(Side note: One quick productivity hack is to use a filtered news service. A great tool to do this is to join over 1 million others and start your day with the latest news from Wall St. to Silicon Valley. This newsletter is a 5-minute read that’s informative, witty and FREE!)
The main reason you should consider this app is it’s the perfect place to practice the “mind like water” concept that David Allen discusses in his book, Getting Things Done.
To quote Allen:
In karate, there is an image that’s used to define the position of perfect readiness: “mind like water.” Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm. It doesn’t overreact or underreact.
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The power in a karate punch comes from speed, not muscle; it comes from a focused “pop” at the end of the whip. It’s why petite people can learn to break boards and bricks with their hands: it doesn’t take calluses or brute strength, just the ability to generate a focused thrust with speed. But a tense muscle is a slow one. So the high levels of training in the martial arts teach and demand balance and relaxation as much as anything else. Clearing the mind and being flexible is key.
Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does. Responding inappropriately to your email, your staff, your projects, your unread magazines, your thoughts about what you need to do, your children, or your boss will lead to less effective results than you’d like. Most people give either more or less attention to things than they deserve, simply because they don’t operate with a “mind like water.”
Allen’s point is that your mind is the worst place to store your ideas, tasks, and appointments. Sure, you’ll probably remember most things, but if you develop the practice of capturing every open loop in your life and putting them in one place, then you can free up your brain to focus on only the task right in front of you. And in my humble opinion, the best tool for doing all this is the Todoist app.
Let me explain: Most to-do lists are a mix of reminders, appointments, tasks, and random goals. These can often cause you to feel overwhelmed. Even if you work diligently and complete dozens of tasks, you might end the day feeling frustrated because you didn’t check off every item on your list
The goal of this Todoist tutorial is to help you rethink your to-do lists. On the surface, you’ll find a walkthrough of all the app’s features, but you’ll also discover many strategies that can help you focus on the tasks that truly matter.
identify the activities that are most important for your personal and professional life
remember every single date-specific appointment, meeting, and personal obligation
create projects with clearly identifiable next steps
use Todoist to remove the distractions and “noise” that prevents you from focusing on your big-picture activities
implement the advanced features to streamline the most precious asset that you possess—your time
#2. Todoist uses push notifications that act as important reminders
I usually turn off push notifications for any new app that I download. I find them to be intrusive and excessive, and they often pop up when I am trying to do something important.
However, the push notifications that are sent by Todoist are always relevant, and they can help you remember important tasks and appointments that you might otherwise forget. If you use reminders selectively (which I’ll discuss later), these notifications will help you make sure you never miss a critical meeting or deadline.
#3. Todoist uses cloud storage to protect your tasks
#7. Todoist provides one central location for all your information.
Warning
At first, you might be tempted to mark multiple tasks with a red or orange flag because they all feel important. This is a mistake that I made. But if your tasks list is full of numerous priority 1 entries, you’ll find it hard to identify the next action to work on.
It has been said that once upon a time, the word priority was used in the singular form, which meant you could only have one priority at a time.
In my opinion, if you’d like to truly master your time (and get the most from Todoist), you must be extremely selective about what you label as a priority. The only items that should get a priority 1 label are the tasks that absolutely, positively need to be completed by the end of the day.
Now, there are two basic types of triggers. The first is an external trigger (like a cell phone alarm, a push notification, or a Post-it note on your refrigerator). External triggers work because they create a Pavlovian response (e.g., when the alarm goes off, you complete a specific task).
The second type is an internal trigger, which is a feeling, thought, or emotions you associate with an established habit. These are like a scratch that you must itch. For instance, if you’ve ever compulsively felt the need to “check in” with social media, then this action was the direct result of an internal trigger.
Focus on Building Simple Habits
As someone who constantly thinks (and writes) about habit development, I’ve learned that one of the secrets to consistency is to set realistic daily goals. That’s why I recommend creating habits that are achievable—no matter how hectic your life might get. The simplest way to do this is to incorporate a mini habits concept.
A habit stacking routine can be broken down into five critical components:
Identify small important actions that you need to do daily.
Group these actions together into a routine.
Schedule a specific time each day to complete this routine.
Use a trigger as a reminder to complete this stack.
Make it super easy to get started.
In this section, I’ll briefly cover five types of tasks:
Actions
Appointments
Ideas
Projects
Processes
Actions
These are the quick tasks that don’t require a lot of advanced planning. They can be completed in a single block of time—anywhere from a minute to a few hours. Most of the time, actions are those random activities that pop up during the week that need to be scheduled into your calendar.
Examples include:
writing a quick report
getting a haircut
mowing the lawn
going to the post office to mail a package
handling an unexpected customer service issue
Actions can also include habits. As we’ve discussed, these are the recurring personal and professional activities you need to do daily.
Examples include:
checking and responding to email
writing for business or for fun
reading nonfiction books
exercising for at least 30 minutes
completing an evening “shutdown” routine
Appointments
This one is pretty obvious—some tasks require you to be at a certain place at a certain time and meet with a specific person (or group of people). Generally speaking, there’s no wiggle room when it comes to completing an appointment-based task. It needs to be scheduled into your calendar, and then everything else in your life has to be worked around it.
Examples include:
doctor and dental appointments
conversations with your lawyer, accountant, agent, or other professionals
business meetings
events for family members
planned vacations
Ideas
We all have great ideas. They often come out of nowhere—popping into your mind at the weirdest moments, like when you’re exercising, showering, doing chores, and talking to others. It doesn’t matter when or where you get an idea—what’s important is to capture it! And one place you can capture these ideas is in Todoist.
Examples include:
tasks you need to complete
future projects to pursue
strategies to add to your current projects
people you should network with or meet
resources to research
I typically use the Evernote app to store all my ideas. I find that Evernote is a better platform for capturing certain items (like receipts, website bookmarks, audio notes, and other types of research). But since my Todoist app is always open, I’ll often use it as temporary storage. When an idea pops into my head, I’ll immediately put it in Todoist. Then at the end of the day, I’ll either add it to an existing project or record it in Evernote as a potential project to pursue.
Whether you use Todoist, Evernote, a journal, or even a scrap of paper, it’s important that you develop the habit of recording every idea that you have. You never know when a random thought will turn into a million-dollar idea!
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Projects
Many tasks will require multiple actions to complete. Sometimes these can be done in a single day, and other times you’ll need to spend weeks, even months, doing them. That’s why you should turn every multi-step activity into an action-oriented project list.
This project list can include items like:
a due date, if there’s a deadline involved—including milestones for phases of the project
simple tasks that can be completed in a single day,
clearly identifiable “next steps” that might prevent the project from moving forward
labels that add context about where the task needs to be completed, how long it will take, or who needs to be involved
links and resources that you want to research
daily habits critical to the success of the project
examples of tasks that can be turned into a project:
buying a gift for a specific person
preparing for a speech
tackling a new work project
training for an athletic event (like your first 5K race or an obstacle course race)
planning a trip for your family
Processes
It’s important to create a distinction between projects and processes. With a project, you often don’t know what steps are needed to complete it. You start with a rough idea and keep adding tasks to the project as you think of them.
So how can you make a distinction between projects and processes?
Well, once you’ve completed a similar project once or twice, then you won’t need to create a brand-new project list because all the actions will be familiar. Instead, all you’ll need is a checklist (i.e., a process) to remind you of all the steps to complete.
You can create a process list one time, upload it to Todoist, and then you’ll have a paint-by-numbers checklist that you’re familiar with. Once again, this is a topic we’ll cover extensively in a future section. Until then, here are a few examples of processes:
going grocery shopping
packing for a trip
preparing for your weekly meeting
writing a book
publishing a blog post
. A task should only be labeled as a priority if it’s time-sensitive or is a task that is crucial to your long-term success. The danger is if you identify all your tasks as priorities, then you’ll be confused about what task needs to be worked on first.
There’s no greater feeling in the world than reaching the afternoon knowing that you’ve already checked off the biggest task from your to-do list.
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any task that requires multiple steps to complete should be put into its own project. That way, you can break everything down into actionable steps that can be completed daily.
Career
Goals that help you focus on improving your productivity, increasing your business revenue, or climbing up the proverbial corporate ladder. Whether you’re looking to improve a specific work-related skill or streamline your business, career goals are important because they have a direct impact on the other six areas of your life.
Finance
Goals that will increase in importance as you get older. These actions include saving for retirement, improving your credit score, eliminating your credit card debt, and investing to build long-term wealth.
Health
Goals help you maintain a balance of physical fitness and eating the right foods. There are many subcategories that are included here, like losing weight, improving your diet, eating different types of foods, or becoming more physically active
Leisure
Goals that relate to personally significant activities. Often, we feel overwhelmed by everything else in life, so we procrastinate on those “bucket list” items that don’t seem immediately important. However, the best way to improve the quality of your life is to set goals that relate to the fun stuff. These activities can include planning vacations, spending time with your family, or focusing on a hobby like home brewing, hunting, cooking, or painting.
Relationships
Goals that are about enhancing relationships with your significant other, family members, or friends. You could also set goals to improve your social skills, find a romantic partner, or simply become a better person to everyone you meet.
Service
Goals that are about helping others through volunteering, supporting your favorite charity, or donating money to causes you believe in.
Spirituality
Goals in this category have a different meaning for each of us. They could include activities like meditation, prayer, yoga, or reciting affirmations. Basically, whatever helps you achieve a calm peace of mind can be categorized as a spiritual goal.
Really, how you structure your projects is up to you. What I like to do is focus on a few core projects at a time and schedule my tasks around these goals. To get an idea of how this looks, here is a snapshot of my Todoist account:
The way that I structure my Todoist account is by sorting my tasks in seven primary buckets. The first are the habits I’d like to build using Todoist as a reminder. This is represented in the parent project, Routine Habits & Tasks
Next, there are four current projects I’m focusing on:
Book Projects
Develop Good Habits Blog
Home & Personal Projects
IRONMAN Training
Finally, there is a parent project called “Backburner Projects,” which are projects that I’m temporarily putting on hold.
The key to structuring is to organize these projects together in what are called “parent projects.”
“Finances.” Within this category, you could create individual projects like: Debt reduction, Investments, Future Home Purchase, and Taxes. Technically, all can be organized under the umbrella of finances, but putting them into a different project helps you laser-focus on the specific goal you’d like to achieve for each one.
to get the most from Todoist, you should create a framework where you focus on what’s important and ignore everything else
Strategy #1: Focus on Five Projects
That’s why I recommend a simple strategy: instead of managing dozens of projects in Todoist, I suggest limiting your focus to just a few core a
Strategy #2: Create a “Backburner” Parent Project List
Strategy #3: Create a “Someday/Maybe” Project
Strategy #4: Turn Projects into Processes
if you have a recurring project with a similar list of steps, then you should consider turning it into a process. You can do this by creating a template and uploading it to Todoist whenever you have to start a new project.
#1. Identify any project that has a repeatable list of actions.
#2. Create the process in a simple file.
The simplest way to do this is to open a spreadsheet program (like Microsoft Excel), put each step in a separate row, and then save this list as a .CSV file.
Strategy #5: Ask Yourself: “What’s the Next Action?”
It forces you to take action on projects that often sit in Todoist without you doing anything about it. Asking this question forces you to think about the single task you can do right now to move a project forward.
It makes you clarify each step because you’ll often create steps that don’t have an actual clearly identifiable step. Most of the time people will have a vague description without any sort of action plan behind it.
It forces you to actually take action. We’ve all had those projects that we dread because they seem challenging or insurmountable. The result is you keep putting them off. But when you identify a simple task that you can do to move a project forward, it forces you into action.
My recommendation is to review all your current projects at least once a week. Go through all the tasks you’ve created, asking yourself “What’s my next action?” Or more importantly, “What is the simplest thing I can do right now to create momentum?”
@next: the “what’s my next action” task in a project to move it forward
@5_min: tasks that only take a few minutes to complete
@phone: phone calls you need to make
@waiting: if you’re waiting for a certain action to be completed before you can complete this item
@home: actions that need to be completed at home
@work: actions that need to be completed at work
@www: any task that should require looking things up while on the web
@review: actions where something just needs to be read or reviewed (perfect for waiting in lines)
@school: actions that need to be completed at school
@email: correspondence that needs to be sent via email
@laptop: work done at your laptop or PC
@mobile: done on your mobile phone (social media, etc.), which is another good batch you can use while waiting for appointments or in line
@phone: any work that needs to be done via phone calls
@errands: all the shopping, personal appointments, or any task that needs to be completed when you’re in your car
@meetings: any task related to a work or personal meeting
@daily: any recurring daily task
@weekly: any recurring weekly task
@monthly: any recurring monthly task
Keyword Filter Queries
These work similarly to labels. You can create a group of tasks that contain a specific phrase either in the task or in the comments section, then the filter will only display these tasks.
For example, if I created a filter titled Email, then I can pull up all the tasks that have the word email in it and then work on completing just these tasks. This is useful for those times when you block off time to do just one type of activity.
It’s easy to create a keyword filter query. Simply type the phrase search: KEYWORD (and substitute KEYWORD with the phrase that would help you find these specific types of tasks). Then you’ll have a list of tasks that require a similar type of action to complete.
Quadrant 1—Urgent and Important: (overdue, today) & (p1, p2, or p3)
Quadrant 2—Important but Not Urgent: (no date) & (p1, p2, or p3)
Quadrant 3—Urgent but Not Important: (overdue, today)
Quadrant 4—Not Important and Not Urgent: (no date)
One recipe that I recommend is to automatically turn your Google Calendar events into Todoist tasks. That means whenever you schedule an appointment
Step #2: Use a Weekly Review to Schedule Your Tasks
Action #1: Answer Five Questions
Each weekly review should start with a few minutes of critical thinking about the next seven days. This is the time to mentally review your immediate goals and decide what deserves your attention. You can do this by answering five basic questions:
What are my personal obligations?
What are my priority projects?
How much time do I have?
What are the next actions on my Todoist project lists?
Is there any item on my Someday/Maybe list that I’d like to focus on this week?
Action #2: Apply the 80/20 Rule to Your Schedule
The 80/20 Rule, originally mentioned by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, says that 80% of your results often come from 20% of your efforts. So only a handful of your tasks will produce any sort of measurable result.
This rule can be applied to any industry or business. For example, 80% of revenue is generated by 20% of the salespeople; 80% of complaints come from only 20% of customers; and 80% of highway traffic is funneled through 20% of the roads.
During a weekly review, take a few minutes to carefully consider the answers to these questions:
What tasks are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
What core activities have the biggest impact on my career?
What experiences produce 80% of my fulfillment and happiness?
Who are the people that cause 80% of my enjoyment and make me feel truly engaged?
Who are the 20% of people who cause me to feel angry, unhappy, and unfulfilled?
What habits make up 80% of my efficiency or effectiveness?
Action #3: Block Out Time on a Calendar
Step #3: Build the “Todoist Daily Review” Habit
#3. Create recurring tasks based on completion date. The typical way to create recurring tasks based upon a specific start date is to use the “starting” modifier. For example, if you have a task that is, “every two weeks starting August 1” you will create a task for August 1 that will recur on August 15 then August 29 then September 12, and so on. This is basic stuff that we’ve already covered.
An advanced way to create a recurring task is to use a “not” symbol in your modifier, which is: !
For instance, you could create a task like: every! two weeks starting August 1
What this does is change the next recurring dates to two weeks after the completion date rather than two weeks after the task starts.
Integrate with Google Drive
Create a task when you star an email in Gmail. Earlier in this section, we talked about how you could create tasks from Gmail with an applet button. But maybe you often forget to add tasks when you’re going through your messages. So with this recipe, you can create a new task whenever you star an email, which is a tool that Gmail uses to identify messages as being important. Here is the link to the IFTTT recipe.
Create a copy of all tasks you complete in a Gmail message. Maybe you have a boss or coworker that needs to know what you are doing. This recipe will generate a summary of tasks you’ve completed into a Gmail message that can be delivered to anyone that you designate. Here is the link to the IFTTT recipe.
Put completed tasks into Google Sheets.
Automatically create a Google Calendar event for new Todoist tasks. You can also reverse the previous strategy and create a calendar event for every task that you create. A word of warning: this can get pretty overwhelming if you’re someone who is constantly adding tasks to your to-do list. Here is the link to the IFTTT recipe.
Add a note in Evernote whenever you add a specific label in Todoist. As I’ve previously mentioned, Evernote allows users to create a “note” that can be a piece of formatted text, a full webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or file attachment.
If you’re someone who uses Evernote frequently, you can create an @evernote label, and then whenever you add that label to a task in Todoist, it will be archived in Evernote. Here is the link to the IFTTT recipe.
Create a task whenever you receive a priority email in Microsoft Office. If you use Office, this strategy can be a great time-saver. Most priority messages require you to take action on a specific project. With this strategy, a task will be created automatically whenever you receive one of these priority messages. Here is the IFTTT recipe.
Next, I recommend creating a project for every major area of your life. If you get stuck, you can use the seven areas that most people focus on:
Career
Finance
Leisure
Health
Relationships
Service
Spirituality
Inside each of these parent projects, create subprojects for any action that requires multiple steps to complete. It’s up to you what projects you create—just think of the major “buckets” in your life and add projects based on these recurring activities.
Third, make that commitment to review Todoist daily. Check off the tasks you’ve completed. Add new ones that you’d like to accomplish. And create a project whenever you start a new multistep activity.
The one reason some people fail to get results with their to-do lists is they don’t fully commit to the process. So if you take five minutes daily to open Todoist, then you’ll eventually build a very powerful habit of reviewing your tasks. Once that happens, you’ll be 100% confident that anything stored in this app will be there when you need it.
Finally, when you’re comfortable with the core features of Todoist, you can incorporate some of the 23 advanced strategies I just mentioned. Go to IFTTT.com to automate the other apps and programs that you typically use, like Evernote, Slack, or Gmail. If you’re someone who likes to systematize their life as much as possible, then these recipes can streamline many of the actions you do frequently.