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Episode 175: Hyper-Scheduling – A New Way To Add Clarity and Focus to Your Day with Harry Ng

In episode 175 we talk with Harry Ng, co-founder of the Sorted app, about hyper scheduling as a food blogger to be productive daily.

We cover information about defining hyper scheduling and how you can incorporate it into your day, rigidity is not the goal and encourage you to download the app so you can have the founder Harry walk you through a few key features.

Listen on the player below or on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.

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Guest Details

Connect with Sorted
Website | Facebook

Bio Co-founder of Sorted. Digital Nomad. Lately, learning about photography.

Takeaways

  • Hyper scheduling isn’t just time blocking, we aim to schedule more precise tasks into the day to be more productive.
  • You know the context about what you need to do within a certain period of time.
  • When you need some changes or you need to plan out your day, the whole process should be done within a couple of minutes, rather than spending a lot of time setting up your time management system.
  • Effective planning can be done the night before.
  • Sorted is set up to help reduce the stress a to-do list brings and keep you productive in your day.
  • Lack of commitment causes to-do lists not to get done.
  • Unified, Effortless and Flexible are the 3 key strategies built into the Sorted app.
  • Unified allows you to sync up calendars and allow you to work in one and update the other.
  • Effortless allows you to incorporate hyper scheduling with minimal clicks and time.
  • Flexible allows you to deal with tasks or events that weren’t achieved and need to be rescheduled with simplicity OR broke up into multiple tasks if they grew in aspect of what needed to be accomplished.
  • Auto scheduler allows you to put down a list of tasks and the auto schedule feature organizes your day for you around events that are set in time.

Resources Mentioned

Why To-Do Lists Don’t Work

Why Schedule Stuff

Transcript

Click for full text.

Intro:

Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, where food bloggers come to get their fill of the latest tips, tricks, and insights into the world of food blogging. If you feel that hunger for information, we’ll provide you with the tools you need to add value to your blog. And we’ll also ensure you’re taking care of yourself, because food blogging is a demanding job. Now, please welcome your host, Megan Porta.

Megan Porta:

Food bloggers! Hey, are you looking for ways to make money as a blogger? If so, we have got your back. We have launched an ebook called Conversations On Monetization. Inside this resource, we take your favorite podcast episodes about monetization, and we put them all in one easy accessible package. We threw a few exclusive interviews in as well. Friends, there are so many ways to monetize your food blog. Inside this ebook, we have interviews with success stories like Todd Bullock, Alyssa Brantley, Kelly McNelis, Jena Carlin, and more. All of these examples have become successful through completely different monetization strategies. Whether you are a brand new blogger looking for your very first revenue stream, or you are a seasoned pro wanting to diversify, this ebook is for you. Go to eatblogtalk.com to grab your copy. And we can’t wait to hear your success story with monetization.

Hey, food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk. This podcast is for you. Food bloggers, wanting value and clarity to help you find greater success in your business. Today I am so excited to have a chat with Harry from Sorted App, and we are going to talk about hyper scheduling as a way to add clarity and focus to your day. Harry is the co-founder of the Sorted App. He is a digital nomad and lately he is learning about photography. Harry, I’m excited to chat with you about this. I love talking about productivity, but first we all want to hear your fun fact.

Harry Ng:

Yeah. Thanks for having me. Fun fact, since we are talking about food here, all the time, uh, I want to mention my love of French toast. So the thing is that when I travel around the world, I try to find the best French toast in town. Sometimes it’s even cooked with homemade French toast. So it’s not always in the restaurant. Sometimes homemade French toast tastes really good as well.

Megan:

What is your favorite? Where have you been that’s made you say, yes, that was one of my favorite French toasts.

Harry:

I think one of the best was in Tokyo.

Megan:

Ooh, I wouldn’t have thought that. That was surprising.

Harry:

Yeah. It’s just a breakfast restaurant and then we went there to have breakfast. Also the coffee there is pretty good too.

Megan:

I love good coffee and I love good French toast and I’m sure all the food bloggers listening are like, Oh yeah, Harry, I can show you the best French toast.

Harry:

That would be great.

Megan:

Bring it on, right?! Oh, I’m excited to chat with you. So ever since we scheduled this interview, I’ve been really eager to have this conversation because my listeners know that I am absolutely obsessed with everything productivity. So this is a great fit for me and also for my audience, because food bloggers are always looking to up their productivity game. In preparation for this talk, I downloaded your app last night and I purposefully did not dig into it because I want you to walk me through it. So I just want to prep you guys, food bloggers. If you’re listening, download the app, it’s called Sorted app, like S O R T E D. Get it on your phone. It’s because, in a little bit, I’m going to have Harry walk us through how to use it, maybe key features and things like that. I’m super excited about digging into it. But first Harry, before we get to that, why don’t you talk through this term that you use, which is hyper scheduling. What does that mean? How did you guys come up with that? Or maybe it’s a term that’s already coined and I just didn’t know about it.

Harry:

The term itself hyper scheduling is relatively new and seems like it’s currency getting more popular among different communities. For us, we have our own definition of hyper scheduling. To get started, maybe we can think of it as something like time-blocking, I’m sure you know about that. Time-blocking in general, you would schedule four hours of marketing, two hours of accounting. You will have a bigger chunk of time and you will be doing the related stuff during that period of time. But for hyper scheduling, we aim to schedule more precise tasks. For instance, it could be having a meeting with the engineering team or sometimes it could be related to your life or family, ready to pay the bill, pay the phone bill, takes five minutes to finish.

It is so precise that it has the exact work. You know the context about what you need to do within a certain period of time. The other thing is that we aim to make scheduling faster and easier with hyper scheduling. Meaning that when you need some changes or you need to plan out your day, the whole process should be done within a couple of minutes, rather than spending a lot of time setting up your time management system. So I think that would be the gist of what hyper scheduling is.

Megan:

So in a nutshell, it’s being super specific with time blocking, correct?

Harry:

You can see it as a more precise version of time-blocking.

Megan:

Okay. That makes sense to me. That’s pretty much what I do anyway. I am really clear about what I’m going to be doing. You mentioned accounting or you had a few examples that were just really, really clear and specific, and that is exactly what I do. So I think we’re on the same page. You also mentioned planning should only take a couple of minutes. So when do you recommend doing planning for your day and how do you do it so fast?

Harry:

So for myself, my own routine, it’s not required to have the same routine for everyone, but for myself, I generally plan my day on the night before. So I will look at my own schedule, see what I want to do tomorrow, and then put them tomorrow as a list first, then the second thing I would prioritize them. Having the more important tasks being on the first item and so on. Next thing, I can use the feature and sorter, the auto schedule feature to allow it to quickly plan out the whole day for me. Basically it will put each task into different time slots, not overlapping each other, and also having some buffer time in between so I can get an overview of what I can do and when to do them throughout the day. Then I will just go to sleep then look at that again tomorrow. Basically start the day witjh that.

Megan:

I love the night before planning. I think it’s super effective because you can kind of get it in your mind what is going to happen, right? Then the next day you already have an idea. You wake up knowing, so you’re not wondering what am I going to do today? What am I going to dive into? Night before planning for me is super effective too. Do you recommend planning your week ahead of time? Or do you just go day by day?

Harry:

I always go day by day, but also there are some cases, like I know this particular task that has a time boundary. Basically I cannot do it earlier or do it later. There are two kinds, right? The detail one is the general life thing, you must do it before some certain time, but there are also cases that you must do it at a particular time. Now would just slow it to that day. I may already know the specific time to do that. Let’s say it is 2:00 PM, and I can do it at 2:00 PM. But there are also cases that I don’t know when I want to do it yet, I only know that I need to do it on that particular day. Then I would just throw it into that day and forget about it. When that day comes in, it’s just some moving machine and the day passes by and it would just bring the task back to you. Then you can decide on that day, when do you want to work on that? Or maybe in some cases, it is not yet relevant, then you can throw it to another day again and think about that when it comes to you.

Megan:

I like that. I’m really excited to actually check out the app because I love what you’re saying. So before we get there, is there anything more about hyper scheduling that you want to explain? I think you did a really good job of explaining it, but I didn’t want to go on unless you were done with that.

Harry:

Yeah. So initially we were thinking about the history behind why we built this. At the very beginning, like many other people, we tried a lot of productivity apps in the market. For myself, they like to do this, calendars or some other lock ticking apps, but then none of these really stick with me. We have been looking for another way to improve this whole process. One thing is that we want to reduce the stress over time. Many to-do lists would just create a lot of stress because they tend to become longer and longer. The primary reason behind that is that there is a lack of commitment, they didn’t help you find certain time to work on those tasks. You didn’t commit to doing that. So those lists get longer and longer. After sometime, we think that scheduling is the way to do, however, the traditional scheduling methods, like a chore, you cannot do them quickly and easily. So that’s how we come up with this concept of hyper scheduling so that you can do the whole process in a really quick way and easy way.

Megan:

So you mentioned to do lists and I mean, everyone listening probably understands that concept because I constantly have an ongoing to-do list. I do get in those ruts where I just keep adding to it. Then I keep looking at it and thinking, well, I’m never going to get that done. When is that going to get done? So it becomes more of a frustration point then than it is helpful. Do you believe that your app actually eliminates to-do lists?

Harry:

It is not exactly eliminating to-do lists but it’s a way to help you in doing those tasks. The reason behind is that once you schedule your tasks into your day, there are several elements in it, right? You have time to do it. Also you will estimate the duration for doing that. That means you are committing to doing that task. When you go through your day, you look at your schedule, you follow what’s in there, and then you work on them. That’s how the app and the concept helps you in doing them rather than just keeping a longer and longer list.

Megan:

That makes sense. So really lack of commitment to a to-do list is the culprit of not completing the tasks and your app helps you commit to completing the tasks on your to-do list. I think that will resonate with people because I have, let’s see, looking at my list of six items that I’m really not committed to finishing today, and I’m pretty sure they will not get done because of that. Can I just ask you, it is free, correct?

Harry:

Yeah, it is free. It’s a free app where everyone can download it and get started using it. This is the experience and the learnings over the past, say six years, we have been on the app store for six years and after 1.5 million downloads, we learned enough from our customers. A lot of our users, students, for instance, really want to use the app, but they do not have income yet. So they are not sure whether they want to spend some money on buying yet. So we choose to offer them for free. They can use it for forever. Later on if they think, they are in need of our pro features, they can get into the pro level at any time, and it’s also a one-time purchase. So it makes everything easier to start.

If they are able to support us, they can always get to the pro level. In order to make it work, there are three strategies that we built into the app. Also that’s part of how hyper scheduling worse. With these three points in mind, it would be also a lot easier to get started in using it. So the three things would be, unified, effortless and flexible, and I can explain a little bit on each of them. For unified, we want your schedule of tasks alongside your calendar events in a unified timeline. The reason behind is that we may have between events or recording a podcast, or maybe have some other things on the calendar. We are also having some other tasks that we may be able to do at any time of your own preference.

If you put the two things together, meaning that you have one big picture for your everything. So it’s a small focus and you don’t need to use multiple apps, multiple views in order to find the everything about your day. For the effortless. The second thing, we think that doing task management or your day planning, it shouldn’t be spending too much time in managing the system. It should be as simple and quick as possible. We have some feature spring, the auto schedule I mentioned earlier. The way to do it is basically just two types away. You click auto schedule and it will plan out the full day for you. You don’t need to arrange each of your tasks to a particular time one by one.

Megan:

That is so nice. I’m excited to learn more about the auto schedule and to see if that’s a good fit. I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit more about this as we look at the app, but what if I have meetings for two hours, I can set those, right. Then just auto schedule around it?

Harry:

Exactly. That’s the purpose of the auto schedule. It basically helps you to fit your tasks into your availability of the day. This only is just two types away. You don’t need to do it one by one manually.

Megan:

All right. Then what about the third word that you mentioned?

Harry:

Yep. The third one is flexible. We know that things don’t always go as planned. Your day may have some accidental changes or some new ideas coming in. So we want to be able to make changes and adapt throughout the day. This is about being flexible.

Megan:

Because flexibility is huge. So it’s not set in stone. If you don’t get this all done, your phone’s not going to explode or anything. Because realistically, we all do need to be a little bit flexible. So unified, effortless, and flexible are all words that resonate with me and I’m sure others that are listening. So those are great. Is there anything else you wanted to say on those before we dive into the app?

Harry:

Yeah, I think that’s it for now. And let’s dive in.

Megan:

All right. Would you mind walking me through it? I just opened it. I have it on my phone. It synced with my calendar, which is amazing. So I see the interview I’m doing with you is on here. I have one after this, a few other things I have scheduled. I’ll just let you take it from here.

Harry:

Sure. So to start with, you already see some events in it because you already turned on the Kennedy integration. We help you to bring in the events from your latest calendar into Sorted. It can be multiple calendars or you can just choose which calendars to show in the settings. I assume you may have your personal calendar, your podcast calendar, or maybe some other work calendars as well. Now you may have some other tasks in mind that you put inside to Sorted already.

Megan:

I haven’t put anything in, so how do I input a task? Is it the top three dots? No, I see. It’s the giant red plus button.

Harry:

There are multiple ways. The one at the bottom right. The plus button will be the easiest way. You can edit by starting typing the title of your task to start with. Just a quick reminder here, when that tasks you have some extra information that is related to the task, you can also put dots in it by just tapping return on the keyboard. That part is quite powerful. You can put, say, chat boxes into it, or you can put bold italic highlights and so on. They will help you to pull white. They have enough information about this task. In some cases, if taking a picture would be helpful, you can also add an image attachment or file attachment in this session as well.

Megan:

That was helpful. I’m glad you’re talking me through this because I don’t know that I would have thought to enter, but yeah, I’m just writing notes. Then at the very bottom of that entry, you can type in duration. So I just tapped duration and I’m going to put in one hour. Done. So that is sitting in my magical place here. My app.

Harry:

With the configuration, you already estimate the time needed for doing this task, but maybe at this point you didn’t set any starting time yet, which is fine. We are basically brain dumping the ideas into it. Then we can do the auto scheduling a bit later on.

Megan:

I’m just going to put a few things in here that I do know I have to do today. Then I want you to show me how to auto schedule. Okay. I have two tasks along with a handful of meetings and I think that’s probably going to take up a good portion of my day. So now how do I do the auto schedule?

Harry:

Okay. Exciting time. Let’s go. Auto schedulers work in a few different ways. Let’s start with an easy one. In Sorted, the current auto schedule feature mainly applies to your tasks. It didn’t affect the events at the moment, but we are planning to add that in the future. For auto scheduling tasks to start with, you can tap the top right three tab button, and there is an auto schedule feature in it. Then you will see. Then you should be able to see an interface about some quick settings, about auto schedule.

Megan:

Oh, right. So you can type a duration. So if I want to be done working at 5:00 PM, I can just note that here. So it’s like the time frame that you want to be working in or doing whatever you’re doing.

Harry:

Yeah. So there are a few settings altogether because the audience may not be seeing it at the moment. So let me explain. There is a starting time meaning that when would you want to auto schedule for your whole day. So typically for myself, I may be starting my work at 9:00 AM every morning, that I will keep my 9 am as the starting time. If your current time is later in the day right now, it may show your current time instead.

Megan:

So if I’m scheduling for tomorrow, I can predetermine what time. But right now I’m starting at 10 30. So it’s just going to show that.

Harry:

Exactly. And then by tapping next on iPhone, or if you are using the Mac version, it is in the same interface, you will be able to see two additional settings. One is about buffers. Then the other is about the default duration. The buffer is for the auto schedule to keep some buffer time in between tasks. So that after finishing each one, you get to take a rest, get some water and so on. So we help you to create those buffer times in between tasks here as well. And for the duration, it only applies if you didn’t set up the duration to each task. So we will assume a certain duration for you. After setting these up, it is time to click the stop button. Then that auto schedule works for you. So after running that, you should be able to see this. First of all, the tasks will not be overlapping with your events. So that means tasks go between events. Then the other thing is that now the tasks have their own starting time within your day.

Megan:

If I want to create a new event that is not in my calendar, can I set a specific time for it or do I have to have it in my calendar in order to have it stay where it’s at?

Harry:

You can also create a given from within Sorted. So basically the same place to start with, the bottom right plus button, and then at the top, you will be seeing on the right side, the events. Then you can type in your event. You can also set the starting time by tapping the date there in the middle. So actually you can set the starting time for tasks and events. But this way, of course it will be slower because you are doing it one by one. It will be just similar to your traditional calendar apps.

Megan:

Yeah. Right. So it would make more sense probably just to go into your calendar and put it there. Is there a way to quickly sync, you can just pull down on your screen for it to sync or how does that work?

Harry:

For the events part, meaning there are sitting inside the calendars. We basically just sync it right away to the native calendar. So the native calendar holds your events information.

Megan:

So if I added something for today, once I was already seeing it in the app, I could still get it to show up. Maybe that was a really dumb question.

Harry:

And in contrast, our tasks, see inside Sorted. So that means if you create a task, it only shows up within Sorted, but you can sync the content between devices, like to another iPad.

Megan:

Okay. So this interface is also available on desktop. So I could sync between the two.

Harry:

That’s true. We recently launched our Mac app back in December, two months ago.

Megan:

Awesome. Okay, good. I will probably use the two together because sometimes I’m at my computer and it’s just easier to record there. Sometimes it’s easier here. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with Toggle, but I use that for time-tracking once in a while. I do that same exact thing where I’m sometimes just here and it’s easier and they sync all the time. So every time I make a change in one place, it shows up in the other. So it sounds like that’s kind of the same thing.

Harry:

Yeah, me too. Uh, I use Toggl a lot to see how much I work for myself.

Megan:

Yes, me too. It’s constant improvement and a way to see exactly what I’m working on. Every time I do it, I come away with insights about things that I’m doing too much for or too little of. I always tell people to try it. If you haven’t done time logging, you should definitely try it.

Harry:

Yep. It’s also good to constantly reveal for yourself what you do, how much time you spend on doing such things. We are also promoting to do some revealing of new things in Sorted as well. Going through your day, you may have your task finish. You may have your events finished. That means you can check them off in Sorted. And after days you can basically go back, on a daily basis to see what you did on a particular day. Or you can go into the history mode to see in terms of a longer list. Then you can see the chronological order of what you did.

Megan:

I love that you guys have a history, so you can look through. So that basically is like time logging. You can look back and see exactly what you spent your time on.

Harry:

Yeah, more or less.

Megan:

It’s not exactly the same thing. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s very similar. So once I do have a task that I’ve finished, how do I check it off? Do I swipe to the right or just tap on it?

Harry:

You exactly nailed it. You can just swipe it to the right to complete it, or simply tap the chat box on the left.

Megan:

That’s really easy. Then I noticed there’s a little icon to the right of each task. I have terrible vision, but I think it’s like a little note paper or something. If you tap that, it looks like the details about that task just pop up, right?

Harry:

Yeah. It’s just an indication that you have looked inside it. So early on, we put some notes into your tasks, right. But some tasks, like paying phone bills, you may not have information in there. Then you just put the title in the task and then that task will not have that little icon. So the way it works is that, for any task, if you want to see the detailed information, meaning the notes or the other attachments that you include early on, you can tap on basically anywhere on the task to expand it and see the detail in it.

Megan:

I see. Yes, that works really well too. Then if there’s a little bell by it, that just means that… or wait. What does the bell mean?

Harry:

Which one?

Megan:

Okay, does everything have a bell? So on the left side, as you’re looking down, just the left side of your phone, I see the bells. Does that just mean that it’s set for a certain time?

Harry:

First of all, the left side, we call it a timeline of your day. For the early one, maybe the first one, there it is solely about you. But for some others, it may be showing you a time. So the time basically means that time you want to do that particular task, or it is a starting time for certain events. When it becomes a bell, it means overdue. So it’s just now past that time. Let’s say it may be 10:00 PM now, and then for that 9:00 PM task over there, it will show up as the bell, meaning it’s overdue. And then you know that you should be doing it or at least take some action about it. Say it can be deferring them to a later time or even put that to another day.

Megan:

That makes sense. So it’s a reminder that you need to figure out your schedule, get on your tasks.

Harry:

So actually, I think of a quick hint. This is actually bringing into an interesting feature that Sorted initially built. So let’s say you have two tasks on your schedule right now. Then, assume that both of them are overdue and you want to defer both of them. Instead of changing the time one by one, there is a quick way to help you change them flexibly. So ready? Here we go. So you can start by using our patent gesture. You start by on the first item, swipe from the right to left and then keep your finger on the phone and then swipe down to see that and other items.

Megan:

So swipe from right to left. Oh, so it selects both, correct?

Harry:

So it is a quick way to help you select multiple items. We call this gesture a magic selecter. After selecting them, you can defer the selected items all together. Do you see a time ruler showing up on the left, on top of the time that we were mentioning? You can swipe down on the time ruler, then you should be able to see the time changing.

Megan:

Let me try that again. So I have them both selected, and then I go to the bottom where the three dots are?

Harry:

You just swipe on the time ruler, scroll the time ruler.

Megan:

Oh, I scroll it. Oh, okay. I gotcha now. That is cool. That’s very handy. Once you have them selected, you just put your thumb on the ruler on the left and swipe up and down where you want them to be moved to.

Harry:

Exactly. This is what flexible means here, right? This is a combination of the magic selectant feature and the time ruler feature. So the original reason is that you need to be for multiple tasks because you have some certain meetings or appointments coming up on now, then you can select multiple items using the magic select. Then by scrolling down to the time ruler using your thumb, you’re able to adjust your schedule quickly altogether.

Megan:

Yeah. You don’t have to go into each one and select a time and then figure out. That’s a really great tip. I’m glad you went through that one. So what happens if I delete something accidentally and I want it back?

Harry:

Yeah. So again, it will be separated into tasks and events. Our original version of Sorted actually just worked on task. We didn’t have integration in the really early version. So for the task, if you delete them, they go into the trash. That means you can recover them from trash. However, if it is an event you need to be a bit more careful for now because deleting the event will just go away. We are going to improve this part so that events can be recoverable as well.

Megan:

So to go into the trash, you just tap on the three lines on the bottom left and tap trash. My trash is empty, but I did put something there.

Harry:

So maybe you were deleting the events instead of tasks.

Megan:

Oh, that could be. So just be really careful not to delete the events.

Harry:

Yeah. It is harder to manage for any Canada clients out there. So it’s always better to be more careful about handling events, especially those events can be a shared event as well. Which you have your participants in the event. So generally we try to not change events as much, but at the same time, we want to make sure that they are sitting together in a unified timeline so that you can manage both tasks in events, all together in just one interface.

Megan:

Okay. I just saw it down at the bottom. If you scroll to the bottom of your task list, you can actually see what you’ve completed, which I think a lot of people will love because part of the fun about having a to-do list is seeing what you’ve done, right? So you can tap on that and see everything that you’ve done for the day. So I love that. That’s a great feature.

Harry:

Anything you complete will go down to the bottom. For some other people, they don’t want the completed task, still cluttering their day. They can hide the completed tasks by tapping the little button at the bottom or in between if you are seeing the completed items right now.

Megan:

Okay. That’s super cool. So I also noticed you can filter. So can you talk us through that a little bit.

Harry:

Filter is really useful when you are having more tasks in your day and you also put in the organization structure into it. For example, we have two concepts here. One is lists, the other is tasks. For lists basically you categorize them into bigger categories. For myself, I may have a family as a list, house as a list, or it could be marketing, accounting, et cetera. For the tasks, you can have multiple tasks on each task. Usually, like the concept suggested in GTD, getting things done. You can use contests as for your tasks. The location in doing that, your energy level or your importance or priority. You can put multiple tasks to indicate how you label this particular task. So after you have lists and tasks, you can start using filter by lists or filter by tab to just show a subset of your task list of the day.

Megan:

That is awesome. You’re talking to food bloggers who very well understand the concept of categories and tags. So they will for sure understand that. I can see this being very addicting and I am excited Harry, to dive into this later. This is like right up my alley. Is there anything else? So if you go to the top right three dots and tap the timeline, I noticed it just shows you a calendar style view of your day. Then it also shows what you’ve crossed off. That’s really cool. If you’re wanting to have a more calendar snapshot, then you can view by tasks so you can kind of decide. Is there anything else you want to point out? Any tips or features that we haven’t covered?

Harry:

One thing which would be interesting, the scenario is that when you put something in your task, as we mentioned earlier, you can put notes into it. The notes can be a checklist. Let’s say if I am preparing a recipe and then I can put the steps and ingredients into it, right? Then after a while, your recipe may grow longer and your checklist inside that task gets too long. At some point you may want to break it down into multiple tasks so that you can work on them at different times, or maybe you simply want to break it down so that you have a smaller list to work with. Then you can use a combination of a couple of features. One, what I would do is I would first duplicate this task and then secondly, I think use a feature called reorganize so that you can split them into smaller and more attainable subtasks.

Megan:

So how do you do that? You just tap on the task and then what?

Harry:

To do that first, you need to expand a certain task with notes in it, and I’m sure you have one here right now. Then inside the expanded wheel at the bottom right, there is a three dot button. Then inside, you will see the two features that I just mentioned. One is duplicate, the other is reorganized. Duplicate is quite straightforward. It’s simply making a copy of your tasks. So we can talk more about reorganizing features here. Then it brings it to the reorganize wheel. In this wheel, the first thing you can do is to rearrange the order of the note session. Say the checklist inside by simply dragging the paragraph and then move it to another position.

Megan:

So you tap and hold and then you can rearrange. Tap hold drag.

Harry:

That’s right. And now if you want to have that checklist, making sure a separate task, basically we split it into another task. You can use the same feature, the same gesture. You drag that chat this to the bottom box. Then you can see a preview of how they are arranging in each future task. So you can basically put multiple chat boxes in the same place holder at the bottom, or you can put into another one, depending on how many tasks you are going to split into. So the final step is just to tap that done button at the top right. Then it will be split into multiple tasks.

Megan:

Really cool, Harry, this is amazing. I am so glad that I found this app. I feel like this is what I need right now. Good timing. This interview is great timing and we’re going into a New Year. So I think food bloggers are just looking for ways to organize and plan and actually accomplish the things that they want to on their to-do lists. Right?

Many people may think about our scheduling or even hyper scheduling may sound stressful somehow, right? Because many people may think, Oh, I need to schedule everything. Then I need to have a strict timeline or plan on how my day works, but actually it is quite the opposite. Maybe some tips here, is that for me to start with, I don’t always have a rigid schedule to start with. I will basically roughly plan my day by using auto schedule features or just quickly prioritize them. Then what I would do is after wanting an auto schedule, I will take a look at what it brings out to me. Maybe I can make some adjustments, first, before going into the day. Then after picking this routine for a few days, you will start to feel or how many tasks you can actually do every day. What exact duration you may be spending on each task? Then you get to know, oh, actually how many tasks can I arrange, in the future. So you get to basically improve over time in the way of doing hyper scheduling.

Megan:

That is a great way to approach it because when you think of scheduling and planning, a lot of people get turned off by that, quote, rigid scheduling, like you said. It doesn’t really have to be like that. For that reason, I’m excited to dive into the auto schedule feature. So you recommend putting your tasks in, running an auto schedule, see what pops up, take a peek at it, make adjustments as needed, and then learn the following day what didn’t work the day before. If you set a time, an hour to photograph a recipe and it wasn’t enough, then note that and carry it over into your following days. It’s always a process. It’s not like if you do it for a week and you’re frustrated, don’t give up, just keep trying to tweak what you’re doing.

Harry:

Yeah. As long as the process doesn’t take you that much time, generally it may be just one or two minutes of work. Then you get to make this as a habit and make it as you know, what we learn over time is that consistency is the key. As long as you can do it easily every day, you will get to make it a habit, and it will eventually help you to become more positive.

Megan:

Yes. I love that. That is all stuff that speaks to me so much. So I’m excited to dig into this and probably today, I will. Now can anyone reach out to you guys if they have issues or questions about the app as they get into it?

Harry:

Yeah. To reach out to us, we have two major channels. On the website, we try to write a bunch of articles on blogs sharing how we create this app and what can help, using the app better. The website is sortedapp.com. S O R T E D A P P.com. So they can find more information there. In case they have any questions, they can also send a message on Twitter and our handle is S O R T E D H Q.

Megan:

Perfect. That’s awesome. Is there anything else you want to say about your app or hyper scheduling before we start wrapping up Harry?

Harry:

As mentioned earlier, just give it a try. Even as we talked about the workflow  a little bit earlier, it will be a lot easier to try it for yourself. So just go to the app store, find the app Sorted, give it a try, at least for two to three days. Then you will know what this app is working for yourself.

Megan:

Yeah. I always say that about Toggle and time tracking tool. Don’t give up on it right away, because it’s different. It’s something you’re adding to your life that is not your normal. So of course, you’re going to forget at times and for toggle anyway, it’s like time will go by and you’re like, Oh man, I forgot to track two hours. Nevermind. I’m just going to throw in the towel. But no, go back and add the time. Same here, keep up with the app because eventually you’re going to train yourself to look at it more often, and it’s going to start helping you be more productive and get to tackle your to-do list. So I like your recommendation to just stick with it for at least three days and see what comes of it. Because this sounds like an incredible help for people who are really busy.

Harry:

Yeah. I totally agree with your take on, just try it and then even if it is not precise. It doesn’t matter. Just do it and then you will see the benefits after keeping doing it for a while.

Megan:

What does your premium feature look like? What does that include that your free version does not?

Harry:

The standard features would allow you to add unlimited tasks and unlimited calendars. Using all the cool features, like magic select and time ruler, et cetera, to basically schedule your day. For the pro features, it will include things like auto schedule, reorganize, and a bunch of other stuff. They are able to see the list of pro features when they download the app and get into the settings page.

Megan:

Okay, perfect. This has been great, Harry, I am pumped to try this. I’m going to report back and let you know how productive I’m being this week.

Harry:

Looking forward to it.

Megan:

Yes. Well thank you for being here. Thanks for taking the time out for this today. I really appreciate it. And I think this is going to benefit food bloggers a ton. Harry, we’re going to put together a show notes page for you and for this episode, and we’ll put together just everything that we’ve talked about, and maybe I’ll even include a few screenshots or something that would be helpful to get people interested. A link to the app and your website and all of that good stuff. So if anyone wants to peek at that, go to eatblogtalk.com/sortedapp. You already did tell everyone where to find you. So I think we’ve got that. So just thank you for being here again, Harry, and thank you for listening today, food bloggers. I will see next time.

Outro:

We’re glad you could join us on this episode of Eat Blog Talk. For more resources based on today’s discussion, as well as show notes and an opportunity to be on a future episode of the show, be sure to head to eatblogtalk.com. If you feel that hunger for information, we’ll be here to feed you on Eat Blog Talk.


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Megan
Megan

Megan started her food blog Pip and Ebby in 2010 and food blogging has been her full-time career since 2013. Her passion for blogging has grown into an intense desire to help fellow food bloggers find the information, insight, and community they need in order to find success.

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