Apple's FREE Productivity System That Actually Works (Notes + Reminders + Calendar)

0:00 Over the last few years, Apple has been quietly updating their reminders app and their notes app. And they've always had a very solid calendar. But what this means is you can now use just the three tools that Apple provide you for free if you have a phone, an iPad or a MacBook or iMac. and you can develop a very solid productivity system that keeps you focused on what's truly important. And today I'm going to show you with a real project how the three tools work together. So let's get started. Now whenever I'm starting a project, the

0:46 first place I start is not here. I don't start on the digital side. I always start on with pen and paper. Now there's a very good reason for that backed up by science I must add which is you get a much better you get much better clarity, focus and creativity when you're just using pen and paper. You don't have all the digital distractions from a digital device. But more importantly, you can go and sit as I do in the dining room and I can just have a couple of pens and my notebook and I will just brainstorm ideas about what the project is, what I think initially I'm going to need to do

1:33 and all the other little bits I need to be aware of. Now, the great thing about using pen and paper also is you have complete freedom in terms of formatting. You can use capital letters. You can put little bits down at the bottom, up at the top, on the margins, all over the place. So, the first place to start will always be pen and paper. Now, the project I'm going to take you through is uh my father-in-law's 70th birthday trip to visit my parents in Ireland and perhaps the UK. Now, this has been a long time in processing, but we're now only about 6 weeks away from going. So the project is now ramping up. It's now becoming quite intense in terms of what

2:19 we need to do. So I've now mapped out on paper what I think needs to happen. The next step is to scan that in to Apple Notes. Now this is where it goes. It goes straight into Apple Notes because what I want to do is now create a project note using my initial thoughts. And there's that's going to be at the bottom of the note. Now, what I'm going to do next is I'm going to pull out from the note, the paper note, what I think are the important factors. May have I might put my packing list in there. I'm certainly going to have my next actions in there. And at the top, I'm going to have any links to documents or whatever I need. So, I may have an email from the airline confirming the flights that

3:05 we've booked, etc. So, all that's going to be in this note. So I have access to pretty much everything I need from one central place. This project note essentially is what I call my hub. This is all the details. Now the other thing I always do because Apple notes has this wonderful checklist uh system with the checkboxes is I will always put the next actions into the project note up at the top. This is the way I structure. So at the very top I have links to whatever documentation I need. In this case airline tickets for example the link to the email with the confirmation of that is up at the top. Coming down below that I have then my

3:51 next actions. What do I need to take do next in order to do this project? Now these are not going into reminders and there's a very good reason for that. A lot of these things that I am putting into here, I'm probably going to need to know that I've done them. If my wife asks me, "Have you done this? Have you done that?" I can go into the project note and it hasn't disappeared. The task is now at the bottom with a line through it. So, it's all here all sort of contained within a note. Now, the other good thing about this, of course, is when I'm at the airport or when I'm we're not probably staying in any hotels, but whenever I need access to any information, it's right here. So, when I book the the car rental, for example, the confirmation again will be placed in

4:36 this note. So, if there's any questions when we actually come to pick up the car, I've got access to all the information right there. Now, I should point out that this kind of project isn't just for traveling. You can do this with your kids activities, summer activities. You can do this with your business projects too. I mean I all my projects are structured in this way. So now we need to look at where does reminders come into this. Now when it comes to Apple reminders, I don't want to put all the tasks that I've got in my note directly into reminders. That would just be a duplication and pretty much a waste of time. Think about reminders as exactly what it says on the tin. I.e. It's reminders. It needs to remind me about what I need to work on today. So,

5:23 if I know that I'm going to have a family meeting this evening with my wife, I could actually have a task in my reminder, discuss island trip 2025 with my wife. And that would mean when we have dinner or even after dinner, we can sit down with my computer, go through Apple notes, and I can say, "Right, these are the things that I've been working on." and my wife can say, "Oh, I will do this and I can take care of that and I need to check if my parents' passports are all up to date and ready." It's pretty important thing to do. So, that's going to be a task. Another one might be the book flight tickets. So, I usually I'm very careful about when I book tickets. I know about the airline algorithm. So if I go and check to see the prices and everything now, it will

6:10 remember and then when I go in the price will have gone up or it will have some kind of algorithmic uh dirty tricks as I call it to try and convince me that now is the time to buy. So I usually just go in when I'm ready to buy. So that's going to be in the next week or two we will be buying the flight tickets. So that's going to come up as a task. Buy flight tickets. I don't need to have all these tasks that I've got in my note also in reminders. I just need reminders to remind me or if you like trigger me to actually go to the note and work on the project. And as you can see in this reminder, I already have the note directly linked to my I have the the task the reminder directly linked to the

6:58 project note itself. So that means I'm not having to go looking for it. I can just click and boom, it will open up and there I have my note. So it's really quite simple the way the two work together. Now the next question is where does the calendar come into this? Now the calendar is going to have some pretty obvious things in there. For example, I will have the flights in there. It will tell me what time and day I'm flying and when we're returning. So that that's pretty obvious. But what else do I use the calendar for when I'm working on a project? Well, usually I I'm a big proponent of time blocking because I've realized that it's not about how much stuff you've got to do. That's never going to stop anyway. That's just going to keep coming in. What I need to do if I want to be

7:43 productive and to be on top of my time is to use time blocking. So I will have usually on a Tuesday afternoon project day or project a time for working on my project. So, usually Tuesday and Wednesdays I think of as project days. So, what I'm going to be doing is, okay, I need to work on these projects right now. So, I'm going to put that into my calendar, project time. That's all my calendar tells me, project time, because I want the flexibility to work on the most urgent projects or the ones that I think, okay, these need moving forward. I don't need to put in work on island trip July 2025. that's that's just too specific. I need the flexibility. So I

8:28 on my calendar it's just project time. If I need to do something like, okay, I need to get the car rental booked. I need to book the tickets. I'm probably going to do it in that particular project window of time that I have because now I know I've given myself permission to work on these particular projects. Now with this kind of project, I'm likely to book the flight tickets with my wife in the evening so we get the right dates and everything. I like I've made too many errors booking flights to get the wrong dates and gh it's just a mess. So I usually like to have somebody with me when I'm doing that. But if I'm working on other projects like update creating a new course or updating a course that's going to be in that project time and the project notes going to be a little bit different because it'll have different links and so on in there but essentially

9:15 the principles will stay the same. I'm gonna start on paper because I may do that over two or three days as well because I like my brain to come out. The way I do this is I begin with a primary color. So in this case it's black. And then when I come back to it a second time I'll use a different color. So in this case it's green. And then perhaps the final time particularly those more complex projects I'll come back to it and use another different color which probably maybe blue or something. Once I'm happy and I've got emptied my head basically of all the ideas then it will get scanned into Apple notes and then I can use from there I can pull out the important things and move them into the project note. Now in case of this traveling project I'm also going to put my packing list in there because I always generally have always put packing

10:01 list in my notes. I've never done that in my task manager in reminders simply because what I want reminders to be is really clean and tight. I don't want lots of distractions in there. And a packing list is I'm going to be doing all that at one time. I've got my suitcase. I'm going to put my clothes in it. I'm just going to go to the note and go, have I got all these things? Check, check, check, check, check. Job done. And then my calendar is going to tell me when I'm going to work on these particular projects. And that's it. The three, the holy trinity, if you like, or productivity apps. You've got your notes, you've got your task manager, and you've got your calendar. And all three are working together to ensure that you're working on the right things at the right time. And that's how it works. Now, whether you're using Apple tools or you're wanting to use third party tools,

10:48 it doesn't really matter. The three productivity apps, Task Manager, Calendar, and Notes app, they work together. And I think this this little exercise in this video should have helped you now to give you an idea of how it all works together. Now, if you want to see how I do this with to-d doist and Evernote, this video up here will be the one to watch