Todoist – A Powerful Task Manager

Todoist is a great task manager across all your devices, from your Windows computer to your Apple Watch. I’ll be taking a look at the features of Todoist, along with what the premium tier of Todoist can offer.

One of the major things that attracted me to Todoist was that I could get it on every platform, and that the apps were similar between the platforms and that I would not have to ‘re-learn’ how to use the app for that specific platform. From the Chromebook, to the Mac, to the Android Wear watch. The advantage of this is obvious – you can access your tasks wherever you go. Coupled with the fact that you can access your tasks offline, you’ll always be able to access your tasks wherever you are. The platforms I use Todoist on are Windows and on my iPad, along with web at school.

Todoist for Windows

Todoist also offers extensions for your browser and email client. You can get a Google Chrome, Safari, or Firefox extension that allows you to save webpages as a task. It also offers powerful clients for your email, Gmail and Outlook, which means that you can save a task with a link to your email.

One of my favourite things about Todoist is the simple interface. In fact, that was one of the three major reasons that I moved over. The interface is clean and simple, and quite frankly, looks great. Todoist offers ten themes, six of which are locked unless you are Todoist Premium. All the themes really do is change the colour of a few elements, such as highlighting from intelligent input in the task input, and the top bar along others. I just use the good old Todoist theme, which is the one I like the most. I would not say that upgrading is worth it just for the themes, as it may be for a few other task managers, but still, its a nice thing to have.

Another great feature, the second feature that made me move over to Todoist was the integrations they offer, especially with IFTTT. This allowed me to get a task in a project every time an issue was created in one of my repositories, and it works like a dream. Todoist offers a ton of integrations, and you can check them all out here.

The third feature that pulled me over to Todoist is the Karma that it offers. Karma is basically charts and stats that tell you about your productivity. I love stats, and this is great for me. Whilst Karma is available for all account types, Premium unlocks a few more features and trends for you. I love Karma, as it really helps me to visualise my productivity, and there are levels that you gain as you go up in Karma, which is also a cool addition. I do have a little complaint – it is very easy for your Karma to go up, and its pretty hard to get bad Karma. For that, you need to have tasks that are overdue by four days. I think that the team at Todoist should make it a little easier to get negative Karma, and make it harder to ‘level up’.

Just some of the Karma menu

Todoist as by far the best natural language input that I have ever experienced. Setting due dates is so easy, its amazing. For example, if I want to be reminded every week day until 2017 to print out school work, I simply type in: ‘Print out school work everyday until January’. Todoist’s natural language input is by far the best I have ever experienced, and that on its own is certainly worth going over to Todoist.

One of the premium features is labels. These are basically tags that you can assign to a task, and then you can sort out your tasks according to those tags. Label’s are very useful to indicate the context for a task. For example, I have a label called ‘waiting’. This label gets added to a task that needs someone else to do something before I can complete that task. Another label is ‘online’, along with ‘offline’. When I am on my iPad on the bus back from school, I can tap the offline label and see what can be done. I also have a label for each devices, and I find that this really helps me. For example, when I have to update my website, I need access to the FTP program on my computer, as well as internet. Therefore, I tag it with ‘computer’ and ‘internet’. I would say that labels are defiantly worth the price of upgrading.

Another major feature in premium is filters. Whilst you can access these in free, you can’t edit them, remove them or add any more. Filters allow you to show tasks based on a specific criteria. For example, one of the free filters is ‘Priority 1’, which shows you all your tasks which have a high priority. There are quite a few filters that come with Todoist free, however you can really take advantage of them with premium. I have a ‘Next’ filter, and this shows me the work due for today and tomorrow, and that allows me to organise those tasks. Another one I have is a ‘Weekends’ filter. Here, I can see my tasks for my weekends and see how busy I am at those times, and maybe reshuffle them around. Filters is a powerful feature, and I believe that they are also worth paying for.

One of Todoist’s features is also reminders. However, these are not available for free users. I believe that this is the biggest turn off from Todoist, however I never have found that I used them very often. However, many people do, so keep this in mind. If you do pay for premium, you unlock them, and they are very good. Along with the standard time based ones, it allows you to set location reminders, that go off when you enter or exit a certain location. I love these, as I can set Todoist up to remind me when I enter my house or school. An example would be setting a reminder to give my mum a letter when I enter the general vicinity of my house. I have found that this works pretty well, and it has saved my skin quite a few times!

Todoist offers two tiers for the consumer market, and those are free and premium. I’ve been going on about premium, but not given you some vital information – the price. I was very pleasantly surprised when I saw the price – it’s only £21.99 ($28.99) a year, and that is cheaper then £2 a month. I consider this a great deal, and I really urge you to check out premium. It unlocks a ton of features for you, as well as helping support the company. You can check out a page on Todoist Premium here.

All in all, I am exceedingly impressed by Todoist. It has helped to keep me on top of my tasks, and I find it really fun to use, as well as powerful whilst being simple. Make sure to go check out the website to try it out!

Thanks for reading!

Feel free to comment below!

Advertisement
REVIEW OVERVIEW
Features
Interface
Ease of Use
Price
todoist-a-powerful-task-managerTodoist is a great task management app, that's available on nearly every platform in existence.