The secret weapon in Todoist

I hated it in todoist! See my other systems write ups to see if this or others might suit you better!

A long time ago I came accross a system called The Secret Weapon (TSW). It took me two whole years to get around to watching the videos and to set it up. I've since learnt that delay was probably caused by my ADHD. I've also learnt that in the years since I stopped using that system that the secret weapon helped me manage my ADHD without ever realising it.

Unfortunately in the past few years Evernote has successfully obliterated what made it so good and while its now claiming back some of its former glory the features that made the secret weapon system so effective are no longer easily accessible.

I've been trying to move away from Evernote for a while now, a topic for another day. I've been a user for over 13 years but I'm going to attempt to setup The Secret Weapon in Todoist.

Its worth noting here that I have a premium Todoist account. Which means I can have more projects and more filters. You can still set this up on the free account but you will have to rely on bookmarking your searches rather than saving them in Todoist.

TSW is very simple to setup in any system. The basics are below, but you need to watch the original to get a full sense of the power. The key part is having a system that integrates into all your sources just having the system setup is only a small part, dont think you'll be done after reading this! You need to be able to add to the system lightning fast. Its the capture phase of gtd.

Where TSW is also incredibly powerful especially combined with todoist is your not forced to set due dates on tasks to see them in your today view. I might have a set of 10 tasks that need to be done, but they don't all need to be done today, this week should suffice. The TSW system of now, next, later lets me prioritise without being too prescriptive. I can then really benefit from todoists scheduling features without cluttering up my today page with overdue tasks. This really helps with my executive dysfunction. When I see a list of overdue tasks that I have to reschedule it completely puts me off and the daily review becomes a laborious mental chore.

1. Create three projects

Filing - Does not have to live in todoist!
Other places to store this data Evernote, Notion, Apple notes, Bear app, Google Keep, Obsidian. Personally for me I keep things as links to google drive, but still in todoist. This is for references and support materials related to your to-dos. Its also a place to store things you may need handy. Examples of filing are:

• If your working on a ticket that requires a spreadsheet of data you can store the spreadsheet or link to it here
• Things you reference frequently for all your tasks, a good example is brand guidelines for all your clients.

Action Pending
Rather than use todoist projects to store my tasks everything will go into one project and be organised via tags. I will however be breaking down my projects into Work and Personal.

Completed
Not actually relevant to todoist but if you're setting this up elsewhere its nice to store your completed notes. I used to archive mine at the end of the year to have a fresh start.

2. Make your tags

Unfortunately we can't nest tags in todoist, below is a list of the 'official' tags. The punctuation was important in Evernote but not so much other platforms. I keep them in out of habit.

• .When
  • !Daily
  • !Weekly
  • 1-Now
  • 2-Next
  • 3-Soon
  • 4-Later
  • 5-Someday
  • 6-Waiting
  • 7-Testing
  • 8-Weekend
  • 9-Ongoing
  • 10-To-be-scheduled
  • 11-Support
  • 12-Anytime
• .What
  • Active-project
    • Project name
  • Inactive-project
    • Project name
  • Read/Review
• .Where
  • @Home
  • @Work
  • @Town
• .Who
  • Who to tell this task is done

This is the list of tags I have setup


1. Create your saved searches

Since I'm combining work and personal I've setup separate filters for 1-now work and 1-now personal. You could just use tags if you're not being fancy like me. I've found separating work and personal is key to keeping distraction at bay.


You'll also see that I've created some other filters the bottom these are:

• To be processed

  • #Inbox, #Alexa To-Do List, #Alexa Shopping List
  • This just takes my various inboxes and combines them into one so that each morning I can assign all my tasks to the correct place easily.

• Missed tasks

  • (##Work | ##Personal) & (!@1-Now & !@2-Next & !@3-Soon & !@4-Later & !@5-Someday & !@6-Waiting & !@7-Testing & !@8-Weekend & !@9-Ongoing & !@10-To-be-scheduled & !@11-Support & !@12-Anytime & !@Daily & !@Weekly)
  • A bit of a monster but this just looks for any tasks that don't have any of my .When tags. So nothing falls through the cracks.
  • I review this daily or weekly.

• No time

  • no time
  • A really simple filter but since I sync my todoist with my calendar and I'm strict in that anything with a datetime is something I cannot forget to do. If something has only a date and no time I will miss it on my calendar so it must have a time.
  • I review this daily and weekly.

4. Setup your workflow

Now that you have the setup you have to use the setup. I've reinstated my old system from a long time ago and I can already see that some things might change. The key thing now is the daily, weekly and monthly reviews. This is where I struggled before. I'm hoping now that the amount of overwhelm is limited since Work and Personal are now separated and nothing is scheduled with dates. Which I find stressful, with all the notifications but also visually I dont always find todoist that good to look at. I've written some custom CSS to fix some issues on there which I will post at some point.

Daily reviews

• Each morning look in the 2-Next and 3-Soon sections and move tasks up.

Weekly reviews

• Look in each n-Category and move items around
• Don't be afraid to put things in someday

A word on 5-Someday this can get overwhelming. I actually take things out of this category regularly and store them in notion.

Monthly reviews

• Look in each n-Category and move items around
• Go through notion and find tasks to bring in for the month

Created on: 12th October, 2022

Last updated: 12th October, 2022

Tagged With:

• productivity
• error