Even after a lifetime of using to-do lists, I'm still guilty of aspirational planning and scheduling too many tasks for a given day. I used Claude to build a dashboard to help me look forward in my planning.
I have four high-level project areas: Creating (I'm a musician), Life (personal, home financial), Managing (music business tasks I want to keep separate from creating), and Routine (personal and household tasks and reminders). My tasks are labeled by estimated time: 5, 15, 30, 60, 120 minutes.
My Claude dashboard shows for the next three days:
- the number of tasks in each time label (columns) across each project area (rows)
- the total time for each project area
- the total time for the day.
It's very handy and it's helping me break my bad planning habits.
That's fantastic, thank you for sharing! is it in anyway possible to get more details on some of these use cases? the one of Amir, Brena & Panos are especially Bangers !
I used AI to input a list of tasks I’d already created that happen each day from now until October; I didn’t want it to be recurring daily, but separate tasks every day I can see in a section. AI individually entered them as a task with the due date of each day, which I couldn’t figure out otherwise.
I work late, and sometimes don’t have energy to do a proper end of day cycle. When that happens I usually also have tasks I wanted to do that didn’t get done, so I wrote a a Claude routine (runs every morning) that both reschedules overdue tasks to today and creates a short briefing about my tasks that day. It’ll name all P1s, # of P2s, and total tasks, and keeps it under 50 words. It also clears any time blocks I made in a way that preserves fixed-time tasks but clears times on tasks that were just time blocked.
I look forward to your newsletter each month. This one was particularly good. I love your writing style and the way in which you encourage us to love ourselves and use our Todoists for a better life.
Thank you for real-world uses from real(/regular) people. I have gone back and forth with using/not using ai and have been feeling like it's more of an imposition than a choice, which really bothers me. It's nice that it's an option with Todoist and I may reconsider using it here sometime in the future.
Wow! That medical support summary! I wish I'd had that in 2021-22 when I was caring for my mother-in-law and her husband. I have a few friends who have entered that stage now, and I'm going to share this with them.
Just this morning, out of desperation, I used AI to complete something I'd been pushing out over and over in my ToDoist app. A while back, I extracted a portion of a training course to turn into a product suite overview. I loved how the trainer explained each part of the suite before focusing on the main module. It was too long for a demo video, so I needed to remake it. This was locally recorded, so I didn’t have the auto-generated transcript from Zoom. I had to use Word to extract the transcript. It had all the timestamps and bits I didn’t need. My plan was to edit the transcript and turn it into a storyboard. But this morning, I decided to throw it into Copilot to see what would come out, and holy moly, I can’t believe what it created in a few minutes. I still need to make some edits and cut some stuff, but the fact that it did the part I was struggling to simply start made my day and gave me the motivation to finish the first draft today.
Cheryl, this is such a cool moment! I've had a few of those where it's made things that were a mental slog into something super easy. It's especially helpful for me when I just need to get started on something. Sometimes even just opening a Claude (or AI of choice) chat and talking out what you need to do is enough to help you get started.
I have been using todoist off and on for a while. I really see the value, but I can't seem to use it consistently without feeling overwhelmed. I have so much to do, and I really want to get it connected to ChatGPT, but I can't visualize how to use it. All of the ideas in the article seem really good. Do you have to give precise instructions to the AI, or will todoist integrate more freely?
I think bolting it on to something you naturally use daily can be helpful, Scott. If, for you, that's ChatGPT then once they're connected, you chat just chat as normal with your AI to add tasks to Todoist.
I would recommend two things though, first is to get in the habit of opening up Todoist daily. I find having the widget on my phone helps. Once you get in that habit, it becomes a system you use and can trust.
The other thing that I find helpful is in the instructions section of your ChatGPT (where you personalize your AI - if you've not accessed this before, ask in the chat) I have an instruction to "If you ever notice me talking about anything that needs actioned, always ask me if I'd like you to create a task in Todoist for the action item'.
Cleo is my OpenClaw assistant. At the start of our working together, she had some problems with using Todoist. Since all of my life is in Todoist, this was a showstopper. But once she had this figured out, it worked great.
We start the day with her giving a summary of my Todoist items. When we chat about a project, she offers suggestions to move items in Todoist back or forward. And yes, I have clients who send many emails, so “Cleo, please create a Todoist list in project X for this mail thread” is a great timesaver.
Cleo herself is also a bit too chatty sometimes; this results in "Cleo, that is way too much info, please create Todoist items for tomorrow from this info. "
So yes, I still organize all of my work in Todoist. But now I have a coworker who helps me organize things.
So cool to hear how you're using an agent with Todoist Marcel. Does Cleo have her own login or does she use yours? I'm thinking of setting up something similar, so would love to know what your setup looks like.
Cleo uses the CLI with my API token. OpenClaw has several skills to use Todoist but, as with the most integrations, we just chat a skill together. "You can use the API or the CLI, what do you see as the best solution?". But also "if you are not sure what project to use, just put it in inbox".
Once everything works fine, I ask her to save the knowledge as a skill. And later we finetune it, for example when she can't find a project (because I deleted it): "Maybe you should refresh your local cache if it is older than a day?" "Oh, good suggestion, I will add it to my knowledge".
I really like the interaction with Cleo. She does about 50% of my coding, is a great code reviewer, but also great at documenting projects, or analyzing existing documentation. And yes, at the end of the day I sometimes tell stories to my wife: "Woow, I had a really great (or weird😀) session with Cleo today,
To start experimenting, just set up a single VPS and, for safety reasons, keep it dedicated to OpenClaw.
I don't use AI (for manydifferent reasons) but I can see why it can be appealing to most.
Nonetheless, it's been tough to observe the addition of AI to many of my favourites tools/softwares/mediums/you name it. And without the possibility to hide these new options.
I've been reading your newsletter for years : full of useful tips, words of wisdom... Your human voice is important and it’s one of the few newsletters I read on the spot.
I love todoist and I appreciate AI additions has been wisely implemented.
For all these reasons, I would hate to see this newsletter shift to something far from it's DNA (in my opinion of course).
I don’t want to be a party pooper because your work is brilliant and I'm very grateful to be able to use such a wonderful tool as todoist.
But I thought it was important to voice the apprehensions of the silent few :)
TBH, I have no interest in writing an AI newsletter.
Although the poll results showed folk wanting more AI-related content, 40% asked for it in moderation. So that's what I'm aiming for. I'll also play around with formatting a bit to make sure the newsletter remains human and built on connection and trust.
Stick around for a while and see if we succeed at striking this balance. And your thoughts are always welcome here. ❤️
That must have been a while ago! If you use Claude or ChatGPT and wanted to connect those to Todoist, you'll get a much more personalized experience. 😊
Naomi, your Newsletters always have a perfect blend of interesting content, written with a light and personal friendly touch. I always look forward to them.
I use Claude + Todoist to create recurring monthly tasks that are important to work on that I might forget to give attention to (or don't want to give attention to).
For Substack: A simple recurring note posting cadence to follow each week so that I vary the types of notes I write.
Twitter/X: A 30-day engagement strategy because even though I am not the biggest fan of social media I did just get back on and need to remember.
Work: Part of my job includes sermon preparation. I have it read the long-term sermon calendar and map out a plan to ensure that I get my work done 2-3 weeks ahead of time.
I'm definitely going to be using a lot of these ideas! I'm very guilty of over scheduling and creating work for myself, hopefully Chatgpt can help me clean it up
Even after a lifetime of using to-do lists, I'm still guilty of aspirational planning and scheduling too many tasks for a given day. I used Claude to build a dashboard to help me look forward in my planning.
I have four high-level project areas: Creating (I'm a musician), Life (personal, home financial), Managing (music business tasks I want to keep separate from creating), and Routine (personal and household tasks and reminders). My tasks are labeled by estimated time: 5, 15, 30, 60, 120 minutes.
My Claude dashboard shows for the next three days:
- the number of tasks in each time label (columns) across each project area (rows)
- the total time for each project area
- the total time for the day.
It's very handy and it's helping me break my bad planning habits.
I'm also guilty of overestimating how much I can get done in a day Dave, so I may steal your system!
That's a great idea, tagging with the duration, I'll definetly steal this idea !
That's fantastic, thank you for sharing! is it in anyway possible to get more details on some of these use cases? the one of Amir, Brena & Panos are especially Bangers !
Hey Roy! Brenna has shared the details of her meal planning system here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brennakl_naomi-liddells-august-newsletter-featured-activity-7490391154866339841-20X3
Happy to share the details Roy, leave it with me and I'll come back with them. 🙌
I used AI to input a list of tasks I’d already created that happen each day from now until October; I didn’t want it to be recurring daily, but separate tasks every day I can see in a section. AI individually entered them as a task with the due date of each day, which I couldn’t figure out otherwise.
Excellent use case, Mariah!
I work late, and sometimes don’t have energy to do a proper end of day cycle. When that happens I usually also have tasks I wanted to do that didn’t get done, so I wrote a a Claude routine (runs every morning) that both reschedules overdue tasks to today and creates a short briefing about my tasks that day. It’ll name all P1s, # of P2s, and total tasks, and keeps it under 50 words. It also clears any time blocks I made in a way that preserves fixed-time tasks but clears times on tasks that were just time blocked.
I look forward to your newsletter each month. This one was particularly good. I love your writing style and the way in which you encourage us to love ourselves and use our Todoists for a better life.
Thank you for real-world uses from real(/regular) people. I have gone back and forth with using/not using ai and have been feeling like it's more of an imposition than a choice, which really bothers me. It's nice that it's an option with Todoist and I may reconsider using it here sometime in the future.
Wow! That medical support summary! I wish I'd had that in 2021-22 when I was caring for my mother-in-law and her husband. I have a few friends who have entered that stage now, and I'm going to share this with them.
Please do Lee! It's one of the most positive use cases for AI I've seen in a while. ❤️
Just this morning, out of desperation, I used AI to complete something I'd been pushing out over and over in my ToDoist app. A while back, I extracted a portion of a training course to turn into a product suite overview. I loved how the trainer explained each part of the suite before focusing on the main module. It was too long for a demo video, so I needed to remake it. This was locally recorded, so I didn’t have the auto-generated transcript from Zoom. I had to use Word to extract the transcript. It had all the timestamps and bits I didn’t need. My plan was to edit the transcript and turn it into a storyboard. But this morning, I decided to throw it into Copilot to see what would come out, and holy moly, I can’t believe what it created in a few minutes. I still need to make some edits and cut some stuff, but the fact that it did the part I was struggling to simply start made my day and gave me the motivation to finish the first draft today.
Cheryl, this is such a cool moment! I've had a few of those where it's made things that were a mental slog into something super easy. It's especially helpful for me when I just need to get started on something. Sometimes even just opening a Claude (or AI of choice) chat and talking out what you need to do is enough to help you get started.
I have been using todoist off and on for a while. I really see the value, but I can't seem to use it consistently without feeling overwhelmed. I have so much to do, and I really want to get it connected to ChatGPT, but I can't visualize how to use it. All of the ideas in the article seem really good. Do you have to give precise instructions to the AI, or will todoist integrate more freely?
I think bolting it on to something you naturally use daily can be helpful, Scott. If, for you, that's ChatGPT then once they're connected, you chat just chat as normal with your AI to add tasks to Todoist.
I would recommend two things though, first is to get in the habit of opening up Todoist daily. I find having the widget on my phone helps. Once you get in that habit, it becomes a system you use and can trust.
The other thing that I find helpful is in the instructions section of your ChatGPT (where you personalize your AI - if you've not accessed this before, ask in the chat) I have an instruction to "If you ever notice me talking about anything that needs actioned, always ask me if I'd like you to create a task in Todoist for the action item'.
Thanks Naomi. I have linked it to ChatGPT and it is working swimmingly!
Cleo is my OpenClaw assistant. At the start of our working together, she had some problems with using Todoist. Since all of my life is in Todoist, this was a showstopper. But once she had this figured out, it worked great.
We start the day with her giving a summary of my Todoist items. When we chat about a project, she offers suggestions to move items in Todoist back or forward. And yes, I have clients who send many emails, so “Cleo, please create a Todoist list in project X for this mail thread” is a great timesaver.
Cleo herself is also a bit too chatty sometimes; this results in "Cleo, that is way too much info, please create Todoist items for tomorrow from this info. "
So yes, I still organize all of my work in Todoist. But now I have a coworker who helps me organize things.
So cool to hear how you're using an agent with Todoist Marcel. Does Cleo have her own login or does she use yours? I'm thinking of setting up something similar, so would love to know what your setup looks like.
Cleo uses the CLI with my API token. OpenClaw has several skills to use Todoist but, as with the most integrations, we just chat a skill together. "You can use the API or the CLI, what do you see as the best solution?". But also "if you are not sure what project to use, just put it in inbox".
Once everything works fine, I ask her to save the knowledge as a skill. And later we finetune it, for example when she can't find a project (because I deleted it): "Maybe you should refresh your local cache if it is older than a day?" "Oh, good suggestion, I will add it to my knowledge".
I really like the interaction with Cleo. She does about 50% of my coding, is a great code reviewer, but also great at documenting projects, or analyzing existing documentation. And yes, at the end of the day I sometimes tell stories to my wife: "Woow, I had a really great (or weird😀) session with Cleo today,
To start experimenting, just set up a single VPS and, for safety reasons, keep it dedicated to OpenClaw.
Yes please, don't forget about us 11% 🧡
I don't use AI (for manydifferent reasons) but I can see why it can be appealing to most.
Nonetheless, it's been tough to observe the addition of AI to many of my favourites tools/softwares/mediums/you name it. And without the possibility to hide these new options.
I've been reading your newsletter for years : full of useful tips, words of wisdom... Your human voice is important and it’s one of the few newsletters I read on the spot.
I love todoist and I appreciate AI additions has been wisely implemented.
For all these reasons, I would hate to see this newsletter shift to something far from it's DNA (in my opinion of course).
I don’t want to be a party pooper because your work is brilliant and I'm very grateful to be able to use such a wonderful tool as todoist.
But I thought it was important to voice the apprehensions of the silent few :)
Have a great week !
Hey Marine, I'm glad you commented.
TBH, I have no interest in writing an AI newsletter.
Although the poll results showed folk wanting more AI-related content, 40% asked for it in moderation. So that's what I'm aiming for. I'll also play around with formatting a bit to make sure the newsletter remains human and built on connection and trust.
Stick around for a while and see if we succeed at striking this balance. And your thoughts are always welcome here. ❤️
Thank you 🧡
> How do you use AI with Todoist?
Honestly? I don't...
Because you don't want to Maurice? Or just haven't tried yet?
I tried the "AI breaking down of tasks" in Todoist, but it wasn't that good :-)
That must have been a while ago! If you use Claude or ChatGPT and wanted to connect those to Todoist, you'll get a much more personalized experience. 😊
Guess I will have to give it another shot!
Naomi, your Newsletters always have a perfect blend of interesting content, written with a light and personal friendly touch. I always look forward to them.
Thank you so much 🫶
I use Claude + Todoist to create recurring monthly tasks that are important to work on that I might forget to give attention to (or don't want to give attention to).
For Substack: A simple recurring note posting cadence to follow each week so that I vary the types of notes I write.
Twitter/X: A 30-day engagement strategy because even though I am not the biggest fan of social media I did just get back on and need to remember.
Work: Part of my job includes sermon preparation. I have it read the long-term sermon calendar and map out a plan to ensure that I get my work done 2-3 weeks ahead of time.
Love these use cases Hans! Especially important to get help scheduling the work we don't love doing.
I'm definitely going to be using a lot of these ideas! I'm very guilty of over scheduling and creating work for myself, hopefully Chatgpt can help me clean it up
Good luck Gabbie! And report back, I'd love to know what you find useful.