Things 3 vs. Todoist: Which Is Better? (Review)

things 3 and todoist are the best to-do list apps out there right now but which one's better or more importantly which one is the best app for you in this video I'm going to show you how I capture tasks how I organize them and how I plan them in each of these apps so that you can make an informed decision about which app is right for you and of course we're going to discuss the pros and cons of these apps as we do this now a quick caveat things three is only available on Apple devices so if you use an Android phone or a Windows PC and you want your to-do list app to be available across all of your devices this question is moot it's not relevant for you you should just go with todoist but if you do use mostly Apple devices keep watching I'm going to help you figure out which app you should be using we've got things three on the left and todoist on the right and I'm just going to show you how easy it is to capture a task in each of these apps so in things three I could pull up a thing called quick entry and I can say schedule a phone call with Jeff Jeff is a friend of mine I can assign that to today and I can assign that to my relationships area boom that was fast I'm not showing you how I'm doing all of this the details if you want to learn the details of all the this I've got full length courses by the way teaching you how to use these apps how to get the most out of it I just want to show you how quick this is both in things and to do so in to-do list the same features called quick add I can pull it up like this and I can say schedule a phone call with Jeff and one of the cool things about to-do list is you can use natural language so I can just type today and to do this will recognize that and assign it a date of today to this task and I can then start typing a hashtag and go relationships and just do that boom and now I have the same thing this is listed on my to-do list for today under the relationships others very fast capturing a task as it comes to you on the computer capturing a task on mobile by the way both of these apps let you put a small little plus button on your iPhone's lock screen which then lets you hey just tap your iPhone tap the plus button and start capturing that task super easy let's say we want to create it to do related to an email so here I have an email I went on a flight and the airline is like hey do you want to fill out a form for us what I can do is I can actually forward this to my to-do list app so I can say mail to things and I'll send this over and what's going to happen is this email is going to show up in my things inbox to-do list has the exact same feature so we'll get back to that in a minute all right another thing you might like to capture is websites so for example here I am on the United States parachute association website because I recently got into skydiving is a new hobby of mine is very fun super exciting and I need to read a little bit about license exams okay so let's say I wanted to create it to do and what I'll do is I'll grab the URL and in things I can say review the USPA website on license exams and then I can put the URL inside the note and I could go ahead and assign this scenario but I'll just leave it like this and Save in todoist there's a more elegant way of doing this I am currently in Chrome and there is a todoist extension for Chrome and if I open it it looks like this and there's todoist extensions for all major browsers by the way if I scroll to the bottom there is a link that says add website as task and if I click on that I can just say review and then hit that page and then boom okay if I go back to todoist what I'll see is I've got this little task sitting right here and it has a link a clickable link back to this page so I find that really handy I'm going to remove this from my today just because I don't want to see it there it's really easy to capture web pages particularly to todoist now in the meantime while I've done this in things the email that I forwarded now shows up in my inbox so here's that email with a link to give feedback and it's shown up right here so this can be really handy if you're often creating to Do's from emails now I will say that todoist has a bunch of extensions that things doesn't so for example todoist has extensions for slack for Microsoft teams for Gmail itself or a bunch of other apps that let you directly create to-do's from messages that you may have received in those apps and that's something that things won't do you'll find yourself manually creating tasks more often another big advantage of todoist is that it supports file attachment which things doesn't so for example let's go over to a project right here that's called get my USPA B license this is again related to skydiving now I want to get a certain license called A B license and there's a list of requirements and I want to figure out what exactly are those requirements and to do that I need to refer to skydivers information manual the Sim I have a PDF file but in things there's no way to attach that in todoist however what I can do is go into the task add a comment to it and click add a file I could also add a voice memo if I wanted to but in this case it's a file I'll go find the file on my desktop and just attach it to the to do and then click comment and now the next time that I'm looking at this to do hey the PDF is right here I don't need to go searching for it in my file system this is very handy and if we were keeping track of points I'd definitely give a point to todoist anyway that's capturing let's move on to organizing the way we organize our to-do's and projects is more intuitive in things than it is in todoist here in things we've got this wonderful structure of top level areas and projects that sit underneath for example here I've got my business area this is all the things that I want to do for my business and I've got inside this area some tasks but I've also got projects that live inside the area so a project is just a collection of tasks that contribute to a joint outcome for example here I'm switching platforms for the courses that I sell okay that's something that is a defined project that has a start it has an end at some point it's done the area itself business that it lives in is sort of an ongoing area of responsibility that I have I have my business it's going to be that way for a long time so you see that there's kind of that distinction and inside a project I can go into a project and see all the tasks that are listed in there right so that's a really handy thing and to do is there's just projects and you can Nest projects underneath each other so you can kind of create the same thing but it's not exactly the same here I have the top level business project and I have a bunch of to-do's in it but what I cannot do here in things if I look at the business top level area I will see both all the tasks listed inside there and the projects that are part of this area so my business projects I can't really do that here in todoist I can show my business tasks but I cannot also see these projects here other than in the sidebar it's just a tad more confusing it ends up working out the same way but I like this way of thinking and things where I'm like hey I've got high level responsibilities admin finances business fun and trips Health home Etc and I have a bunch of tasks and projects that live underneath these just a little harder to set up in todoist now one of the nice things about todoist is you can view your projects in many different ways so for example here I'm showing this as a kanban board so for each YouTube video that I'm working on I can assign it to a specific category so for example earlier I was writing now I'm recording it after I'm done recording it whoops go away scrolling is sometimes hard on the Mac man um move this over to editing all right and so that can be really handy and I can click in here and I have a bunch of subtasks okay so you have the kanban board style available to you in todoist and that can be really handy for projects that move through different phases maybe that's something that's relevant for you as well but even just if I'm looking at any other project I could even be looking at my today view in todoist I can really customize how I view it for example I can sort my tasks in different ways or I can group tasks by a variety of characteristics and that can be really handy but speaking of labels you can tag your tasks and things and in todoist you can label them it's called labeling rather than tags but it works the same way so for an additional way to organize other than the high level organization that we have here with top level areas and projects which I've replicated here in to do this as well you can tag stuff so for example what I can do is inside my business area in things I can click YouTube and immediately only show all of my tasks and products that are related to YouTube of which I only have one right now apparently I've gone into this project and I've assigned It the YouTube tag and the way you manage Tags by the way and things is just go to window and then click tags and you'll see your list of tags right here now the way it works in todoist is you can create tags but then and the way that well they're called labels you go to filters and labels and you can create a new label right here so I can create one called YouTube for example and I could go ahead and assign that to specific tasks but you can then create custom views called filters so what I can do for example is here I have a filter that's called today's top priorities if I just go in there I can say only want to show tasks that are listed for today and that are my top priorities for today talk about priorities in a second so you can create lots of things you can say I only want to show today's tasks that have the YouTube label YouTube tag Etc so you can really slice and dice your data in different ways which is not something that you can do inside things another handy feature of todoist is that you can share tasks this is not possible at all in things things is purely for you but in todoist you can share tasks so let's say that I have a project here switch to kajabi I'm going to switch my website and stuff to this new platform and I want to get an assistant to help me out with this what I could do is I could click this button right here and just share the project with someone else and just punch in their email and invite them now I won't show you how this works because this whole collaboration feature in todoist is about to be revamped so maybe by the time you're watching this to be really outdated but then you can do the obvious thing and just assign this task to someone that task to someone else and then you can also go back and create different filters and say Hey I want to show all high priority tasks that are assigned to me for example this is definitely a big advantage of todoist things 3 is really focused on what you need to do and todoist is a little bit more focused on working together with other people as well and working in a team next let's talk about planning your day which is a really important part of task management and to do that we have to start by talking about dates which work very differently in things in todoist and this is really really important let's say that I am planning to go on my next skydive on July 15th but I want to wear my own helmet rather than renting gear so I'm going to create a task in things and it says buy my own skydiving helmet I'm going to give that a deadline of uh July 14th because on July 15th is when I want to use it so I got to buy it the day before that right and I'm going to put that under my fun and trips area now here's the thing just because I could buy it the day before I need it I probably want to buy it a little bit sooner because I don't like to leave things to the last minute so what I can do and things is I can say hey you know what I'm planning to do this uh this weekend so Saturday boom now what happens in things is I can go to upcoming to the upcoming view which is really nice it shows me all of my to-do's that are upcoming and on Saturday you'll see it says buy my own skydiving helmet but it also shows hey if I don't get around to it on Saturday that's okay I just have to get it done by July 14th this is really great so these supports start dates as well as due dates now in todoist this works differently if I add a task and I say buy my own skydiving helmet there's only one type of date that I can add so what should I do should I write July 14th here and set the date to July 14th or should I write Saturday or sat and put it on Saturday I can't do both now what I recommend is that you use the so-called due date in todoist as an intention date to say it's my intention to do this on Saturday and again I can add it to my fun and trips um oops fun and trips high level project area and todoist and it'll live right there boom okay so you see and I can go to upcoming and todoist as well and scroll down to Saturday and I can see my task right there buy my own skydiving helmet is listed under Saturday showing my intention to do it then but what if I don't get around to it on Saturday and I remove the date in todoist now I lose the information about the true hard deadline and so that's a real shame in one of the big big upsides of things and downsides of todoist is that you cannot keep track both of when you plan to do something and the hard deadline in to-do list at least not an elegant way what I do in the description is I just write down hard deadline July 14th okay but it's easier to miss it this way and this is definitely a big downside of todoist I know that they're working on fixing this they've publicly announced this is not Insider information but it may take a little bit of time for them to also support start dates anyway when you actually plan your day how do you do that in each of these apps in things there's a built-in view called the anytime view which is absolutely amazing what it shows you is all of the tasks that you've not already scheduled for some day in the future so something that you could work on anytime and this is really handy what I do every morning is I just scroll through all those tasks and I'll tell you know what I want to work on this one today I want to work on this one today this one and this one and then I just assign all of those to today and they show up under my today View and I have a list that looks like this absolutely fantastic and if you build this habit you will have such intentional and productive days you won't believe it what I've done in todoist is I've created a filter called anytime just trying to replicate what I did in things because it's such a powerful feature and you can do this as well it's a custom view it's a filter and to learn what query I use for this I'm enroll in my two this course by the way but what it does is it shows exactly the same thing all of the tasks that you could work on that are not already scheduled for the future yeah and again you can do the same thing you say I want to work on this one today we're going to work on that one today and assign all of those to your today view so that's fine it just looks a little bit neater in things because it's built in now those are big advantages that things has the two different types of dates and the built-in anytime view there's also built-in someday view in Things by the way which is really handy to put in all those tasks that you're like maybe someday it'll work on these and you kind of have to hack that together in todoist again I created a label a tag for it called someday but it's a bit harder to get those things out of the way in todoist than it is and things but todoist also has a bunch of upsides that things doesn't have one of those is priority ratings you might have seen these colors in my today view I don't know what colors they are I'm colorblind myself so maybe this is red maybe this is blue who knows hopefully it doesn't matter um they're color coded and what happens in todoist is you can assign each task a priority rating so for example if repair suitcase is a super important task for me today I can see say that's Priority One and shoots to the top because by default your today view is going to sort tasks by priority now it's not actually my top priority so I'll just send it back to Priority four but this is Handy right when you're planning your day you can say you know what these are the things that I'd love to get done today but hey some of them are a lot more important than others and so you can assign those priority ratings and then just start working through your list from top to bottom and one of the cool things about to-do list of course is you can customize the layout so you can actually if you wanted to group these by priority and show it as a board so there you go now it's your priority one thing it's your priority two things Etc right if you want to do that but um I'll just leave it like this and leave it on list view now another amazing thing that you can do in todoist is integrate todoist with your calendar that's not really possible in things now in things you can show calendar events so here this is a calendar event that I have for this evening the podcast recording that I mentioned earlier if I go to the upcoming view I can also see hey here's a calendar event that I have tomorrow here's a calendar event that I have on Sunday and so on but this is purely showing your calendar events and things you can't even show your things tasks on on your calendar in todoist you've got much more options for that todoist integrates with Google Calendar as well as with the popular Mac calendar app fantastic out which is the one that I use so I'll show you how this works in Fantastical and you'll see there's a lot going on now all of these scheduled things are actually my events okay those are events on my calendar but you'll see that you can also see my tasks for each day sitting at the top here and also in the sidebar so for today here you go here's the prepare for the podcast recording the video that I'm recording right now and I can go ahead and check that off right here I can check that off right here and that'll sync right back to todoist it might take a second um you'll see this get checked off and completed soon there you go it's gone I probably want to undo that to be honest because I have not yet in fact on that there we go we've undone that but one of the cool things is you can also put these tasks at a particular time so using this integration between fantastic account and todoist or if you don't use fantastic L with Google Calendar and todoist is you can time block so I can actually drag this task and just say you know what I'm going to do this at this particular time right here at 4 pm what that does is if you go into todoist the tasks well I have to make sure that it's not checked though the task is going to show up with a date so-called due date but I've told you before due date should really be intention or plan dates and todoist at 4 pm it's a really great way to time block now one of the downsides is at the moment that I'm recording this todoist does not yet support duration of tasks so what I cannot do is make this task longer or shorter it just shows up as like a one hour chunk or maybe slightly longer however that will change soon todoist is working on allowing you to set the duration of different tasks so if you love time blocking a to-do list is probably going to be a fantastic choice for you very very soon because you'll be able to do this anyway time blocking is great in todoist it's just not really something that you can do in things because things doesn't integrate with your calendar it's just there's your calendar and there's your to-do's and that's it another big difference between todoist and things is how they treat reminders in things I can set a time-based reminder let's say I'm adding a task I can say take a pill and what I can do is open up the when field and say tomorrow now 9am it's going to schedule the task for tomorrow and at 9am I'll get a reminder in the form of a push notification telling me to do it so maybe this is a health thing okay boom I can do that and now if I look at upcoming right here take a pill is here hey there's a reminder at 9am tomorrow that's it in todoist I can do the same thing so I can say take a pill tomorrow 9am same thing is going to happen now it's scheduled for 9 A.M tomorrow and I'm gonna get a reminder a certain time before that for example 30 minutes before but I can change this I can set multiple reminders and I can change the default as well so there's more going on in todoist and I can put that under the health area and do the same thing to do it says the major advantage that it also supports location-based reminders so for example I can say try out that new exercise Jeff Cavalier recommended and what I can do is I can add that to my health area but then I can go here click on reminders and click a little clock right here and say no I don't want to be reminded at a specific date and time I want to be reminded at a location and then I can type the location of the gym that I like to go to and now what's going to happen is the next time I show up at that gym I will get a push notification boom try out that new exercise as a reminder really handy to have location based reminders and things just doesn't support that at all all right two more things I want to talk about one of them is repeating tasks you can make repeating tasks both in things and todos but it does work quite differently so for example if I go to my business area right here I have a task review course feedback I sell courses people give me feedback I periodically review the feedback now I have said it and I can click right here so that at three months after I last reviewed the feedback that people have left on my courses I want to see this to do again so I want to show this three months after completion I could also set it on a regular schedule like every three months but I like to do it three months after the previous time I did it now what happens is hey I've got this scheduled for Friday okay and if I check that off what's going to happen is Boom the master task is going to go to September 29th which is three months from now so if I completed this task today hey three months from now all this task will show up again I'm just going to undo that how do you do that in to-do's in todoist you can create a task right here and I have a review course feedback and I can literally just type here every three months starting Friday and this is a natural language recognition really really cool now what I need to do is I need to put a little exclamation mark after the word every so I actually have to type it like this every three months starting Friday so that it's not uh three months but it's three months after the previous completion all this is details that you can learn in my todoist course doesn't matter and then I can save it and that'll work however big downside in todoist is if I now say you know what I actually don't want to get around to this tomorrow I'm going to get around to this on Monday then the repetition is removed so that's really unfortunate because you're going to have to reset the repetition schedule every time that you change the due date of one instance okay that's an unfortunate thing but other than that hey being able to capture those repeating tasks with natural language recognition is really nice okay the final thing that I want to mention about things versus todoist is actually quite a big one or a small one depending on how you look at it because one thing that you cannot do in things three is change the font size if your eyesight is not so good if you've got or if you've got gigantic monitor uh it can be really hard to read what's going on in things it's just the text is one size and you cannot change it it's a big limitation whereas in todoist I mean you can blow things up until they're really big and you'll definitely be able to read it big downside for things three don't know why that's the case but it's one thing to be aware of if your eyesight's not amazing so where does that all leave us between the two apps well I think things has a bit of a better design it looks prettier it has that intuitive area and project organization things has the separate start dates called when dates and deadlines super handy really easy to plan tasks ahead of time but some of the downside of things are that you cannot attach files to tasks you can't share your tasks with anyone one and there's no location-based reminders todoist has the big advantage that has amazing calendar integration custom views you can attach files to your tasks there's location-based reminders however big big downside there's only one type of date in todoist and that's really unfortunate because it means that if you want to track hard deadlines and not always do things at the last minute you have to hack around that a little bit again that's something they're working on but who knows whether it'll take them a month or two years to add that feature so for now you can't rely on it whichever of these apps you use just make sure you get the most out of it that you learn the ins and outs of it that you learn a whole workflow for using it and to do that you want to check out both my courses I have a course for things three a course for todoist and some free resources that you can find in the description of the video I have a things 3 cheat sheet and a to-do list cheat sheet you can start there and then move on to the full courses thanks so much for watching hope this video was helpful for you I hope you have a fabulous day ciao [Music]

Channel: Peter Akkies

Views: 39,910

Keywords:

Id: -KLt1LgLBPM

Length: 20min 54sec (1254 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 08 2023