TickTick Blog

Special Offers for Students and Educators

Gone through the “Sci-Fi movie” called 2020, life goes on and unfolds new challenges for us all, especially for those students and teachers who have just experienced not-so-efficient remote learning and for those who are new to the college this autumn. At this key stage, turning life into a new page and getting more focused on what’s happening next is obviously important. 

TickTick is here to help you gain more control back over the new challenges in the coming school year, with the special educational discount for all qualifying students and faculties!

There are up to three benefits that you can enjoy:

1. All enrolled students and educators are eligible for a 25% discount when upgrading to TickTick yearly premium. This is a long-lasting program. Learn how to apply. 

2. From today to 30th of September, everyone who successfully upgraded to premium through our special offer for education, can get 3 extra one-month TickTick premium gift codes! This is for you to share with any of your schoolmates, colleagues or friends, which means they can enjoy the one-month TickTick premium service totally for free! 

3. If any of your friends who used your codes continue their subscriptions for TickTick’s yearly plan, you’ll then get one more month automatically extended to your current premium status too!

Ready to kick off the new school year? Here’s a step-by-step guide for students. 

Be prepared for school with simple to-do lists

Before the school starts, preparing for the move from home to uni can be very daunting, particularly difficult if the uni is in another city or even country. To help yourself a little bit, writing everything down and getting reminded is what should come in the first place. 

For example, creating a packing list by using the “Packing Template” in TickTick and then divide the lists into multiple “Sections”: clothing, stationeries, electronic gadgets, and etc. A reading list regarding one of your newly chosen courses can also pre-equip you with a general idea and get you ready for shifting to the study mood. Meanwhile, a social list for the events you’d like to attend in the welcoming week, and societies you’d like to join will prepare you for a new start of uni life. A document list for enrolment, or a sightseeing list to explore the new city where you’re going to stay, are also essential for your quick settling.

Build a study-based workaround 

Step 1: Creating different Lists for different courses you’re enrolled in. 

Step 2: Creating different Tasks for components of the course within each list.

For example, in the list called Sociolinguistics, there could be three tasks: Task A: Lectures, Task B: Seminars, Task C: Workshops. Here, you can set the tasks as recurrent, for example, 10-12 am every Friday for Task A: Lectures.

Step 3: Adding Subtasks within the tasks. I suggest you create those subtasks according to the topic of each class. 

For example, under Task A: Lectures, there could be many subtasks: Lecture 1: code-switching, Lecture 2: translanguaging, Lecture 3… 

Subtasks can be further split if necessary. For example:  Lecture 1: code-switching can be divided into three new subtasks in the second level: Preview, In process, Revision. 

Step 4:  Defining the context of your tasks/subtasks with Tags. 

In the daily study life, it’s common to have different types of tasks, e.g. Reading, Discussing, Researching, or Writing. Therefore, you can actually add different tags to the tasks to make sure they are well sorted out, and then plan out accordingly based on their contexts.

Step 5: Prioritizing your tasks and identity what’s important.

I believe you may have heard about the Eisenhower Matrix before (sorting your tasks based on urgency and importance). Important and urgent, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, not important and not urgent. Based on this, TickTick offers 4 choices of Priority: High, Medium, Low Priority and No Priority, to help you decide what needs to be done first.

Step 6: Taking notes and connecting everything related to the course.

When taping into a task/subtask, you’ll find a wide blank area for task description. You can write down/upload more details here regarding your tasks, whether it’s reading resources, professors’ contacts, random ideas, or lecture notes from the class. Markdown (a way to quickly add formatting like headers, bold, bullet points, and so on to plain text) is supported here in the task description section, in order to help you take notes easily and beautifully on your digital devices. 

Not a fan of digital writing? Not a problem. You can also add attachments in the description, to include any files you feel relevant to your tasks, like notes written on paper.

With these steps above, you’ll find all your course-related materials and tasks can be well organized and scheduled just in one place. 

* Would also like to plan out social and daily life? Then creating multiple Folders to collect lists is what you need to do. Move all lists for study in one folder, and get another for social life. Easy, right? Or simply subscribe to other calendars, and all the events from there could be synced into TickTick.

Beat procrastination with Time Blocking 

When the courses begin, the struggle comes in the form of knowing exactly what to do but just can’t find enough motivation to actually do it. With so many tasks at the same time, like readings and group assignments, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. The 48-hour essay writing and one-night-oil exam reviewing are probably the most often heard stories in the uni. 

How to be a master of time management and stop being the last-minute person, is perhaps the most important skill we should all learn in uni life. One of the solutions for this could be practicing Time Blocking with TickTick’s built-in Calendar. 

Step 1: Customizing when week 1 starts at the Date & Time Settings in TickTick. 

The first week you set can be the first week when your courses begin, and the following weeks will be able to show in sequence in your TickTick calendar.

Step 2: Arranging tasks in the calendar. 

After going to the calendar, you’ll be able to see tasks you’ve created before, as long as they have a due date. For example, it will show the timetable of your classes, social events synced from your local calendar, or other tasks in daily life. 

If you’d like to add, move and arrange new tasks, simply use the feature “Arranging Tasks”, where all your tasks are  displayed by Priority, Tags and Lists. Via drag n’ drop, anything can be put into time blocks in the calendar. What’s already in there can also be moved. 

Learn more.

Be more focused with Pomodoro Technique

With so many distractions around us, it’s even harder to stay focused than we thought. One of the main features designed to help you keep focused in TickTick is actually called Focus. 

Within Focus, there's a Pomodoro Timer. Based on the Pomodoro Technique, it’s a pre-set timer normally combines a 25-minute work session with a 5-min break. This goes in cycles at least four times, and you’ll then get a longer beak (normally 15 minutes). You can always change the settings for these sessions. 

So, to get Pomo started, you may first have to choose a task you’d like to focus on, and then a white noise as the background sound. Start working till the Pomo timer ends, and you can’t back out of the app, otherwise you would lose this Pomo. But if you’re an Android user, there is actually an allowlist in which you can add other apps. You’re then able to use other apps with your pomo timer keeping running in TickTick. 

Find more about Focus.

Be active in group work with Kanban boards 

Group assignments take a big part in uni life. What may become the hindrances sometimes are the responsibility division within the group, disconnection with others’ progress, or inefficiency  in group communications. Kanban in TickTick offers a solution. 

First used by line-workers in Toyota’s factory, Kanban is a project management method to visualize your workflow. Group work can be displayed on different Kanban boards, so that you can clearly see what should be done by who, when it needs to be done and what’s the progress of others. Commenting on tasks on Kanban also makes it more efficient to communicate with other group members.

Go to TickTick and enter a list, you can then choose to switch it into the Kanban view. Here, you can place tasks onto different boards divided from person to person or phase to phase. Each task can be assigned to others, as long as you share the list with them. The progress of each member can also be easily marked to keep the whole team informed. Commenting on your own or others’ tasks also makes the communication in the group come in real time. Besides, not only available on desktop, Kanban also works on mobile. This literally turns the group work into something that can be done anytime and anywhere! 

Ready to kick off the new school year? Take this guide and the unique discounts we offer to wrap TickTick in your starter pack!

A couple of months ago, I saw a TV series called Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, where a Japanese lady Konmari visited families to help them tidy their homes. The tiding process normally starts from clothes, books to sentimental items. A rule she’s given is only keeping what’s necessary and discarding those that don’t spark joy anymore. The basic concept embedded in the Konmari method is actually similar to minimalism.

Minimalism is about living with less. This not only means getting rid of extra material possessions, like what they did in that TV series, but also includes reducing mental burdens, and decluttering other aspects of life, e.g. digital life. It’s a less-is-more mindset that gets you to reflect on the current state of your life and identify what is truly valuable. With a minimalist lifestyle, people can sort their life well to enjoy more peace and freedom.

Getting rid of excessive material possessions

Among all aspects of minimal living, what we could easily start with is probably the personal belongings. I know this may still sound like a big project, but here’s what I did:

Observing

The first thing I did was to examine how much stuff I actually own, and I started with clothing. I pulled over all my clothes from several wardrobes and piled them together, which was really appalling, especially seeing hills and hills of clothes and some were years ago but still with the label on. I came to realize that I was kinda a semi shopaholic that I never thought I was.

Decluttering

Then it comes to the decluttering. I had to decide what to keep and what to toss. Considering some clothes are still quite new, I spare another choice for donation. It was quite a struggle to decide which item should go, but I asked myself two main questions:

Functionality: is it still functional/wearable?

Sentimental value: is it something meaningful/makes me happy?

It became easier with these two standards. For example,

Pieces bought out of pure impulse: donate.

Sweater my grandma knitted for me: stay.

T-shirts with holes: go.

Same type of dress: keep the best, ditch the rest.

Trousers I haven’t worn for the last year: go/donate.

Tip: One thing I learned from Konmari was the thank-you ritual. Thank the item for its sweet company before letting it go. This can help reduce your inner guilt when throwing things away.

Organizing

What was also suggested by Marie Kondo was organizing stuff by category instead of by location.This simply means storing the same type of items together, rather than letting them scatter in multiple places. For example, all towels go to one box, and all T-shirts should be collected in the same drawer, sorted by colors if you’d like. This helps when I need to quickly search for something, and also gives me a clear idea of the number of same items I own, which then can prevent me from buying more than I actually need.

Maintaining

To maintain the cleared-out momentum, regularly check if anything becomes excessive or nonfunctional. Also, always ask yourself the hard question — Do I really need it?/Do I already have it? — before you fall prey to consumerism that encourages you to buy excessively. Some minimalists stick strictly to the “one-in-one-out” principle, which means when they add something new, another stuff they already had should go. I haven’t tried this, it might be effective, but also be careful that it can lead to a simple replacement too.

Cleaning up digital clutters

Compared with visible substances in real life, what burdens us in the digital world is perhaps much harder to be noticed. A quick self-check can be: unlocking your phone and counting how many installed apps there are, or go to the photo album, and see the number of photos stored in it. In my case: 187 apps and 19220 photos. Amazing.

I decided to start the purge from those little cute apps. First I created different folders to sort them out by category. Interestingly, I realized I’ve downloaded 14 apps of a single type — photography and editing. Never knew I had a true passion for that. To downsize it, something particularly useful was: keeping the multi-functional apps because these are the ones I use most, just like TickTick, an all-in-one productivity app. Then the others are just a waste of storage. Also, let go of those barely used, for me the recipe apps, because I seldom cook, and also the recruitment apps, which were only used when I needed to look for a job. When finishing the decluttering process, the size of apps on my phone was shrunk largely to nearly ⅓ of the past.

The same process then went with my photo album, which was downsized to about 6k from 20k, after all the meaningless screenshots and repetitive selfies were deleted, and all trip photos were moved into cloud drive. This could further extend to messages or emails, if those are the severely-hit areas in your case. God bless.

I literally felt my phone was thinner after the whole process. Try it.

Reducing the amount of information I’m exposed to every day was what I did next. I’ve tried more radical way like cutting my phone completely out of daily life for 3 days in a row. It felt terrible honestly, and I used it for more hours as a payback once I got it back. A common misconception there of minimalism might be the elimination, but I think the difference is minimalism is not telling you to avoid something forever, it’s always about striking a balance between your desires and capacity.

Therefore, I’m enjoying my digital life, but I’m also trying to weighing it against my capacity of information that I can take in. Articles with exaggerated titles but cheesy contents needed to go first; numbers of newsletters subscribed should be restricted; time spent on TV series was limited; scrolling on social media posts was also reduced; notifications from apps were minimized… so on an so forth.

Reducing mental burdens

Lastly I’d like to talk a little about the effects of minimalism on mental world.

Also take myself as an example, I used to be addicted to expanding my social network, because I’ve long been educated: one more friend, one more road. Therefore, I took very good care of my social media accounts like they were just many MEs living on the internet. However, the larger my network size is, the more exhausted I feel. The more I care about how many likes I get for a new insta post, the more anxious I get.

Then I just realized putting so much effort into building social personas and expanding so-called friendships did nothing good, but added on my mental burdens. Why not spending more time for myself, and people I really love and care about? Understanding the truth of quality over quantity, I decided to:

Unfollow people I met on a party but never talked in life since then.

Delete those using me as a “problem-solving machine” but nothing else.

Delete those who barely contacted me unless they became sales.

Let go of those in close relationships but ghosted for whatever reasons.

Share what I’d really like to share instead of what my online friends like.

After doing that, I felt so much more relieved than before, because I finally understood that my time and energy is the very limited resources I have in life and thus not everyone around me is worth it. I truly get the meaning of living with less: spending less time on the unnecessary and what consumes you endlessly, but more on what you really need and what brings you joy.

Talking all above, you might feel inspired and would also like to try the minimalist lifestyle. But before you go, I’d like to kindly remind you of three gimmicks of minimalism I’ve spotted:

It’s not a disposal competition. Focusing only on the number of stuff you’ve tossed or people moved from your contact is not what really matters. And there isn’t a rule saying the less, the better.

It’s not a promotion of expensive brands with minimal designs. Some products brand themselves with minimalism, making it a new aesthetics standard with normally a not-so-affordable price. How ironic.

Make conscious decisions when ditching something, or else you may find yourself end up in a replacement cycle that causes extra expenditure.

In a nutshell, minimalism is a way of life and a way of thinking. It encourages us to focus more on what’s truly important in life and avoid other distractions; it becomes an antidote that saves us from drowning in numerous goods and boomed information; it helps reduce mental loads and spare some room for inner happiness.

 ticktick.com

What is OKRs?

Drown in the jargon river where so many abbreviations represent different business management methods, the OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) framework stands out due to its popularity among some household names, e.g.Google and Linkedin. Moving through Andy Grove, who first introduced Management by Objectives to Intel in the 1970s to now John Doerr, whose book -- Measure What Matters -- probes greater depth of OKRs in the workplace. How to embed the company’s purpose and values into everyday goal-setting and outcomes throughout the company’s workforce, is where OKRs come into play. 

The basic process of implementing the OKRs is: The company sets a goal (normally for the coming quarter), and lists some metrics that can be used to measure whether this goal is met. With the same practice, this process further goes to different teams and then down to individuals. 

Here’s an OKRs example displayed under Kanban View at TickTick:

From the example above, we can clearly see Q3 OKRs are displayed and sub-divided in three levels: Company’s OKRs > Marketing Team’s OKRs > Jack’s OKRs in Marketing Team.

*Key Result 1 of the company is the Objective of Marketing team, and KR1 of Marketing team is Jack’s individual Objective. It is not necessary to always have correspondent O and KR, but the full path can go similarly like this to other teams and individuals.

OKRs vs. KPIs

To understand OKRs better, we may also have to identify where it differs from another performance evaluation method: KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Why do OKRs work?

Encourage company-wide focus

OKRs create the same context within a company, which connects and immerses everyone as a whole, by setting the company’s biggest objectives and identifying what matters most to achieve these objectives. A common sense will form organizationally: working towards the goals, trimming the unnecessary, and keeping anything off-track away from the runway. Motivated to only focus on what’s important, individuals are more likely to outperform. With all efforts channeled into one thing, there’s also higher possibility for the company to win the game.

Ensure top-down alignment

The traditional management method tends to be like: the top tier dictates, and the rest executes. One of the biggest issues caused by that is the disconnection between decision and execution, which may lead to employees’ lack of higher-level thinking, with only the hard-work on completing given tasks, not knowing what the meaning of their everyday work is. OKRs solve this problem because of its transparency and accountability. On the premise of knowing what the company steers towards, and what the team’s responsibility is, one can be well-aware of what their work should be built around. One is also less likely to feel themselves drifting away from others, especially when they are at the bottom level.

Enhance both-side engagement

When setting the company’s OKRs, the proven way is to involve not only leaders of the company, but also individuals, into the discussion and goal-setting. If well-implemented, OKRs also allow adjustment and continuous improvement. Both the leadership and individuals can check on the key results regularly, adjust, or even abandon the goals according to real-time circumstance changes. That way the voice of individuals has been heard and commitment from both sides has been greatly increased.

Tips of implementing OKRs

1. When there are too many focuses, there is no focus.

Some may fall into an OKRs pitfall -- Achieve as many objectives as possible. When asked about what the company’s objectives are, the leadership themselves may even be confused, let alone other employees. Thus, setting only one objective of the top priority and then investing resources in it to do exceptional work, is perhaps better to enhance the sole concentration in everyone’s mind. Conversely, if there are too many focuses, people may find it hard to decide which they should really pay attention to.

2. Allow sufficient time to test out your OKRs.

Setting quarterly OKRs is what’s been used in most cases, even though some prefer the 2-month duration or a year. If you’re implementing OKRs for the first time, make sure the duration is not too long or too short, because you need time to test out the key results, and also need to adjust or reset the goals as OKRs progress.

3. Be careful of the goal-setting.

Make sure the objective you’ve set for the company/team/individual is ambitious and also inspiring, not to be unrealistic or too easy-to-reach. It might immediately scare people away if it seems too challenging. On the flip side, they may feel less-motivated if it seems quite attainable. A method mentioned by Christina Wodtke (author of Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results) is: Target the rate at 5 with full score 10, because that would be something challenging but still achievable, 7/10 can be considered as a success, and 10/10 is unsuitable to be KRs.

4. Communicate, communicate, and communicate.

Communication and engagement alongside the way is the key to successful implementation of OKRs. Ensure employees have been involved before the objective-setting, in the process of checking on key results and also reflecting on the results of OKRs implementation.

Personal OKRs

Walking through all the above, you might come to the recognition that OKRs could be effective for fast-growing companies. But some of you might also wonder what it’s to do with me if I’m not the founder of a company or the leader of a team. Like so, can OKRs only be used at work for companies? The answer is NO, because it’s a general methodology for goal setting and achieving, which can be used for personal life as well. 

*Note: Personal OKR here doesn't mean individual OKRs at work.

Christina Wodtke, the author of Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results, shared how OKRs modelled her life as a professional writer: 

To say OKRs have changed my life would be an understatement. They have made my life possible. They are the backbone that holds my life together.

Here is a personal OKR example she’s given:

O: Model life as a professional author

KR1: Rough draft of Continuous Feedback to Alpha reader list (and Cathy) with actionable feedback

KR2: Working with Pictures V2 on Amazon with 4 five star reviews 

KR3: Product-Market Fit book (Creative Founder) interviews complete with essays at 2K views each or higher

Similarly, if the most important goal currently in your life is the IELTS test for example, then your OKRs might be like:

O: Get the C1 level in IELTS exam

KR1: Enrol in courses to improve weak skills, e.g. Listening

KR2: Enhance strong skills e.g. Speaking by practicing more

KR3: Increase the overall score by 1 point 

Or, if one of your recent life goals is to find a better job, then the personal OKRs could be:

O: Find a better job 

KR1: 20% of salary boost

KR2: More training opportunities and resources 

Tip: Further divide these key results into actionable tasks, with TickTick’s new task nesting feature! Then it will look like:

What is Task Nesting?

Commonly used in Computer Science and Informatics, Nesting usually means where information is organized in layers and locked up with hierarchy. Following the same concept, Task Nesting here simply means task hierarchy. This means, different tasks can always be logically connected rather than sparsely scattered in your to-do list. A complex task can also be split into multi-layer subtasks (up till 5 layers including the parent task)! In general, it’s like a “family tree” that all the tasks can find their own place. 

Task Nesting vs. Check Item 

Some of you might already be wondering, “Did the Subtask feature already exist, which you could access in the task description? Why is there a new Subtask feature?”

The previous Subtask (now renamed as Check Item), lying in the task description section, functions more like a checklist. You can split a task, e.g. packing for a trip, into multiple subtasks, and also set reminders for each task. However, what you could not do in there is sub-dividing it into more grades, or setting priority and tags for subtasks. Therefore, we have renamed it as “Check Item” and it still remains in the task description.

As for the new Subtask feature -- Task Nesting, I’d like to call it the real Subtask, because each subtask here is empowered with all the functions that a parent task has: setting tags, priority, reminder, assigning to others in a shared list, and etc. 

Then, the confusion may rise, “Why do I need two Subtask systems?”

Like what was mentioned above, Task Nesting and Check Item function differently in many ways. In one word, Check Item is a lightweight version of Task Nesting. Put it in a more funny way, the former is like a “toddler”, while the latter has come into “adulthood”. Keeping both is actually allowing you more flexibility tailoring to your own needs of whether just a checklist with reminders could be enough or a whole subtask foundation with its own reminder, priority et al., is what you need.

How can Task Nesting helps with GTD (Getting Things Done)?

As David Allen’s theory in his book Getting Things Done, breaking a planned project into actionable items allows your attention to be focused on taking actual actions. Cutting a complex task, especially when it’s related to a big goal, e.g. an exam prep, or a product launch, into more digestible slices, is especially helpful for those who suffer from procrastination. 

Not only being able to split tasks into smaller ones, a bigger advantage of Task Nesting is it brings a clear-cut structure showing the bonds between different tasks. This means tasks can be well sorted and organized based on their inner logic. Following what makes sense to you, the previously scattered tasks in your to-do list will no longer be single and can always be sensibly accommodated and grouped together. Therefore, you can not only know what needs to be done at what time, but also stay aware of the relationships between tasks (division and belongingness).

Task Nesting also makes the task arrangement more convenient, because every subtask incorporates the functionality of the parent task, which means it is able to maintain its own activities with separate contexts. It can also be put into different time blocks in your TickTick Calendar (Note: Subtasks will show without hierarchy in blocks.) More importantly, assigning different subtasks to other members also becomes simpler and more straightforward too, which makes team collaboration just a breeze if you’re all in a shared list.

Take Away: The 4D Framework

In summary, Task Nesting in TickTick helps you with GTD in terms of: 

* Dividing tasks into subtasks

* Defining subtasks’ context

* Distributing subtasks to time blocks

* Delegating subtasks

QnA Time

1. Will the List Panel become messy if there are multi-layer Subtasks?

Not at all. You can choose to display or hide the Subtasks of a parent task, or even decide to only hide Subtasks in specific level(s), and display the rest. Anything as you like, really.

2. Is Task Nesting a premium feature?

NO NO NO. We love you all despite you’re using a free/premium account.

3. Is it mobile-only?

Nope. Available on all platforms:)

4. What else should I consider?

Seriously nothing. Download/Upgrade TickTick to help yourself getting things done with Task Nesting!

iOS 

Android 

You might instantly recall the Lego blocks that we used to build a house when we were kids. Similarly, if we split 24 hours/1440 minutes of a day into blocks, how we spend the time is how we pile up these blocks in order the house to be built.

What is Time Blocking 

Time Blocking is a time management method that helps us get more done in the finite time by cutting a day into many chunks and each chunk is dedicated to a certain task. Some of the world’s most productive people, from Elon Musk to Bill Gates to Cal Newport (Author of Deep Work) have combined their to-do lists with this important method: Time Blocking.

A Russian entomologist Alexander Aleksandrovich Lyubishchev, kept recording the expenditure of his time, for 56 years in a row, in order to stay in control of his time. This comes with higher necessity in today’s society since 24-hour-a-day remains unchanged, while daily information explodes in the modern workplace.

How Time Blocking works

From the face value, this technique seems just a walk in the park. In what way can it really benefit us?

* It reduces context switching and mental energy loss

Time blocking is closely linked with task batching, which means similar tasks can be grouped together and distributed to time chunks. There are mainly two types of tasks at work: Deep and shallow. Deep tasks such as coding, designing, and drafting a marketing plan, usually require intensive attention and deep thinking, while shallow tasks are comparatively low-value tasks like emails, team chats and phone calls.

Setting a time frame for shallow work can prevent you from spending too much time on it and save mental spaces for other more high-value tasks. Combining time blocking and task batching also avoids frequent text-switching and helps minimize your cognitive burden caused by goal-changing.

* It helps lock your focus and reduce anxiety

Doing one task at a time can lock your focus and keep it intact, compared with splitting your attention across multiple tasks. With all mental resources invested in a single task, it can avoid getting distracted by miscellanies. With all tasks planned out alongside the day, the anxiety level is also lower because you can easily gain the control power over your workload.

* It helps keep track of your time expenditure 

When you get used to scheduling your day into set and controlled units, your own productivity pattern will form. For one thing, competitive daily/weekly tasks can be quickly arranged. For another, you’ll know the average time spent on certain tasks, which then helps you make realistic plans on time allocation. Therefore, time blocking lets you track your time-spending and further reflect on it for higher efficiency.

Is Time Blocking effective for everyone?

Well, the fact is there is never a one-fits-all solution. Time Blocking might be infeasible for reactive workers, e.g. customer support specialists, whose work  is basically based on in-time situations and thus cannot be estimated. 

However, blocking time off has an instant effect on those who have a short-term goal, no matter if it's an important exam or a job application, because they need to use their time wisely in a short period to maximize output. In another case, if you’re a fresh graduate who just joined a new company, then maybe the awareness and skills of time management are what you need, to avoid being trapped into the “keeping-busy fallacy” where workload keeps piling up but productivity keeps running low. Time Blocking also works for someone who can get a sense of accomplishment and stability from a well-scheduled daily life and who’d wish to continuously look back on his/her performance. 

Some misuses of Time Blocking

Like what’s being said, even though time blocking is a simple concept from the surface, it can still be misused and taken to extremes. There are mainly five cases that cannot be considered as an appropriate adoption of time blocking.

* Keep every minute on the regiment, and make 24 hours fully stuffed. * Too strict to the schedule and any changes or flexibility are not allowed. * Too optimistic about the estimated time arranged for a task. * No any loosening-up activities scheduled between blocks. * Sequent time chunks filled with all deep work, or vice versa.

Step-by-step guide to use Time Blocking at TickTick 

* Creating a to-do list

Creating different lists for projects or different parts of your work, and writing down what you need to do is all for the start. Don’t forget to set Tag or Priority for these tasks, because this is important for quick sorting and grouping in later arrangement.

Tip: Make sure to distinguish different Lists and Tags with color coding, because tasks will then show in the calendar in the form of color blocks, based on three options: the color of Tag, List, or Priority.

* Arranging Tasks in the Calendar 

After going to Calendar in TickTick, you can switch the view to Today (also for tomorrow/three-day/week/month). Tap “Arrange Tasks” and all tasks you’ve created before can be filtered by Lists, Tags or Priority. Here you can add any tasks into any time blocks simply via drag n’ drop. The space of each time block is adjustable and the minimum size is 15 minutes. The sequence of blocks is also changeable if you’d like to fill one time slot with multiple tasks for example, or keep a good balance between shallow and deep tasks.

After this step, you’ll be able to see a completed time-boxed schedule with tasks planned out for Today. 

Tip: If you’re using other calendar tools, you can import your data into the TickTick calendar too. 

* Starting to focus with a Pomo Timer/Stopwatch

Now, it’s time to start working! Opening a task from your Time Block 1 and starting to focus with the Pomo timer on in TickTick. Pomo helps enhance your focus and also keep a work-rest balance. But if it’s a new task and you wish to test out how much time it’ll cost, then Stopwatch instead of Pomo should come in use to count up the time. Therefore, next time when scheduling, you’ll be able to make a fair evaluation on time allowance for this task.

* Tip1: Saving competitive tasks as Templates

An easier and faster way to arrange a repetitive task is from the Template. Instead of repeating the process of creating the same task each time, a daily task such as team meeting, can be saved as a Template. With this, the task can be added to your “Today” List in just seconds.

* Tip2: Have you tried “Plan Your Day”?

The Best Method You Can Learn from Theologian Moffatt

When we hear people saying "Have a break", what naturally comes to mind is doing nothing, perhaps just lying down and taking a nap. Indeed, sleeping is a good way to eliminate fatigue and help recharge ourselves. However, it’s not the only way to give your brain a break. What we’ll introduce today is another interesting method that may also help maintain the balance between work and rest. Let’s just call it “Moffatt’s Method” because it was the idea originally developed from him.

What is Moffatt’s Method?

Moffatt is a Scottish Theologian who produced one of the best-known translations of the Bible. According to Gossip (1944), in Moffatt’s study, there were three tables. Each was gathered articles and books of different subjects. For example, one was work-related, e.g. the translation of the New Testament; one was his paper draft and another was a detective novel. He would work for hours with adsorbed concentration; and when weary rises, stretch himself and stroll to the next table. After refreshing his mind with some hours of hard toil on the new topic there, perhaps then move to the third!

Why does Moffatt's Method work?

Switching between tables and topics is Moffatt’s way to avoid staying in the same tension for a long time, while still maintaining focus and work streaks. Well, does it really work? why? 

We might all know that the left hemisphere of our brain is responsible for people's language expression, logic and reasoning. The right half is for non-verbal activities, perceptions and feelings. Therefore, the left hemisphere is active when we deal with work like writing articles, making plans, and solving tough problems. Conversely, work such as copying materials, transcribing, sending faxes, and etc., requires more use of the right brain. If we divide the tasks into these two categories and alternate them, our left and right brain will take turns to rest. This can thus help ease fatigue, and increase efficiency.

How can we make use of Moffatt's Method?

Besides switching places and topics of work like what Moffatt did, we can also extend this idea by mix-grouping tough and easy tasks, thinking-based and less skill-required, input-inclined and output-inclined, so on and so forth.

I’ll give you more examples：

Abstract + Concrete

If you are learning a new concept in History or Art, combining abstract and concrete materials might be a good way to keep the balance. Our brains function differently when processing different types of information. Therefore, after reading “text information” like journals and articles for a while, move to more concrete information, e.g. pictures or documentaries, to instil a little freshness into your body.

 Input + Output

Inputting information can be combined with outputting. For example, if you are learning a new language, e.g. English, and you wish to improve your speaking skills. Instead of just keep talking in English non-stop till draining yourself up, maybe picking a good English movie to watch for a while can be a good addition. Without changing the purpose of improving oral English, your brain still gets some rest in that way.

Static + Dynamic

When sitting there reading for some time, why not take your book to the garden, read while walking on the grass and enjoying the breeze? Getting tired of the silence in the library, why not hit a nice cafe and study with latte and music? After working alone on a topic for some hours, why not invite someone to join you and discuss for a bit? Changing the environment from static to dynamic like that may help get rid of boredom and tiredness.

Tough + Easy

Combining a tough task with an easy one is also the way to give your brain regular breaks. For example, tasks that need full concentration and high mental skills, such as planning and writing, can be bonded with other comparatively simple tasks such as making PPT and tidying up the documents. Let your brain “go on strike” after being kept high-strung for a long period of time.

Wrap up

Tick Tick Tick Tick… we’ve officially walked into the second half of the year 2020! Daytime becomes longer and TickTick has also speeded its way to progress. See what has recently been added and find what surprises you most. Spoiler alert in the end!

Track Every Step of Your Progress with My Badge 

What is Badge?

The Badge is kinda like an approval and a reward to your achievements at TickTick. It makes every step of your accomplishments visible and trackable. For example, the days you've been using TickTick, the months you’ve joined Premium, the number of tasks you’ve accomplished, the total amount of time you’ve been focused on tasks, the number of friends you’ve invited, and the times you’ve checked in your habits. 

Every tiny progress you’ve made deserves a place in your overall achievement. They will automatically be counted and converted into badges.

6 different types of Badges

* Learn more about the details and algorithm of Badge.

The reason why we included Badge here at TickTick is we wish it could function as a gentle reminder not a stress trigger. It can tell you sometimes, “Hey, I know life is full of tasks and challenges, but see what you’ve done, you’re already brilliant!”. Sometimes it’s easy for us to forget giving ourselves credits when we’re too busy pursuing greater successes. But remember, staying productive is important, so is staying happy.

Manage Your Workflow from Emails to Tasks

TickTick has recently been integrated with a wonderful email app - Spark. With Spark, you can stay on top of your inbox by intelligently prioritizing your emails, and keep your inbox distraction-free. From there, you can also streamline your workflow from email inbox to task management tools by connecting your it with TickTick! 

Imagine it was a busy Monday morning, and you’ve received tons of emails. Some of them may be related to on-going collaborations, some are enquiries, some are work reports from your team, and some might be your newsletter subscriptions. You might easily forget what you’ve just left on, or things with low priority cost you too much time than what you expected. TickTick and Spark integration offers an ideal solution, because you can save any emails one click away and organize them in TickTick!

Not only can you save the email text, you can also save a unique link of the email. Option 1 helps you quickly save and schedule the content, while option 2 allows you to trace back freely.

Improve Your Workflow with Kanban on Mobile

Originally from the concept of Kanban board, TickTick embraced this idea and extended it to desktop, and now to mobile versions as well. All we did is to make your experience of managing your projects at TickTick more flexible and controllable!

What is Kanban?

Some of you may never heard of Kanban or not be very familiar with what it is, but I suppose you’ve all ever seen a whiteboard with many sticky notes placed under different sections. That is exactly what Kanban is!

In a simple term, Kanban is a project management method to help you visualize and streamline your workflow. It was first used by line-workers in Toyota’s factory. They’ve found a visual card showing what needs to be done and when, has helped a lot with the process of production. It has then been widely used in other industries as well.

What roles can Kanban play?

Kanban visualizes your workflow, by allowing you to create and manage different columns. These columns can be regarded to different stages of a project in chronological order, or divided by tasks from different groups involved in a project, or any other ways that make sense to yourself. Whatever logic is embedded under your Kanban columns, it helps track the project’s status, and always presents you a clear picture of what is the next step.

Kanban also allows you to sub-categorize and sub-organize your tasks within a list. For one thing, it saves you from the trouble creating multiple lists for one same project; for another, tasks can be distributed into different columns in Kanban View. It’s also flexible to move and edit. 

Plus, Kanban is helpful when it comes to the team collaboration, because the workflow of the whole team can be visualized and managed. By inviting team members to your list and assign tasks accordingly. Each task has its “owner”, with users' avatars showing behind. Thus, the responsibility and progress of each task can be clearly demonstrated. Edits and comments on the tasks are also supported, so that communication between teams can come in time.

Spoiler Alert!

As we keep moving forward to make TickTick a better tool for you guys, what will come right next is… 🥁🥁🥁

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Task Nesting: Break down a complex task with subtasks.

Ever since the last time we released Kanban on Mac, Windows and Web, we’ve heard it multiple times for Kanban on mobile. Now, it’s all happening! This article will walk you through how to make the best use of Kanban View at TickTick mobile versions to visualize and streamline your workflow!

What is Kanban?

Some of you may never heard of Kanban or not be very familiar with what it is, but I suppose you’ve all ever seen a whiteboard with many sticky notes placed under different sections. That is exactly what Kanban is!

In a simple term, Kanban is a project management method to help you visualize your workflow. It was first used by line-workers in Toyota’s factory. They’ve found a visual card showing what needs to be done and when, has helped a lot with the process of production. It has then been wide-spread and used by many others in other industries as well. 

TickTick embraced Kanban and made it available on desktop versions not so long ago. Now, we’ve brought it to mobile versions, in order to help you manage your projects anywhere and anytime!

Step-by-step guide of using Kanban 

1. Where to find Kanban on your smart phones

To enable Kanban View, first you need to go to a list that you created in TickTick (Default smart lists such as “Today” are not applicable), tap the “…” at the top right corner of the list and select  “Switch View”. You will see two options in the pop-up window: List View and Kanban View. Choose Kanban and you’re all set to go.

2. What’s under Kanban view

After switching to Kanban View, your list will then become a Kanban board with two columns: To Do and Progress. You can rename the existing columns and also add new ones if needed. 

3. Keep your columns in order

To manage the columns, tap the “…” button at the top right corner of one of the existing columns. Here you can choose to edit, add new ones and manage. 

For instance, if you want to add a new column in the middle of two existing columns, you can choose either “add a new column to the left” or “add a new column to the right”. If you’d like to change the order of how these columns are placed, then you may go to the “manage columns” and change the order by drag n’ drop. 

4. Different ways to view columns

To view the columns you’ve created, you can simply swipe left and right. If you’d like to quickly locate and switch to a specific column, especially when there are too many, then you could tap the name of a random column, and there will be a new window that displays all the columns in the grid. From there you’re free to jump to any.

5. Decide where your tasks go 

After switching to Kanban View, all your tasks in that list will automatically go into the “To Do” column. However, you can change the locations of every task simply by drag n’ drop. Not only within the same column, you can actually choose to put it anywhere. For example, if you’d like to move one task from “To Do” to “Progress”, all you have to do is drag the task to the bottom and then drop it there to select any column you’d like the task to go to.

6. Edit multiple tasks from different columns

In Kanban View, it becomes even easier to continuously track your progress and rearrange work schedules more efficiently because you can always choose to edit multiple tasks from different columns. There’s also a “Select all” button that saves you plenty of time when batching tasks.

7. Quick add tasks to a specific column

To quickly add a task to a desired column, tap “+” and input the task info, and the task you just created will automatically go into the column which your screen now presents. That saves time for task categorization and is also helpful when something new pops up in your project and you need to quickly write it down.

8. Make use of little visual hints

Kanban is not only desirable when tracking the progress of a whole project, you can also see the progress of each task with some little visual hints. For example, there’s a mini pie chart that shows how many percentages you’ve achieved of a certain task. A preview of task descriptions and subtasks are also shown under the task name.

How to make the best use of Kanban 

Kanban view offers a simple, open-ended way of structuring, checking and rearranging your tasks. You can always use it as you like and organize tasks into columns in the way that makes sense to you.

Basically, it can be used for almost all the project management. For one thing, Kanban’s highly visual nature makes your project look neat and well-organized. For another, it saves you from the trouble of creating so many lists for a project because you can do it just in one place.

For instance, if you want to manage a release of a product. You may create a series of columns named: Documenting, Designing, Finished design, Developing, Testing, Public Beta, Ready to release.

Or, let’s say it’s an event planning task that you are going to accomplish. Instead of creating so many lists for different parts of the job, you can organize them in one list, and sort them out by creating different columns in Kanban View. This allows you to track, check and modify everything just in one place. With it on mobile, this process becomes even easier.

Last but not least, Kanban plays an important role when it comes to the team collaboration. Apart from the visualization of what needs to be done and when, it can also show which task should be done by which person. This is achievable because if a task is assigned to another person, their TickTick avatar will show behind the certain task. In this way, visualizing the workflow of the whole team involved in the project can be achieved. Members can also make comments, and edit or add tasks anytime. Communication between the team comes in time and becomes more efficient.

Getting Started with Kanban at TickTick！

For iOS

The integration with Spark has long been an eagerly anticipated feature for both TickTick and Spark users. Finally, it’s exciting to share the news that together with Spark, we make it happen! Stay on top of your email tasks and get more things done with TickTick + Spark ✅

 📧 What is Spark?

Over 1 million people rely on Spark email to manage their personal and team inboxes. The app aims to help you take more control of your inbox and boost productivity. Email is an essential tool that is used worldwide. With Spark, you can focus on important emails by intelligently prioritizing your emails, get peace of mind with distraction-free email, and streamline your workflow from inbox to task management tools by connecting with brilliant 3rd party integrations. 

💡 What to achieve with the TickTick + Spark integration?

With the Spark integration, you can now turn emails into tasks and export them to TickTick in just a few clicks. 

🔗 How to connect TickTick to Spark?

1. Make sure you have both apps installed on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad (the integration will be on Android in the future - will keep you posted).

2. In Spark on Mac, open Preferences -> Services. On iOS, go to the Spark Settings -> Services -> Add Service.

3. Select TickTick on the list and click Connect.

4. Log into your TickTick account. Now, the apps are connected.

📩 How to turn an email into a task？

1. Open the desired email in Spark.

2. Tap … More on the toolbar and select TickTick.

Here, Spark offers you two options to export the email:

Email – exports the email text to your TickTick task.

Link – creates a secure web link to the whole email thread, so all the information is one click away.

3. Tap Save. Now, you can manage this task in TickTick.

🎁 Giveaway time!

To celebrate the integration with Spark, we’re going to give away eight 3-month TickTick Premiums to eight lucky winners. 

To participate, please visit TickTick’s official Twitter or Facebook channel to find more details.

Twitter @TickTickTeam

Facebook @TickTickApp

We hope you enjoy TickTick’s integration with Spark and the best of luck to win free Premium!

As the mission of Spark puts it “to help you love your email again”, we hope to help you love your email even more with the seamless integration with TickTick. Download TickTick and Spark now to unlock the countless possibilities from your inbox to tasks:

TickTick for iOS

TickTick for Mac

Spark for iOS

Don’t Let the Excessive Self-Discipline Hurt You

What has caused the Excessive Self-Discipline?

Bombarded with numbers of books and courses aimed at helping us develop self-discipline, together with numerous praises from people around us or on the internet, it seems quite obvious that self-discipline is such a highly-valued quality in today’s society.

This however, may overstate the significance of being self-disciplined to some extent and may thus pressure us in a way that we easily feel anxious and left-behind if we fail to climb over the “self-restraint mountain” built by so many fabulous examples.

People with such anxiety tend to push themselves harder and harder, just in order to keep pace with those successful examples in this life race. Once their energy is burned out or the willpower collapses, some will fall into an extremely down momentum, thinking they just inertly lack the “self-discipline genes” or completely discrediting being self-discipline itself.

This might explain why even just thinking of self-discipline brings us headaches already. It has been pre-linked with so many negative feelings: toughness, pain, huge effort, discomfort, and shame.  

So, is being self-disciplined really a nightmare, or is it just our own misunderstandings or even stereotypes which makes it terrifying?

What does self-discipline really mean to us?

In fact, being self-disciplined never equals to leading a restrictive or punitive lifestyle. Although it seems usually associated with self-control and willpower, it still has to be based on the respect to one’s own free wills, energy flow, effective methods, and positive mindset. 

Examples & Contrasts:

“I wanna work out regularly to be more healthy.” vs. “Even though I hate gym, I want 6 packs in order to be as attractive as xxx on Instagram.”

“Think I’ll skip the gym schedule because I’m too tired at work today.” vs. “I gotta work out even though my energy is drained already.”

“I’m good enough even though I know there’s still spaces to improve” vs. “I am terrible and I have no choice but to change.”

“Forming a healthy eating to reduce pizzas for meals” vs. “Cutting pizzas forever off my diet” 

“Forgetting Curve is a useful way to learn new vocabularies” vs. “I can learn as many vocabularies as possible so long as I invest more time.”

Through the checklist, some may come to realize that you’re unfortunately in a “self-discipline trap”, where you get your heads up and drain yourself all the time, and where any mistakes, failure and laziness are absolutely not allowed. Is this really the way we improve ourselves to reduce anxiety, or a way to cause greater stress and anxiety? I’ll leave you to think about it.

In general, even though staying self-disciplined is beneficial for self-improvement and the quality of life, it’s never a “everyone-must-do” in life and never means self-torture. On top of it, staying healthy is much much more important.

How can we avoid being over self-restrained?

1. Follow your own energy flow and limit

This simply means when your body tells you that you need rest, then it’s high time you should rest. We all have our own energy flow and upper limit. What in return when disobeying it may not be desirable results. For example, sleeping for 5 hours and then forcing yourself to get up for a morning gym sesh. The harm caused by insufficient sleep may overweigh the good brought by working out. Therefore, arranging yourself a work-out when you have enough time and energy to handle it, instead of sacrificing your sleep time just to do it anyways.

2. Follow your own heart instead of following others

Information on the internet, especially social media, has created a hidden competitive environment where numerous good examples lead the trends and define what is good and cute. People who see these consciously or subconsciously tend to follow. However, 6 packs isn’t a must, neither is S-shape. Not having them is also not a shame. My suggestion is listen to your own voice instead of others. Think and identify whether it is what you truly desire or just the illusional self that other people project in your mind.

3. Keep a positive mindset based on self-acceptance

It might sound like a paradox if I don’t deny myself, how can I have the idea to regulate my behavior? Well, try this way: “I accept and love myself, and I also don’t mind making some changes to be better”. For example, staying up late often largely affects my work efficiency and also speeds the aging of my skin. Therefore, I wanna quit this habit because I wish to improve these. This positive mindset that you develop before taking an action can bring sustainable effects, which helps you enjoy and then insist on doing something. Conversely, denying yourself, e.g. “I am a whole mess that I sleep late too often. My work efficiency is also slow and I age fast”, usually brings up a lot of negative feelings, which may be converted to a strong motivation in the beginning, but is usually inconsistent. Once the rush fades, your self-denial is also enhanced. 

4. Adjust your goals and expectations

Some who are excessively self-restrained may also face the situation that their goals and expectations on themselves are too ambitious. This normally comes in two ways: First, they never stop till it’s perfect, despite the fact that nothing could be really perfect. Second, they establish an ambitious goal to themselves. The more unachievable it seems, the more fulfilled they will feel. 

For example, losing 10 pounds in a week, quitting smoking immediately and cutting pizza forever off the diet. It then easily goes into an unbalanced and unhealthy cycle that they always set goals but never reach them, no matter how hard they’ve tried. Plus, every time bad habits come back 10 times stronger than before as a payback. 

My suggestion is:

* Perfectionism is a fallacy.  * Attainable is more important than ambitious.  * Huge success always comes from small steps through the time.

5. Work smart instead of working hard

Finding more effective and efficient methods is also another way to avoid self-torture. We might all have ever been stuck in the situation that no matter how much effort we’ve made, the progress is sluggish. Some went further by devoting endlessly. But, reflecting on it, have you found better ways to do it instead of just trying harder? 

For example, if I have a goal of learning 20 new vocabularies each day when learning a language, I might follow the Forgetting Curve to improve the efficiency. When trying to stay focused when working from home, I use the Pomo Technique to maintain a work-life balance.

Be careful, sometimes when you feel you’ve been “super self-disciplined”, you may just be “less productive”. Like what Henry Ford said, “Improved productivity means less human sweat, not more.” 

Takeaways:

Self-discipline doesn’t have to be associated with discomfort, pain or depression. Therefore, when establishing the healthy habit of being self-disciplined, please remember:

* Follow your own energy flow and limit

* Follow your own heart instead of others

* Keep a positive mindset based on self-acceptance

* Adjust your goals and expectations

👋 Approaching the mid of 2020, TickTick has walked a long way to keep making itself a better tool for you, our lovely users! In the recent months, there were also some great improvements. This review is to give you more insights of what has been upgraded and what yet to come.

What has been improved recently?

A brand-new “Focus” evolved from “Pomo”

⏱️ A new Stopwatch mode to count up your Focus time

Stopwatch has been added to “Focus” to enable you to easily track the time spent on the task that you were not sure for how long it would take. It also provides another option for those who do not wish to be interrupted by a Pomo timer while conducting work. This new Stopwatch, together with Pomo, has made the way to count and track your focused hours at TickTick becomes even easier and more well-rounded.

🍅 Pomo timer can support pause

A more personalized Pomo timer is the one that can let you pause and resume according to your own pace at work. However, only three chances to pause because we still wish you to stay focused.

🌧️ Enriched White Noise for background sounds

In addition, TickTick also enriches the background sounds, so that you can have more White Noises choices to help you stay focused. Last time in the blog I suggested you to try the Biscuit sound, tell me whether you like it or not 😉

📈 More informed and in-depth Statistics for Focus

An enhanced Focus Statistics provides you with a more clear and comprehensive visual demonstration, intending to help you understand better how much time and effort you’ve devoted into different tasks and what’s the trend of your focused hours. 

A more customizable “Habit” tracker

🧘‍♀️ Enriched and Categorized Habit Gallery

Categorized by Life, Health, Sports and Mindset, more than 50 kinds of habits are well sorted and presented in the Gallery. There is also a Suggested section in case you haven’t got any habit-building plan.   

🚶‍♀️ Customizable Habit Icon

Not only to customize your own habits, but also to make your own habit icons! Name a new habit ➡️ pick a background color ➡️ type texts or emoji in. Ta-da! Here comes your own unique icon!

❎ A new “Unachieved” status

Say NO to the situation that habits can only be checked as achieved. Now, it becomes possible to see what you’ve missed at what time and also for what reason, simply by checking your habit as “Unachieved”. This is helpful for you to reflect on your habit building process at a later point. I know some of you may only wish to see what you’ve achieved and may also be a little afraid of seeing the failures. However, what TickTick Habit promotes is always a healthy lifestyle, never a burned-out one. We wish you to know that it’s totally OK to fail sometimes, and reflecting on it is what keeps you moving forward.

📝 A more helpful Habit Log

To help you understand your habit-building process, the Habit Log has been improved by including an individual switch for each Habit, and also mood trackers! In this way, you are free to decide whether to write something about a habit or not, and also to track your feelings when doing certain habits.

The new Integration with Gmail

📩 Achieve inbox zero with TickTick for Gmail. Never miss out anything important by turning your emails into tasks and setting due dates and priorities.

1⃣️ Add TickTick for Gmail from your G Suite Marketplace

2⃣️ Open the desired email in Gmail

3⃣️ Click TickTick on the panel to the right

4⃣️ Edit some details and set due dates and priorities if needed

5⃣️ Click “Add Task”

Now, you can easily see and manage this in TickTick. 

🗣 Available both on 💻 and📱

With all these exciting upgrades above, we hope you’ve enjoyed TickTick even more. Tell us how you feel or what you are also expecting 🙋🙋‍♂️

What to come?

📋 Kanban View for mobile - Manage projects on the go

Email has long been one of the main sources of our tasks. Among all the email clients, Gmail plays a fairly large role. To help you handle your inbox more efficiently, TickTick for Gmail is now officially released in G Suite Marketplace! Stay on top of your Gmail inbox by adding emails as tasks into TickTick. Never miss any important ones by setting due dates and priorities. Achieve inbox zero with TickTick for Gmail ✅

🛠️ How to set up the add-on?

There are two ways to make the add-on work:

1️⃣ Set up from G Suite Marketplace

1. Go to G Suite Marketplace “TickTick for Gmail”

2. Click Install 

3. You’ll then be directed to login and authorize the Gmail account you would like to integrate TickTick with

2️⃣ Set up within your Gmail

1. Go to your Gmail

2. In the panel to the right, click on the ➕  icon to open the G Suite Marketplace

3. Search for TickTick for Gmail and select it

4. Click Install, and you’ll then be directed to login and authorize your Gmail account

📩 How to use TickTick for Gmail?

To conquer your inbox on the go, we make the TickTick for Gmail available both on desktop and mobile. 

Open the email you want to create the tasks with ➡️ 

Click on the TickTick icon on the panel to the right ➡️ 

Choose the Due Date (at the moment, you can only pick the due dates available via the drop-down menu, but further set up can always be made within TickTick after the task has been added) ➡️ 

Edit the Task Name and Task Content, if needed ➡️ 

Set the Priority ➡️ 

Click on ADD TASK ➡️ 

Follow up on the tasks in TickTick

Streamline your workflow from inbox to to-do list by turning any email into a task. With Gmail and TickTick, plus the smooth integration in-between, enjoy a peace of mind from the messy inbox and never miss to follow up any important emails from now on.

Download the “TickTick for Gmail” add-on today to clean out your inbox for real this time. 

Everything You Need to Know about Procrastination

Understanding procrastination

Usually, we think of procrastination as a bad habit, but this might not be the case. Research by Burka and Yuen, authors of Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It Now, have found that procrastination is not a bad habit, but a psychological syndrome caused by one’s fear. In other words, procrastination is not purely a problem of time management. Instead, it concerns people's inner fears, expectations, doubts and pressures. 

There might be some people, like myself before, who’d always leave their tasks to the very last minute before the deadlines and look forward to a suddenly-bursted extraordinary performance, or a very best luck ever. Some even say the closer the DDLs are, the more productive they are.

So, is the deadline really a force to drive us forward in a positive way?

My answer is negative, although from the surface it may seem harmless to some people, and can to some extent be converted to motivator. However, deep inside, procrastination brings more harms than good for most of us.

Consequence of procrastination

1. On top of all the damages caused by procrastination: mental sufferings. Even though relaxing first brings instant joy, it’ll soon be replaced by overwhelmingly negative feelings: e.g. anxiety thinking, nagging pain, a guilt of not starting earlier, and etc. Not hard to imagine how painful it is to be trapped into this situation for a long period of time.

2. From the view regarding one’s physical health, there’s also detrimental consequence. Chasing DDLs usually means overworking at a late point. For example, burning the night oil in a row. If this continues as a habit, it will threaten one’s physical health as well.  

3. There might be consequences to other people as well, because people who procrastinate a lot may be bad at time management. For example, being late for a date because they’ve not started dressing up earlier, or being unable to submit a task on time because they’ve wasted a lot of time thinking. These could then make them easy to not be trusted by others, and people around them may also sometimes feel disappointed.  

Then, what at root drives us to procrastinate? What makes people consciously or unconsciously choose to procrastinate?

Reasons for procrastination

1. Excessive perfectionism

People who are perfectionists normally have very high standards to themselves and to the work they do. Therefore, they easily fall into the fear of not being able to reach these standards, or making mistakes on the way which will lead to undesirable results. By not getting started, the mistakes/failures will not happen, which means at this procrastinating point at least, they don’t have to worry too much. 

Also, many perfectionists may waste too much time thinking how to do instead of actually doing. They choose to wait till a perfect plan is ready. However, in fact there is neither a flawless plan nor a perfect outcome. Plus, it’s extremely hard for excessive perfectionists to be fully satisfied with what they’ve achieved no matter how good it is. 

2. The rewards are too far away. 

Studies have shown that the farther the due date is, the less binding force it may execute on us, and the easier it is for us to feel unmotivated to start. Compared to gaining rewards from a not-so-recent future, instant gratification is obviously much easier. 

This might be the very reason why many people choose to enjoy first and do later. For example, if the deadline for an assignment is 2 weeks from now, then spending 2 days watching a new series on Netflix doesn’t seem like a big deal. 

3. Fear of difficulty

Reason for this fear is we know the goal is too big and require hard work. Sometimes when we are given a big task, e.g. dissertation, we might be very likely to feel overwhelmed, not knowing where to start or how. The motivation then downgrades to 0. Similarly, when a monthly personal KPI has been given, even just thinking of it brings a lot of headache already, let alone start doing. 

4. Lack of awareness and skills of time management

Sad but true, I know:(  

For these ones, getting so used to an unstructured work/study style makes it even harder not to procrastinate. Never thinking of organizing or not knowing how, is a big hindrance to their productivity. But, it’s totally fine if you just enjoy the flow and do not worry about getting things done. However, for these who crave progression and success, then tackling procrastination and learning how to manage your time and organize things well is extremely important. Let TickTick help with that 🙌

5. Dislike of taking orders

As some of you might feel relatable, deadlines and dues are set usually by other people, either our professors or team leaders, to the tasks assigned. For those who have strong self-awareness and do not want to be tasked by others, they consciously or subconsciously resort to procrastination as a way to resist the order. Meanwhile, they try to declare some autonomy and freedom by refusing to do things at this moment and ignoring them till later.

Ways to fight against procrastination

The most painful part of procrastination is not working on the task, it is starting the work. Therefore, to beat procrastination, is actually to find out ways to get us started. 

Where to start

1. Set a realistic goal and fairly evaluate your ability

Make sure your goal is inspiring but also attainable, based on the evaluation of your ability now and its potential to grow, plus the time and effort needed in achieving your goal. 

For example, if I have three free weekends this month, then I probably establish a goal: finishing reading a book this month. Many procrastinators are too optimistic about their ability in the future and underestimate the time needed to complete the task. When deadlines approach, it’s just frightening and frustrating. 

2. Divide the goal into more achievable ones

If the goal seems too big to reach, then cut it into smaller pieces to reduce the fear of a sudden commitment. 

Going back to that book-reading example, to finish reading a book in a month, I may divide the task into reading ¼  every week, and then 10 pages each for working days and 20 pages each for unscheduled weekends. Compared to 1 book, 10 pages just sounds like a breeze. 

3. Trim the unnecessary and only keep the priorities

According to Pareto Principle, 20% of the things in life can determine 80% of the results. Therefore, when facing multiple tasks, sort them out based on urgency, importance, necessity and other indicators. Next, take the lead in dealing with high-priority things. This method can effectively help us abandon those low-value and insignificant activities, and rationally allocate limited time and energy for the maximum return.

4. Start from a small task 

Some may argue that starting from a hard task is better for time management. However, for a lagging person like myself before, starting is the most difficult part as I said. Therefore, an easy task can first “allure” me to start, and when finishing this, the rest of my day is then kept in a feeling-productive momentum.

Long-run strategies

1. Increase incentive mechanism 

The best way to do that is to bond the completion of a certain task with an instant reward. For example, if I finish writing my blog draft today, I’d be rewarded with 30 mins to play with my dog. If reading through all literature within scheduled time when writing a dissertation, I’ll treat myself with a big meal or an outing day. In this way, before each task starts, motivation will replace stress to activate your enthusiasm.

P.s. Please remember, what the reward for is always your hard work and progress, not the results.

2. Reduce the task aversion from a mental side: 

Go deeper into the given task and find/develop some parts you feel passionate about from it. If you’ve found out the joy of doing things, then a task will not be a task anymore, but a daily trivial, something like teeth-brushing. Those who work out consistently no matter how busy he/she is, are actually regarding working-out as a daily activity. This sounds a little bit like self-brainwashing, but believe me, it brings positive results in the long run.

Other possible solutions

1. Make use of visual tools 

Write the daily tasks down for enhanced execution force: Some research has found out that writing down your to-do tasks makes it easier for you to really complete it.

Check it done for enhanced encouragement: When I see the visual hints, e.g. a visual tick, like the logo of TickTick, that tells me I’ve achieved something, it is like an energy transferred into my body. Not only visually, it’s a mental encouragement I’ve got from the process.  

2. Create a co-supervising system

By inviting a friend/colleague to co-supervise each other, it may help you two to both keep on the right track. Also, in this co-supervision scheme, competitive people will hate to lose. By losing here actually means your friend finished her task while you didn’t. A positive competition vibe is formed here to probably give you a little gentle push.

Final words

An improved "Habit" feature is rolling out now and ready for use at TickTick. Read to explore what’s new!

🆕 A brief version:

1️⃣ Enriched Habit Gallery

2️⃣ Customizable Habit Icon

3️⃣ Customizable Habit checking frequency

4️⃣ Newly added “Unachieved” status for Habit-checking

5️⃣ Divided reviews of checked and unchecked Habits

6️⃣ Quick emoji add in the Habit Log

7️⃣ Display of both Current Streak and Total Days

8️⃣ Individual switch for each Habit Log 

9️⃣ More beautiful and inspiring images to share

🔟 Access to creating and editing Habit on desktop

📝 A deep-dived version:

1. A more customizable experience to create, check and review your Habit

1) To create:

Say Hi to the enriched and categorized Habit Gallery

There are not only some common habits being added in the Gallery, like Track expenses, Do skincare, and Do push-ups, but also some interesting ones, like Be a good cat keeper, and Roll eyeballs (in a way for your eyecare of course 😂). With a wider range of habits covering four major scenarios: Life, Health, Sports, and Mindset, I’m sure it’s much easier to find yours. If no one rings in your mind, see what habits we suggest in the Gallery. If there still isn’t a fit, you know you can always create your own ones.

Customize your Habit Icon to make it unique

Not only to customize your own habits, but also to make your own habit icons! In addition to the previous way of choosing an existing icon from our list when crating a new habit, there is new way -- DIY! Name a new habit ➡️Pick a background color ➡️Type a letter or emoji in. Ta-da! Here comes your very own unique icon. For example,  “Go for a Stroll = 🚶‍♀️+  🟡”.

Create and Edit Habit on the desktop versions

Enhanced accesses to Habit on the desktop allow you to create, edit, check and manage your habits anywhere and anytime!

2) To check:

Set up your own Habit-checking Frequency

Previously, when it comes to the frequency for Habit checking, only Daily and Weekly can be picked. However, we understand your needs for more flexibility. Therefore, “Interval” is introduced here for you to freely decide at what intervals you wish your Habit to be checked.

Check your Habits as “Unachieved” if necessary

Say NO to the situation that your habits can only be checked as achieved. Now, it becomes possible to see what you’ve missed at what time and also for what reason, by checking your habits as “Unachieved”. This is helpful for you to reflect on your habit-building process at a later point. I know some of you may only wish to see what you’ve achieved and may also be a little afraid of seeing the failures. However, what TickTick Habit promotes is always a healthy lifestyle, never a burned-out one. We wish you to know that it’s totally OK to fail sometimes, and reflecting on it is what keeps you moving forward.

3) To review:

Distinguish what’ve been checked from what haven’t with a more clear view

When you used to review your daily Habit, there wasn’t a divided space for which one is checked and which is not. Therefore, to help you better distinguish them, we’ve improved the view by separating the already checked ones from what remains. 

See both the Current Streak and Total Days of Habit

Another subtle change here is the review of the Current Streak of a Habit and the Total Days you’ve insisted on doing it. To make it easy to access and also to save space, what you need to do is simply tapping the time to switch between each other.

2. A more personalized experience to record, share, and analyze your Habit

1) To record:

Freely decide whether to keep a Log for each Habit

Previously, we’ve provided an overall switch of Log in Habit settings. This, however, isn’t the best solution for those who'd only like to keep logs for some instead of for all. To address this, Auto-Display of Habit Log has been made more flexible with individual switches included in the editing page for every habit.

Quick add emoticons in the Habit Log

Apart from texts, Habit Log can also support quick adding emoticons now. This feature may function for some of you who not only wish to record your progress of a Habit, but also your feelings in doing it. 😄

2) To share:

Share your progress with a more beautiful image

We’ve made the picture of your Habit achievement more shareable! The number of days you’ve persisted in doing something and also your account avatar, are included in the image ready to share (Example below).

3) To analyze:

Get to know your stats better with Habit Statistics

For this moment, we’ve included the Weekly Habit Status in the data overview within My Profile (access via settings). On this page, "Task Statistics", "Focus Statistics" and "Weekly Habit Status" are respectively presented.

For what’s next: Like what we’ve improved on Focus Statistics, we are also going to extend it on Habit! This means a more well-rounded and in-depth data analysis for Habit will be coming on the next stage!

To wrap up, now with enriched and categorized Habit Gallery, customizable icons, separate controls for Habit Log, mood trackers in the Log, newly added “Unachieved” status and a more clear review for Habit-checking, you can build and track your Habits in a much easier, customizable and more personalized way.

A healthier and more self-disciplined life starts here at TickTick. Planting a good habit now and reaping it in autumn 🍁

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How to avoid productivity pitfalls of remote work at COVID-19 crisis

Editor: Lizzy - A new comer to remote work 

An unexpected COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global rollout of working from home for the last month(s) and some maybe for now too, whether it’s out of personal choices or out of no choices 😂

Although this may be no difference for those who’ve already been used to remote work, like some freelancers. However, for those newcomers to this, like myself, it really could be a complete disaster. Not just the change of workplace, it’s the change of everything: work schedules, collaborative methods, work environment, and more importantly the state of mind. Being at home naturally makes me feel like doing nothing but binge watching Netflix. 

I know some of you might experience the same as me. Some others may likewise be struggling with the smell of bread floating up from the kitchen, or unexpected shouts from their kids/parents, while at work. 

To prevent these factors from sabotaging the productivity of working at home, here in the following is what I do in this long combat. These six tips so far have made my working-from-home days more productive, organized and also more enjoyable 😉

1. Create an undisturbed work-only space:

This space does not have to be large or fancy. Instead, it could be a kitchen corner less traveled by people you live with, a table behind your bedroom door, or a cleaned-up space in storage/garage. Of course it could be better if it’s by the window, because who doesn’t like a sunbath while working at home? ☀️

Why a separate area for work essential?

- Physically, a relatively quiet place helps prevent distractions from others.

- Mentally, it reminds you that when walking into this area, what you do is only work-related. 

2. Dress up in your usual smart look:

I know some would say this is totally unnecessary, but for someone like me who can never work efficiently in pajamas or oversize T-shirts, then dressing yourself up in the usual way before starting work in the morning, will be a good way to quickly get you ready for the shift to a work mode. But make sure it’s not too much, otherwise your mum may think you’re going on the T-stage live stream (or it’s just my mum). 

3. Make a simple to-do list:

This might be the most efficient way for me to plan my work and batch different tasks. These lists may be about a recent project, a customer list, a self-learning plan, or anything.

- First, try breaking down a long-run goal in your list into more doable small tasks and link them together if necessary

This is to mitigate difficulty and better activate your motivation.

* Find more here about how to achieve subtasks and task quick switching.

- Create different folders to collect the lists to keep them right in order

- Remember to mark tasks as completed. 

It’s really a huge satisfaction and encouragement being able to see how much progress I’ve made daily or periodically. Yes, even though this encouragement is not from a real person, still, it makes life sweeter 😄

- If necessary, share your lists/tasks with colleagues 

In this way they can co-work, edit and comment on your tasks, when it comes to team collaboration. 

- At the same time, don’t forget to create lists for family

By separating tasks at work from life, housework or your kids’ homework can also be reasonably dealt with.

4. Schedule your day properly:

I always make my daily and weekly schedules according to the priority, and set up reminders on what’s important in case I forgot. That not only clearly tells me what to do at what time, but also helps me review and reflect on what has been done, for further improvement. 

But also remember: Not just including work tasks in schedules, regular breaks deserve a place. For example, even just a 10-minute coffee break ☕️or a 30-minute nap, can clear your mind for a while and help you recharge and bounce back to work more efficiently. 

5. Stay focused, focused and focused：

To stay focused is probably the biggest challenge for me when working from home, first because I’m not an easy-to-stay-concentrated person, and then is all the temptations at home: Phone/iPad/Switch, and also the largest one, my dog. Can hardly say no to his fluffy face begging for playing toss n’ fetch. 🤷‍♀️

Here are the methods I‘ve tried:

- Putting all electronic gadgets 300,000… meters away

- Drinking coffee nonstop (ask me how to make a great flat white at home, I might share you the list 😉)

- Harshly refusing my dog’s game-playing invitation

However, none of these seem to work really well. Now, what’s instead? 

- Pomodoro technique ( what is Pomo 🍅)

Pomo timers enable me to arrange my time wisely: Making the best use of limited focused hours of a day by striking a good balance between work and relaxation.

- White noises 

White noises in another way simply ease my nerves and clear other sounds around, putting me in a mood to only pay attention to what I do (Tried ASMR tho, just not my thing, but may be yours).

- A delayed gratification strategy 

A delayed gratification strategy here in general is work first, enjoy later. Work harder to get a bigger reward. For example, refusing my dog’s request for now, but if I finish a task on time, then go to play with him for 15 minutes. If less than the scheduled time, then 20 minutes. Likewise, treating myself with one-hour fun time for playing Animal Cross if I’ve completed more than 90% of my scheduled work for today. 2 hours if over-completed. 

TickTick has recently made a major improvement of the previous Pomo (renamed as “Focus”) feature. New features make our “Focus” function more accessible and customizable for you. Upgrade now to unlock your brand-new “Focus” experience! Let's explore together what’s new about “Focus”.

☑️ Two modes available now to help you focus better: Pomo & Stopwatch

🍅 What is Pomo？

Pomo technique is a commonly-used time management method. By using a timer to break down work into intervals (normally 25 minutes for each work period), with short breaks (normally 5 minutes each) in between, it helps people use their time wisely and concentrate better on tasks. Here, the 25-minute period is called “Pomo”. 

Many people have benefited from using this method, especially to improve their work efficiency and time management. Some also believe a better work-life balance and even a more productive lifestyle starts with Pomo. Now, easily make it all happen at TickTick!

⏸️ What have we improved on our previous Pomo feature?

Previously, in order to help you focus on tasks, the Pomo feature did not support a Pause action in a Pomo session. However, we understand sometimes something unexpected may pop up when you are trying to focus on your work with the Pomo timer on. Don't worry! That will not be a problem anymore, because the newest Pomo can be paused anytime. BUT only three times at most to pause your Pomo timer, since we still wish you to stay in the Pomo mood! 

⏱️ A brand-new Stopwatch mode to count up your Focus time

Stopwatch is a whole new feature we’ve developed this time. If the former Pomo offers an ideal solution to count down your focus intervals, then what Stopwatch does is to give you another option to ensure the continuity of your work time by counting the time up. It serves the best for some of you who do not wish to be interrupted while conducting work. With an easy tap at starting Stopwatch, you are switched to a simple recording mode of your focused hours. It can also be paused and resumed anytime at your own work pace. Also, like Pomo, it is easy to get into a full-screen mode if you just tap the blank space when the Stopwatch is on.

🔛 Switch between Pomo & Stopwatch 

Both Pomo and Stopwatch are designed to assist you with better concentration. After understanding the distinctions between these two features, some of you may start wondering, “Can I freely switch between Pomo and Stopwatch at any point? Is it easy to do so?” The answer is absolutely YES. Mode-switching can happen immediately because the two icons are right next to each other within the page of Focus. “Then will it change my choice of ongoing task or affect the counting of my total focused hours?” NO, your task remains no change even if mode is shifted, and your overall focused time will not be influenced by this.

☑️ Wider choices of White Noises are at “Focus”

White Noises normally mean those authentic sounds from nature or our daily life, like the sound of rain, wind, people talking at cafes, and etc. Scientific studies have shown that listening to these sounds can help clear our minds and thus enhance our concentration on tasks. To use it as a litter helper, we’ve updated this feature to provide you with more options of White Noises at “Focus”! Sounds, such as Storm and Lava, are new on the list. Try the Biscuit sound and you are gonna love the kink 🍪

☑️ Track your “Focus” trends with more informed stats

Besides enabling you to focus better with two different modes and more background sounds, what is also improved is our in-app support for your personal time-spending data analysis. In earlier versions, you may only be able to see your stats like Numbers of Daily/Weekly/Total Pomo Earned and Focused Hours, Most Focused Moments, and Completion Rate of Pomo Goals. But now, apart from these, we’ve made it a more comprehensive analysis to help you understand your personal stats better!

📊 What’s the new powerful Statistics like?

1⃣️ Separated slides instead of one page to show your time-spending stats (overview/daily/weekly)

2⃣️ Day-on-day and week-on-week comparisons between Numbers of Pomo Earned and Focused Hours are available.

3⃣️ Graphs to show percentages of your time spent on tasks sorted by Lists and Tags

4⃣️ Pie charts that clearly reveal your Focus Goal Completion Rates

5⃣️ A surprising integration with Apple Health! Data of your Focused Durations at TickTick now can be synced to Apple Health Mindfulness.

Now, with more flexible mode choices to help you stay focused, wider options of White Noises, and greater data support allowing you to look deeper into the stats of your time allocation, TickTick can’t wait to get on there right now to provide you a better “Focus” experience! Try it by yourself and we’d always love to hear your feedback in the notes or at [email protected]

What is IFTTT?

IFTTT (If This Then That) empowers your apps and devices to work together in a new way by establishing connections (“applets”).

In the applet of IFTTT, “This” is the Trigger; “That” is the Action. A simple example could be:

If {Event added to Google Calendar} Then {Create a task in TickTick}

Explore popular connections on IFTTT to get some inspirations. 

What does the TickTick and IFTTT integration do?

IFTTT brings an even more automated task management experience in TickTick. 

🔫 Make TickTick as a Trigger

The Trigger fires every time you add/ complete a new task in TickTick. 

You could also go further to have more control over the Trigger. For example, configure the trigger to fire only when: 

- a task is added to a specific list/ the completed task is in a specific list

- a task is added with a specific tag/ the completed task has a specific tag

- a task is added with specific priority/ the completed task is set with a priority

After everything is set up properly, information such as task name, task content, as well as Start & End Date will all be fired to the Action. 

🎬 Make TickTick as an Action

The Action will add a task in a specific list in TickTick.

Just like what you could do with Triggers, it’s up to you to decide the list to which the task belongs, task name, task content, due date and priority. 

How to connect TickTick with IFTTT?

1. IFTTT is free! If you haven’t got an IFTTT account yet, the first step will be signing up one;

2. Open TickTick’s IFTTT Channel and activate it in your IFTTT account;

3. Connect your TickTick account with apps you use every day, such as Alexa, Slack, Evernote, Twitter, Instagram, Uber, FitBit, and so many more! 

@lifehacker​ The Beginner’s Guide to IFTTT

Create applets to win free Premium

To celebrate the integration with IFTTT, we’re going to give away two TickTick yearly Premium to two lucky participants.

To participate, all you need to do is:

1. Make sure you’re a TickTick user

2. Create your own TickTick + IFTTT applet(s)

3. Share the applet(s) on Twitter or Facebook with the #️⃣hashtag #TickTickIFTTT

All participants have an equal chance to win! We’ll randomly draw from the full list by: Friday, April 17th at 11:59PM PDT . The two lucky winners will be announced in this blog. We hope you enjoy TickTick’s integration with IFTTT and the best of luck to win free Premium!

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[📣 Updates] The two winners of the #TickTickIFTTT Giveaway are @dushenkevych and @spthealien. Congrats! Premium will be arriving soon. Winners please keep an eye on your Twitter/Facebook messages.