Do you often find yourself getting distracted while you are working? Are there items on your To-Do List that seem to stay there for a long time? Do you consistently miss deadlines and end up losing opportunities or paying to solve problems?

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Over the years, I’ve found that productivity can only be increased when you make a conscious effort to develop a system and stick to it. It also means being realistic about what you can or cannot achieve within a time frame. For me, I use Todoist to maintain my list and ensure I remain on target.

Todoist is a fantastic tool for making lists. It has a number of features I appreciate, so I will just share the top 5 that I feel are essentials.

1.) Recurring Tasks 

Todoist has a function where you can set up a task that is repeated. This is very helpful for things such as paying the bills, etc. Set it up either daily, weekly or monthly and use it to reward yourself for doing certain tasks. I have it set for writing three times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and get a small thrill whenever I check this off the list on time.

2.) Task Reminders

Reminders are useful to set if you are someone who tends not to constantly check your To-Do List. You can add as many reminders as you want and set them to go off on your phone or via email. I personally use this for things that need reminding because I tend to procrastinate on them. So I put multiple reminders on the same task to ensure it gets done.

3.) Gmail Integration

If you use Gmail and Chrome, there is a very useful plugin that you can add so that you can add tasks within Gmail. Once you click on the add button, a window pops up within Gmail for you to input details about the task. This is especially useful because you no longer have to exit the Gmail window when you are adding a task. Plus, when you click on the task in Todoist later on, it automatically pulls up the relevant email in Gmail.


4.) Email Tasks Into Todoist

Sometimes you are on the go and happen to read an email that needs some action. Instead of opening the Todoist app on my phone to add the action, I forward the entire email into Todoist. All you need to do is make sure you enable emails for the project and when you forward the email, make sure it is going to the correct project email.

Right-click on any project to enable the option to email tasks to the project or to share the project.

Once you have set up the email address, don’t forget to add it to your address book!

5.) Project Collaboration

One of the useful features of Todoist is the ability to share projects with people and have collaborations. Once you have shared a project, you can assign various tasks to other team members. At the same time, you can use the notes function and attach files where you need. This is especially useful for when you are assigning a task to a team member and need to give context and information.

Bonus Tip: Use IFTTT to automatically create a task when you star an email in Gmail. IFTTT is an automation tool that allows you to link various apps together to trigger a certain action when something happens.

If you happen to use Gmail and often have trouble remembering to act or reply to an email after reading it, just star it and it will automatically create a task in Todoist for you. I personally use this a lot so I never forget to reply to an email.

I hope the above tips are useful and please feel free to share any other Todoist tips you may have!

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