Testing out a new Todoist setup

MichaelVino

MichaelVino

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So... I accidentally subscribed to Todoist for a full year and since I have 11 months of Pro access to go, I've decided to give it another look. One of the things I do appreciate about Todoist, aside from its cross-platform availability, is its ability to nest projects hierarchically. This allows me to create two top level "Folders" (Work & Personal), second level Areas of Focus (which may contain stand-alone next actions), and third level Projects within those AoF. So far my brain is digging this manner of organization. I'm going to commit to 30 days with Todoist to see how it goes and report back. Wanted to share my initial setup here to compare at the end of my testing period.

Coming from Things 3, my biggest pain point with Todoist is the lack of start dates. I do utilize them often to plan out my weeks. As a workaround, I am thinking I'll utilize Todoist's "due dates" as start/intention dates and simply make note of any hard deadlines in the task name itself, e.g.: "Prepare presentation for sales meeting [deadline: 7/31]."

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In theory, Todoist is a great product, but the lack of start dates is problematic at best. My solution has been to have a tickler project with due dates acting as start dates. In this way, the the tasks show up as being due on the day and I can act on them accordingly.

Not to change topics, but I have a general question as you’re reconsidering Todoist over the next year: I’ve always been bothered by the program’s lack of export for completed tasks and projects. I’d love to be able to download an archive of my past work, including attachments and comments. Yet, the only way I’ve been able to do this is through third party automators such as IFTTT, which are unreliable. I’d love to have easier access to my data once a project is completed. If this is a problem for others, how have solved this?
 
MichaelB212 said:
So... I accidentally subscribed to Todoist for a full year and since I have 11 months of Pro access to go, I've decided to give it another look. One of the things I do appreciate about Todoist, aside from its cross-platform availability, is its ability to nest projects hierarchically. This allows me to create two top level "Folders" (Work & Personal), second level Areas of Focus (which may contain stand-alone next actions), and third level Projects within those AoF. So far my brain is digging this manner of organization. I'm going to commit to 30 days with Todoist to see how it goes and report back. Wanted to share my initial setup here to compare at the end of my testing period.

Coming from Things 3, my biggest pain point with Todoist is the lack of start dates. I do utilize them often to plan out my weeks. As a workaround, I am thinking I'll utilize Todoist's "due dates" as start/intention dates and simply make note of any hard deadlines in the task name itself, e.g.: "Prepare presentation for sales meeting [deadline: 7/31]."

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I do essentially the same thing and find it very functional.

Lack of start dates is a challenge… I’ve used the tickler project approach also and didn’t love it. There are other GTD friendly methods (such as calendar and physical tickler file) to deal with those types of items though and I find the other advantages of Todoist are well worth that limitation for me.

If you have not discovered it yet, one of the best features of Todoist that puts it at the front of the pack imo is the “quick capture” feature on desktop. You’ll find it in settings and essentially there’s a global hot key for creating a task (Win + alt + Q default on windows). Smoothest entry and capture on any app I’ve worked with.
 
Jared Caron said:
If you have not discovered it yet, one of the best features of Todoist that puts it at the front of the pack imo is the “quick capture” feature on desktop. You’ll find it in settings and essentially there’s a global hot key for creating a task (Win + alt + Q default on windows). Smoothest entry and capture on any app I’ve worked with.
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I was looking at Todoist recently, and found it’s quick capture not as good as I would want. In my opinion, both Things and OmniFocus do a better job: they typically capture a header, subsequent text, and a link. While Todoist does capture some links, in Markdown format even, I don’t like it as much. The ability to enter context, project, dates, et cetera is nice, though. And of course it’s available on many platforms.
 
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MichaelB212 said:
Coming from Things 3, my biggest pain point with Todoist is the lack of start dates. I do utilize them often to plan out my weeks. As a workaround, I am thinking I'll utilize Todoist's "due dates" as start/intention dates and simply make note of any hard deadlines in the task name itself, e.g.: "Prepare presentation for sales meeting [deadline: 7/31]."
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A suggestion, if you don't mind: when I was using Todoist I'd prepend anything like that with "Tickler" so I knew it was something I had "tickled" forward and could easily and visually distinguish those from the things actually due that day. When I did my morning review I would then remove the world "Tickler" from the description, remove the due date, and add the appropriate context tag. It worked in that I didn't have to think about this first thing in the morning, I could just do it. YMMV, but I thought I'd offer it.
 
I‘m using Todoist for quite some time now and it works really well for me, due to the use of some programmed automation. In my setup, there also exists an explicit „Tickler-Project“. Within this project, I also interpret due dates as start dates, as some of you already mentioned.

Todoist has a well documented API so you can easily write programs that interact with your projects and tasks automatically. I used this API to write a small program that gets executed nightly. The program checks all tasks within the tickler project daily. Each task that is due on the day of the execution, is automatically completed and gets copied to the inbox for me to work on. By excluding the tickler project from my custom filters, I have a clean separation between due and start dates.
 
mcogilvie said:
There I was, standing on the computer platform, waiting for the M2, when this dame walked by and asked where to catch the i5 to Hoboken. I tried to tell here it was too slow, so most people didn’t take it anymore. She said that was ok. I never saw her again.
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Unfortunately, "this dame" was the target @mcogilvie had been tasked with stopping at all costs. Because he let her go, she was able to smuggle the trigger device onto a flight bound for Washington, D.C., where she detonated a nuclear device that wiped out the entire federal government and plunged the U.S. into chaos. The Triumverate was easily able to install its own military dictatorship and rule the U.S. populace. @mcogilvie's instructions were shared with him in Todoist, but because he preferred Things he bungled the assignment and democracy was laid to waste.
 
bcmyers2112 said:
Unfortunately, "this dame" was the target @mcogilvie had been tasked with stopping at all costs. Because he let her go, she was able to smuggle the trigger device onto a flight bound for Washington, D.C., where she detonated a nuclear device that wiped out the entire federal government and plunged the U.S. into chaos. The Triumverate was easily able to install its own military dictatorship and rule the U.S. populace. @mcogilvie's instructions were shared with him in Todoist, but because he preferred Things he bungled the assignment and democracy was laid to waste.
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I saw that one last week on Netflix.
 
bcmyers2112 said:
Camp Nano?
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The Summer July version of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) but the goals are set by you (rather than NaNo which is 50K words in 1 month) and it's set up to put writes in a "cabin" so you can share ideas and help each other along. I am not doing it this year but I have in the past.
 
Oogiem said:
The Summer July version of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) but the goals are set by you (rather than NaNo which is 50K words in 1 month) and it's set up to put writes in a "cabin" so you can share ideas and help each other along. I am not doing it this year but I have in the past.
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Like the way many writers are into 'cabins' to do their writing . . . nice!
 
Oogiem said:
The Summer July version of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) but the goals are set by you (rather than NaNo which is 50K words in 1 month) and it's set up to put writes in a "cabin" so you can share ideas and help each other along. I am not doing it this year but I have in the past.
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I have a desire to self-publish a novel in the near term, so it sounds like something I should consider. Unfortunately, I've missed the boat for July. But I see they also have a thing in November. Good to know.
 
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