This made it much easier to judge how much work I had to get done. Within a couple of minutes, that task was also captured by my Todoist. I could set up email aliases for each of my projects, that way, when someone emailed me a task to complete, I could hit forward, add in some metadata, and hit send. Now, instead of sections just being a “subproject”, I could use Agile practices to track my work across their typical life cycle, say from idea to outline, draft, edit, and ready to publish. It didn’t stop there, though! Since becoming a Todoist customer, they have introduced Kanban boards. Not only that, but I had multiple levels of tasks (projects, sections, tasks, sub-tasks, and priorities). I had a Today view, that really helped, so I didn’t see EVERYTHING I needed to do, just wanted I wanted to get through that day. I could set reminders, recurring tasks, could set labels or organize by project. A few hours later, I was sold, literally, I signed up for the Pro subscription right then and there. I can remember setting aside my work for the rest of the afternoon I needed to give this tool a proper test drive. It had a simple-yet-beautiful user interface (UI), incredibly intuitive layout, and many of the features I felt I needed out of a task management tool. However, I begrudgingly created an account, and what I found surprised me. I told my friend this wasn’t looking good. Strike 1 it’s not open source, strike 2 it’s a paid, cloud service. I had my doubts and, if I am being honest, was just looking for excuses not to use it. I needed to be able to do scheduling, track progress, and and and… My list of needs seemed to keep getting longer, how could any tool stand up to that!?Ī friend of mine told me about this tool with a weird sounding name: Todoist. Tasks and projects though are two different beasts entirely, but they are also connected! What I found I needed was a way to do both, preferably in the same tool. I also tried organizing projects into MS Project in college (yeah, I was that nerd), eventually projects moved into Evernote, and later Joplin. I’d also tried out Trello, but at the time couldn’t quite get a handle on how to use a task board (stay tuned, wink wink!). It wasn’t as feature rich as it is today, but it got the job done and as a bonus synced to my mobile device. It had a decent task tracker… You could schedule tasks, set reminders, and eventually could even set tasks to repeat. I used to be stuck on Microsoft Outlook 2003. (Besides, we all know metal dice are better!) However, if you go from following a lively instant messaging thread about plastic versus metal dice for tabletop games to working on a 3-year business plan, you aren’t giving either your full attention. The more alike tasks are, the easier it is to switch between the two in a short space of time and with little productivity penalty. What you are really doing is context switching. Sorry, Charlie! That’s a common misconception. Attention spans and deep work are at an all-time low. Tweets, news, sports, YouTube, podcasts…and that’s just a short list only from the digital world! Many of us have multiple devices within a few feet of our favorite chair that spend their time lighting up, dinging, buzzing, and ringing. No you don’t! We live in a world of CRAZY connectivity! Everything is always on all the time. We’ll cover Todoist, email management, ways to focus on tasks (like me trying to write this blog post), and much, much more. What I plan to unleash into your minds is a series of tools and methods I use every day to get everything done. Add on top of that the need to sleep, work out, and get things done around our house. I work a demanding job in a challenging field, host a podcast, a live stream, have a wife, four wonderful kids, and a few hobbies. Over the past few years, I have managed to shift from an anxious task tracker to a productivity power user. Enter Todoist, a product which boasts you can “regain clarity and calmness by getting all those tasks out of your head and onto your to-do list (no matter where you are or what device you use).” To say that Todoist is a to-do list or even a project management application would be a gross understatement.
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