I have recently switched to using Todoist for my task management. I've been a long time Omnifocus user before, and a short while before I started to use Todoist, I used Evernote for my task management. But after using Todoist premium for awhile now, I'm sure it's the right tool for me. This is it!
What makes Todoist so great:
- Sync is instant. It's one of the best synchronizations I've ever seen in any app. It's so much better than Omnifocus sync. Omnifocus sync is terrible in comparison. My devices is almost never in sync in Omnifocus. Not without forcing a sync. Yes I know the great guys at Omni group are working on trying to fix the sync issues as much add they can, but I'm using the Omnifocus beta and the sync still is not as good as Todoist. And personally I believe it never will.
- The snooze feature is awesome. This is actually one of the most important things that made me switch from Omnifocus to Todoist. The snooze feature makes it so easy to defer a task to later. I wish the developers could add more default options though. Like for example “This evening”, “In 4 hours”, “Tomorrow evening”, “This weekend” or something like that. Some of the competitors (Swipes) has that. Todoist could look at the mail app MailBox for inspiration. It has the best snooze options I've seen.
- Available everywhere. Even if I'm living in the post-pc era with only my iPad and iPhone as my computers, I really appreciate that Todoist is available everywhere on any device. You can even run it in a web browser. So if I don't have my iOS devices with me (for some strange reason), I could borrow a computer anywhere in the world and get to my Todoist. That's brilliant.
- Karma makes you want to do tasks. The karma feature in Todoist is maybe not the first thing you thinking of as a reason to switch from your task management system to Todoist, but maybe you should. Because it motivates you. It makes your task management to a game. It's fun to mark a task to done. And having karma points earned for it makes it even more fun. You really want to climb the ranking ladder to become a guru. And this actually works. Trust me. It makes you more productive, and it makes you keep going and using your task management system. So many people stop using task management systems and GTD after awhile, and I think Todoist karma system prevents that.
- Filters makes it easy to see only the tasks you want to see. And you can do quite advanced filters too.
- Sunrise calendar integration. One of the best calendar apps for iOS is called Sunrise. And it has a really great integration with Todoist. You can see your Todoist tasks directly in the calendar and also reschedule them. That's awesome.
- Google calendar integration. Todoist also has a good Google calendar integration but you can only see your tasks, not reschedule them.
- Evernote integration and reminders sync. You can sync your Evernote notebooks and reminders with Todoist if you like. I do that with one notebook for those rare cases I still set a reminder on an Evernote note. The sync means that the note shows up as a task in Todoist, and you can mark it done in Todoist or Evernote. The bad thing is though that you can't open the Evernote note from Todoist. You can only see the title of it.
- You can email into Todoist. That's important. Especially now when Evernote did a bad thing and removed that feature for free users. And you can have a special email address for every project in Todoist you have. So you can forward your emails into Todoist directly into the right project.
- You can add attachments to your tasks. There is no storage limit in Todoist. Only a limit of 100MB per file. This is awesome. I often add images and screenshots to my tasks. You can also integrate different cloud services with Todoist. So if you for example have a file in your Dropbox account, you can add that file as an attachment to your task. And it shows up everywhere on all your devices.
- Notes/comments you write for a task appends. This is also really good. You can keep a log over what has been done so far for example. Every comment gets a time stamp. And you can add files in your comments.
Some things Omnifocus has that Todoist don't:
- Omnifocus has an auto dark mode that is really nice. I often do a review of my tasks in bed before I go to sleep, and I always “empty my head” in bed at night too, so having the interface switch to a dark mode automatically at night is really nice. I wish Todoist had that too.
- Omnifocus has defer dates so it works quite differently. You can use reminders like defer dates in Todoist though. So if you don't have a due date set on a task, you can add a reminder when you want that task to popup instead. A bit like Omnifocus defer date.
- Omnifocus has an integrated review feature that reminds you to do a review on a specific time you have set. Review is one of the most important things when it comes to task management. I have solved it with a filter in Todoist. The filter shows all my tasks sorted by project. I also have a filter that only shows the tasks without a due date. So I just added a task that pops up every Monday, Friday that says “Do a review”. Then I use my filter and goes through all my tasks and do the changes needed.