Every: Completing a task that has a due date of every 3 months will set the task’s due date to 3 months from the task's original date. For instance, if you created a task on January 10th with a due date of every 3 months, it will recur on Jan 10, Apr 10, July 10, etc regardless of when you actually complete the task. Using recurring and repeating tasks in Todoist is a great way to save a lot of time and to stay on top of all of your tasks that occur regularly, or at least more than once. A good shutdown routine helps to ease that tension by assigning every task a plan and place, so we know it will get its due attention. Kickstart productivity – shutdown rituals provide immediate structure for the following work day, so you can easily pick up where you left off. They also help to adjust your priorities throughout the week. Edit: I asked the Todoist team on their website, and quickly got a response. The solution to my problem was: 'every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday'. Can't believe I didn't think of that. I'm trying to set a 'get the mail' task. I can't for the life of me figure it how to make a task for every weekday and every Saturday.
Being a solopreneur and work-from-home consultant, I routinely evaluate tools and methodologies to stay productive and focused, while maintaining the work-life balance.
Recently, I have started to use Todoist, an online task management app and to-do list. Todoist offers integration with lots of apps including Gmail, Google Drive and Dropbox that enhances productivity and makes it easier to manage the digital life.
How Todoist works:
Todoist allows task management through Projects, Labels and Filters. In Todoist, tasks represent actions that could have fixed, or recurring, due dates. A project is a collection of related tasks. Labels are used to present the context of the task, while filters are used to create views based on projects and labels.
Todoist Productivity Tips:
Todoist Daily Task
In order to get the best out of Todoist, and use it to become more productive, I have found these tips and hacks very useful.
Utilize the Inbox project. Todoist comes with a default Inbox project. This project can be used as the starting point. During my work day, I dump every idea and action item in the Inbox. Once the day ends and I am in review mode, items from Inbox are moved to relevant projects.
Email to Inbox: Todoist has a plugin for Gmail that turn emails into tasks. These tasks link back to the original email. More details on the link below
Add tasks in a project via email. Emails can also be turned into tasks by forwarding them to projects. Each project has a unique email address. The subject line will become the task name, and the body of the email will be added as a comment. All attachments smaller than 25MB will also be attached.
Add links. Urls saved in Todoist tasks are clickable. This is a great feature to save links for later reference.
List to tasks. It is possible to quickly generate a set of tasks from a list. Just copy and paste the list to an open task and Todoist will convert it to multiple tasks, one task per list item. This is a great time saver.
How I use Todoist:
Todoist Every Workday App
My Todoist set up looks like this:
Projects:
- Inbox: The starting point and the dumping ground. I use this project to dump all ideas, daily collections, emails etc. At end of the day, everything in Inbox is either acted upon or moved to the relative project.
- Goals: My goals for this year, one of which is to become more proficient in Python.
- Clients: Everything related to the clients go here.
- Personal: This is for personal stuff including tasks that involve family and home.
- Self Work: Contains the ever growing list of my solo projects.
- Routine: This is divided into three sub projects, daily, weekly, and monthly. Routines are things that I have to do due to necessity. Routines include paying bills, buying groceries etc.
- Someday / Maybe: Tasks without deadlines. This includes books to read, videos to watch, places to visit etc.
Labels:
Labels give context to tasks. A task can have multiple labels.
- Home: Covers everything related to home and family.
- Morning: Morning is the time of day when my energy levels are high. This is why tasks that require high energy (client work, coding etc) are done @Morning. I follow the Eat that Frog principle, which teaches to do the most difficult task first. [More about it here]
- Day: Tasks that require low energy (reading news, checking email, social media etc) are assigned @Day
- Evening: Late evenings are for coding, planning and reading.
- Errands: All chores and routine activities are marked as @Errands
- Ideas: Every time I have an idea for a product feature, or anything at random, it is stored with @Ideas for future review.
- Payments: All payable tasks are tagged @payments.
- Waiting: Tasks that require input from others are marked @Waiting.
A word of caution: Use Todoist to manage your life, don’t live by it – meaning, you don’t have to check the app in every 5 minutes.
Do you Todoist? If yes, I would like to know about your setup.
Resources:
Eat that Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time [get from here]
Todoist Every Day Until
Todoist blog is the first stop to learn more about the features and use cases. It has an excellent usage guide, a tutorial on labels and filters, and the email plugins.
The Reddit sub is another great place to learn about Todoist. [link here]
Todoist Every Workday Login
Carl Pullein’s Youtube channel is a good resource for Todoist, and productivity tips in general. Couple of videos that I recommend are, this and this.
Python Developer in Karachi, Pakistan. Interested in Web Scraping | Data Mining | Web Bots | Python Development using Django. [Check my Portfolio here]
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