For collaborative professional work, we prefer Asana slightly to Todoist. Conversely, we like Todoist a smidgen more for personal task management and lightweight teamwork. Todoist The top-ranked productivity app that helps millions of people organize work and life. Twist A communication app that helps teams balance focused work with collaborative conversations.

1. Todoist Work And Personalized
2. Todoist Work And Personal Life
3. Todoist Work And Personal
4. Todoist Work And Personalities
5. Todoist Work And Personal Learning
6. Todoist Work And Personality

I’ve long used Evernote for my resource and reference materials. all of my research is stored there, along with notebooks that contain living documents that I want to share with those who are helping build Productivityist and my virtual assistant. Pretty much everything that is any source of reference material is kept there, and even ideas for blog posts and other content spend some time in Evernote before making their way to Scrivener for bigger projects or Desk.pm for blog posts.

Todoist has been my task app for nearly a year, although it seems much longer. The majority of my tasks live in Todoist, with the exception of those being the ones in Asana (which I use for some of the projects I’m working on with others, including the Do Better With Asana project I’m part of with Jeremy Roberts of Cloud Productivity). All of my personal, professional, and Productivityist tasks otherwise live in Todoist.

So how do I use Todoist and Evernote together to create a workflow that is as frictionless as possible? I mean, they don’t speak to each other very well out of the box. And while there are some automation tools you can use to link them up – IFTTT and Zapier immediately come to mind – I tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to build automation before developing the best approach to the apps I’m using.

My way of getting Todoist and Evernote together isn’t all that difficult to assemble. It just involves working with the two apps with similar triggers and identifiers, as well as developing a routine that I get to know and follow every day.

1. I Build Common Threads

I break down Todoist in the following way:

1. Top tier projects are Areas of Responsibility.
2. Tiers below those top levels are projects of varying sizes.
3. Tasks are…well, tasks.
4. Labels are the equivalent of contexts to me (or modes).

I break down Evernote in the following way in order to create an easy shift from my task app to my reference app:

1. Notebook stacks are categorized by Areas of Responsibility.
2. Notebooks found in those stacks are projects of varying sizes.
3. Notes are…well, notes.
4. Tags are the equivalent of contexts to me (or modes).

See how I’ve created some common threads between the two apps? Now when I switch back and forth I spend less time getting used to the change of environment and more time making progress. (Note that I do keep Productivityist Coaching as a notebook stack because it contains notebooks that are local notebooks and not synced…for privacy reasons.)

Let me give you an example.

I’m currently working on my next book. I have a project called “My Next Book” in Todoist that lives under the top tier Area of Responsibility called “Professional.” When I look at the same project in Evernote, I’ll find “My Next Book” as a notebook inside the notebook stack called “Professional.” The difference is that tasks related to the project live in Todoist, while reference notes related to the project live in Evernote. I can also copy the URLs from either a Todoist task and put it into an Evernote note related to said task or copy the URL from the note from Evernote and place into a Todoist task if I want. I may do the former when I want to work on finalizing some research in Evernote so I can simply click on the Todoist task and mark it as complete without having to look for it in Todoist. I may do the latter when I’m in Todoist and want to access a related note found in a task quickly rather than wade through my Evernote notebook. The URLs simply speed up the process enough to keep me moving along at a faster clip.

Label and tags are treated a bit differently, however. In Todoist I limit the amount of labels I use so that I can easily remember them and attach them to tasks. I’ve written about labels before and I strongly believe that “less is more” when it comes to labels in Todoist as long as they are clearly defined and refined as needed. In Evernote, I’m not as strict with that rule. After all, tags are effective search terms and I have far more notes to search in Evernote than I have tasks in Todoist. Why? Because notes don’t get completed – tasks do. So while I don’t go crazy with tags in Evernote, I do try to be mindful of them.

2. I Use Reminders In Both Apps Differently

First off, I rarely use reminders in any app, unless it’s for a specific appointment or a date-specific agreement. I actually use an app called Due for things like reminding me to pick up my son from daycare (that way I don’t get stuck in flow and fail to give myself enough time to get him) and things of that nature. But I do occasionally use reminders in Todoist and Evernote for very different use cases.

Todoist’s location-based reminders are great. I know other apps (most notably OmniFocus and Checkmark 2) have this feature, but I like the fact that once a location is entered in Todoist from a mobile device that it can be used regularly from all platforms in the future. Very helpful stuff. I don’t use the time-based reminders in Todoist very often because I’m generally proactive enough to not need such reminders. In the case that I do use them, they are usually for things like reminding me to send Productivityist Coaching Recap and/or Accountability Emails to clients in the Eastern Time Zone before they end their day (for example, “Send Client X Recap Email” today at 1 pm – which is actually 4 pm their time).

I use Evernote reminders to bring items related to my monthly themes back to the forefront at the start of each month. For example, I received an Evernote reminder on the first of this month to start working on my next book. It wasn’t a task so much as it was a note that displayed some content I’d written that was meant to jumpstart the book writing process.

Other things I have started doing is copy the link of a Todoist task into Evernote related to starting of a certain big task or project, as shown below.

Since Todoist doesn’t have start date capabilities (or at least not start dates that seem easy to set up), the Evernote reminder would serve to remind me that I wanted to start working on that task on a specific date. I simply click on the link in the Evernote note (which would also contain pertinent information related to that task) and it takes me to the task.

At that time I’ll assign a due date (usually a repeating date until I finish it) and I’m good to go. It’s not the most automated of solutions, but I know it works every time and it appears to be unbreakable (which is exactly what I need in order to trust it).

3. I Use Both Email Accounts For The Apps Constantly

While both of my email clients allow for me to send tasks directly to Todoist and reference items to Evernote (I use Airmail on my Mac and Dispatch on iOS), the most reliable way to process email for me is to simply use the email addresses associated with Evernote’s default notebook and Todoist’s email addresses per project.

To be clear, I don’t use all of the email addresses Todoist allows. Instead, I use the following ones:

1. Inbox: This is where most of my tasks that arrive via email go. I simply go into Todoist and put them in the right projects later.
2. Team Inbox: These are where I put tasks that arrive via email that either myself or my wife need to work on. (I’ve contemplated adding my assistant to the mix here, but I’ve got another project that’s just for her right now.)
3. VA Tasks: Any tasks that arrive via email that I want to assign to my assistant go in here.

Why don’t I use all of the email addresses my various projects in Todoist allows? Because those project above will last while other projects won’t. I also only have to think of three email addresses that tasks need to wind up in – which is helpful when simply trying to process email quickly.

In order to best align Evernote with Todoist, I renamed my default notebook “*Inbox” so that I am triggered to process it regularly. On some occasions, emails end up going to both Todoist and Evernote if they contain both a task and reference item. I’ll also make a habit of BCCing these apps when replying to people so that I can get tasks and/or reference items into the right apps and respond all in one fell swoop.

I’ve been a big fan of Evernote for a long time (having been a user since June 2008) and my fondness for Todoist continues to grow. With the recent addition of being able to link to tasks in Todoist, my productivity when working with both of these apps in tandem is further enhanced. If you’re looking to get more out of the productivity tag team of Todoist and Evernote, then pick any one of the ways I use them and start building that better workflow today.

If you want to wring as much productivity goodness out of Evernote as possible then I highly recommend you pick up Brett Kelly’s Evernote Essentials. Brett is my go-to guy for all things Evernote and he’s levelled up this product in a big way. You can check out all of the tiers of Evernote Essentials (appropriately aligned with how Evernote named its tiers) over at the Evernote Essentials website. There’s no better Evernote resource available so go and check out Evernote Essentials now!

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A typical day for all of us involves lot of things we should complete. Buying groceries, working, calling family, and more. Organizing all of this and keeping track of everything is not that easy, especially if you work remotely and your home is also your office! At least, that was the case before discovering Todoist. Before talking about it, I want to tell you how I spent the last 3 years trying to find the perfect system to organize what I should do in a given day.

Todoist Work And Personalized

My story started with post-its. But I quickly found they are tied to where you leave them. For example, when I’m outside, I can’t check what I have the next day easily unless I’m taking my post-its with me wherever I go. Which sounds weird. So it was apparent that I needed something I can take always with me. Something on my phone for example.

I then tried Google Keep, Calendar, and a bunch of todo apps. And what they all have in common is they were too demanding. Whenever I need to add something, I need to open the app, write it down, add a timing, etc. It was too much for me. And actually, I failed to keep using them for more than a week.

Even with this, I kept trying more solutions. But this time, my problem was more defined than before. Failing to find a solution to something only means you got more data to find a better solution. For me, I wanted something to help me manage my tasks without spending too much time adding the said tasks, or tweaking things. I needed someone or something I can just forward emails to, add things with a click, that automatically reminds me of important meetings, etc. I needed a personal assistant.

Todoist was an app I tried at least a year ago, and it didn’t work out as expected. I was thinking of it as a todo list. And actually, even Todoist is selling itself as a todo list (screenshot from their homepage):

But for me, once I started learning more about it 3 to 4 months ago, I found it was more than a todo list. I literally forward emails to Todoist. Add my tasks with a click. My calendar is automatically synced. Reminders are included. And much more. It’s my external brain. My personal assistant.

In this post, I’ll present you how I leverage Todoist and use it as my personal assistant. I’ll also give you my daily workflow that keeps me focused and productive. But before starting, I want to share a few points with you:

1. The method I’m presenting here, is my method. And it’s for inspiration. Take what’s here, study it, and iterate on it to find your own version. It’s always better to create a workflow that works for you instead of adapting yourself to someone’s workflow.
2. Some features described here are only available for Todoist Premium members. But no worries, you can get 2 months Premium fo free if you register using the link below:

Get all your work into Todoist

Emails

Either work or personal emails, they both land into Todoist. And to add them, you have two solutions depending if you’re on a laptop or on a mobile device:

Desktop

If you’re using Gmail or Outlook as your mail client, there is a Todoist integration to add your emails as tasks. You can find them here.

But before adding an email, I want to know if it’s worth adding it as a task. To decide, I use a simple process: if I can do this in a short period of time, usually < 10min, I do it right away. If not, I add it to Todoist and archive the email.

The last step, archiving emails, is optional. I like to keep my inbox empty. Having emails in my inbox makes me think I have work to do. So I prefer to remove everything I finished with.

Mobile

While on mobile, it’s impossible to use the mail integrations discussed above. For this reason, I forward emails to Todoist. Just like a personal assistant.

How? Each project in your account have a unique email address. Once you forward an email to it, a task will be created in the project. As simple as that.

All the steps to forward emails to Todoist can be found here.

Please note this is a premium feature. But you can get 2 months premium for free using the invitation link:

Calendar

Todoist Work And Personal Life

Work happens on calendars too. I wanted a way to automatically sync meetings to Todoist.

With Todoist Premium, it’s easy to link your calendar. You also get a two way syncing. This means, a task added to Todoist will be added to your calendar and vice-versa. One advice I would give here is to not sync tasks without a due date. If you sync those, they will show as a whole day events on your Calendar. I find that not optimal.

To fix this, you need to go to the Integrations settings, click Edit on the Calendar integration, then: Tasks without a due time should not be synced.

Tasks

Different teams use different tools to track their work. I usually use the web version of these apps alongside Todoist browser extensions. With one click I can add these links as tasks. There is an extension for Chrome, Safari and Firefox and you can find them here.

With this, I have all my emails, calendar invites, and tasks in one place. This means all my work. For personal tasks, I just add them either directly.

Having all of this in one place helps me have a wide view of how my work and personal day looks like and better schedule time for each task.

If you’re curious how I do it, I’ll present you my workflow next.

My personal Todoist workflow

Work and Personal projects

I have two projects: Personal for my personal tasks. And Work, for work-related tasks.

I got the unique emails for both these projects and added them to my contacts list. I called them Todoist Personal and Todoist Work so I can forward emails to the appropriate project. i.e. when it’s a personal email, I just forward it to Todoist Personal. When it’s a work email, I forward it to Todoist Work. And these emails are automagically added as tasks to the appropriate project.

These are the two projects I started with and use daily, but I add more from time to time.

Your projects can live forever or for a short period of time. For example, I have a project called Groceries. I just add what I want there and check things off when I buy them. But once it’s empty, I don’t delete it, because I know I’ll use it later to add new items. On the opposite side, I have a project called “Learn drawing from Gal’s videos”. This project is for learning a new skill and I will eventually archive it once all tasks inside it are done.

Using filters

Filters is a premium feature you can use to record your searches and display the results in seconds. You can learn more about filters here.

My most used filter, and the first thing I check in the morning is: (overdue | today) & #Work. This displays all task overdue or scheduled today and are part of the Work project. I’m calling this filter Today’s work.

In the morning, I check this filter to know what my work day looks like, if I have a call, or if I need a chunk of time to think deeply about something.

Once I have these information, I can better schedule my day and see how my personal tasks fits, or vice-versa.

Preparing daily work

Todoist Work And Personal

To prepare my daily work, i.e. the Today’s work filter I presented above. I usually take 10-20 minutes at the end of the day to prepare for the next one.

Sometimes I can’t do it for different reasons. If that’s the case, I do it in the morning instead. The general rule is: I like to start the day with an already defined list of what I should do or work on that day.

More features in Todoist

This is basically what I use in Todoist. But there are other features you can use like labels, priorities and more. You can discover them and see if they fit with your workflow. But for me, I just keep it minimal as long as it’s working.

Todoist Work And Personalities

Todoist Work And Personal Learning

Hope this post was helpful for you and gave you an inspiration to have your own personal assistant like Todoist.

If you have a personal Todoist workflow you want to share with me or the readers of this blog, please let us know in the comments.

Todoist Work And Personality

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