Ten Great Tips for Using Todoist

Todoist is one of the most popular to-do apps in the market. Todoist contains outstanding features that help to improve productivity by organizing tasks and setting schedules. It works effectively on multiple platforms such as Windows, Android, iOS, MacOS, and all the leading web browsers. It has a user-friendly interface with integrated productivity charts (only for premium accounts). It has a set of classification tools that is well-liked by users. Todoist offers offline functionality, which helps its users to work wherever and whenever they want without needing an internet connection. Todoist markets itself as a freemium tool. It offers a free 30-day trial to allow users to check its features that help them to decide which of the features addresses their needs. It also has pricing plans which are very simple and cost-effective. The pricing plan has two categories depending on the budget and needs of its users. These pricing plans are:

Premium – $36/year
Business – $60/year

Knowing different tips for using Todoist is very important to get its full benefit according to your needs. The following are ten tips for using the Todoist app:

Adding and completing different tasks.
Keeping track of your tasks.
Creating a project.
Setting task priorities.
Setting task reminders.
Adding task comments.
Sharing projects.
Adding websites as tasks using browser extensions.
Adding labels to a task.
Using productivity view to check progress.

Before we get started with the tutorial, if you are looking to learn more about apps like Notion, Todoist, Evernote, Google Docs, or just how to be more productive (like Keep Productive’s awesome Notion course), you should really check out SkillShare. Skillshare is an online learning platform with courses on pretty much anything you want to learn. To learn more about Skillshare and its vast library of courses and get 30% off, click the link below:

SkillShare – Online Learning Platform

If you are a Google Calendar user, check out my guide to connecting Google Calendar to Todoist. This allows you to bi-directionally sync Todoist with Google Calendar and allows you to have your tasks and updates sync between Todoist and Google Calendar.

Adding and Completing Different Tasks in Todoist

You can get rid of all the things on your mind and put them into Todoist. Getting these things into Todoist can be done by adding those things as different tasks. To add a new task follow the steps listed below:

Press + Add task on any Todoist platform.

Type out the name of the task you want to add.
Click on the Add task button to save the task.

After completing a particular task, you can mark that as complete by clicking on the circle to the left of that task. On mobile phones, you can mark the task as completed by swiping the task from left to right.

Keeping Track of Your Tasks in Todoist

By adding more and more tasks, it becomes difficult to keep track of every single task. To keep track of individual tasks, you can organize them by using three different views:

Inbox
Today
Next Seven Days view

Todoist Inbox

Inbox serves as a default home for all new tasks. The Inbox is in the top left section of the Todoist window. You can readily write any task in it. You can either complete the task directly from the Inbox or reorganize it into another project and complete it later.

Today View

The Today view helps you to determine the tasks which are due today among all other tasks. If you couldn’t complete a task on the today list within that day or want to postpone that, you can drag that task to tomorrow’s view list.

Next 7 Days View

This view helps you to plan your whole week, allowing you greater control over your schedule.

Creating a Project in Todoist

Projects help you to organize different tasks into separate checklists. Todoist has a list of projects, but it also allows you to create projects of your own choice. For example, if you’re a lawyer, you can create projects for each of your clients having all the details related to them.

To create a project, follow the steps given below:

Click + Add project, present at the bottom of the project list.

Type the name of your new project

Choose the color of your choice to differentiate it from other projects and finally add the project.

Tip 1: You can save your time by moving multiple tasks to a new project at the same instant.

Tip 2: You can easily assign a task to a particular project by typing # into the task field. After typing #, Todoist will automatically present the list of all your existing projects. The list will narrow as you start typing your desired project name.

Setting Tasks Priorities in Todoist

After creating your tasks, you must know which tasks are most important and need to be completed within the specified time. To maintain your to-do list, you must prioritize your tasks. We all have some tasks that are more important than the others and tasks that you need to complete now. Sometimes our to-do list becomes so long that we can’t accomplish all the tasks within the same day and unfortunately the urgent that day are left and postponed to the next day. Thus, by setting a task’s priorities, you will filter the most important tasks to the top and give your full energy and time to accomplish them first.

Todoist has four priority levels:

Priority flag 1/P1 (Red) – Urgent, most important, must complete.
Priority flag 2/P2 (Orange) – Task is important but not urgent.
Priority flag 3/P3 (Yellow) – Complete if there is time available.
Priority flag 4/P4 (White) – Optional, can be postponed to the next day.

You can prioritize your tasks in Todoist by following either of these two steps:

Mark your task with the priority flag you want from the right side of your field.

You can also set a priority level by typing “p” into the field, followed by the level of priority you want. For example, drink water p1.

Setting Task Reminders in Todoist

This feature of Todoist prevents you from forgetting a task by reminding you through reminders. The reminders are of two types:

automatic reminders
manual reminders.

Automatic reminders:

You set due time and date with every specific task. The automatic reminders will automatically send you a reminder 30 minutes before the task is due. You can change the default reminder time in:

Settings > Reminders

Manual reminders

If you prefer to set a custom reminder time, you can set a manual reminder that will activate at the time specified by you.

To set a reminder, follow the steps listed below:

Click on the task.

Click on the clock icon at the right.

Todoist understands natural language so you can set a trigger for the reminder by specifying a date and time like “Today at 2 pm”. If you already have set a due date and time, then you can set a corresponding time for the reminder like 2 hours before the task is due. If you have the Todoist app on your mobile phone, you’ll have an option to set a location-based reminder. From there, you can choose a specific location to trigger the reminder.

Adding task comments

Task comments serve you to add every single detail related to a task. This feature helps you by saving your time and effort consumed in searching for the information related to each task. With the help of task comments, you can attach related files or notes to each of your tasks.

For example, if you are working on a team project, you can attach a file containing presentation slides in task comments.

To add task comments, follow the steps given below:

Hover over a task.

To open the comment view, click the speech bubble icon on the right side of the task name.

Type your comment in the comment field.

To attach a file, click on the paperclip icon and upload a file related to your task.

To record an audio comment, click on the microphone icon and attach your recording as a comment.

Tip: You can also add project comments to add information related to the whole project instead of a single task.

Sharing Projects in Todoist

Todoist permits you to work together by allowing you to share your tasks and project with other people. By sharing tasks and projects, completion becomes easier as you distribute the workload across the team. Collaboration allows users to easily communicate and work on tasks, enhancing productivity, and improving output. When you’re working on a project, teamwork is required. Teamwork only works if the team has the information related to the project. With Todoist’s shared projects, everyone you share your project with will have access to all the tasks and information related to that project.

To share a project, follow the steps given below:

For Mobile phones

Open the project you want to share.

Press the icon of three dots at the top right.

Press on Sharing.

Now invite everyone you want to share your project with, by pressing on the add people icon via their email addresses.

For Web or Windows

Click on the three dots icon at the right side of that project which you want to share.

Click Share Project

Type the name or email of the person you want to share your project with inside the name field, under the collaborators’ option.

To invite people to collaborate on your project, press the invite button.
After accepting your invitation, your invited people will be able to see everything related to the shared project.

Adding Websites as Tasks in Todoist

Sometimes when you are in a hurry and not able to read all the information present on a web page, you need some method to save that information for later use. Todoist makes it easy to read all the information present on a web page whenever you want by allowing you to save web pages as tasks.

To save web pages to read later, you can save any web page by using browser extensions for Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome. By adding websites as tasks, your productivity increases.

You can add websites as tasks using browser extensions by following the simple steps given below (each of these requires the browser extension to be installed):

1st Method:

You can simply right-click on any web page you want to add as a task.

Click on Add to Todoist from the list.

The link to that website will be saved to your inbox.

2nd Method:

You can also highlight any text from a web page then right-click.
Click Add to Todoist.
The text will be saved in your inbox.
Upon clicking the text, you will be directed to the original web page that you saved the text from.

3^rd Method (For Chrome):

Download and install the extension for Chrome by simply going to todoist.com/chrome.

When the installation is complete, a Todoist icon will appear at the top right corner of your window.

Open any website you want to add as a task.

Next, click on the Todoist logo in the top right corner of your Chrome browser to open Todoist.

Click on the + icon present on the left side of the toolbar.

Click Add website as task.

There will be a highlighted link in the text field with the name of your new task in parenthesis. You can change that name to fit your needs. You can also set a deadline for this newly created task.

Assign it to the project you want.

Click on the Add task button to save it.

Adding Labels to Tasks in Todoist

Todoist allows you to organize and tag your tasks using different labels. By adding labels, you can search for the specific type of tasks you want across different projects.

To add a label to a task, follow the steps given below:

Type @ while adding a task.

A list of available labels will appear.

Choose any label from the list or type out a custom label name.

Type on the add task button and add the label to that certain task.

Using the Productivity View to Check Progress in Todoist

If you want to keep a check on your productivity in Todoist, use the productivity view. The productivity view will keep you updated about how many tasks you have completed over a certain period and how many karma points (awarded for completing tasks) you have earned.

To check your productivity via the productivity view, follow the simple step given below:

For Web

To open the Productivity view, click the pie-chart icon at the top right.

For Android and Windows 10

Click your avatar photo at the top left.

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