My Favorite Tool - Todoist

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool is Todoist, a task manager.

Why do I like it?

Todoist is a cross-platform ‘to-do’ tool. I went through many different ones before settling on Todoist a few years ago and I now use it to organize everything from my household chores, grocery shopping and gift ideas for family members to my many work projects and non-work projects (things I do that are work-related but not apart of my actual job).

Todoist can also work really well in a team. Right now at work I’m the only one who uses it, but my husband and I use it for household communication about shopping and other tasks that need to be completed, we can assign each other tasks, with time-triggered reminders and it really helps us stay on top of things.

Everyone works differently, and I hope you have a system that works well so you can get work done - I just wanted to share what has become a crucial part of my system.

How does the tool help me in my work?

The ability to have recurring tasks that I can easily input such as ‘second Thursday of every month at 2pm’ and the ability to add emails as tasks, with a link that opens up the email, have changed everything about the way I work. It allows me to clean out my inbox more effectively by assigning emails as tasks so I can answer them at the appropriate time, or have the email at hand for an important meeting in a few weeks, and it easily allows me to break down tasks into their component parts and keep track of them.

What do you wish someone had told you when you first started learning how to use this tool?

If you use Gmail, the integration with Todoist and Gmail is fantastic. Todoist also has integration with many other platforms, few of which I personally find useful but I have a few friends who think that is where the true power of Todoist lies.

– Auriel Fournier, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Ocean Springs, Mississippi, USA.

Have you got a favourite tool you would like to tell us about? Please use this form to add a bit of detail and we will do the rest to create a blog post about it. You can read the background to these posts here, or see what other tools people have written about.