I’m, uh, very bad at task management. I wouldn’t want to pathologize, but I’ve never been a particularly organized person. I’ve always aspired to be more organized, but I’ve never found a tool or a methodology that really works for me. They were either too rigid and opinionated or brought too much overhead: I had to remember to use them, and that was enough of a blocker to not.

Over the last two months, everything has — weirdly — changed.

Someone mentioned Todoist over on Threads, and although I had a vague memory of trying it years ago and it not working for me, I decided to install it again. Maybe it was just the right time for me now, or maybe the design has evolved, but it clicked pretty much immediately.

There are two things that make it great:

1. It’s everywhere I work
2. It gets the hell out of my way

Whenever I need to remember to do something, I press a key combo — I’ve configured shift-command-T — and a modal lets me quickly tap it in using relatively natural language. That’s a similar workflow to what I’ve been doing with Alfred for years and years, so adding this new combo isn’t a giant feat of muscle memory.

Then, whenever I want to check what’s on my plate, I can bring up the app (desktop via ctrl-command-T, or phone), or click the toolbar icon in my browser to bring up the browser extension version. Because I spend most of my life in my browser, that’s particularly handy. It’s just always there.

I’ve found myself adding new tasks via modal while I’ve been in meetings, so I don’t forget to follow up. Or I’ll be in a Google Doc and add a task the same way. (There’s a way to automatically sync Google Tasks with Todoist, but I don’t use that — I’d rather have direct control over my task inbox.)

It’s made me more productive, more organized, and as a result, much less anxious. And I feel really good about it.

This post isn’t an ad, by the way. It’s just so rare that I really love a piece of software, so I thought I’d let you know.