|||
After years of switching task managers, I’ve learned that small details matter. Each app—Apple Reminders, Evernote, Things, and now Todoist—taught me about my needs: natural language input, workday-aware recurring tasks, and calendar integration. Here’s what I discovered.
Apple Reminders was attractive because it’s available on all Apple devices and will be around and improved over the years. I like the flexible recurrence rules. It’s surprising how few task managers allow “repeat monthly on the last _work_day”.
I never stuck with Apple Reminders because the UI is the major drawback. Ironically, it doesn’t feel very Apple-like. On the Mac, it’s cumbersome to create and interact with tasks. The click targets are small, there’s limited keyboard accessibility, and it feels slow and restrictive.
As part of my Evernote comeback, I tried managing tasks within Evernote. The advantage is clear: tasks are available in the context of existing project notes, so the background information and action items are in one place.
The integration into a note-taking app makes the user experience for task management cumbersome, at least with Evernote’s implementation: It lacks keyboard shortcuts, doesn’t allow selecting and rescheduling multiple tasks, and everything just takes so much effort. For recurring tasks, I can’t differentiate weekdays from weekends, so I’m reminded about monthly work tasks on weekends.
I ended up back with Things due to poor UX and lack of keyboard shortcuts in Evernote and Reminders. I have a long history of abandoning and returning to Things.
Things feels like coming home compared to less intuitive, non-Mac-native apps. Ironically, Things smells more like Apple than Apple Reminders itself. The quick entry works well, capturing context—like saving a website’s title and URL directly from the Mac app. Everything is accessible via keyboard shortcuts, and the integration with Apple Calendar shows a daily agenda in the today view.
Things was the first app I used to integrate deadlines, allowing to assign a date you intend to do a task, and an optional date when it has to be completed. Additionally, there’s an option to mark a task as canceled, which is valuable because not every task gets done, but you might want to remember that you didn’t complete it.
Unfortunately, Things falls apart again by not allowing recurrence rules that consider weekends vs weekdays. I can’t set up a recurring task to issue invoices on the last working day of the month and submit my VAT return on the first working day.
I tried Todoist again, curious about the competition. I was pleased that since I last used the app, it has implemented deadlines, a feature I missed from Things.
Todoist manages recurrence rules without a fiddly UI but with natural language input. Instead of clicking around in Apple Reminders to define custom repeat rules, I can say, “every first workday” and it just works.
I haven’t been looking for a task manager with calendar integration, but Todoist’s calendar view has been useful for time blocking.
You can connect Todoist with Google Calendar to view events alongside tasks. A sidebar shows upcoming tasks, and you can drag and drop them onto the calendar to place them in free slots. This effectively blocks time slots for tasks while keeping track of calendar events.
I don’t use Google Calendar, so I share my iCloud calendars read-only with a Google Calendar, making them available to Todoist. This makes me miss out on the two-way sync, but I don’t plan to interact with tasks from my calendar. Todoist offers a calendar feed I can subscribe to in iCloud calendar to see scheduled tasks.
After exploring various task managers, I’ve learned that no app is perfect, but some imperfections matter more. Todoist stands out for its features that align with real-world workflows. Natural language input for recurring tasks, intelligent workday handling, and flexible calendar integration solve my daily problems.
My track record suggests I might be writing a “Why I Switched to [Insert New App]” post in three months. However, the fact that I’ve deleted all other task managers from my devices — and feel calm about it — suggests this is more than just another temporary switch. Progress?
