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.

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”.

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.

Labels

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:

1. You can filter by a label narrowing your list of projects only to those with that given one.

2. 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.

When you become an affiliate and how it works?

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.

Android widget

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:

Time is money

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.

All about comments

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:

Alternative uses of comments - notes

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.

Like most of tech industries, we watched the Apple Event yesterday. And now we know for sure:  Watch is real, it’s coming very soon (end of April in first countries - which happen to be the countries where we have most of our customers: USA, UK, Japan…) and yes, we’re building an  Watch Nozbe app for you: We can’t wait to show it to you. The best part? You won’t have to download anything extra to get this new app, it’ll come as a part of your Nozbe app for your iPhone.

Hope you’re on the right track with your goals for 2015! In the last blogpost, we presented a short video about how to get your goals done in Nozbe - did you like it? Have you planned your goals yet? Since my last email we’ve improved the video to make it easier to follow - make sure to watch it again! Did you know that as a Nozbe PRO user you can create an additional Nozbe account for your partner absolutely free?