Category Archives: Tools

60 Second Productivity, Todoist, Workflowy

Create a mobile friendly task list in Notion

If you’re managing tasks or checklists in Notion and want a mobile friendly interface I recommend creating a Gallery view for your list. Not only does it work on the desktop as well as on mobile, but it scales to work well in the vertical layout of a phone.

In Notion, go to your listing, select Add a View and choose Gallery. You can then choose what properties are displayed as well as any filters and sorts that need to be applied.

Bonus TIP – On mobile if you press and hold on any of the gallery boxes you can drag them to change their order in the list. I use this frequently when re-prioritizing my work.

60 Second Productivity, Workflowy

Add a Todoist project to your calendar

Todoist has a nice feature of allowing your projects to be displayed on external calendars such as Outlook or Google Calendar. From within Todoist, click on the three dots to the right of the project name and select “Project Calendar Feed”. Now follow the directions for your preferred calendar tool to see your project tasks represented on your calendar with your appointments and meetings.

Check out other 60 Second Productivity tips!

60 Second Productivity, Microsoft Edge, Workflowy

Gain space for more tabs in Edge with one click

If you’ve moved over to Microsoft Edge or are looking for a reason to give it a try, vertical tabs

In the upper left corner of the browser click on the Turn On Vertical Tabs icon to move your browser tabs from across the top to down the left side.

Bonus Tip – Click on Collapse Pane at the upper right of the list of vertical tabs to regain even more space on your screen.

60 Second Productivity, Microsoft Teams

Schedule a meeting in Teams instead of Outlook

If you need to schedule a meeting for your team and you use Microsoft Teams, you can save time by scheduling the meeting from within Teams instead of jumping out to Outlook to book the time.

Go into your Team, select a Channel, and then in the upper right select the pull down next to Meet. Choose “Schedule a Meeting” and you can book the meeting without having to leave Teams.

Bonus Tip – You can use the Scheduling Assistant at the top of the screen to compare schedules to find the best available time.

Full Length Articles, Techniques, Tools

Stop wasting time trying to be more productive.

It’s about time we stopped putting so much effort into putting out less effort when it comes to getting work done. We spend too much time and effort digging through articles, podcasts, and other content trying to find those little nuggets of wisdom that can have an immediate impact on our work. We get it…we have the same struggles. That’s why we’ve started a new series here at The Idea Pump called 60 Second Productivity.

The purpose, if you can’t tell by the title, is to gather as many tips, tricks, and hacks as we can find across the spectrum of tools and techniques that can be implemented in under a minute and immediately help you become more productive. Each day we’ll share a post so you’re always getting something new.

If there is a tool or topic you’re specifically interested in, make sure to drop us a line below and let us know. If you have your own tip, trick, or hack and want to share it with the world, you can submit it and it might be included in a future post (you’ll get credit!)

It all comes down to this…the little steps we take to make things easier on ourselves amount to big steps towards being more productive added together.

60 Second Productivity

60 Second Productivity, OneNote, Tools

Quick Access to Notebooks in OneNote 2016

Rather than having to click through drop downs and display screens to access your favorite notebooks in OneNote 2016, you can streamline the entire process with just a few clicks.

Open OneNote 2016 and then right click on the tab in your task bar. Your most recently opened notebooks will be listed in the pop-up menu. Click on the push-pin to the right of the notebook name and you now have access to that notebook with only two clicks while you’re running OneNote.

Bonus tip – You can pin multiple notebooks to the taskbar tab if you have a few you use frequently.

60 Second Productivity, Tools

Making any screen easier to read on Windows 10

If you’re dealing with screen that is too small to see comfortably, there’s a tool ready to help you built-in to Windows 10. I run into this problem frequently when viewing spreadsheets being shared during a video call.

Press the Windows key on your keyboard and type in “MAG” until the Magnify application shows up as one of the best matches. Run that application and you can pan around the screen at an increased magnification (which you can control from the app toolbox. You can also control the panning speed if things are sliding around too fast. When you’re done, click on the X on the toolbox to turn off the app.

Bonus tip – when the Magnify app is listed as your best match, click on the Pin to Taskbar option to keep it ready at your fingertips.

OneNote, Techniques

Deletion and better ways of managing OneNote notebooks

OneNote has an inherent management issue when it comes to keeping organized…notebooks. It’s not that I’m saying notebooks are a bad way to keep things together. Quite the contrary. The problem comes in with what do you with the crabgrass-like growth of the number of notebooks you have as your time with OneNote grows. Here are the five steps I recommend when you’re ready to get rid of a notebook. (Please note these steps require OneNote 2016 to execute completely.)

Step 1 – Transfer old content

Before you delete an old notebook make sure you’ve gone through and transferred any content you need to retain to a new notebook. You could go through and move things item by item but to save time I recommend creating a section for all the pages you plan to move in the notebook, moving the pages to that section, copying the section to the new notebook, then deleting the section. That extra copy may seem counter-intuitive, but it gives you an extra bit of security in the move in case something goes wrong.

Step 2 – Export to PDF

You can export an entire notebook to a PDF file for easy storage. I recommend this over creating a OneNote package since at this time you’ve already decided to delete the notebook so you won’t need to have the content in an editable format. Exporting it as a PDF file gives you the reassurance of having access to the information in the smallest and most portable format possible.

Step 3 – Create an Archive Notebook

Sometimes we need to keep the content in OneNote format but we don’t need the content in separate notebooks. In these cases I’ll use an Archive notebook. I create a section in the Archive Notebook for the content I am archiving from the old notebook and then move that content over. Once I’m done I have an organized Archive notebook, access to the content I need, and one less extraneous notebook file to keep track of.

Step 4 – Create a link index

One of the tricks with OneNote is you can create links to notebooks, sections, pages, and even content on a page. By creating a master index notebook you can create links to all the content you may need access in a rarely used notebook, clicking on the links to access the information, while reducing your sync load and storage needs. I recommend this highly for content you may need access to while on mobile but can live without if you’re offline.

Step 5 – Leave it alone

If you’re using a system such as OneDrive to store your OneNote files, it might be best to not delete notebooks unless you absolutely need to. You can move them to other out-of-the-way folders, but by keeping the files you can leverage the OneDrive search capability without having to open the notebooks every time.

Updated – Step 6 – Create a OneNote Package

In OneNote for 2016 you not only have the option to export a PDF as mentioned before, but you can also create a OneNote package file (*.onepkg) by using the Export: Notebook: OneNote Package option. This is a great way to pack up a notebook used for archived content and still retain the structures within the notebook. Keep in mind that you will have to use OneNote to re-open this file, but that may not be a non-starter for you.

If you want to archive a single section, say from a completed project, you can use the Export: Section: OneNote Section format to create a file similar to the OneNote Package. Again, you will need OneNote to open the file but you will be able to retain the organizational structure you’ve created within the section.

What you need is a plan

Notebooks are one of those things in OneNote that can be extremely powerful…with some planning. Without a plan as to how best to put them to use, be prepared to become your own librarian.

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OneNote, Techniques

Using OneNote for Recording Scripts

One of the ways I use OneNote is to manage my recording scripts for podcasts.  While it’s not particularly complicated to type up a script or notes and then reference them during the recording process, there is a particular feature I fall back on for keeping things clean and distraction-free.

Before I get ready to record, I compress my OneNote 2016 window down to about 1/3 of my screen and then use the Full Page View arrows to hide all the sections, pages, and ribbons. This allows me to focus on my content and not wander off because of navigation errors or other unplanned clicks.

It’s a simple enough step but it has become almost second nature as part of my recording workflow. OneNote is loaded with these types of little features that, when explored, can make a significant improvement in your productivity no matter what you’re doing.