Tips for your favorite tools


Productivity tools are always getting better. I struggle to keep up with all the new features—and I do this for a living. So this Sunday, I wanted to share with you one feature I love for many of my favorite apps.

Take a look at the apps you use. Did you know about these features?

In Things 3, you can access built-in hidden views. For example, there is a “Deadlines” view that allows you to see, at a glance, all of the hard deadlines you have coming up in the coming months. There’s five of these hidden views—take a look:

In Todoist, you can tell the AI Filter Assist feature exactly which tasks you’d like to see and it will create a custom view (called a filter) for you that does exactly that:

In Apple Calendar and other macOS/iOS calendar apps like Fantastical and BusyCal, you can set the travel time you’ll need to get to an event, automatically blocking off time on your schedule.

In Apple Reminders, you can use the built-in templates feature to create re-usable lists or projects, such as a packing list. I particularly like using this for work projects where I want to make sure I’m not forgetting any important steps.

In Apple Notes, not only is it super easy to scan a document—just long-press the Notes app icon and choose Scan Document—but you can also very easily sign that document before you send it along, by tapping the Markup button (the pen icon).

In OmniFocus 4, you can make an integrated plan for your day, showing both your to-dos and your calendar events exactly in the order you plan to get to them.

I hope you learned something new and that you feel inspired to get the most out of the tools you use.

If you’d like to master these apps and use them to be more organized and productive, you can do so with my video courses.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

P.S. Is there a feature in these apps that you think I probably don’t know about? Let me know.

Peter Akkies

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