Todoist Share Project

'Todoist is a good tool for keeping me focused, goal oriented, and on track. It's great to share projects with other colleagues using the software also.' Pro 'I find Todoist to be a very good app and am very happy with the free plan.
I have been facing the same issue, but I have found a workaround. Sign in to your 2nd Gmail in incognito, signup Todosit on another tab with 2nd Gmail account. Create a project on todoist.

I've been using Todoist almost daily for the last 4 years. I've learned a lot of tips and tricks along the way, which I'd like to share with you. The official guide describes the basics to get started, but I want to cover some more advanced or lesser-known features in this post.

Select Platform: Right click on the project you want to share. Select Share project from the menu. Type in the name of the person you want to share with. If it’s someone you’ve never shared a project with before, you’ll. Click Invite to send the invitation (s).

Update: Todoist also published a Hidden Features post, covering even more tips & tricks.

Customize your start page

As of version 949, custom queries were removed. You will have to create a custom filter and select it instead.

By default, Todoist uses the 'Next 7 days' view. But it's also possible to define any project, filter or custom query as home page. Go to Settings → General and select Custom query as your Start page.

That's the query I'm using: overdue, 3 days, @next, p:Inbox. This will show the following sections by default:

overdue
next 3 days
tasks marked with @next label
the inbox (depends on your language, e.g. it's p:Eingang in German)

Recurring tasks based on completion date

Todoist offers many ways to create recurring tasks using the every keyword. One overlooked feature is adding ! to every. Here's the difference:

every month creates tasks based on the task's original date. This is useful for tasks with exact due dates, e.g. paying your rent.
every! month creates tasks based on the task's last completion date. This is more appropriate for tasks that must be completed at regular intervals, e.g. working out.

Let's say we create a recurring task on January 10 and complete it on January 15. When every is used, the next occurrence is February 10, while every! leads to February 15:

Postponing recurring tasks

In a perfect world we would always complete our scheduled tasks on time. But sometimes you can't or don't want to finish a task today. There are various ways to deal with this:

Leave the task as overdue and finish it later. This may not be the best solution for passionate procrastinators, though. This also reduces your Karma points if you leave a task overdue for more than 4 days.
Mark the task as completed. However, this will distort your Karma points (as you check off a task that you did not actually complete).
By editing the date field or using smart date recognition you are able to re-define the task's schedule. This is not the preferred way to reschedule tasks, but it's possible using the starting keyword, e.g. every day starting tomorrow
Much more convenient is the built-in postponing mechanism. Open the task's menu and click on the circle arrow to reschedule the task to its next due date. This will not alter your task's original date query.

Structure subtasks

Subtasks are handy to structure your tasks within a project. Let's improve the hierarchy visually by connecting the following features:

A task starting with * (followed by a space) will hide its checkbox. This makes it perfect for subheadings.
Todoist supports basic Markdown formatting, so surround a text with **Text** to make it appear bold.

When combined, we are able to create a 'Scheduled' project with * **Monthly**, * **Weekly** and * **Daily** sections:

This makes it easier to distinguish parent projects from subprojects.

Archive subtasks

Completed tasks are archived automatically. However, this does not apply to subtasks by default. Instead, checking off a subtask marks it as completed without removing it from the view:

This may make sense for some people, but I don't like seeing completed tasks on my todo list. You can select the task's menu and click Archive, but there is an easier way to achieve it: Hold down Shift on your keyboard while checking off a subtask to automatically archive it.

Expand / Collapse all tasks

Subtasks are not only useful to structure your tasks. They also allow you to hide/collapse all children tasks by clicking the black arrow.

It would be great to collapse/fold or expand all subtasks at once, especially when dealing with many tasks. Unfortunately, Todoist does not offer such a feature, but it's possible with Bookmarklets, small scripts stored as browser bookmarks.

Drag and drop these links onto your bookmark bar and click them while your Todoist web app is open:

Projects comments (premium)

You might have been using task comments already: hover over a task and click the speech bubble that appears next to the task name.

But did you know that you may also attach comments to projects? It's quite useful for generic notes or discussions.

Backup your data

I manage most of my tasks in Todoist, and I'd really hate losing any of them. If you're a Premium user, Todoist already creates automatic backups for all your active tasks. You can also try my Export tool for Todoist — an app I have written several years ago. It's free, open source and doesn't require a premium account. It also allows you to download all your data, including account information and archived tasks (JSON only).

Conclusion

Todoist is a simple yet powerful task manager. I hope my post helps you to get even more out of this app. If you're looking for more tips, visit the (unofficial) Todoist subreddit, where people are sharing a lot of useful knowledge.

If you know more useful tips and tricks, feel free to leave a comment below.

Do you want to try out premium features? Use my referral link and get two free months of Todoist Premium!

Want to leave a comment?

Join the discussion at Twitter. Feel free to drop me an email. 💌

Freelance writing success isn’t just about how much money you make. It’s also about your resulting lifestyle. If you only “succeed” financially because you’re working 12-16 hour days, you’re doing something wrong.

It’s about balance.

One of the biggest perks of freelance writing is that our job tailors to our lives — not the other way around.

We can work from anywhere. We can take time off when we want to. We can work in pajamas and fuzzy slippers (my favorite work attire).

Maintaining those luxuries requires discipline. When we don’t have a boss looking over our shoulder… when we don’t always operate on someone else’s schedule…

That’s where freelancing can become a challenge.

And I’ll admit it. I’m not a naturally disciplined person.

I love the freedom of freelancing. If I want time off, I take it on a whim without a second thought. Even though I work best when I keep myself on a rigid schedule, there’s nothing I like more than breaking my own rules sometimes.

So, over the years I’ve put a lot of emphasis on one simple concept:

Work Smarter, Not Harder

I have no interest in being one of those 16-hour-per-day writers (been there, done that).

I have no interest in rushing to meet deadlines someone else set (why I also set my own deadlines for client projects — more on that in a bit).

And I have no interest in working so hard that I exhaust myself and start hating the job (oh, don’t get me wrong — I exhaust myself; but work is often a relief more than the cause).

If, like me, you have no interest in those things, you learn to work smarter rather than harder.

I’m sure you’ve heard that before. But what does it actually mean?

Simple: “Work smarter, not harder” means you find ways to get more done and make more money in less time and / or with less effort.

Sounds nice, right?

It is!

And there’s one particular productivity tool that helps me more than anything else.

Todoist

Look. I’ve always been a bit of a productivity junkie. And I’m a huge fan of to-do lists. I’ve shared my to-do list strategies with fellow writers over the years, and I still use all of them for different things at different times (especially white boards and index cards).

But even when I use other to-do list and organizational tools, I tend to go back to one in particular — Todoist.

The way I usually put it is that “Todoist is like having a virtual backup of your brain.”

Today I’d like to tell you a bit about how I use Todoist and how it might help you organize your writing, your business, and your life too.

Todoist is my “Everything Organizer”

One of my favorite things about Todoist is that I can use it to organize and plan pretty much everything.

Here are just some of the things I plan and track using this tool:

Freelance writing deadlines
Interview calls and other appointments
Blogging schedules
Site audits
Web development projects
Indie publishing schedules

And that’s just business.

I also keep track of my daily workouts, shopping lists, home improvement projects, and routine chores.

If there’s something I need to do on any given day, it’ll show up on my daily Todoist list.

Here’s what that might look like:

One of my favorite aspects of Todoist is its portability.

I can take it anywhere and everywhere. It’s in my usual browser. It’s on my phone. And it’s on my tablet. Things sync beautifully, so when I mark a task as complete on one device, it’s cleared from my to-do list on all devices.

How I Use Todoist

I like to use Todoist in two key ways:

For scheduling
For planning

Todoist’s scheduling capabilities are fantastic. You can use plain language to set up scheduling and even repeat tasks.

That might be as simple as typing “Every Tuesday” to schedule a task to repeat every Tuesday. Or you might want something a bit more unusual (tough for a lot of to-do list apps to handle) like “every 6 months starting January 12” — just type it like that and Todoist knows what to do!

If you’ve ever been frustrated with scheduling limitations in other to-do list apps, check out this short video from Todoist on what you can do with theirs. Really, this blows most other apps I’ve used out of the water (and I’ve used plenty).

Not every task or list needs to be scheduled.

That happens when I use Todoist for planning instead.

That could mean anything from using a grocery list (which you can share with other members of your household) to creating a website development to-do list where I’m not worried about specific deadlines for each task, or when I’m planning things out and don’t have a specific timeline yet. Ar5009 driver windows 7.

Todoist lets me organize it all. And that makes it an indispensable tool both in business and in life.

Organizing by “Projects”

Todoist uses a “project” hierarchy to let you organize things.

I start with my top-level projects — Personal and Work.

(Actually, I have some other top-level projects as you’ll see below. But they’re not always there. One is a shared project I was helping someone else with, and others were for a temporary challenge and when I moved this site’s development to a top-level project so it was always front-and-center. I could have just saved them to the favorites section instead, but I did it this way in these cases.)

My Personal project folder is then broken down into things like Health & Wellness (that’s where I organize my workouts), Shopping (where I keep track of grocery lists and other things needed around the house), and Home Projects (such as repairs or seasonal chores I don’t want to forget about).

My Work folder is the most important though.

It’s the master project for everything in my business.

I run a 3-prong business — freelance writing, blogging, and indie publishing.

So my Work folder (or primary project) has sub-projects for each of those areas, as well as one for general admin and marketing tasks.

Then I break it down even further.

For example, in my indie publishing project, I set up sub-projects for each pen name. Then, under each of them, I have sub-projects for each series and / or book, depending on what I’m working on.

My Websites & Blogs project is broken down as well — with a site admin project, then sub-projects for every website or blog I own. I even have a separate project section for sites in development, to keep them separate from active sites.

The freelance writing side of my business is much simpler. So I don’t break that down into further sub-projects. I just schedule all client projects, calls, and related tasks under the main Freelance Writing project. If I didn’t have admininistrative and marketing tasks laid out in a higher level project, I might create sub-projects for those here.

Earlier I mentioned that I can’t stand operating on someone else’s schedule. That includes client deadlines. So I have another simple rule: I try to under-promise and over-deliver whenever possible. And Todoist helps with that too.

I do that by setting my own project deadlines. I always leave padding when quoting turn-around times to clients to account for any issues that might come up. But I set my own deadlines in Todoist earlier. This gives me flexibility if I need a day off, it eases overall pressure, and most often it allows me to over-deliver on client expectations.

Here’s a quick peek at what my higher-level project structure used to look like in Todoist (more recent changes moved or removed the bottom three categories, and I’ve added another for more private research projects):

Todoist Free vs Premium

So far, everything I’ve shown you is available in Todoist’s free version. So there’s no reason not to sign up and play with it for a bit to see if it works for you.

Actually, there are even more free features you might find useful, such as:

Task priority levels
The ability to share projects with other users (up to 5 on the free account)

But I’m a Todoist Premium user. So I have a few other cool options to work with.

I won’t go into detail about those because they won’t be accessible to all of you, but at around $30 per year, this easily pays for itself in the time it saves me. So I do want to give you a quick overview.

Todoist Premium Features

If you enjoy the free version of Todoist and decide to sign up for the premium version, here are some of the extras you’ll enjoy (and no, I’m not an affiliate of Todoist or anything; I’m just head over heels in love with this app and think it could save you boatloads of time):

You can attach comments and files to tasks (handy if you use it for collaboration).
You can use location alerts (set iOS or Android alerts when arriving or leaving certain places — like an alert to pick up printer paper the next time your phone shows you’re near your local office supply store).
An unlimited number of email or text reminders for important tasks can be set up.
You can export tasks to calendar tools (I have mine tied to Google Calendar for example).
There’s a label system for tasks in addition to your priority levels and project groups.

But the last feature in that list is my favorite and why I’d stick with premium even if I didn’t need the larger project limit (the limit is 80 projects for the free account and 300 for premium, though you can archive inactive projects so they don’t count towards that limit).

If you were a reader of All Freelance Writing, you might have seen me mention “5-minute lists” as well.

This is when you have a list of tasks that can each be completed in five minutes or less.

These quick-task lists are one of my favorite productivity tools (right along with Todoist and things like the Pomodoro technique) because they keep me moving forward no matter how much, or how little, time I have at any given moment.

This is the main thing I use labels for.

No matter what project a task is in, if it can be done in five minutes or less, I slap a “5-minute task” label on it.

Then, when I’m just not feeling “it” and I’d rather do anything but work, I can pull up a task list using that filter.

I figure, “fine, I’ll go chill if I really need to, but let me just knock out one quick thing so I don’t feel like a total louse all day.”

So I do.

And once I’ve done that and I have the satisfaction of knocking something off my to do list, 9 times out of 10 I opt to do another quick task. Then sometimes another. And another.

Before I know it, I’ve spent an hour working and have several things finished that I never thought I’d complete that day.

So yeah, that little label feature is a big deal for me. And in addition to 5-minute tasks, I label other time-based groups as well (15 min, 30 min, 1 hour, day-long projects, etc.).

And that’s the gist of how I use Todoist!

I organize everything by projects and sub-projects. You can use sub-tasks too to narrow things down even more. I schedule what needs to be scheduled. I use Todoist for collaboration occasionally.

Todoist is like having a personal assistant with you at all times. Who wouldn’t want that?

If you’re looking to get more organized this year in your writing business, or if you want to more fully embrace the “work smarter, not harder” principle, Todoist might be just what you need.

You’ll get most of these features with a free account, so why not sign up today and give it a try? The more organized you are, the easier it is to be productive. And that can free up extra billable hours, letting you earn more through your freelance writing without having to raise rates immediately or work more hours overall.

How To Use Todoist

This post was originally published on January 11, 2017 at All Freelance Writing. It has since been updated for Freelance Writing Pros readers.

Todoist Project Management

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