so folks today we're checking out sun sama this is a task and calendar application which is priced at
a fairly crazy twenty dollars per month on their monthly plan we're going to check out
why it costs that much how it works and everything you need to know before committing to sunsama
today's video is sponsored by tempo tempo's my go-to email client it's a minimalist client for
mac and ios and its best feature is email batching this means that it delivers emails in batches
around your own customized schedule which means less notifications and less distractions you can
connect up to five gmail accounts and they don't sell any of your data because they charge for
tempo and their goal is to help you to reduce the amount of time you spend in email they also
removed all their hidden pixel tracking from emails and they're perfect for folks who do
their most important work outside of email like designers product owners developers and small to
medium-sized business operators i love using them especially the sorting and focus mode features
it is fantastic and it's definitely changed the way that i'm using email you can check them out
below with the link it's so good to have them on as a sponsor this month thank you very much and
let's dive into asan sama review so when you sign up to suzu sama you get a 14 day free trial and
to begin you do two core things you start with a workflow questionnaire which you answer a little
bit about yourself this isn't what's featured on screen then you begin this is what's featured on
screen is what's called like a analysis so you basically analyze your last working day
and then you begin to plan your day so it's quite interesting because they asked me questions about
what i did the previous day allowing me to work up to the projected hours of six to eight and then
what they did is they brought in my calendar for today and begin to start planning how much time i
had for the day now once i answer all of these it begins to project it onto the screen so then you
can start planning seeing your elements as well now since arma is actually available on mac os
and also web and they do have an ios and android application which you can access once you begin
paying so here we are with sunsaber now as you can see here it's a very sort of similar
to applications like trello in its abilities so what i can do here is on this left hand panel
i can start skipping ahead i can see the specific calendars that i have connected to the account and
i can also see channels as well now channels is more in particular with the sort of time and where
you spend it so for example context you can add a personal context you can add a work context and it
helps to sort of separate them out and see where you're spending your time in uh so for example
if i wanted to see all of my personal tasks i could create a base for them here and if i want
to see all of my work tasks i haven't assigned any yet then i could see them there now the real sort
of abilities that you get inside of sunsama is the tarsand calendar now tasks sit in the center here
although i can skip them around if i did want to and you can see your calendar in front of you here
now if i go back to the task view i get obviously you can see this in kanban can make this a little
bit bigger uh to get started and i can start adding tasks so up here i can start adding tasks
for the day so i can add the task details can take it off and even give it a start date which is a
great for getting going and also i can give it a the planned amount of time that it's due so for
example i could say upload youtube and press enter so you can see up here as well i've got a bit of a
progress bar so as i complete certain things i can naturally get them ticked off so if i take
this one off you can see that quite a considerable amount got cleared there and it helps me to see
a sort of progress bar for the day now we really like the fact that you can scroll ahead
a couple of weeks if you want to and even scroll backwards if you want to on the web version you're
just using two fingers to move across the keyboard and it's really nice because your calendar also
follows you along now you can also add a new task and anything that you add obviously contributes
to the amount of time and you can also change the channel to it so for example in this case
i would want to change the channel to work and if i pop this back open
you can see that work is now appearing here so if you did want to start separating them
using it for both work and professional that's quite a nice addition now over this side obviously
i can see my calendar um if i want to i can add a new google calendar event and i can even create a
meet uh video conference as well which is helpful so sort of like getting a little bit of access to
your google calendar all from there now if i want to just discard this just for example's case i can
see existing events as well so for example these are this is an upcoming meeting that i've attended
so you can actually select attendance you can even run the meeting as well so running the meeting is
great for being able to start taking some agenda notes and some action items over here and you can
even start the meeting based on duration you can share that too which is pretty cool as well so
meetings are a little bit more interactive but over on this hand side you can see that i've got
a todoist connection and i can actually connect todoist if i want to i think i can connect to
range different applications including likes of trello asana gmail click up as well but just for
this example the todoist integration if i press add to todoist i'm able to start getting the tasks
that are inside of my todoist in this account which is perfect okay so this is what the todoist
integration looks like and you can see here that it's starting to bring in some of the different
accesses i have inside it to do it's like even today i could start dragging this in obviously
they're pretty similar but if i want to say put zero accounting on thursday you can now see that's
a todoist task and you can start interacting with it or you can start bringing in some of the inbox
stuff so this is really helpful and there's also a great refresh feature as well as the adjusting
of the filters as well there so that's a great way to be able to bring in different ones like
that and you've also got github jira trello asana gmail and outlook and also click up as well and
that's if you were to be able to bring in the gmail reds that might be helpful so these are
all great ways to consolidate your experience into one base now obviously over here i've got weekly
objectives so this is more of a holistical week view so for example if i said um upload five times
youtube i can see that from a sort of big picture point of view so if i were to start that on
the monday obviously um you can see there that if i complete this i can get it ticked off and
that's pretty helpful i guess to be able to have a sort of zoom out view i don't know whether it does
interact with any of these obviously if you have some key weak objectives you could drag them onto
here but in terms of like how whether you zoom out or anything like that i don't see anything like
that you can also see your backlog which is quite nice because a lot of applications you know let's
take todoist for example they tend to hide this sort of stuff in you know like project folders
and things like that but a backlog with a linear view is quite nice as well and obviously you'll
be able to search that if you want to or just see it in a list view too you can also see an archive
which is tasks that have been rolled over at least four days consecutively you can auto archive them
or turn that off if you did want to you can use a search for searching through all of the tasks
and notes you may be made inside of meetings and there's this command bar which i'll demonstrate in
a minute these are just updates this new weekly objectives feature looks fairly new and allows
you to sort of be a bit more sort of focused in the week so there is a command bar if you press
command k you can get access so for example if you were to say oh okay here we go align
with objectives so for example so if i was like okay let's upload youtube i can go command k and i
can press r or r here capital r i can also connect it to an objective so now you can see that the
objective becomes useful because that's aligned with the objective that's quite a nice feature
because i thought this would be quite useless but you can see here that you can start connecting
tasks to objectives so that's a nice addition there i do like that so the other thing i haven't
shown you is the actual ability so for example if i'm writing three medium articles i can add
not only start dates but due dates i can also add subtasks and over here i can add a repeating one
i can begin to align it or i can copy the link and create some notes down here i can also start timer
what it was planned for and what it was actually and if you're in a team you can add comments
and add files here i can open this up as a bit of a bigger focus which i like so for example if
you wanted to just be like right i'm working on this solely and you can start writing down some
objectives so i can be like why productivity sucks as an article uh and then i could be like right
i'm taking a short break and i could close that so that gives you a bit more of a a more focused view
which i quite like that it's a nice addition there so you can also go to these different modes so for
example if you want to focus on today what happens is it just narrows down the options for you so
that you can see only your day and your weekly objectives which is a really nice view because
what typically happens in applications like todoist or trello is you get looking at all
of these other views or other things you're doing and you can sometimes get distracted or maybe even
have that priority crisis of like oh god what have i got to do but having that's quite a nice
sort of narrow down option you can do that per day but each day has for example if i wanted
to plan tomorrow you can use this sort of how do you set like a guide to help you add in the events
that you've got coming up so these are ones i can roll over any tasks that were completed yesterday
not completed yesterday i could also bump back tasks that aren't essential so i could defer
certain work to the next day but you can see here that because i've got these two events
that are like five hours long it's a clockwise integration i haven't fully set up but you can
see it's gone over eight hours it's suggesting that i defer work to this day so in this case
it's saying you know what can wait for tomorrow so that you don't overload yourself which is
quite a nice feature and you can also finalize your planned uh shutdown time so there we go
so you can see here that um that's sort of the overview for today and you can see here
plan for tomorrow and you can post the obstacles in your way you can customize this if you do want
to as well so include the subtasks include private tasks which is part of your private section and
include tasks completed on the previous day so if i go apply you can see that breakdown now which is
very cool and you can even post this to slack if you want but if i want to i can just get started
and there i have it i've planned tomorrow which is quite nice so having that sort of uh guide i
always think it's like onboarding to some extent is quite a good addition when it comes to planning
ahead now it's saying create a private channel for um my work so i'm guessing this is that so
you can see here that if i go to edit okay here we go so this is my private context so anything here
i can modify the details of context as well so if i want a different color and i can also create a
tertiary or more contexts as well so moving forward the calendar can be flipped around
so if you're somebody that's more time blocking centric then this is a great way to be able to
see your calendar in front of you now let's start with the week views so you can actually go quite
granular with the time framing so an example you can go one day three days weekdays and even a week
view and a month view as well so that's really nice in terms of be able to planning ahead i quite
like the three-day view which is quite nice and what's nice as well is you can still get access to
the focus and plan ahead for these guys so i can switch back whenever i want to and that's quite
helpful um for being able to access everything there okay so up in the top left hand corner
you can see that i've got a couple of things i want to go over account settings and things like
that i'm obviously not using the mac version but obviously that would work better i even set when i
started my day starts at 9 30 and when it ends so you can actually have you know where you set your
day and start the day and automatically daily shut down as well and a workload um sort of threshold
too you can have an automated weekly review and also you can go into a lot more detail about like
you know when and what your calendar shows as well as the task rollover and much more detail
like that like enter focus timer as you start and the timer you can choose dark mode as well
which is nice i'll keep it on that then you can modify things like the notifications so what you
get accessed you can connect it to slack and be able to um sort of get slack updates from
there especially if you're working in a team so you can change the workplace settings so here
are some of the integrations as well quite helpful specifically so for example you can see what types
of privacy you've got set up email folding as well if you want to send tasks on and you can also see
your calendars as well which ones are connected so in this case i could add an outlook or a
google calendar too now here we go is a weekly review so this is a way to reflect for the week
ahead so the weekly refraction questions are where did i spend my most time and there any surprises
also some two more here you can also export that weekly review too i haven't quite got to that but
that could be quite cool obviously it's a 14 day free trial um as i said the monthly pricing is 20
so obviously you'll be looking at this at uh sort of a bigger pricing uh it's probably gonna
solve your calendar and your task issues uh if you're gonna commit to it because it's quite a
steep price for that but let me share my opinion with you guys so i think this is from my first
inspection i was like no one should pay this much for a to-do list application but if i'm honest i
really like the way this consolidates information i like the way that they take you through and
onboard certain things don't get me wrong i don't think the pricing should be this much but i do
like the way they're approaching tasks and calendar events and the way that they're trying to
get you to narrow down your focus for the day not overload yourself and help you plan ahead i like
that that's something that a lot of people can struggle with and also the consolidation is pretty
helpful too in being able to use it alongside apps that you might already use or transition over from
now the mobile application is available on android and ios so you're not getting too much disk
access there however 16 per month if you go for the yield plan or 20 is fairly steep i probably
pay up to 15 for this application so it sort of falls into the pricing i'm impressed with this app
it's more i would say it's more for those who want a a more focused system those who are happy to
maybe drop a calendar application for the sake of having talent house and calendar in one location
it's for those who really want to stay focused during their work who struggle with planning
and maybe who want to bring in other applications that they use as a team and be able to consolidate
them in one application so i think it's a actually more impressive than i thought i did do a review
on sunsarmac a couple of years ago but it was much more basic than this and it's definitely
improved in the near future so folks a big thank you for stopping by there'll be a link to sunsama
below but those are my opinions and thoughts on this application i really like its approach it's
a little bit more premium however for those who are looking for a task calendar consolidation tool
this might be the application for you so thank you very much folks hopefully this was a great
overview to make that decision to go with sunsama anyway folks talk to you all very soon cheerio
so
you