Getting Things Done With Todoist PDF
Preview Getting Things Done With Todoist
INDEPENDENTLY PUBLISHED IN DIGITAL FORMATS “GETTING THINGS DONE WITH TODOIST” FIRST EDITION | 2015 All rights reserved Copyright © 2015 Daniel LeFebvre Get in touch with me on Google+[1] Cover design by Daniel LeFebvre Chapter 1: Let's Meet Hello there! First, let me thank you for your interest in this book. If you've found this book and have gotten this far, you're probably a lot like me. Before we dive into the nitty-gritty details of getting things done with Todoist, I thought it'd be nice to take a little bit of time to get to know each other first. That way, if you're just reading the sample of this book, you'll know whether or not you want to proceed. To tell you a little background about me, I've been working in computer graphics (CG) for well over a decade at the time of this writing. Since the early days of my career, my roles have changed quite a bit and have included just about everything from freelancing, working alone, working in large teams, small teams and even leading my own teams. A big hobby of mine has been finding ways to improve my own personal productivity. I first started using David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology the year his book of the same name first published in 2002. Since then have been constantly tweaking and modifying my workflow to better suit my needs. As part of that, I’ve bounced around between to-do apps and tools over the years. Some of the tools I’ve used in the past include Toodledo[2], GQueues[3], Nozbe[4], NirvanaHQ[5] and Zendone[6], just to name a few. Recently, I wrote a book about Getting Things Done in Evernote[7] where I outlined my workflow for using David Allen's GTD system inside of the ever-popular Evernote system. Well, as often happens, my role at work has changed and as a result I needed to re-assess how I manage my action items. For me, the tool I use to manage action items now is Todoist. I still use Evernote on a daily basis for reference material and writing, but I've found Todoist to be an incredibly robust and powerful app that can manage my action items very well. Is it the end-all app for task management forever? No. But then again, nothing really is. So now that you know a little more about me, I'd like to get to know you a little better. Since you can’t really interact directly through this book, we’ll have to settle for my making some assumptions about you. In this book, I plan to move quickly. I’m a firm believer that personal productivity is, well, personal. That means what works for me probably won’t fit perfectly into your productive life. However, there are bound to be some tips and tricks you can pick up or things you can learn from the decade-plus experience using GTD in various systems that has resulted in the system I use now in Todoist. As I eluded to before, I've been working with some form of technology for most of my life on a daily basis. As a result, I really want this book to be a guide to showing you how I use GTD and Todoist together so, hopefully, you'll be able to glean some tips and tricks that can help you get stuff done. Fortunately, Todoist's interface is such that it is incredibly simple to pick up and understand. With that in mind, I won't really spend much time going over the basics of how GTD and Todoist work. Instead, I'll assume you have some pretty good technical knowledge as well as knowledge of how GTD itself works. That will let me focus on explaining how I get things done but also why I do things in specific ways to get things done. One other thing I'd like to point out is that I won't be covering anything about Apple's OS X or iOS operating systems. While I don't have anything against these operating systems, I don't use them on a daily basis so, by extension, I don't use them for my GTD workflow. I would assume that Todoist's iOS app works in a very similar manner to their Android app simply because the good devs over at Doist[8] (the company behind Todoist) have done an amazing job at cross- functionality in their apps, but I have never used the iOS variant myself so I won't be covering that at all. After over two decades of GTD myself and seeing others use countless apps, if there's one thing you should know it's that personal productivity is, above all else, personal. That's a big reason why I'm sharing my personal workflows with you. I don't really expect anyone to follow my workflows to the letter, but that's okay. Everyone works differently and as a result, what helps him or her be more productive is going to be different. With that said, there is a great deal that anyone can learn from seeing how others do something so they can pick out the pieces that they'd like to try. That's what I hope you get from this book. Even if it's one or two tips that are able to save you a few minutes each day -- that time adds up. The last thing I’d like to point out is if you’ve noticed any of the images are being displayed strangely on your device, you can download the original screenshots used along with the original book images by connecting to my shared Evernote notebook link. I did it this way because online book publishers like Amazon will automatically adjust formatting to work best for reading across eBook formats. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always bode well for screenshots. You can find the link for the Evernote shared notebook at the end of this book. Again, I really appreciate your time in reading this and I truly hope that I'm able to help you become more productive and organized. Are you ready? Let's get started! Chapter 2: Free Vs. Premium As of this writing, Todoist's free version offers a lot of functionality. So much functionality, in fact, that many people are able to get by with this free version without needing premium. Personally, I bought Todoist Premium[9] for a full year when I first signed up. While I won’t try to sell you on Todoist Premium if you really don’t want it, if you'll allow me to get up on a soapbox for a moment as I've heard many people complain about the subscription model of Todoist. When you consider it's not really a static product, that cost becomes negligible. What I mean by that is when you purchase Todoist Premium; you're not buying a single product as you would a DVD or a physical book. What you're buying is a service. That means Todoist's dev team are constantly improving, adding features and maintaining the servers that are needed to make sure your data doesn't get lost. So if you consider Todoist to be a buy-it-and-done app, I'd encourage you to change how you view it. It's a living, changing product. And, quite frankly, in today's modern world a broadband internet connection can cost well over $100/mo., and smartphones can cost about the same. The cost of Todoist Premium for a year ($29/year at the time of this writing) for an entire year's worth of great service from a tool you'll use every single day is pretty amazing by comparison if you think about it. How much have you spent on your cell phone bill in the past year? How about in entertainment or your morning coffee? I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to pay a relative drop in the bucket to make sure Todoist is reliable, secure and stays around. Okay, I'll hop off my soapbox now.
The list of books you might like
