A couple of tricks that help me a lot on the apple ecosystem: 1. Use focus modes for different segments of my day. Focus mode for day job, one for personal life, and DND triggered by some apps that require absolute focus (like Books app). 2. Mail, Calendar, Messages, etc filter what I see based on my focus mode. So I don’t even see my work calendar or email when I’m in Personal focus. 3. Widgets! I have Home Screen widgets on all of my devices tailored to the focus mode. And today I added two widgets to show me my Todoist filters for today’s objectives on one widget, and today’s focus tasks on the other (thanks for those!)
Carl - this is an amazing hack! I implemented it straight away and 24hrs later, it's proving to be the best tweak to my productivity system! Thank you!
I try to distinguish tasks as less than 4 hours and projects more than 4 hours. Reminders are to remind me based on context. That is arriving at a location, or other event based trigger. The calendar is for scheduling time and noting events. The bullet journal has been the best thing to answer why I am doing the activities.
I enjoyed the small book called 30 Days to Overcome Procrastination by Corin Devaso, taught mindfulness lessons as pertaining to self and "time". Rushing is another form of going nowhere. Have to be mindful and aware of what we're doing.
Carl, your best line (so far): "We are human beings after all. We are not going to get everything done every single day. It just doesn't happen.... That's not the way life works." That is so true! For the last two weeks, I feel like I am swimming up stream in jello gelatin or something. My pace has been slowed and has been a struggle to keep up. As we all know, some weeks are just that way! We take three steps forward and two steps back. This is good info. I have been mixing my calendar and reminders (moving reminders to the calendar) when I am doing my TOMORROW PLANNING. So, my calendar becomes a second "to do list" What you have shared here today of working them together without adding so much extra to the calendar is a big help.
Hi Ed, you nailed it there. We're human; we will have good and bad days (sometimes weeks). Recognising that and doing what you can to stay on top is a critical skill to learn. I find the question, "what's important today", helps me get the right things done when I am not performing at my usual level.
@@Carl_Pullein Thanks. Every evening, after I have had dinner and some rest time, I look at Reminders and Calendar in split screen mode and ask, “what is most important for tomorrow?” (My modification of your question.) I usually get the 2-3 most pressing items settled. Between them, I mix in a couple of simple (20-30 minute) tasks that will move me forward in some way on billing a client. Keeps me moving forward even on thons days where I am barely reaching 50% efficiency.
The more vodeos like this I see the more I cant help thinking that all of them are releveant only to poaple who do not work in teams. This neat calendar carl shows in the beginning is absolutely unreal for persons working in teams.
Hi Peter, funny you should mention that. I work with a team, yet we established some mutually beneficial rules so we could all focus on our important work. If you do not establish some borders between doing your assigned work and meeting/communicating with your team, backlogs, overwhelm, and missed deadlines will inevitably appear.
I think I will give this a try. I always use third party apps but their subscription prices keep increasing and I'm tired of paying for them. Thanks Carl.
@7775Kevin, I was in your boat of subscription update prices killing me. The learning curve was not too steep when I made the switch. Transferring some things over took some time, but it is soooo well worth it. Good luck. You will be a winner on this in the long run.
How to do you get your reminders to sync with your calendar though? Do you have to manually enter everything into calendar? Because I'm not seeing any options to sync the two, even with tags
The video seems to be missing some information. Just by adding a tag of the same name in the Reminders with a new Calendar in the Calendar App does not seem to sync them at all. Hope @Carl Pullein can shed some light on it.
Not sure if it was mentioned but you can actually get links for the lists in the reminders app and therefore add those links in the notes (to have a bi-directional link). Also, you can add links to both notes and reminders in Calendar events, to avoid having to use conventions to link events in the calendar to reminder's lists (although you don't get a cool icon like you do with the links in the reminders).
@@thegoose84 just right click on any item (a note, a reminders list, etc) and click on share, or look for the share icon in any menu. Then click on invite with link and cancel any menu that pops up. Then, right click again on the item but now instead of invite with link you should have an option that says copy link, click and you can paste it wherever you want.
I wish reminders and calendar integrated these functions so that you could add to either and have the mirror image show up in the reciprocating app. To be able to edit one and have the changes be reflected in the other app would be fantastic.
Ah, but then why would you need both a task list and a calendar? "Mirroring" is duplicating by a different term. Your calendar is sacred territory (something needs to be), and your task list is discretionary. (Well, that's the way I've found works best)
@@Carl_Pullein Yes I totally agree and that's how I use both of these applications. However, I'd love to be able to create a calendar event that also can create a reminder that is associated with it. If I put a note into the reminder it appears in the calendar event and vice versa. Same with a link. Having the ability to share the reminder list to the notes app would also be great. I do a similar action by setting up recurrent events in the calendar and in reminders. I'd love to do it just one time...
I'm waiting for Apple to come up with this feature too. Like even if I can have my reminders showing up on my calendar automatically. Without having to manually inserting them@@mehmd1913
It seems like an enormous overhead for marginal benefits. Calendar management overcomes all of these perceived problems. Personally, and I appreciate other people’s mileage will vary, I’d be happier actually getting on with the tasks, rather than spending hours finding the silver bullet to organise them!!
Great content. I have been using Tick Tick for a long time. But I want my data to be in the apple ecosystem. I also intended to use apple calendar and reminders for siri and other automation related reasons. I like that all the to-dos are on the calendar in Tick Tick. But in the end, I started to think that it would be enough to have time blocks only for the main categories in the calendar and to have a list of things to be done, even if they do not appear on the calendar. Meanwhile, when I saw this video, my thought was reinforced. Thanks.
Carl. In Notes, select the title of the note, and share it directly to Reminders. Along the way, you can change the title of the Reminder. No need for the link. Wakey-wakey.
@@Carl_Pullein no no, you don’t. You just need to share the note to reminders , and then it will be created a new reminder with the note truly attached (not linked)
@Carl_Pullein, all you need to do is drag the note front he left column like you would an email into the inbox (or whatever list you wish to choose) in Reminders. It will create another list item for you. Very simple. On my iPad, i just put the Reminders and Notes app in split screen mode and drag it across. I am confident it will work just the same on my MacBook.
When you say you’ve created “categories” on the calendar app, I don’t see those. Are you talking about creating entirely separate calendars for each “category”?
There are some good reasons to do this. When you have multiple projects and you chunk out the things you’re going to work on during the day you typically have a list of things to do but you only have so much time to do them in. So you chunk out the type of work that you do the same times every week and then go to the corresponding list. But there are times because of other meetings and schedule changes that you may move that chunk to another part of the week. This way you can still see this is what I’m working on now and then go to that list to start knocking out the actual items.
Carl, very helpful and insightful (as always)! I assume this system only works when all activities are assigned a date. I have several (project) activities that don’t need/have a specific date assigned. Any thoughts how to incorporate those into this system?
That's correct. However, I only date things I know need to be done this week. Everything else I leave the date untl I do my weekly planning. This prevents a build-up of tasks that do not need to be done.
In addition to what Carl said, most of what he showed (apart from the link to Apple Notes, probably) is replicable within Todoist. It's just a matter of coordinating your tags in the task manager and time block categories in the calendar.
Just finding your content--so, these tags are used solely in the Reminders app--not with iCal/Apple Calendar. You create the reminders within the app and use tags to go along with the blocks of time you've manually created in your calendar? Is that correct? On my first watch of this, I thought there was a way to put the blocks of time in the calendar and then use tags to get those events to show up on your reminders.
Or, you could just use your calendar as a real calendar and not merely a recurring time blocking tool. (MS Outlook has “Task” feature within the calendar, Apple should do same.) TBH: this is over engineering a to do list.
The problem I’ve always had with that approach is I’ve always seen tasks as discretionary that can be done at anytime in the day (those pockets of time that pop up between meetings, and while waiting for someone). Events are specific and must be done at a set time. this means events go on the calendar and tasks go on a to-do list. This approach worked for 100s of years without any issue. We would write out appointments into our calendars and use a piece of paper to list out our tasks.
Carl just a bit of feedback on your recent videos sometimes that apps you shown on screen is small when viewed on larger screens. In this this video both calendar and reminders isn’t full screen and so a bit challenge to view unless watched on iPad for example and can zoom in. But on a TV for example this appears a lot smaller.
Sometimes, you need to log out of iCloud, close down the device that is not syncing correctly and then restart and login again. It clears any bugs that may have got into the system.
I love this but for some reason some of my smart folders don't seem to work with my tags. everything is up do date. some of my personal are ending up on work and not all the work are showing. I keep deleting and starting over🤣
Hi Barb, check that the setting is set the ALL not ANY. If that doesn't work, close down Reminders then shut down your phone and restart. (Sometimes bugs get into the system)
I had been trying to set up my calendar and reminders up following your tips and wondered why I just couldn’t get it to work… then I just realised my Reminders was un-updating itself and reverting to old style ‘basic’ reminders! Both my iPad (M2 Pro) and iPhone (12 Pro) do this, so frustrating! Any tips on how to make the update stick?
@@Carl_Pullein the iPhone & iPad are both on the newest iOS (17.3), my Mac Pro is a bit older (running Monterey), so I’ve actually disabled iCloud reminders on it incase that was causing the issue 🤷🏻♂️
@@yamaotokostudio4946 That sounds like a trip to the Apple Store may be required. AS Reminders is linked to the OS, it shouldn't be reverting back to an old version (technically it's impossible)
@@Carl_Pullein Wanted to give an update, incase anyone is playing along at home; I've managed to solve the issue and update reminders! It was a case of taking a screenshot of all my reminders, deleting the lot, leaving it overnight then starting afresh, seems to have done the trick...
![[Full] 4 ต่อ 4 Celebrity EP.910 | 22 ก.ย. 67 | one31](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4TR3MVpOiw8/mqdefault.jpg)
A couple of tricks that help me a lot on the apple ecosystem:
1. Use focus modes for different segments of my day. Focus mode for day job, one for personal life, and DND triggered by some apps that require absolute focus (like Books app).
2. Mail, Calendar, Messages, etc filter what I see based on my focus mode. So I don’t even see my work calendar or email when I’m in Personal focus.
3. Widgets! I have Home Screen widgets on all of my devices tailored to the focus mode. And today I added two widgets to show me my Todoist filters for today’s objectives on one widget, and today’s focus tasks on the other (thanks for those!)
Carl - this is an amazing hack! I implemented it straight away and 24hrs later, it's proving to be the best tweak to my productivity system! Thank you!
Your very welcome, Jef. Glad you find it helpful.
I try to distinguish tasks as less than 4 hours and projects more than 4 hours. Reminders are to remind me based on context. That is arriving at a location, or other event based trigger. The calendar is for scheduling time and noting events. The bullet journal has been the best thing to answer why I am doing the activities.
I enjoyed the small book called 30 Days to Overcome Procrastination by Corin Devaso, taught mindfulness lessons as pertaining to self and "time". Rushing is another form of going nowhere. Have to be mindful and aware of what we're doing.
Carl, your best line (so far): "We are human beings after all. We are not going to get everything done every single day. It just doesn't happen.... That's not the way life works."
That is so true! For the last two weeks, I feel like I am swimming up stream in jello gelatin or something. My pace has been slowed and has been a struggle to keep up. As we all know, some weeks are just that way! We take three steps forward and two steps back.
This is good info. I have been mixing my calendar and reminders (moving reminders to the calendar) when I am doing my TOMORROW PLANNING. So, my calendar becomes a second "to do list" What you have shared here today of working them together without adding so much extra to the calendar is a big help.
Hi Ed, you nailed it there. We're human; we will have good and bad days (sometimes weeks). Recognising that and doing what you can to stay on top is a critical skill to learn. I find the question, "what's important today", helps me get the right things done when I am not performing at my usual level.
@@Carl_Pullein Thanks. Every evening, after I have had dinner and some rest time, I look at Reminders and Calendar in split screen mode and ask, “what is most important for tomorrow?” (My modification of your question.) I usually get the 2-3 most pressing items settled. Between them, I mix in a couple of simple (20-30 minute) tasks that will move me forward in some way on billing a client. Keeps me moving forward even on thons days where I am barely reaching 50% efficiency.
Really interesting approach.
Thank you 🙂
Drag up on the line above the number calendar in the bottom left for future months !!!
It didn't work for me.
Doing this is a halftime job already, just to plan everything.
Esta era la configuración que me hacia falta, extrañaba poder categorizar mi día, muchas gracias
De nada. Me alegro de haber podido ayudar.
This video is really helpful!! Thank you for this 💖
You're very welcome.
The more vodeos like this I see the more I cant help thinking that all of them are releveant only to poaple who do not work in teams. This neat calendar carl shows in the beginning is absolutely unreal for persons working in teams.
Hi Peter, funny you should mention that. I work with a team, yet we established some mutually beneficial rules so we could all focus on our important work. If you do not establish some borders between doing your assigned work and meeting/communicating with your team, backlogs, overwhelm, and missed deadlines will inevitably appear.
I think I will give this a try. I always use third party apps but their subscription prices keep increasing and I'm tired of paying for them. Thanks Carl.
Apple's productivity tools have certainly improved in recent years.
@7775Kevin, I was in your boat of subscription update prices killing me. The learning curve was not too steep when I made the switch. Transferring some things over took some time, but it is soooo well worth it. Good luck. You will be a winner on this in the long run.
How to do you get your reminders to sync with your calendar though? Do you have to manually enter everything into calendar? Because I'm not seeing any options to sync the two, even with tags
The video seems to be missing some information. Just by adding a tag of the same name in the Reminders with a new Calendar in the Calendar App does not seem to sync them at all. Hope @Carl Pullein can shed some light on it.
Not sure if it was mentioned but you can actually get links for the lists in the reminders app and therefore add those links in the notes (to have a bi-directional link). Also, you can add links to both notes and reminders in Calendar events, to avoid having to use conventions to link events in the calendar to reminder's lists (although you don't get a cool icon like you do with the links in the reminders).
How do you get the links?
@@thegoose84 just right click on any item (a note, a reminders list, etc) and click on share, or look for the share icon in any menu. Then click on invite with link and cancel any menu that pops up. Then, right click again on the item but now instead of invite with link you should have an option that says copy link, click and you can paste it wherever you want.
I wish reminders and calendar integrated these functions so that you could add to either and have the mirror image show up in the reciprocating app. To be able to edit one and have the changes be reflected in the other app would be fantastic.
Ah, but then why would you need both a task list and a calendar? "Mirroring" is duplicating by a different term. Your calendar is sacred territory (something needs to be), and your task list is discretionary. (Well, that's the way I've found works best)
@@Carl_Pullein Yes I totally agree and that's how I use both of these applications. However, I'd love to be able to create a calendar event that also can create a reminder that is associated with it. If I put a note into the reminder it appears in the calendar event and vice versa. Same with a link. Having the ability to share the reminder list to the notes app would also be great. I do a similar action by setting up recurrent events in the calendar and in reminders. I'd love to do it just one time...
I'm waiting for Apple to come up with this feature too. Like even if I can have my reminders showing up on my calendar automatically. Without having to manually inserting them@@mehmd1913
You just need to drag and drop the item from the calendar to a list on the Reminder App
The same works with emails
Can’t wait to try this! Thank you! 🙏🏽
You're very welcome. 🙂
It seems like an enormous overhead for marginal benefits. Calendar management overcomes all of these perceived problems. Personally, and I appreciate other people’s mileage will vary, I’d be happier actually getting on with the tasks, rather than spending hours finding the silver bullet to organise them!!
Great content. I have been using Tick Tick for a long time. But I want my data to be in the apple ecosystem. I also intended to use apple calendar and reminders for siri and other automation related reasons.
I like that all the to-dos are on the calendar in Tick Tick.
But in the end, I started to think that it would be enough to have time blocks only for the main categories in the calendar and to have a list of things to be done, even if they do not appear on the calendar.
Meanwhile, when I saw this video, my thought was reinforced.
Thanks.
You're very welcome.
Hi Carl, another great video!
How can I integrate my Todoist with my Apple calendar, just how you've shown with Apple Reminders?
Todoist uses labels rather than tags. But the same principle works there too. Match your labels with your blocks of time on your calendar.
Carl - Excellent, new, creative technique.
You're welcome.
This method is brilliant!- I will try this genius idea!😊
Glad you like it, Casey.
This was great. Thank you
You're welcome.
Carl. In Notes, select the title of the note, and share it directly to Reminders. Along the way, you can change the title of the Reminder. No need for the link. Wakey-wakey.
Thank you for sharing.
amazing idea
Thank you.
can you make it clearer on how you make a calander event "tagged"
You tag the reminder, not the event in the calendar. The tags in Reminders should match with your time blocks on your calendar.
Great, Thanks
You're very welcome.
Thanks
@@Carl_Pullein
You don’t need to share notes with the link. You can share to reminders directly from the share button, it’s way faster and way cleaner
True, but you still need to add your email address to share.
@@Carl_Pullein no no, you don’t. You just need to share the note to reminders , and then it will be created a new reminder with the note truly attached (not linked)
@Carl_Pullein, all you need to do is drag the note front he left column like you would an email into the inbox (or whatever list you wish to choose) in Reminders. It will create another list item for you. Very simple. On my iPad, i just put the Reminders and Notes app in split screen mode and drag it across. I am confident it will work just the same on my MacBook.
@@the_real_mister_ed this only works on iOS. The only correct way is using the share button to create a reminder
@@the_real_mister_ed Ah, that was an issue earlier this year. Sometimes it worked; other times it didn't. Apple may have fixed it now, though.
When you say you’ve created “categories” on the calendar app, I don’t see those. Are you talking about creating entirely separate calendars for each “category”?
My categories are: Writing, project work, Admin, Communications, Audio Visual.
Why don’t you just look at your calendar. This seems making it overly complicated
There are some good reasons to do this. When you have multiple projects and you chunk out the things you’re going to work on during the day you typically have a list of things to do but you only have so much time to do them in. So you chunk out the type of work that you do the same times every week and then go to the corresponding list. But there are times because of other meetings and schedule changes that you may move that chunk to another part of the week. This way you can still see this is what I’m working on now and then go to that list to start knocking out the actual items.
Carl, very helpful and insightful (as always)! I assume this system only works when all activities are assigned a date. I have several (project) activities that don’t need/have a specific date assigned. Any thoughts how to incorporate those into this system?
That's correct. However, I only date things I know need to be done this week. Everything else I leave the date untl I do my weekly planning. This prevents a build-up of tasks that do not need to be done.
@@Carl_Pullein of course! That makes sense!!! Totally forgot about the weekly review 🙄
Hi Carl, thanks for those amazing tips. One question, if reminders works amazing and integrate with calendar and notes why you use Todoist ? 😅
It's not better than Todoist and I don't do app switching (unless something is massively better and solves a problem my other app cannot do)
Thanks for the answer ! 💪🏼@@Carl_Pullein
In addition to what Carl said, most of what he showed (apart from the link to Apple Notes, probably) is replicable within Todoist. It's just a matter of coordinating your tags in the task manager and time block categories in the calendar.
@@Komatik_ You are quite correct there.
Just finding your content--so, these tags are used solely in the Reminders app--not with iCal/Apple Calendar. You create the reminders within the app and use tags to go along with the blocks of time you've manually created in your calendar? Is that correct? On my first watch of this, I thought there was a way to put the blocks of time in the calendar and then use tags to get those events to show up on your reminders.
That is correct, Marie.
Hmm.. Thanks for the advice. But i don't think you know how procrastination works. 😂
Or, you could just use your calendar as a real calendar and not merely a recurring time blocking tool. (MS Outlook has “Task” feature within the calendar, Apple should do same.) TBH: this is over engineering a to do list.
The problem I’ve always had with that approach is I’ve always seen tasks as discretionary that can be done at anytime in the day (those pockets of time that pop up between meetings, and while waiting for someone). Events are specific and must be done at a set time. this means events go on the calendar and tasks go on a to-do list.
This approach worked for 100s of years without any issue. We would write out appointments into our calendars and use a piece of paper to list out our tasks.
Carl just a bit of feedback on your recent videos sometimes that apps you shown on screen is small when viewed on larger screens. In this this video both calendar and reminders isn’t full screen and so a bit challenge to view unless watched on iPad for example and can zoom in. But on a TV for example this appears a lot smaller.
Thank you. I'll see what I can do to improve things.
Thanks Carl. I've been looking for something like this to emulate my Todoist dashboard.
You're very welcome.
Hi Carl, are you planning on any Black Friday deals on your courses this year? If so, I want to buy some!
I am. Working on it as I write.
Absolutely amazing. I am a hard user of Calendar, Reminder, and Notes and never thought about this solution. Thank you!
You're welcome.
Can You add e-mails in a reminder? - or link to an e-mail?
Yes. You can drag and drop them into Reminders.
@@Carl_Pullein Thanks .... 👍
My hashtags are not syncing between lists. Some do and a few don't. They all have the same settings.
Sometimes, you need to log out of iCloud, close down the device that is not syncing correctly and then restart and login again. It clears any bugs that may have got into the system.
I love this but for some reason some of my smart folders don't seem to work with my tags. everything is up do date. some of my personal are ending up on work and not all the work are showing. I keep deleting and starting over🤣
Hi Barb, check that the setting is set the ALL not ANY. If that doesn't work, close down Reminders then shut down your phone and restart. (Sometimes bugs get into the system)
thank you!@@Carl_Pullein
I had been trying to set up my calendar and reminders up following your tips and wondered why I just couldn’t get it to work… then I just realised my Reminders was un-updating itself and reverting to old style ‘basic’ reminders! Both my iPad (M2 Pro) and iPhone (12 Pro) do this, so frustrating! Any tips on how to make the update stick?
That's a strange problem. Reminders is updated when you update the system software. Re you using macOS Sonoma? And iOS17?
@@Carl_Pullein the iPhone & iPad are both on the newest iOS (17.3), my Mac Pro is a bit older (running Monterey), so I’ve actually disabled iCloud reminders on it incase that was causing the issue 🤷🏻♂️
@@yamaotokostudio4946 That sounds like a trip to the Apple Store may be required. AS Reminders is linked to the OS, it shouldn't be reverting back to an old version (technically it's impossible)
@@Carl_Pullein Wanted to give an update, incase anyone is playing along at home; I've managed to solve the issue and update reminders! It was a case of taking a screenshot of all my reminders, deleting the lot, leaving it overnight then starting afresh, seems to have done the trick...
Excellent.
Glad you like it.