(upbeat music)
- What's up socials, welcome back to my channel.
Today is all about being more productive.
What are those things that have been helping me
get a lot done in 2017.
I've done so much.
If I could go back and look at all of my to do lists.
No I probably wouldn't opt-in to doing that.
But from writing a book to speaking all over the place,
helping my clients, and everything in between
especially making these videos,
you've got to find your productive flow.
And so these are my favorite apps of 2017
that helped me to be more productive.
If you're into this kind of thing make sure you subscribe
to this channel because I make new videos
every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
The first app I want to give a shout out to
is a little bit newer in my workflow
but I am absolutely loving it.
It is called Followup.cc
So this is essentially a Google Chrome extension
that helps with your Gmail organization.
Something you might know about me,
I've probably talked about this at this point,
is that I treat my inbox very much like a to-do list,
so I don't like to have a lot of things in the inbox
and I want everything to be labeled properly
so that I can find it.
The amount of money I think I'm paying Google right now
just to be able to archive every email I've ever gotten,
is probably terrible, but I like it.
'Cause I can go back and search for everything
but that requires a lot of organization.
And what I like Followup.cc for is that they help me
manage an email that I maybe don't have to deal with
at this moment, but could be a task I need to work on
two days from now, a month from now, et cetera.
So I can always keep track of that email
by using Follow-up.CC by snoozing it for a later date.
So if there is a testimonial I need to write for someone
or a blog post that I'm working on,
and the details about it are in an email,
and I don't really feel like
copying and pasting it anywhere else,
I will basically snooze that email until
the day I have scheduled myself to work on it.
So that I know the information I need
is going to pop right back up on my radar that day.
Or even at that time.
Sometimes I snooze things until later in the day
because first thing in the morning it may not be a priority
based on what my to-do list looks like,
but if I know I need to get something done
for someone in the same day, I'll work on it later on
when I've cleared up my own to-do list.
Prioritization.
I also really like Follow-up.cc because what they do
is help you track what other people
have opened that you've sent.
This is really useful from the perspective of
trying to get new work or trying to get clients
or trying to follow up with someone
that you really want to get ahold of.
And knowing whether or not they opened that email.
It's kind of sneaky almost.
I love it.
I reached out to the guys at Follow-up.CC,
and they actually wanted to offer you 10% off an account,
if you want to give it a go.
There's a great free trial, so you can even find out
if it's for you or not.
Whether or not it's a tool that you're going to enjoy using,
or will work for your productivity flow.
You can find out
more details at savvysexysocial.com/followupcc
The next app I want to talk to you about was recently
featured in a video that I did called
iPhone apps for vloggers.
So I went over a bunch of apps that I love
that are on my iPhone.
If you're a video blogger, why they would be useful
and this was one of them.
But it's not just an app on your phone,
it's also something that you can use on desktop.
And it's called Focus@Will.
I'm one of those people that gets very distracted.
If I hear something that is not in tune
with the environment that I'm in.
I can't watch TV while I'm trying to work,
because obviously I'm not watching TV, I'm listening to it.
'Cause I'm looking at my work and
I'm hearing something else.
This is very distracting.
And so I do like to have something in the background,
but it can't be another thing that's
requiring my attention in some way.
Or taking my attention away.
So what I like about Focus@Will, is it offers you
lots of different sounds or music
that are meant to make you more productive
to keep you in the zone of what you're doing.
It's nice to have on iPhone app,
in case you're out and about doing something
and you want to be a little bit more focused,
or you're just away from your desktop,
but I also like using the Focus at Will website
because they do the same kind of
offering the features and everything are right there.
I also like it because it can work with you
on the Pomodoro technique, if you've heard me
talk about this before, it's the idea of being
very productive and focused for 25 minutes straight,
and then taking 5 minute breaks.
All of those intervals happening throughout the day
to make it a very effective eight hour work day.
So having the music start for a certain amount of time
and then a bell chimes when you're done,
and then you take a break, et cetera.
I just love that the sounds are meant to keep you focused
but will also take you out of that
focus to work with that technique.
Super nerd alert on the productivity side.
Definitely give Focus@Will a try.
If you would like to do so,
go to savvysexysocial.com/focusatwill
for a $20 credit.
Another app I've been loving is one that I use
for the most part on my phone and my Apple Watch.
Which I really didn't think I was loving
when I first got it, and maybe
because of this app I love it.
This one is called BrainToss.
And this is something that I have been pining for,
in a lot of ways in terms of
I have something I need to get written down,
or remember it, but it's a lot of work to then
sometimes pull out your phone
and type up an email to somebody or
add something to a to-do list.
I want it to be as short of a time span as possible
to get that idea out of my mind and into a documented place.
And like I said, my inbox is
often treated like a to-do list.
So what I love about BrainToss is
you can use three different options.
One is voice, one is a note, and one is an image.
All three you just pick which one,
really big buttons on the screen,
and you document the thing that you want to,
and it will email it to you.
I love this for voice memos.
Because if I'm totally not in the mood to type,
which is often on my smart phone,
I love just talking into the phone
and sending that email off to myself.
I just listen to the voice memo next time
I'm going through my inbox to-do list.
What I love is when I'm doing something
and my phone isn't even close to nearby,
thinking this has to get done immediately,
and the fastest thing I can look at is the smart watch.
By opening BrainToss here, I can record a voice memo
just like you would talk on the phone
or do anything else with voice on your Apple Watch.
And it will send to your email as well.
Buy flights to Portland.
This has been probably the fastest process for me
to remember something I want to do
or remember something that I need to
look up later, et cetera.
It's also one of those apps that are so simple.
You don't open it and go, good god,
I have to learn this spaceship.
Every time I look at an app,
I look at it's user-friendliness.
This one is very basic.
The last app I'm going to talk to you about today
is one that has been around in my productivity flow
for a number of years.
The last time I talked about it here on the channel
was in a video called inbox zero.
My tried and true secret.
And that app is Sanebox.
It is yet another extension that works with Gmail
like I said, a lot of my management
does happen in my inbox.
And so what Sanebox does is it learns the habits
of me as the user of my inbox
and the emails that I find to be priority.
So Sanebox will essentially send the things that it knows
are not important, although I might argue otherwise
sometimes like my shopping emails.
And it sends those to it's own little sanebox
so that the important emails such as ones from clients
or inquiries or letters from you go into my inbox
so I can focus on those when I come back to manage it.
So with this workflow between Sanebox and Followup,
they're really nice for me being able to keep that inbox
down to a minimal amount of stuff,
so I'm not overwhelmed every time I come back to it.
The combination of these two things was fabulous
when I got back from my wedding.
'Cause I really took about a week away from email.
I tried to keep it really cleaned up,
it was totally inbox zero before I left,
and then when I came back, I had a couple thousand emails
in my Sanebox, but there weren't so many in the inbox.
And then with the use of Followup, I was able to manage
which one of those things were priority,
and which one of those things could wait
so that I wasn't completely overwhelmed
when I got back in the office.
If you want a tool that is going to properly learn
based on your preferences, not someone else's,
of where an email should go, I highly recommend Sanebox.
Sanebox is also working with us on a $20 credit
to try them out so
go to savvysexysocial.com/sanebox to do that.
Those are my favorite productivity apps of 2017.
They have been helping me so much with managing the things
that other people want me to do,
in addition to the things that
I'm prioritizing for myself to do.
You have to balance both.
If you want more of these productivity tips,
make sure you subscribe to this channel.
And also check out a new playlist that I created,
so you could watch more of these
that have productivity in common.
The playlist called How to Be Productive
has more videos for you to check out from yours truly.
That's all for today socials,
thank you so much for tuning in,
I appreciate it as always.
Remember, you must subscribe for good vibes
and be productive on your way
to going after the life you want.
Cheers.