Organize Your Life: How I Use Todoist to Achieve Goals

Intro

Three years ago, I read Getting things done by David Allen and installed a todo app called Todoist. Since then, I've leveraged this app to reach many goals including learning computer science, landing a 100% work from home job, getting married, and buying a house. Once you get organized, anything is possible 📈

Getting Things Done will get you started. It's dated, but the concepts and ideas are timeless, tried and true.

Step 1 - Write tasks down as you think of them 

Every time a task pops into your head, put it in Todoist. If you're working on an important work project realized the bathroom hasn't been cleaned, pop open the app and add a task, 'clean bathroom.' Todos will pop into your head throughout the day!

After a couple weeks, there will be unorganized tasks in Todoist. Everything from "Buy a house" to "Replace HVAC air filter."

Step 2 - Start organizing tasks into buckets

Choose a weekend to sit down and look for patterns. Create project folders organize tasks into folders. The top-level projects I use today are Yellowfin (Where I work), Overhead, Career, Future, and Books.

What's great about Todoist is that it has very good natural language processing, so it can detect things like... "Check Tire pressure on the first Sunday of every Month" and remind you on the day.

Step 3 - Determine Cadence and Task Priority

For a couple weeks, don't set 'task quotas' or goals. Simply completed tasks as you have time. I naturally complete about 10-20 tasks per day and 50-70 tasks per week. Use this number as a baseline to figure an amount of completed tasks to shoot for each day.

Today, I consistently complete 10 tasks per day and 70 tasks per week. That's about it! Write things down, organize, and complete. Easy as 1-2-3!

Happy To-Do-ing!