a simple task manager: it’s a whole-life system, guiding all areas of my life.
Today is 04/04, so we’re launching the preview of Nozbe 4 (Nozbe Teams), our new take on team productivity. It is a tool that will help small teams do great things.
After more than three years of work and a few months of internal testing, we’d like to invite some teams to be the first to test our brand new Nozbe 4 (Nozbe Teams) system. If you’re curious about what the future holds for Nozbe, read on:
Most people who create content use a content calendar (an editorial calendar) in some form. Simply put, a content calendar works as a sentinel for controlling the publication process and ensuring that your content appears regularly.
In this post, you’ll learn:
At the heart of Nozbe are your projects. And that’s how you begin to create a content calendar…
Welcome back to our FAQ series in which we answer questions that our users ask in their e-mails. This month, we’re discussing data and different levels of access that team members might have in Nozbe. I will try to answer your questions and explain why it is useful to promote some of your users to team or project admins.
If you are about to start using Nozbe not only as your personal project management tool but also as a team collaboration booster, read on.
Welcome back to our FAQ series in which we answer popular questions that our users ask us in their emails. This time, we want to talk about archiving.
Nozbe supports many languages. We offer not only the app, but also on-boarding, educational materials, blog posts, email campaigns and newsletters in multiple languages. To get these materials all sorted and delivered on time, we set up a simple system for collaborating with contractors based all over the world.
For this fall, we have prepared version 3.9 of Nozbe, designed to:
Welcome back to our FAQ series in which we tackle the most popular questions our users send us in their e-mails. In this blogpost, we’ll take a closer look at the collaboration features in Nozbe.
In recent days, we released the new version of our app, Nozbe 3.8. We focused mainly on mobile apps to enrich native user experience in Nozbe. In this blogpost, I will focus on the new features in the iOS app. If you use Android please see this post.
We are in the middle of the summer season. However, at Nozbe we are still working very hard. We have a great customer community, and we want to deliver the best productivity platform and experience to them. With the newest update – Nozbe 3.8 – we focused on our mobile apps. Both Android and iOS got some love from our dev team. In this blog post, I’d like to focus on some cool new features for Android users.
So you’ve decided to give Nozbe a try. You’ve registered and downloaded the app to your computer or smartphone… We are thrilled! And you will be, too! Read on, follow the tips and take your productivity to a whole new level. Let’s get started!
Welcome back to our FAQ series in which we answer questions that our users ask us in their e-mails. This month, we’re going to take a closer look at the Account Settings and other administrative options in Nozbe Personal.
Did you know you can integrate some of the time tracking apps with Nozbe? This way you will be able to view exactly how many hours you spend on various projects, tasks and other activities!
Great news for all time tracking enthusiasts: PomoDone, one of the leading apps on the market, can now track your time spent on tasks! Read how it works and how to get a free month of PomoDone 🙂
You are not alone – it’s our motto. You may get your work done with other people. It’s fine, however, to keep all your projects private and manage them individually. Nozbe gives you all the tools you need to work independently!
You could operate on your desktop using only a mouse or a touchpad. But why would you do that when you have a keyboard with its shortcuts? Learn how to manage your tasks with powerful key combinations! ⌨️
Do you work in the insurance industry (or a related industry) and are wondering how to use Nozbe for collaboration with your clients? In this article, we present methods and solutions that may help insurance agents, as well as other professionals from this industry, increase their effectiveness and work in a more structured manner.
Welcome back to our FAQ series in which we answer popular questions that our users ask us in their e-mails. This month, we will take a look at the sorting and filtering options.
Today, a humble feature request from a Nozbe user is the pretext for Michael to show how we think of the privacy of your tasks. And he’s quite serious about that!
What is the biggest advantage of a digital productivity system, in comparison to a paper-based one? Automation, of course! With features like recurring tasks, you can operate on autopilot. Let’s check out how it works!
Do you use iCal and Outlook and want to connect them to your productivity app? For the time being, there is no direct way to link these apps. However, it is still possible to make them work together! Read on to learn how.
What do Nozbe and personal trainers have in common? They do everything they can to help clients achieve their goals! What happens if they combine their powers? The clients receive the best care ever 🙂
After months of hard work, we have just released our new, updated tutorial for Nozbe. Whether you’re a beginner or a long-time user, you may find it very helpful to watch. Today, Michael explains why it’s worth watching!
Nozbe has always been a great communication tool for teams. Lots of companies use it everyday to asynchronously assign tasks and contextually discuss potential solutions for each task in order to complete them all ✅. With the new Nozbe 3.7, communication flow in your company can be smoother than ever before. We also included some goodies for Android users, dark theme enthusiasts and more. Keep reading to learn how these new features can boost your productivity and make using Nozbe even more comfortable.
Your projects are yours by default - always! In today’s episode, Michael casts all doubts away about the privacy of projects in Nozbe in different scenarios.
Nozbe Ambassadors share not only their affiliate link, but – most importantly – their experience and know-how in order to make others more productive with Nozbe. They can help you, too!
With Nozbe, you’re not dependent on Wi-Fi. Your tasks are always with you, as long as you have a device with some charge. Does this feature really matter? Oh, yes, it does!
Did you know that checklists are a popular type of comment among Nozbe users? We’re not surprised: it’s a powerful tool to organize mini-actions or small parts of a task, as well as a good way to get started on a new project. Looking for more ideas on how to get organized? Here you go!
Exactly 11 years ago today a young aspiring entrepreneur/programmer from a rented apartment in Warsaw, the capital of a country in the Central Europe called Poland, launched a productivity Web 2.0 application inspired by David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done”. That was me, and when I started Nozbe I never even dared to dream that 11 years later I’d be running this amazing company with Nozbe apps for all the major platforms with 0.5M people from all over the world using it… Happy Birthday Nozbe! You just turned 11 and as your founder I’m writing this post to give everyone a little more detail of where we came from and where we’re going in the coming months and years. Here goes:
Welcome back to our FAQ series in which we answer questions that our users ask us in their e-mails. This month, we’re discussing checklists.
Hello and welcome back to our FAQ series in which we tackle popular questions that our users send us by e-mail. This month we will discuss how to prioritize tasks. You will learn how to decide which tasks should truly be done first and how we can set up different levels of priorities in Nozbe.
Welcome back to our monthly series where we answer the most frequent questions asked by our users. This month we’re going to take a closer look at the search engine in Nozbe. Whenever you’re trying to find a certain task or a comment you’ve read before but you have no idea where it is, you can just go to the Search tab in Nozbe and find it right away! This is one of my personal favourite and most often used features and yours probably, too! But do you really know all the different ways of searching in Nozbe? Let’s find out!
What does Nozbe offer for collaboration? What can you achieve by inviting someone to your Nozbe team? And what will happen when you do that? All of this in today’s “Ask Michael” episode!
Welcome back to our FAQ series in which we answer popular questions that our users ask us in their emails. This month we tackle a crucial topic concerning processing your inbox and arranging the tasks you save there in appropriate projects.
Why do law offices choose Nozbe to manage their work? Because they know we have a high level of security and encryption, and they feel safe in keeping their clients’ and their own data with us. And that’s the topic of today’s new “Ask Michael” episode!
With Nozbe 3.6 we can make your back-to-work time even more productive. You will now be able to easily capture tasks via Siri on your iPhone or via Google Assistant on your Android smartphone. Other cool features are the search option within your completed tasks 🔍✔️ and customizable Nozbe reminders 🛠🔔 . Let me show you what exactly you’re getting with Nozbe 3.6.
Today you’ll learn how to store notes and attachments related to your projects. It’s pretty easy with project attachments!
Welcome back to our FAQ series in which we tackle popular questions that Nozbe users ask us. This month we’re discussing two questions that many users and GTD fans have been wondering about: how to deal with loose and someday/maybe tasks.
Productive people know that time is the most precious resource they have. And that good organization skills and effective scheduling are the keys to success.
Welcome back to our FAQ series in which we tackle popular questions that our users ask us in their emails and messages. This month we’re discussing another powerful feature - sending your tasks to Nozbe via email.
Welcome back to our FAQ series in which we answer popular questions that our users ask us in their emails. This month we’re discussing joining a team.
If you’re looking for an alternative to Wunderlist, Nozbe is the perfect choice.
After receiving many inquiries from people interested in transferring their data from the Microsoft app to Nozbe, our developers built an easy-to-use import system. It lets you move all your lists, tasks and other data from Wunderlist to Nozbe in a few simple steps.
This is another inspiring guest post we got from Robby Miles - our Ambassador, productivity guru and a really good man :-) Read on if you want to boost your team’s efficiency by applying a kanban method.
Kanban is a project management system pioneered by Toyota motor company and its “just in time” production system. Its visual nature makes it easy for teams to communicate and quickly see what is going on as a project moves forward.
Traditionally kanban systems are broken into different project phases.
For example:
Welcome back to our FAQ series in which we tackle popular questions that our users ask us in their emails and messages. This month we’re discussing an underused but powerful feature of Nozbe - the possibility to format text comments using Markdown markup language.
Did you know that approximately 65% of the population are visual learners? Most of us process information based on what we see. We also tend to pay more attention to those elements that stand out. Because of that, from time to time we receive the following question:
This is a guest post by Mike St. Pierre, Nozbe Ambassador and online coach. Nozbe users get a 20% discount on Mike’s new productivity system, “Never Miss a Thing”!
My name is Mike St. Pierre, a non-profit leader in America and a Nozbe aficionado. My team uses Nozbe and it’s increased our productivity by 30-40% since utilizing the shared list features and the ability to delegate tasks.
In this post, I’ll be sharing how my new productivity system, Never Miss a Thing, features a “first premise” and it relates nicely to Nozbe.
We have fantastic users that always give us valuable feedback. Today with Nozbe 3.5 we’re delivering solutions to some of the requests that we receive from our users the most.
Watch our short overview of the new possibilities that Nozbe 3.5 gives to you and your team.
This is a guest post we got from Robby Miles - our Ambassador, productivity guru and a really good man :-) Read on if you want to learn about the advantages of flat project management, emailing tasks and using project templates.
My name is Robby Miles and I am a dad, history teacher, Army officer, online freelancer, and Nozbe Ambassador. I probably have too much going on , but Nozbe is the one tool I trust to keep all the different areas of my life organized. So how do I use Nozbe to stay on top of everything?
I’m thankful that Nozbe uses a “flat” project system when it comes to staying aware of all the different tasks I have floating around. Flat project management means there are no tasks hidden deep within sub-tasks, within tasks, within projects, within folders. You get the point. Everything is visible within a couple clicks. In many apps, it’s easy to lose tasks. Not so with Nozbe.
Here comes another guest post on our blog. This time a fantastic Nozbe user, Michele Wiedemer of Virtual Customer Learning shares her top methods for adding tasks to Nozbe. See whether you know all the options she describes :-)
My name is Michele Wiedemer. I’ve been freelancing for over 10 years (as a technical writer, tutorial video developer, instructional designer, and eLearning developer), and during that time, I’ve tried several different systems and methods of keeping track of tasks in multiple projects. I found Nozbe a little over a year ago, and I can barely remember the crazy hectic way I used to manage my projects. Though I had been incrementally implementing David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology since I first read the book in about 2006, it wasn’t until Nozbe came into my life that GTD really started clicking for me.
This month in our FAQ series we’re tackling invitations to teams and to projects in Nozbe. We always encourage you to invite people to your team in Nozbe and share projects with them because we believe that collaboration is more effective than doing everything alone.
Many of you are considering (or already) collaborating with others and we regularly receive questions about inviting to teams and projects.
Here’s the most frequent one:
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.
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.
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!
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?
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:
This is a guest post by Chad Garrett - our ambassador, power-user and a tremendous advocate for the GTD. See which Nozbe features he uses and how he deals with “loose tasks”.
My name is Chad Garrett and I am President of Productivity Grid, LLC and a Nozbe Ambassador. Nozbe is really the perfect productivity tool. I am a huge advocate for David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology and Nozbe fits perfectly into this workflow. So how do I use Nozbe? Let’s start with where I put my tasks.
Everything in Nozbe goes into a project (as defined in GTD, anything that takes two or more steps to complete). I currently have around 75 projects. This may seem like a lot, but in reality it isn’t - we are all this busy!
I’m not that creative… and worse yet - I’m blonde. I still happen to have ideas, though. Sometimes :-) When I need to, I force myself to reflect and come up with a nice solution or plan. More often, interesting thoughts just pop into my head in the most unexpected situations… Because I don’t want to lose these little treasures, I always capture them. I encourage you to do the same.
Idea dumping is a really handy procedure - whether you do it routinely or spontaneously. Thoughts in your mind, although precious, can be a hindrance to productivity. When they float around in your head, they will surface again and again at inappropriate times, stress you out and, worse still, be lost when they are actually needed.
You might want to run idea-dumping sessions for two reasons:
Have you ever searched our app or website for a handy feature or specific answer? For those who have, we’re launching a new blog post series! It will be a classic FAQ - posts will contain the answers to the questions our users frequently ask in their support emails.
I’ve been working for Nozbe Customer Support for a long time now. And I still enjoy the direct, every-day contact with our clients. All their questions, big or small issues, feedback and requests.
We’ve noticed that some of the questions repeat quite regularly. And these aren’t just from users who start their productive life with (and thanks to) Nozbe. Each user has their own workflow and habits. This often means that they skip or don’t notice some functions that our system offers, even though it would definitely improve their efficiency.
Let’s kick off with the first query:
I stumbled upon Nozbe several years ago while searching – yet again – for the ideal multi-platform task management system. Even then, Nozbe had a clean, crisp, and powerful interface. Today, Nozbe stands alone as the ultimate expression of a well-designed task management system.
Each new version of Nozbe allows me to update and refine my personal productivity workflow. Nozbe, the company, works very closely with their user community to keep the flow of ideas moving and growing.
Today, it’s time to take you back to the beginning, and show you what got us to today. This is a long post, but it’s worth reading if you’re curious how we got to this point. Let’s turn back the time machine and head back to 2007!
It’s still astonishing to us that Michael’s little side project has evolved into a productivity platform with an enormous community and a great team. So many factors got Nozbe on its current path. Both coincidences and hard work.
You might not be surprised (if you have already read Michael’s “It’s all about Passion” book, among others) to learn that Nozbe wasn’t intended to be a global business. It was just a quick and dirty solution for organization issues.
It was 2005. Michael, known today as The Productivity Guy and the author of #iPadOnly, was a PC user. Hard to believe, huh? There’s more than that: before he read “Getting Things Done,” he kept organized with MS Outlook – just like many other folks in those days.
Michael was a marketing consultant. He worked from home, helping other businesses get better results online. Because he worked with their websites, he learned HTML, PHP and MySQL (technologies needed to build modern websites). And he had a lot of fun coding.
But managing projects for many clients at the same time became a struggle. Then he got David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done”. Convinced by the method, but not by its reliance on paper, he searched for a digital solution.
Inspired by David’s method I built a tool that’d help me achieve my goals and implement the GTD system in real life. I spent a whole day researching the web to find a tool I needed for this […] and finally when I found nothing, I dedicated one weekend to building a very simple, bare-bones web-based tool. (from “It’s all about Passion”)
In the next few months, he spent some time fixing bugs and making new features. And he still thought about Nozbe as a simple project only for himself. Initially, there was no plan to make money.
Michael had already tried running his own business. Michael and Victor created a simply email reminder service called… Nozbe. They offered a subscription but only a few users decided to pay. This project, like a later one, failed quickly, because they focused on making money. Michael gave up, but he learned a lesson. It was a chance to take entrepreneurial baby-steps. And now he already had a fancy name for the next project.
You may know Michael as a #NoOffice evangelist, for proving that a remote company is a reliable and effective model. In fact, the idea isn’t new. Nozbe reminder was developed using tools like ICQ and FTP. Now it would be Slack or iMessage and Dropbox. Is that really so different?
Tools have changed, but not the methods.
Now let’s focus on 2007 - the launch:
Tracking goals, regular fitness, setting up habits – that’s all possible if you’re motivated and disciplined. We already know this; however, when we read this post on Reddit, we were amazed by the outstanding progress made by the author, therealleotrotsky in a relatively short time!
Since he agreed to publish his achievements on our Blog, we’re proud to share his words. Read, get inspired and follow his determination :)
Today we’re happy to announce a new version of Nozbe. Nozbe 3.4 contains some really cool stuff that you’ve been asking for.
Watch a short overview of new features in Nozbe 3.3 and 3.4:
We’d like to introduce you to Marc Woodland – the founder and CEO of Winbox, a specialist email marketing company for small and medium-sized businesses. As a team, Winbox uses a setup of apps to help them on daily basis. Read how Marc manages clients with Nozbe!
Marc is one of those business founders who succeeded by responding to the need of a market they already know and belong to. As a marketing guy, he knew that small companies need a reliable, non-spamming and easy-to-use email sender. And that’s where Winbox comes in! For us, the best part of the story is that Nozbe has been one piece of the puzzle and helped the Winbox team to manage their projects.
One of the frequently asked questions we’ve heard a lot in the last few weeks is how best to make use of the Business version features of Nozbe. To answer this question, we created a short video tutorial about team & project roles and the Nozbe Ratio. In fact, Nozbe PRO users can learn something too! Check it out!
Nozbe and Google Calendar are like best friends: they share information, work together for the greater good and don’t bother each other. And, by the way, they both work for you! Learn how to make use of integration with Google Calendar. And a calendar in general.
Some people rely on their calendars completely: they work on reducing blank holes in their schedule, minimizing time spent in meetings and tasks and optimizing processes. But what if this isn’t enough to fully improve our workdays?
Today we can finally introduce our fantastic users to another update from Nozbe. We worked really hard on version 3.2. This time the new features may not look as spectacular, but we believe they will be great improvements for the productivity of you and your team.
Here are the highlights of new features in Nozbe 3.2:
Ever since I founded Nozbe back in 2007, the security and safety of customer data as well as the stability of our infrastructure were my biggest points of focus. To the point that I’d wake up in the middle of the night to check if our servers were still up… Over the years we’ve had our failures, outages and issues… but if you’ve been with us for the last few years you’ll have noticed that our infrastructure has been rock-solid for a while now.
In this blog post I’d like to explain why that is, what we’ve done so far and what we’ll be doing in the near future to actually make it even better and more secure for you to get things done and communicate effectively through tasks thanks to Nozbe.
I’d like to mention a few things:
As a productivity tutor, Jeroen Sangers knows many GTD services, but Nozbe is his app of choice.
We just launched Nozbe 3.1 with lots of features and improvements, and today I’d like to focus on 3 changes that will help you move your 2016 goals forward and get them done!
One of the most successful entrepreneurs in Africa, Marek Zmyslowski, is also a loyal Nozbe user. Check his tips out!
If you follow the Nozbe blog or newsletter closely, you might have seen my article discussing how I use Nozbe to implement the FRESH approach (from the book, “The Accidental Creative” by Todd Henry). I’ll spare you and not completely rehash the entire approach, but one aspect of FRESH that is very important is the “F,” which stands for “Focus.” As we all know, a very important part of being productive and creative is lazer focus. Not only do you get a lot more done when you fully concentrate on the essential few, but you also use your energy and brainpower much more efficiently.
Since I wrote my previous post for Nozbe, I’ve been continuing to tweak and refine my FRESH Nozbe system, and I recently had a breakthrough after reading Brian Talty’s post on using “organizing headers” in Nozbe. At first, I played around with Brian’s method for a few days, but I continued to tweak it in a slightly different direction. Eventually, I came up with the idea of creating “time block” categories.
It’s awkward to admit, but can you imagine that even the Nozbe team members are not aware of how amazing our app is?
Sometimes, during a random discussion someone mentions a Nozbe feature he or she uses on a daily basis… and it is like: Eureka! Reinvention of the wheel! It turns out that one of us - perhaps due to using Nozbe on a different platform or applying a totally different work mode - didn’t realize such a possibility existed!
To save you that creepy feeling you get after learning something obvious and brilliant about the tool you have used for quite a while now, we’ve prepared the following blog entry. Check it out, maybe there are ideas you don’t know and that you could use to optimize your actions.
People have different hobbies. One like to knit, another to paint and yet someone else, like me, loves mechanics and his/her car. Last year, I made my huge car dream come true - Mazda Rx-8. 12 years since the premier they are still not what you would call cheap. But once you decide for a car like that costs are unavoidable. It is iconic not only because it is one of very few run by a Wankle engine but also for the timeless design of the body and it’s fascinating driving properties.
Should you look for a car that offers pure fun of driving curvy roads… that’s the one you should consider.
I started out my QA (Quality Assurance) career working full-time. After 2 years, I tried a freelance remote job. A constantly changing client base and the lack of financial security was rough and difficult compared to a stable full-time contract.
But I did it - I went freelance and was testing software for many clients. Along with a high volume of work, a need of uber-productivity and perfect time management kicked in. I started to look for the best solutions, and soon I found Nozbe… First, as my top productivity tool and then also as an employer who hired me as a full-time QA person.
We can learn a lot from specific, real-life use cases. Check out how Brian negotiates with himself using task headers.
I am a Christian Pastor at First Christian Church in Decatur, IL.
My journey with task management began with Stephen Covey’s “7 habits of highly effective people” in college; and then was further honed by David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” several years ago.
Traveling alone, traveling with kids, traveling on a budget, around the world, with friends… No matter which way you choose, it guarantees precious experience, unforgettable lessons and a new way of looking at certain things.
I’ve always tried to travel a lot. Alone or with friends when at the uni, then - with my partner and now - with an extra luggage (our 6-year old son and a daughter on the way.) One of the things I’ve learned so far is that planning is important providing you don’t exaggerate. There is a couple of things about it:
“I ultimately knew I wanted to have conversations with people” - Erik Fisher
After talking to Erik Fisher on his Beyond the To-Do List podcast, Michael (our CEO) thought it would be great to present the BTTDL host to the whole Nozbe community.
Here is the outcome: a great interview on productivity essentials and Erik’s methods for planning and staying on top of things.
As you all realize, Nozbe affiliate program is one of the focal points of our marketing. Over the years, we have grown almost exclusively thanks to it… Thanks to your recommendations.
It remained unchanged for several years, so it was time for it to mature. Therefore, we have decided to introduce a couple of changes in order to provide our affiliates with more support, materials and aid.
It is still open to anyone, for full details please take a look at the information in your Nozbe account settings and at our Help Page.
Nozbe users, from now on, will be divided into three groups.
After launching Nozbe 3.0, in one of his Periscope videos, Michael presented a fresh way to manage shared projects.
Michael answered several questions, such as:
He also revealed some details of how we work in Nozbe and why we strongly believe nobody is alone these days :)
Happy birthday Nozbe! Today marks 9 years of helping more than 300,000 busy professionals and their teams from all over the world get everything done! Nozbe 3.0 is here with better design, business accounts and a completely new logo!
To learn more about Nozbe 3.0, check out our short video:
Now that you’ve watched the video, let me tell you (1) how can you get Nozbe 3.0, (2) what’s new in 3.0, (3) some more details about new Nozbe for Business and finally (4) our newest NOZBE3 special offer. Here goes:
1. Nozbe 3.0 is available today on most of the 9 major platforms we support:
Nozbe’s birthday celebrations continue. We hope you like all the gifts we’ve prepared for you so far :-)
Today, we would like to talk a little bit about the productivity of your team. See, what we can do together to help your business grow.
9 years ago, back in 2007, Nozbe started as a GTD-based personal productivity tool designed to meet mostly our CEO’s needs ;)
Over the years, listening to your feedback, we added the project sharing feature. Then, multi-personal accounts were introduced. The team collaboration flow and communicating through tasks soon became one of our priorities and strengths.
Today, we are taking Nozbe to a whole new level by creating special Business accounts dedicated to companies and teams willing to boost their productivity!
We believe that essential factors affecting team productivity are:
…and Nozbe works great in each of these fields.
The big day is coming. We are putting finishing touches to Nozbe 3.0 and cannot wait to share it with our great Nozbe users. We hope this will be the best gift for you to celebrate our 9th birthday :) And your feedback will be the best gift for us!
Today, we wanted to share some highlights from Nozbe 3.0:
It was back in August 2015 when our designer Hubert prepared a blogpost on our internal blog with a project of a new Nozbe logo. When Michael saw it he got a bit mad… because he realised how much he liked the new logo and that the change was necessary ;) I mean seriously! The new logo is so beautiful that Hubert was crying with tears of joy while drawing it. True story! ;)
The new logo is the icing on the cake of a new design. With Nozbe 2.5 and 2.6 we introduced some major changes to the app design. We brought a new font, new colors, new icons, refreshed side panels and task list appearance. The last part of the app that needed a redesign was the task details column. That is kind of a place when the magic happens. In this view, you comment tasks, delegate them and complete them. You simply get everything done over there. First attempts to tweak the task details design were made in April 2015 but we could not agree on how it should look like. After months of discussions and tons of sketches we finally got to the solution which, although not so revolutionary, really improves the user experience.
2015 was the year that brought some new possibilities for automation on mobile platforms, especially on iOS. The beginning of 2016 is a good moment to tweak our workflows and make them even more effective.
In this blogpost, I will show you a few examples of how these automation tools can work with Nozbe. Thanks to our email integration, hashtags and Markdown support we can do some really cool stuff. Here goes:
Some time ago, we introduced you one of Nozbe power-users: Jeff Sanders. Today, we would like you to meet another fantastic member of Nozbe community: Robby Miles.
Robby is a husband, a dad of four, a college prep teacher, a freelance writer, and an Officer in the Army National Guard. After hours, he runs a Mission Mindset project to help people like himself stay on top of things.
He says:
I’m from North Idaho. Up here productivity means getting the right things accomplished. And this can only be done through simplicity and focus.
Robby is convinced that only by using practical systems you can create focus for the missions that matter (putting your priorites first)… And he helps you with that by providing you the exact templates and systems busy parents and students may use to create focus, overcome distraction, and get back hours of quality time each day.
Sharing projects and teams is one of the most confusing matters to our users.
For safety please allow me to start with definitions. For some users this is not a secret as it can be read about on Nozbe Help Page. The matter, in fact, is so simple that it seems confusing to many and is related to Nozbe’s history.
Inviting someone to your Nozbe team DOES NOT mean inviting them to your projects. Statement seems logical enough, right? Well, it is like inviting a friend to a party. You invite him over, yet that does not mean automatically he will or should get involved in all conversations and activities going on at it.
Once you invite someone to join your team… what happens?
You see them on your “team members list”
You pay for their access to the service BUT 3. you neither give them access to all your projects, nor you get access to all of their projects.
Once you share a project… what happens?
You grant them access to all data within that project but nothing else.
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:
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…
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
This post will answer those for you.
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”.
Grouping projects is one of the most vital and tricky aspects of day-to-day project and time management. Properly arranged groups can boost your productivity while a mess in the list can defeat the purpose of use of any system at all.
I guess everyone can imagine the most basic use thereof… simply create some, add them to projects and later on, filter by them. Yet, a second use that not so many are familiar with is… sub-projects.
Yes, you read it right… sub-projects. True, Nozbe does not have sub-projects. However, none said that you can’t turn your goal into a label; a complex task into a project and sub-tasks you had in mind - into actual tasks.
Two things to remember:
You can filter by a label narrowing your list of projects only to those with that given one.
You can have more than one label attached to a project (so it can indeed be grouped by a goal + something else)
I for instance, have some fixed and unchangeable labels such as work, home, study, private. All my projects are grouped initially into those areas. Then, I have other sort of labels. Those are actual goals such as: affiliate, support and other - all for work; home related tend to be shopping, improvements; private - craft, travel.
Nozbe has always grown via word-of-mouth spread among friends and colleagues. Our affiliate program has been running almost as long as Nozbe itself. Many users have taken advantage of it and earned additional income.
As described at our help page and also in your account Settings, you become an affiliate automatically once you create your Nozbe account. After you set up your nickname, your individual link gets personalized. Starting at this point, you are able to recommend Nozbe by providing your link to invitees.
Their account will get then automatically added to your statistics and once they pay their subscription, you start earning extra money. It is that easy! But there’s more!
Hello Android users! We need to talk. Some of you might feel a bit left out due to our latest Nozbe for Apple Watch release and other tight Nozbe iOS integrations which we recently launched. I get that. But it doesn’t mean that we don’t love our Android users! We do! To prove it to you we decided to get back to work and deliver some exciting new features which will change the way you use Nozbe on you Android device.
We heard you loud and clear - Android users need to have Nozbe widget that looks and works great. For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been working very hard on exactly that - Android widget that saves time and thus helps you be more productive. Just take a look:
I’ve been traveling a lot this past month and as I kept meeting with people asking me about business, success… and Nozbe’s features, one question clearly stood out in all this: who is your target customer for Nozbe? Consumer? Prosumer? Small business? Enterprise? Who??? … And my answer was pretty surprising to most of the people I met: ideal customer for Nozbe is a person (or a group of people) who value their time. Let me explain:
There are countless tools that will help you get things done. Some are free, some are cheap, some are more expensive than others… But the point is that time is indeed money and you should find a solution that works for you. That makes you more productive. That saves you time. And here’s how to do it:
I believe everyone knows there are comments to tasks in Nozbe. Yet, it seems not all see a point in that. Therefore a question - to comment or not to comment - arises.
Most of us are aware of the definition and the basic use as per instructions found on Nozbe Help Page. Their principal function is to facilitate communication on issues relevant to a given task within a team.
And that’s just great. Once your team gets disciplined about it, the function can replace emailing almost entirely and thus save much time.
Attachments that can be added to comments are a great way of speeding up your work and storing relevant reference materials in order to make everything clear.
You can also email tasks already with comments to Nozbe or add comments via email at later time.
That’s all great, you may say, but what is the point then of this post? Well… here it is:
One of the most obvious secondary uses are simply notes. If you do not share the project with anyone, or even when you do, you might wish to add things to your own tasks.. in that case they become your notes.
