Productivity secrets from the creator of the popular Todoist task management service

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Todoist author Amir Salihefendic has developed his own productivity system that has been helping him achieve his goals without stress for 9 years. Today Amir will talk about his system and its integration with Todoist.

Most people do not seek to streamline their workflow, let everything go by chance and hope for the best. But if you have a system, you can maneuver between many tasks, prioritize and not feel overwhelmed.

I named my productivity system Systemist. I invented it - and Todoist is based on it - in 2007. At that time I was living in a hostel in Aarhus (Denmark) and studying computer science. I had two part-time jobs and many personal projects. I felt overwhelmed and disorganized. That all changed when the Systemist idea came to mind.

What has this system helped me achieve?

1. Establish Doist Ltd. and develop a product that allows people to achieve amazing results.
2. To successfully combine the duties of the founder and the CEO. I have time for everything and do not feel overstrained. The company employs 50 people, and hardly any of them saw me exhausted.
3. Identify priority aspects of the workflow every day and always remember important emails, appointments and projects.
4. Enjoy life outside of work: spending time with your wife, traveling, self-education and sports, health care.

Balance between work and personal life is the key to personal effectiveness.

Systemist works best in conjunction with Todoist. But you can use any other task management programs and services. The basic principles of the system are much more important than the specific tools.

6 Systemist principles

1. Apply everywhere

The system is the system, to use it everywhere and everywhere. You must have access to the scheduler from any device, anywhere.

We've put a lot of effort into making Todoist available worldwide. I recommend installing it (or another similar application) immediately on all devices and platforms that you have: phone, tablet, laptop, browsers, and so on.

2. Apply in everything

The system works if it covers all aspects of personal and professional life. This will give you freedom. You will control everything important and you will no longer forget about such things as meeting with a client or buying a gift for a loved one.

Almost all my activities are streamlined. Specifically, I have systematized:

1. Upcoming events (meetings inside and outside the company).
2. Complex projects fragmented into many small stages.
3. Repetitive tasks to control long-term projects.
4. E-mail (if I can't answer the letter right away, I translate it into a task with the help).
5. Bug reports, if fixing them is tied to me.
6. Release list (shared with colleagues).
7. Shopping list (shared with my wife).
8. Web pages on which I cannot take action right away. For example, a product page from Amazon.com (not yet decided whether to buy or not), a movie page in IMDb that I want to watch, or an article I want to read later. For all this, I use.
9. Health tasks (weekly gym and jogging workouts).

3. Break down large tasks into feasible small ones

A small task is easier to accomplish. Therefore, always break large projects into smaller subtasks that can be completed in an hour (or less). First, it will help you understand how much time it takes you to do this or that. And secondly, you will see progress.

It is important that the task is feasible. You must be able to implement what you put on your to-do list.

4. Prioritize

I do 15 to 25 tasks every day. They are the most important at the moment.

It's easy to prioritize in Todoist. This is how I do:

1. Be sure to set the deadline by which the case must be completed. I set important tasks for today or tomorrow, I write out unimportant ones for the future.
2. I indicate the levels of prioritization. There are four of them in Todoist. The service automatically sorts tasks based on importance.
3. To further emphasize the importance of the task, I use tags like @high_impact. With them it is convenient to keep track of how many important tasks are done in a day.

5. Empty your to-do list every day

Before I started using the 0 inbox rule, my email was chaotic. I felt terrible every time I had to clear the rubble.

To manage tasks, I use a similar rule - "0 tasks in to-do-list".

If you didn’t have time to do everything that you planned for the day, do not carry over the remaining tasks to the next day. Instead, reset your to-do list and create a new plan. This will allow you to take stock, understand where you are, and re-prioritize.

6. Always get feedback

Most time management systems focus on what needs to be done rather than what has already been done. But what's the point if you don't see your progress and don't understand how productive you are?

Therefore, we created. It allows you to track, visualize, and improve personal performance.

Todoist Karma is like a mini-game: you complete tasks, score points and see the color charts grow. This is very exciting, especially for time management newbies. To make it even more interesting, you can set not only daily, but also weekly goals, as well as share the results on social networks, thereby increasing the level of responsibility.

Additional Tips

Working with e-mail

1. Check your email twice a day. For example, in the morning and afternoon.
2. Aim for an empty inbox.
3. If possible, answer the letter immediately. If not, translate it into a task, be sure to indicate the due date and priority.
4. Turn off notifications on all devices. This will help you avoid distractions.

Working with messengers

Messengers are productivity killers, they are twitchy and distracting. Research shows that the average office worker spends on average over two hours a day on distractions and breaks. This means that the working week increases by more than 10 hours, because the volume of work is not reduced.

1. Combine correspondence in messengers with Internet surfing. When you just need to work (write a report, draw a layout, and so on), close the chat applications.
2. Process messages in batches: opened the messenger, read everything, answered everyone, and closed it again.
3. Disable messenger notifications on your mobile phone.

According to Salihefendik, this system helps him to be focused, sane and healthy.

Write in the comments what you think about Systemist, and also share your secrets of productivity.