Todoist can be a simple task manager or solid collaborative tool for teams.
I have been using ToDoist for about 6 years. And a Premium user since 2015 (I will be covering my ToDoist setup in a future post). Every year I have tested other apps as part of an ongoing pursuit of a better way of managing productivity. So far I have used Things, Wunderlist, Microsoft To Do, Trello, Asana, Google Tasks, and Outlook Tasks. As well as various iOS apps. Yet I always come back to ToDoist.
My most recent trial was with Things. I checked it out a couple of years ago but never gave it a hard look. So I migrated everything from ToDoist into Things. I lasted about a week. This time, while using Things, I spent time thinking on what was drawing me back to ToDoist.
Things I love about ToDoist
ToDoist is full of features and setup options (Premium is the way to go). It’s easy to use. You can setup Projects & Sub-Projects, Tasks & Sub-Tasks. Managing priorities and using labels is a sinch. You can email tasks into individual projects and the email parsing is spot on. ToDoist also lets you set daily and weekly goals for the number of tasks you want to complete.
The UI is minimalist and super clean. I am a huge fan of the app.
But none of the things listed above are what I was missing in other apps or what keeps drawing me back.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!
– Michael Corleone
Damn you Karma!
ToDoist Karma tracks your activity and provides statistics on daily and weekly progress. You earn Karma Points based on your use of the apps features. Completing your tasks by the day/time you schedule them and meeting your daily and weekly goals.
Karma rewards your progress by awarding you Levels. You start at Beginner with the highest level being “Enlightened”.
It’s this brilliant gamification feature that keeps sucking me back in. I achieved the Grand Master level with 8027 tasks completed. I have 26236 Karma points at the time of writing of this post. In 2017 I was in the top 3% of ToDoist users and in 2018 in the top 1%. The Enlightened level is a couple of years away at my current rate but I want to see if I can reach it.
What Next?
If it were not for the awesome features ToDoist offers I’m sure I would have bailed on it a long time ago. It’s interesting to me thought that each time I use something different, the desire to keep my Karma score growing is a factor in sticking with the app. I’m not big into social media, I don’t use Facebook or SnapChat, and I don’t have an addictive personality type. Yet the dopamine hit I get each time I tick a task in ToDoist is alarming.
My plan is to go all in on the Bullet Journal Method in 2019 and get out of the digital space for a while. I’m sure I will keep ToDoist for collecting of information. Every task I get for work is a project in our project management app, an email, Slack or from some other electronic communication. But my daily task list and planning is going analog for a while. I will post updates in January to my progress.
Have you used ToDoist? If so, what do you like about it? Do you us Karma or have it off? Share your thoughts in the comments.