Todoist Review: How I’m Using It to Organize My Life and (Travel) Goals

It’s about time I update my Todoist review. I’ve been using Todoist to organize my days since 2015 – almost five years by now! It’s an app and website I use every day and I can’t imagine life without it.

That’s because it’s a perfect place to brain dump. If I have more than a few things I want to get done, I find they form a circular loop in my mind until I put them into list format. And seeing them sequenced calms me and puts me back in control of my thoughts.

Over the years, I’ve used Todoist to keep track of:

Books I want to read
Movies and TV shows to watch
Yearly and life goals
Recurring tasks around the house and in life
Things to do when I travel
Self affirmations
Things to buy when I’m running low on something
And of course, daily tasks

To say I love Todoist would be a huge understatement

Not only is it a great place to store to-do lists, but it’s become a huge part of getting ahead in so many ways. I truly spend my life in this app.

My Todoist review

Link: Get Todoist

Todoist, like its name says, is an app and website where you store to-do lists.

At the expense of having too many apps to manage, I was leery about adding another one. But this one is Top Five and with Evernote, Feedly, Google Photos, and Outlook email (yes, for real).

It’s hard to say why a certain setup or layout appeals more than another, but Todoist, for me, was simply “the one.”

I like the minimal layout, the ability to tinker with colors, nested subtasks, and the labeling system. 

The reframe

Link: Evernote

I’ve written about how to use Evernote for travel goals and during trips.

Evernote lets you make checklists, and even add reminders – just like Todoist.

They both perform essential functions, but for me the kicker is the reframe.

I think of Evernote as a digital repository – a place to store information. And I think of Todoist as a place for tasks.

So placing my travel goals in an action-oriented setting spurs my subconscious mind in a way Evernote doesn’t. Because if it’s in Todoist, I have to do it.

And once a task is marked “done” in Todoist, it’s gone forever. In Evernote, everything lives on.

Places I want to go in this lifetime

Evernote reminds me how far I’ve come. With Todoist, I don’t necessarily want to remember that I completed a task.

In that way, Todoist keeps me moving forward. Whereas Evernote is the place I go to recall and reflect. Those are the essential differences between the two, and how they complement one another.

How to use Todoist

Just click the “+” button, add your task, and click it when it’s done – that’s it. But that simplicity belies how effective it is – and how much you can really do with it.

Because you can also add:

Subtasks to break your tasks down further
Labels to assign an area or topic to your lists
Filters to denote who’s in control of the task (if you’re sharing accounts)
Priority levels for time sensitivity
Projects for different areas of life (“work” and “home,” for example)
Due dates

And everything stays organized in the simplest, most appealing format.

A live look at my actual Todoist account and all my to do lists (yes, I’m obsessed with emojis IRL)

My favorite feature by far is recurring tasks. Because you can use natural language like “Change sheets every two weeks starting Saturday” and you’ll get a reminder every other Saturday to change your sheets. It’s also amazing for remembering to cancel subscriptions before a free trial ends.

Or you can put, “buy lightbulbs next Wednesday at 10am,” and Todoist will fill in the necessary details and add it to your list.

I can see everything I need to do in a day

Then, you can view a single day, or the next 7 days, and rearrange tasks as needed. If you don’t want to attribute a task to a particular project (say because you’ll only do it once or every so often), you can add it to the Inbox and let Todoist add it in where necessary. And when you do it, it’s gone. Here’s my current inbox:

A handy place to dump anything and everything

In my Inbox, you can see all the things I’ve added. And in the daily view above, you can see where Todoist parsed it all out for me.

Todoist Premium is worth it for all you get

I pay $29 a year for the service so I get all the premium features, including two-way sync with my Google calendar. If I add something to GCal, it shows up in Todoist and vice versa. This feature alone has been a godsend more times than I can count.

For planning a trip

Before I travel, I’ll research places to go and add them to a list. In the notes section, I add addresses, screenshots of maps, and any other info like ticket cost, opening hours, etc.

The list becomes a compendium of:

Tips sourced from friends
Research I’ve done online
Bucket list items
Practical info (like “Withdraw money to eat at street carts”)
Who to buy souvenirs for
Items to remember to bring
Anything else (this is a brain dump, after all)

After the trip is done, I simply delete or archive the project – or rename it something else and repeat all over again.