The secret to using a task management system is to make it an everyday habit. My task manager of choice is Todoist and I put virtually everything I want to get done into it: work stuff, side projects, home repair tasks, kids’ school stuff, whatever. It all goes into Todoist, and I’m dipping in and out of that app to check off tasks and add new ones, every day, many, many times a day.
Join 25 million people and teams that organize, plan, and collaborate on tasks and projects with Todoist. 'The best to-do list' by The Verge. Todoist integrates with Google Drive and Dropboxallowing you to upload task attachments directly from your file storage accounts online. Adding details to your to-dos is the best way to add context to your tasks and keep important and relevant documents right where you need them. Todoist integrates with Google Drive and Dropboxallowing you to upload task attachments directly from your file storage accounts online. Adding details to your to-dos is the best way to add context to your tasks and keep important and relevant documents right where you need them. Todoist Web App Todoist is a cloud-connected task-management service with apps for several platforms, including the Web, shown here. Task Details in Todoist When you hover over a task, you can see. You can find your token from the Todoist Web app, at Todoist Settings - Integrations - API token. A special sync token, which denotes that we want a full sync, in contrast to an incremental sync. This is denoted with the. symbol, so we set synctoken=.
Creating new tasks quickly and easily is key, of course. I use virtually all of the many methods that Todoist offers for adding tasks, from Quick Add on my desktop (essential) to voice dictating tasks into Google Assistant (less essential). I’ve also created an iOS shortcut called “Todoist Task from Webpage” that has become an essential part of my productivity. I’m making it publicly available today and you can download it here for free and install it on your iPhone or iPad.
I made this shortcut because so many of the tasks I create in Todoist each day are based on what I come across in my web browser. On any given web page, I might find that I want to follow up on it at a later time, download something linked on the page, make a purchase, watch a video, or something similar. In fact, it used to be that a lot of the tabs I’d keep open in my browser were actually tasks in disguise: I’d want to keep them available so that I could take some action on them later. Obviously it’s more useful to turn these into tasks than to let them linger as tabs for days or weeks.
The key to translating a page you’re looking at into a task that you’ll actually take action on is quickly capturing the page’s URL. You can do this manually in Todoist by either adding the link as a comment on a task or, even better, embedding the link into the text of the task itself in Markdown form. This is straightforward, but of course the more quickly and easily you can create a task the better.
When you run this shortcut on iPhone or iPad by selecting it from the share menu in mobile Safari (sorry, Chrome on iOS doesn’t support the Shortcuts actions that make this possible) it grabs the URL and the title of the page and quickly formats them as a Markdown link. You can then choose from a list of actions with which to prepend that link, e.g., “Read,” “Follow up on,” “Purchase,” etc. to form the text of the new task. Another menu allows you to assign the task to one of your pre-existing Todoist projects, and the due date is automatically set as today. That’s it; with a few clicks, the page has been turned into a Todoist task.
Here’s what it looks like on an iPad:
Some other nifty details of this shortcut:
- Tasks are assigned a due date of today unless you’re running the shortcut after 9:00p local time, in which case it automatically assigns the next day as the due date.
- Turning a link on YouTube.com into a task is a little trickier, so the shortcut actually makes a quick call to the YouTube API to get the information necessary to create a new task. As a result, you can also use this shortcut from the the YouTube app. Tap on the share icon and then swipe over to the More action to find the shortcut.
- In some cases where the preset actions don’t quite make sense to prepend to the page title, there’s a custom option to allow you to fully edit the text of the task on the fly.
I use this shortcut every day, multiple times a day, and it’s become an essential part of how I think about task management. I now stash all kinds of pages into tasks, from Adobe XD web prototypes that I want to review later, to YouTube videos that I come across during the workday, to Kickstarter campaigns I want to consider funding, and much more. If you’re using Todoist (and if you’re not, you should be) give this a try and let me know what you think.
This shortcut requires iOS or iPadOS 14.4 and the latest version of the Todoist app for iPhone or iPad. Note that if you’ve never run third-party shortcuts before, you’ll need to follow these steps. Also check out ExactPic my suite of image editing shortcuts
+A collection of screenshots from the web platforms and android apps of Asana, Trello, and Todoist, highlighting their UI/UX.
Asana's platform is beautifully designed for both web and mobile. Menus are easy to read, intuitive, and each screen seems to have just the right amount of information on it to do what you need. It's a great experience using both, although some time needs to be spend to learn the ins and outs, given the large feature list.
There is room for improvement, however. Calendar integrations are poor for the free version, not transmitting times to Google calendar for tasks and not enabling notifications at due times on the mobile app. Add to that a very bland Android widget, and there are some regular frustrations with the UX simply because time-sensitive tasks are not managed well. However, the integrations that Asana provides with other apps, websites, and services makes up for that and then some!
The Trello platform is very functional and immensely powerful with their power-ups and integrations, but not the most user friendly, and most of those power-up features require paid access. Additionally, the features are not always easy to use, and the interface can be confusing to navigate, with some menus feeling totally overwhelming.
The design of the web platform leaves something to be desired, with squared edges and lots of unused space. The 'home' page is also less than useful, just showing a list of boards available rather than a summary of tasks.
Trello's android app follows similar design but is more in-line with typical android apps - rounded edges, useful menu pages, and great notifications. The actual experience of using the app (and the web platform) is mixed, with some tasks being really easy, and others taking a fair amount of time to figure out. Overall, the UI/UX performs low both in design and ease of use, though platform functionality as a whole ranks pretty well against the others.
Web view with Todoist is pretty bland, taking the form of primarily a text-based site. Not a lot of effort was put into making the design beautiful, though it is very straightforward and functional. I find myself navigating away from the web platform and using the Android app instead.
My default view for the web platform and Android app is the 'Upcoming' page, as it lists overdue, current, and upcoming tasks, making it easy to see all of them in list view. The board view is also really easy to assess on both platforms, and that's my go-to when adding tasks.
Todoist Web Interface
The experience on the android app feels natural. It follows the device preferences for dark/light mode and themes, and does everything I could want it to do. Todoist misses some of the more important features for business that Asana has, such as messaging and detailed tracking, but Todoist Business does seem to address some of those. In any case it probably requires paid access to use functionally for business, which is a bit beyond my intended uses right now.
Todoist Webdav
In short, Todoist is a bit lacking in design effectiveness for the web app, but it's consistent with the clean, efficient Android app that they have created. The user experience, while not as feature-packed as the others, is stellar, including the Android widget and notifications.