Why do I love todoist.com?

I can’t even begin to name how many todo management apps are out there. How am I going to choose anyway?

I believe I’ve tried a dozen, can’t even remember their names. In their essence, they’re all doing the same thing.

Why have aI chosen to stay with todoist.com then? It’s the day to day experience.

The fact that I’ve learnt a few of their keyboard shortcuts so now I’m able to move around quickly and do my job. Let me go over a bunch of features:

1. Single page app #

The dawn of a new era, web pages, then web sites, have become web apps. The gap between desktop apps and web apps has grown increasingly slim. The browser has taken the spotlight. I can access todoist.com in my forever-open Chrome and its sits right in there, acting well.

2. Catered towards human nature #

No longer do I have to figure out dry dates. They can handle human stuff like: “tomorrow”, “next week”, “every second Tuesday” and the likes. Great stuff!

3. Simple priorities #

My daily routine is to get rid of everything that I can and then prioritize what’s left. I do that by flagging tasks using their labels (i.e. flags): white, light blue, dark blue or red. My initial urge is to flag most of the stuff as red. Then I figure out that’s not doable any more, so I start downgrading certain tasks. It helps out to be able to take a brief look at my todo list of priorities for the day every time I refocus.

Did I mention that refocusing a few times a day is a really healthy habit? I found out that not doing so basically renders me into procrastination, drifting apart on the likes of Facebook or Email. Having everything clear helps though.

4. Shared projects #

I can share certain projects with my business partner and project manager, Jeroen. That not only helps him out to see what I’m working on and how busy I am, but also kind of creates this accountability idea into my mind, where I feel like I should do a better job prioritizing and checking off tasks.

5. iPhone App #

Morning coffee. I’m still lazy to fire up my laptop, so I just tinker with my iPhone. The todoist.com iPhone app does well. Although any.do on the iOS also comes to mind, I’m happy with their offering.

Conclusion #

Overall, it does the job. It does it well, it stands out of the way. It understands humans and it caters to them. It lets me be fast and learn shortcuts that I can use effectively. It makes it easy for me to form a daily habit. That’s what good UX should be all about, allowing and encouraging one to form a daily habit.

Q.e.d.