- Ooh, I love a good productivity app.
Mm, mm, mm.
(calm electronic music)
Hey there, welcome back to AmyTV.
You don't have to be around here
for very long to find out how much I love technology,
especially when it comes to making me more productive.
So today, I thought I would share
my top three apps for helping me be
the most productive version of myself
while going after my very best life.
You know I love sharing a good resource list.
We do it a lot around here.
But if you want to learn not only what I use,
but why I use it, and my favorite parts about it
that make me productive, then stay tuned.
Before we get started, make sure
you subscribe to this channel.
I make new videos every Wednesday and Sunday,
and I hope you'll be back for the next one.
My top three productivity apps.
Now, full disclosure, I think this list changes a lot.
But in a lot of ways, it also stays the same.
I feel like I would have said Evernote
was number one probably a few weeks ago.
But I'm a little mad at Evernote right now,
just gonna be completely honest.
Yes, it is still my main note-taking app,
and all of my sort of bullet points
for this video are sitting in Evernote.
And it does keep me productive.
But I got really mad at them when their server
went down recently and I could not access something.
I couldn't even record a video because my notes were there.
And sometimes it's just not the most conducive.
So, Evernote gets this weird "I'm mad at you"
shout-out right now, (laughs) just to kick things
off in the weirdest way possible.
The first app that is actually on my top three
productivity apps list is Trello.
When I hired a personal assistant
a couple of years ago for the first time,
it was extremely important for us
to find the right tool for us to collaborate with.
And let me tell you, we went through
way too many before we figured out what was going to work.
There are so many tasks and videos
and appointments and emails and things
to keep track of that my assistant
will kind of bring in and then start fielding for me to see.
So, for me to see something that's supposed
to give me work to do, I need to be able
to look at it, understand what's going on,
and not kinda wanna cry or scream when I look at it,
which basically comes down to how good user experience is.
And it's very surprising how many
project management softwares still look crappy.
I have work to do.
Don't make it worse for me by being ugly.
So, after a lot of vetting, we landed on Trello.
By the way, if you don't like how it looks
you can totally customize how you
want it to look, which is really nice.
But we mostly decided on it because
it was such an easy user experience,
very easy to tag each other in things,
categorize things into different lists,
or essentially these columns that are
a really, really big feature of Trello.
And the number of boards we have is insane.
But one of my main reasons why this was my favorite
is because of the checklist feature
that is integrated into every card.
So, this is really important to me,
because a lot of what we do tends to be the same
for every single project that comes in.
So, for example, if somebody wants to hire me to speak,
we have a lot of the same tasks that have to happen
to find out, is this going to happen,
am I getting hired, signing the contract,
actually doing the speaking engagement.
There are lots of things that happen from start to finish
before, during, and after a speech.
So it's really nice to be able to have a card
that has everything, sort of like a template
of all of the steps that we take for every client
that we can just duplicate over and over
every time a new inquiry comes in.
The same goes for different videos that need created.
The same goes for an email coming
in asking for an interview of me.
Being able to replicate these cards
is really big for us because then we don't lose track
of the really important customer service strategies
that we've integrated into what we do.
Or if there is a big box that we usually forget to check,
like booking Amy's hotel, that seems to be
something that I forget all the time,
it's there, and we never forget it,
because it's a part of a templated checklist.
Trello has absolutely been fantastic
from a collaboration standpoint.
I don't even think you need an assistant to love Trello.
It's a really, really easy
project manager/task manager for anyone to use.
If you're interested in more of a deep dive on Trello,
I know that I kinda breezed over some of the things
that we do, but my assistant and I have been talking
about doing a video like this for you,
kind of talking about the intricacies of how we use Trello.
Let me know in the comments below
if that's something that you would be interested in seeing.
My second favorite app for productivity is Headspace.
It's funny, I was just having a talk
with my best friend over the weekend about stress.
And I was telling her that I don't categorize myself
as someone that feels they have a lot of stress.
I feel like my cortisol levels are okay most of the time.
I think about it as, when I fill out a survey,
and it's like, how do you feel your stress is,
I'm always like, "Oh, I'm fine, whatever, it's cool."
Well lately, that has not been me.
I have been a big ball of stress.
There's stuff going on in my personal life,
stuff going on in business, stuff going on with Lucy.
Lucy's driving me absolutely crazy lately.
I love her to pieces, but she's driving me crazy.
There's just a lot of inherent stress lately.
Now, I know that for the most part,
I'm going to be better off in managing
that stress by keeping my body moving.
So I'll exercise on a regular basis.
That's going to help to really level things out.
And I always feel better after I get done working out.
But there's that 20% of stress left
that doesn't quite get managed by just exercise and cool.
Headspace has been that helper for me.
If you haven't heard of Headspace,
then you've been hiding underneath a rock.
It is probably by far the most popular
meditation app on the market today.
And it is great, because it's a guided meditation app.
You don't have to sit quietly by yourself
and hope you're doing meditation right.
You have somebody that is walking you through it,
which is great, because of those of us
who have a hard time focusing on nothing,
at least we can kinda focus on the voice in our head
that is Headspace, and that really helps
achieve a better state of meditation and clarity.
And that has been helping me a ton with stress management.
My favorite thing about this particular app
is being able to zero in on a specific issue.
Or maybe it's not even an issue,
but just something you want to focus on.
So, there's an actual stress track
of meditations that you can do
so that you can focus on being guided
through meditation during a more stressful time.
If maybe you're going through more of a depressing time,
or you're having a hard time finding happiness,
there's a happiness track of guided meditations.
So, this is fantastic, because I feel like
I'm not just trying to meditate, but in a way,
I'm seeing sort of my meditation therapist,
who's gonna walk me through some clarity for myself
at a time for a specific purpose.
So, stress track has been where
I've been hanging out lately.
How 'bout you?
And my third favorite productivity app of late is Braintoss.
Now, I recently tweeted about Braintoss,
and I went ahead and told them,
I was like, "You guys, this app is ugly."
It is ugly, ugh.
But it is the only one I have found
that really sort of scratches my itch
on the thing that I need it to do,
and that is to take my ideas when I get them
and deliver them to a place where I know
I can follow up on them later.
So, whether it's a task that pops into my head
while I'm in the grocery line, or if I have an idea
and I kinda need to just say it, I can send a little
Braintoss to myself, and it goes to my email.
You know I'm fairly good at managing my email.
It's pretty cleaned out.
I'm usually at inbox zero unless there's
a couple things in there I need to field.
So, being able to send myself an email,
it's easy for me to follow up on that later.
What I love about this app in particular
is the fact that you can do voice memos
and email yourself a voice memo.
Now, there's probably a million other ways to do this,
but Braintoss is insanely fast.
I just open up the app, start recording, and then you hear
the little boomerang sound, and it goes to your email.
When you're trying to get an idea out of your head,
typing it is probably the worst thing you could do.
I feel like it squashes my creativity.
If you try to type something that's this
weird idea in your head, you might start editing it,
and you might start changing it as you're typing.
I certainly do, 'cause I'm not
a good typer on the smartphone, okay?
We don't get along.
Me and my thumbs are so not on the
same page as my phone. (laughs)
So being able to just say the idea as stupid as it sounds,
record it as a voice memo, and Braintoss it to my email
so I can check it later, then I can field it as,
okay, how do I formulate this into a Trello card
so it can actually get organized and get done?
This app has really been that lovely
little limbo space for this type of thing.
So, to quickly recap, my top three favorite
productivity apps are Trello for project management,
especially for collaboration with other people,
Headspace for getting some head space in your life,
because don't we all need that
no matter what we're going through,
and Braintoss, because what a perfect name.
I just wish you would not make it be so yellow.
The app is so yellow.
But I told them.
I hope they're listening.
I hope they consider that yellow
is just not everyone's color.
So let's change that up a bit.
All the links, everything I talked about,
are in the description below, but how 'bout a bonus app?
Since we talk a lot about productivity around here,
I get the question frequently, how rigid I am
with my finances in addition to sort of all these
other things that are going on in my life.
Well, if you're thinking about how you wanna get
more proactive and productive with your finances,
then I highly suggest you check out
the sponsor for today's video, and that is Empower app.
Find out more details by going to empower.me/amytv.
This app watches your money 24/7
so that you can go on living your life,
your best life, if you ask me.
It helps you figure out how you
can make better financial decisions,
so whether that's setting a budget
for certain categories of spending, consolidating debt,
or finding high-interest savings accounts.
Empower became a game changer for me
because I started to realize and comes to terms
with my biggest spending weakness.
No shocker, it's shoes.
When you see some things on the high side,
the app allows you to set a budget.
And so I was able to set one for my
shoe and clothing monthly spend.
So, once I start getting to my max on that,
because it's tracking all of my accounts
and can see it automatically, 'cause you know
I'm not telling it when I go shopping,
I'm more likely to think about that next pair of shoes,
maybe on a longer term, make sure I really need them.
Maybe I'll have to wait for next month's
budget in order to make this happen.
Because Empower helps me see where my spending is going.
Pretty much any time I can use an app
and it allows me to not be an expert in its field
so that I can go do my best work elsewhere is amazing.
So, I've become much more productive,
especially with my money, thanks to Empower.
And I highly suggest that you check it out, as well.
Visit empower.me/amytv, or go ahead
and click the link in the description below.
I wanna hear from you also about
your favorite productivity apps.
What are they?
You know I love to learn more about these things
and nerd out on the technology that
is gonna make me more productive.
So, leave them in the comments below.
That's all for today, thank you so much for tuning in.
I appreciate it, as always.
Make sure you subscribe for good vibes.
And remember to continue to go after the life that you want.
Cheers.
(calm electronic music)