Using Todoist to Be More Productive

Todoist is a great tool for managing your tasks. With its smart features, you can focus on what’s important and get the most out of every day. While it has primarily been used by people who want to be more productive, there are other ways in which this centralized app could improve survival rates among survivors like ourselves.

Todoist is a task management app that allows users to manage tasks, projects and notes. The “todoist premium” allows users to access their tasks from any device. This is helpful for people who work on multiple devices or want to access their tasks quickly.

Between 2006 to 2009, while I was in law school, I was a productivity addict. I studied every book and visited every website on how to hack life like a ninja so that I could get more done and manage my time and duties more effectively. In the hopes of discovering the Holy Grail that would miraculously unleash a world of optimum living, I also checked out a number of productivity programs.

During these years, and subsequent years, I experimented with a variety of internet tools, software, and pen-and-paper methods that claimed to help me get more done. But none of them ever met my expectations. They were either too complex, with so many capabilities that the tool became overpowering, or they were too basic, with inadequate customizing possibilities.

Thankfully, in 2014, I came across Todoist, a productivity program that offered everything I needed and more. The hunt for the Holy Grail was finished, and I’ve been utilizing it for almost six years in both my professional and personal life.

People often ask about how I manage my time, so I thought I’d describe how I use Todoist on a daily basis. It’s something you should check out for yourself if you’re searching for a strategy to help you get more done.

Note: Because we live in Idiocracy, where everything is provided by Carl’s Jr., I’d want to make it clear that this is not a Todoist sponsored article. While they did interview me once about how I use the app, I have no financial or other affiliation with Todoist. I utilize and suggest the service on a regular basis.

Why Do I Recommend Todoist as the Best Task Management App?

Todoist enables you to make digital to-do lists and divide them into multiple categories or “projects” at its most basic level. However, it has capabilities that enable you to do a lot more with it than a traditional to-do list:

It syncs and works on all platforms. Todoist includes applications for all major desktop and mobile platforms. There’s also a web-based version of it. If you modify anything in your Todoist app on your desktop, it will appear on your smartphone, and vice versa.

Collaboration with others is simple. Todoist enables you to create a to-do list that can be seen and used by other people. This collaboration option is quite useful for organizing group tasks, and I use it both at work and at home. Todoist is how Kate, Jeremy, and I keep track of everything we do at AoM. Todoist is also how Kate and I manage our domestic to-dos and family responsibilities. In addition, I use Todoist to cooperate with my coworkers at church in monitoring our congregation’s young men’s program.

Simply create a task and delegate it to someone. Boom. It’s that easy. There will be no more “Who was supposed to do that?” inquiries.

Todoist works with a variety of different programs and services. Todoist is so frequently used that it’s integrated into a number of apps and online services. Todoist’s Gmail interface, for example, enables me to convert emails in my inbox into Todoist tasks. I’ll get to it later.

A complete list of Todoist integrations may be found here.

It’s simple to use and may be set up as you wish. This, I believe, is why Todoist is such a strong productivity tool, and why I’ve been using it for the last six years. Todoist is a basic application that enables you to create lists. As, you may structure your lists however you like, and Todoist makes it simple to explore and manage them. It has the ideal structure-to-flexibility ratio.

Todoist: free or premium?

Todoist has a free edition that allows you access to the app’s basic features. You may gather tasks in your inbox, give due dates to tasks, create up to 80 projects, and interact with up to 5 individuals per project with the free edition.

Todoist’s premium edition costs $3 per month and includes all of the features that make it the ideal productivity software. For better organization, you may give labels to your tasks, set reminders for them, add comments to them, and upload files linked with them. You may create up to 300 separate projects with the premium edition, and each project can have up to 25 employees working on it.

While I have a Todoist business membership (which is an upgrade to the premium service), I believe that most people can get a lot out of the free version. The premium version’s added features are wonderful to have, but they’re not required for most people.

How I Make Use of Todoist to Get Things Done

I’ll explain how I set up and utilize Todoist at work and at home in the sections below. In many respects, I use it to apply David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” approach; “GTD” was the system with which I had the greatest success over my years of trying with productivity tools, but I never quite got it right. Todoist provided me with the structure and organization I needed to implement a GTD-inspired system in my life on a regular basis.

While I’ve described what works for me, you’ll almost certainly need a different configuration. It took me a few of years of trial and error to figure out this specific method, so I’d advise you to play about with Todoist until you find something that works for you. Hopefully, this explanation of my setup has piqued your interest in using Todoist in your own life.

Put everything in Todoist’s Inbox.

Todoist’s inbox folder is the default location for any tasks you add to the program. You may add tasks directly to project folders, but I like to pour everything into this general inbox first, then filter and organize the tasks into more specific categories.

I mean everything when I say I pour everything here: job duties, thoughts I get during the day, reminders to respond to certain emails and text messages, and so on.

I’ll go into how I handle things in my Todoist inbox in more depth later, but for now, think of it as the ultimate digital catch-all for your open loops.

Create projects based on various aspects of life.

A project in Todoist is a container for a group of tasks all linked to the same objective or part of your work/life. You turn an action item into a project when it contains more than one stage. To take a trip, for example, you’d create a project called “Vacation” and then place all the action items for finishing that project in that folder.

I know some people who utilize Todoist’s projects tool to create projects for all of their multi-step activities. I tried it at first, but it was too much for me. On Todoist, I had about 30 distinct tasks at one point. It’s not easy to handle. I gradually narrowed my focus to initiatives for just the most important aspects of my life: work, home, personal, and church. There are sub-projects in several of these projects. I have a sub-project for “Art of Manliness” for all AoM-related work, a sub-project for “TSL” for all Strenuous Life-related work, and a sub-project for “Store” for all AoM store-related work under my Work project.

I make sure to assign assignments to their correct projects and add due dates when appropriate when I handle stuff in my inbox daily and monthly. Then you may click on each project to view all of the tasks associated with it.

In addition to the ones I’ve stated, I have the following project folders:

Maybe/Someday/Someday/Someday/Someday/Someday/Someday/Some

I got the concept for the Someday/Maybe folder from Allen’s Getting Things Done. This is where I’ll keep track of all the things I’d want to accomplish, or at least think about doing, but don’t have urgent plans to do. I’d want to record the thought in order to prevent it from vanishing or reappear on my mental bandwidth indefinitely.

I’ll briefly check over the Someday/Maybe project during my weekly review to determine whether I’m ready to take action on any of its pieces.

The Routines Project

Working With Todoist, by Carl Pullein, gave me this idea. We all have daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance responsibilities that we must do. When you forget to accomplish these things on a regular basis, your life’s systems break down. Paying bills, cleaning the house, planning, and home upkeep are all examples of routines. You may also have work-related normal chores, such as weekly reports. The Routines project makes certain that these recurrent activities are never forgotten.

I built three sub-projects under my Routines project: daily, weekly, and monthly.

I’ve included the nagging but important everyday duties into each of those sub-projects. Todoist is fantastic since it allows you to assign a recurring date to a task. So, if you want to do something every day, you simply write “water plants every day” into a task. Todoist will generate the task for you automatically so you may check it off every day; when you check it off on Monday, Todoist will create it again for you to complete on Tuesday.

You may put “pay kids allowance every Sunday” for weekly assignments. Boom. It will always be on your to-do list to pay your children’s allowance on Sunday.

I go through my regular projects once a week to see if there’s anything I need to add or delete from the lists.

The basic Todoist arrangement that I’ve decided on and have been using for the last several years is an inbox + projects for the key areas of my life + a Someday/Maybe project and a Routines project. Let’s have a look at how I use this arrangement.

Quick Add helps you free up mental space.

Quick Add is my very favorite Todoist function. I can rapidly add a task or item to my Todoist inbox with a few keystrokes. During the course of my workday, I could utilize the Quick Add function if I’m reading something for work and come across a reference to another book I’d want to read or have an idea for an article to write. I just use the Quick Add keyboard shortcut and write the concept into the pop-up box. Then I go back to doing what I was doing before. This helps me to keep my attention on the work at hand while capturing the notion.

At the end of the day, I’ll go through all of the things I’ve added to my inbox using Quick Add and assign them to the appropriate project.

With Gmail integration, you can turn emails into tasks.

In addition to utilizing the Quick Add option on a daily basis, I also utilize the Gmail Integration feature on Todoist. It’s a Chrome addon that enables you to convert emails from Gmail into Todoist tasks. This is a great technique to keep emails that need a response from getting lost in your inbox.

Include Todoist in your weekly planning session.

The weekly review and planning session that I undertake on Sundays is the most crucial aspect of my Todoist method. In the post “How to Plan Your Week,” I go into great depth about my weekly planning process. (It’s worth noting that I wrote that piece in 2012.) Back then, I used “Things” (a Mac program) to keep track of my tasks. It’s a nice app, but it’s only available for OS and iOS, and you can’t collaborate on it.)

Dump Your Mind

My weekly planning session begins with a brain dump. It’s exactly what it sounds like: I spend around 15 minutes going through my to-do list for the following week and using the Quick Add tool to add it to my Todoist inbox. I simply went with the flow. Even the most ridiculous ideas are sent to my mailbox for review and deletion.

I’ll often utilize a GTD Trigger List to prompt my mind to consider all of the chores I need to do that week, and then use Todoist’s Quick Add to record all of those tasks as they arise.

Dates are sorted and assigned.

I begin processing everything once I’ve poured it into my Todoist inbox. I set each job a due date and allocate it to the relevant project (Work, Home, Personal, Church). In Todoist, this is quite simple. You may manually assign a job to a certain project using a select box, but it’s far easier to do so by entering “#[project name]” next to the task entry (see the above example). You may either manually click on a dropdown calendar or input “today,” “tomorrow,” “April 25,” or “next week” to give it a date. Todoist will give a date to any task if you provide a time parameter.

I place tasks in the Someday/Maybe category if I don’t intend on taking action on them anytime soon.

After I finish processing items in Todoist, I use my calendar to plan out my week. Fantastical is what I use to keep track of my appointments.

Review of the Day

I conduct a fast evaluation of my day every night. I look at what I accomplished (tasks vanish from their respective lists when you check them off, which I do as soon as a task is completed, but you can examine them later under “Accomplished Tasks”) and see which ones I didn’t. I’ll give the projects that I didn’t finish new deadlines. I’ll allocate any new things in my Todoist inbox to their relevant project folders and set a due date for each.

Collaborate with Todoist

As I previously said, we use Todoist to manage all of our team tasks at AoM. Our team gives each other jobs to complete and utilizes the comments tool to discuss about a particular assignment. Team AoM’s task management and completion has been greatly expedited thanks to Todoist’s collaboration features.

Todoist may also be used to work with your family. Kate and I address all of the duties and to-dos that need to be completed around the home and in our family at our semi-weekly marriage sessions. In our shared family project list, we assign tasks to ourselves. When one of us finishes something, we mark it as finished. It’s a fantastic approach to make sure we’re on the same page.

So there you have it. That’s how I use Todoist to keep track of my business and personal obligations. Its versatility will enable you to utilize it in more complex ways if you so wish. Todoist, on the other hand, keeps things simple in any case, and for me, it’s been a wonderful blend of contemporary tools for keeping things properly managed and structured… with the profound, lifelong gratification of crossing things off the to-do list.

Watch This Video-

Todoist is an app that allows you to easily set up a task list. It has templates for various types of tasks, such as “Today”, “To Do”, and “Waiting For”. This makes it easy to get started with the app. Reference: todoist templates.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you use Todoist productively?

A: Todoist is an application that helps users keep track of what they are doing. It allows for easy scheduling, prioritizing tasks, and reminders all in one place.

How do I get the most out of Todoist?

A: The best way to get the most out of Todoist is by setting your daily granularity from 1 day to 7 days. However, this will only work if you have a recurring task that happens on a regular interval and it needs to be completed every day or every other day.