The problem I am excited to be solving with this week’s Weekly App Practical is the problem of organizing the many compartments of my life for greater productivity! Now that school has started, I have many activities to juggle - work, school, ministry, family demands, household management, etc. Each comes with its own set of ToDo’s, some recurring and some one-time only, and some overlapping. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I sit down and make ToDo lists hoping to capture all that is swirling around in my head, and then to check things off when I finish.
Sometimes it makes sense for me to make a list of things to do for a certain project, but sometimes it makes sense to make a list of things to accomplish on a particular day. As a result, I have lots of lists in lots of places. I have had some success in streamlining the process by making lists in Google Keep, but that just felt like the “million dollar pencil” solution - a nice place to keep everything but really still just a bunch of lists. I also have tried to put everything in Google Calendar, but that just seemed like a chronology of unconnected deadlines (though color-coding did help sort them). And what about the things you have to do that don’t have a date associated with them. I am hoping to find an app that will cross reference these two approaches for me so I can make lists in the compartments of my life and have them show up on calendars - pulling out ToDo list for any given day.
Turns out, many in our class are looking for similar solutions, so last week I gathered some apps to check out. I investigated Remember the Milk (which looked promising), and Chipper (which seemed more specific to students). I also had some experience using Trello for project management, and wondered if that was a tool that could be applied to my problem. I also knew my son (a software engineering student) used Todoist. Comparing those two, I thought Trello might be more suited to large projects with many collaborators, and Todoist would be better suited to one person with lots of ToDo’s. A conversation with my son confirmed this notion, since he has used both extensively. Easy access to his experience made Todoist a more appealing option than Remember the Milk, since they looked similar to me. My choice was made!
I installed Todoist, and found it might be just what I’m looking for. I was able to set up “projects” for different areas of my life, and for short term projects as well. Within each project I can add tasks and assign one-time or recurring due dates.
I really like the inbox feature where you can quickly capture a task you need to remember in a holding area, and then later on assign it to a project or give it a due date.
Todoist can also set up tasks with sub-tasks within a project, a feature that allowed me to capture my grocery needs real-time and sort the items by where I shop for them!
You can view your tasks either by project or by what’s due today or within the next 7 days.
And you can set it up to send you email reminders.
The clincher was when I was able to set up 2-way integration with my Google Calendar.
I look forward to using Todoist this fall to keep me organized!
Turns out, many in our class are looking for similar solutions, so last week I gathered some apps to check out. I investigated Remember the Milk (which looked promising), and Chipper (which seemed more specific to students). I also had some experience using Trello for project management, and wondered if that was a tool that could be applied to my problem. I also knew my son (a software engineering student) used Todoist. Comparing those two, I thought Trello might be more suited to large projects with many collaborators, and Todoist would be better suited to one person with lots of ToDo’s. A conversation with my son confirmed this notion, since he has used both extensively. Easy access to his experience made Todoist a more appealing option than Remember the Milk, since they looked similar to me. My choice was made!
I installed Todoist, and found it might be just what I’m looking for. I was able to set up “projects” for different areas of my life, and for short term projects as well. Within each project I can add tasks and assign one-time or recurring due dates.
I really like the inbox feature where you can quickly capture a task you need to remember in a holding area, and then later on assign it to a project or give it a due date.
Todoist can also set up tasks with sub-tasks within a project, a feature that allowed me to capture my grocery needs real-time and sort the items by where I shop for them!
You can view your tasks either by project or by what’s due today or within the next 7 days.
The clincher was when I was able to set up 2-way integration with my Google Calendar.
I look forward to using Todoist this fall to keep me organized!
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