I used to be an avid user of Todoist. The app was available on all platforms, even web, and I liked the ability to set smart filters to see the tasks I wanted to, and also the karma feature. However, Todoist was missing one vital feature that I’ve covered in both my Things 3 review, and in my post on how I use Things 3.
If you want to read an in-depth comparison of Things and Todoist, you can do so here.
The main feature that made me switch over was the ability to set a start date in Things. This lets you set both a date that it appears in your ‘Today’ list, and preserve the deadline date. For example, if I need to complete a piece of work for the 15th of the same month, but want to complete it on the 13th, I can set my start date as the 13th whilst preserving the 15th as the due date. This lets me keep track of how long I have to hand in a task, and see if I am up to date on the progress and where I want to be.
The above image shows how easy it is to keep track of your deadlines with Things. All three tasks are showing in my today view, however I can still see when I need to give them in and how much they are overdue by.
However, Todoist doesn’t allow you to this. Todoist only allows you to set a deadline, meaning that you cannot schedule tasks to show up in your today view before they are actually due. This meant that I kept losing the deadline date, and I either had to set up a separate list in order to keep the due dates. Eventually, I got fed up with this and moved to Things.
Secondly, Things’ interface is amazing. It’s clean, and even when you have dozens of tasks for that day, it doesn’t stress you out. Todoist’s interface was way too cluttered for my liking, with red alerts everywhere making me feel like I was more busy than I was.
However, Todoist has a huge edge of Things in one aspect – platforms supported. By far my biggest gripe with Things is the fact that there is no Things for Windows – I mainly use Windows when I am at home, and because of this, I have to manage my tasks on my iPhone or iPad. Whilst this works, it would be great to see a web interface or a Windows app to make it easier to manage tasks on desktop. In addition to this, you can get Todoist for Android, and other major platforms (even for Linux).
This being said, I am glad that I made the switch to Things. I feel less stressed about tasks, and I always know when they are due.
If you want to read more on the differences between apps, you can read my in-depth Things 3 vs Todoist article.
