After a short break, Michael is pleased to introduce the second season of his YouTube Show! Today he talks about how to use Evernote on a daily basis. We were so happy to have you here for the first season of “Ask Michael”. We hope it was a great productivity booster for you! As Michael got astonishing feedback, he’s very eager to go on answering your questions about productivity and life hacks.

Today is the last day of our semi-annual Nozbe Reunion - where our “No Office” team meets to hang out, socialize, discuss, brainstorm and work together in one physical space. This reunion was very fruitful as we’ve discovered a next step in productivity evolution: Nozbe Stories.

Nozbe is a very mature product that helps more than 400,000 people all around the world to get things done. More than 10 years in business, we want to keep the product simple, effective and dependable so instead of bloating it with all the features possible, we’re searching for the next step of innovation and productivity. What’s the one feature that would take our product to the next level? We believe we found it: it’s Nozbe Stories! Here’s why:

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.

Bucket Projects

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!

And here it is – the last episode of the first season of “Ask Michael!” Today Michael answers two questions we get all the time: After the previous episode, you already know that we run Nozbe with Nozbe – and without an office. Why do we only work remotely? Who else follows that approach? And where, actually, can you visit us? Watch the new episode! What now? We’re wrapping up the first season of “Ask Michael.

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.

The purpose of all this commotion?

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:

As a tech company, we’re armed with many apps to run our business. Some of you are curious about which apps we use and how. That’s where “Ask Michael” comes in!

Since we’re in No Office model, we have no other choice than using the best available services and applications to get our work done, to communicate and to discuss our efforts. But that’s just one side of the coin. In fact, playing with new things and upgrading our toolset is our passion. :)

Introduction

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.

Here comes Productive! Magazine no.34 - the latest and the last issue of our periodical.

The reason we stop working on our magazine (that have been on-line for more than 8 years) is… essentialism :-) Michael, our Editor in Chief, explains his decision in details in his article that you will find inside this edition.

Interview with Greg McKeown

The special guest of issue no.34 is none other than Greg McKeown, the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less”.

10 years in business – and just as many years listening to customers. We get feature requests every single day. And that’s what the latest “Ask Michael” episode is about! You might be curious what we do with your requests. Are they stored somewhere? Does anyone read them? First, we carefully review your requests. Then we save them in a special Nozbe project. And use them while planning future releases. But our experience tells us that (usually) simply adding new features isn’t actually what you really want.

Nozbe isn’t the only app we use to get things done. We also use Slack. The natural question is: is integration between these apps on the way? Although we strongly prefer asynchronous communication because it doesn’t disrupt deep work, we need more “live” and less action-focused field too – to keep a healthy balance. Slack handles this very well. Check out what Michael has to say about Slack, its role on our team and the future of integration between Nozbe and Slack: