Adding Tasks to the Todoist Inbox

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About this lesson

Creating new tasks, assigning them and processing your inbox.

Quick reference

Adding Tasks to the Todoist Inbox

Starting your journey by adding tasks to an inbox is the perfect next stage, adding tasks is easy inside of Todoist. The inbox will be a hub for your incoming tasks and activities and help you avoid distractions, take control and provide you with a space to organize all of your future plans and activities. In order to get things done across your day, clipping idieas and using the inbox are practical ways to save time and effort. Once mastered you can gain a lot of time back when it comes to processing tasks and the Todoist inbox is a great location for those. 

When to use

  • Getting started with Todoist to understand functionality of the inbox feature 

Instructions

  • Select the "Inbox" in Todoist
  • Add all your uncompleted tasks
  • Use the Trigger Sheet to assist (see below)
  • Drag and move tasks in Inbox to the respective project folders
  • Drop items into Todoist as you go across your day 
  • Process the inbox once or twice a day 

More features

  • Add projects, labels, reminders, priorities and comments if needed
  • Add links, images, files and more to a task
  • Sort by date, priority, name or person responsible
  • You can also email in tasks

What is a Trigger Sheet? 

A Trigger sheet is a set of actions, covering all aspects of your life to assist the open loop process. 

This will assist you in bringing together all of your incomplete tasks to add to Todoist. 

Use the Trigger List from GTD to assist you, this can be found here. 

Hints & tips

  • Use the triggers sheet as best as you can to clear all things from your head
  • Clear your brain of to-dos and items on a regular basis, weekly works well
  • Explore new ways to keep your head clear and brain in the doing mode 
  • Learn Todoist keyboard short-cuts to work even faster inside the app.
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  • 00:04 Hello everyone.
  • 00:05 Welcome back to Essential Productivity.
  • 00:07 I'm Francesco, your host in this GoSkills course.
  • 00:11 In this feature we're going to be starting off to demonstrate a few of the functions
  • 00:16 and features inside of the to-do list application, Todoist.
  • 00:20 The good thing about Todoist is it's very flexible.
  • 00:23 If you're someone who is looking for
  • 00:25 a to-do list application that really is open to new layouts, and experiences, and
  • 00:29 workflows, then this is actually one of the best ones out there.
  • 00:33 So in this feature we're actually going to be looking at the concept of an inbox.
  • 00:37 We're going to be talking about the Todoist inbox, and
  • 00:40 how you can use it In your daily routine.
  • 00:43 And really try to give you an introductory experience to the layout of Todoist.
  • 00:48 So as you can see here, there is Today, which is all of the opens that you have
  • 00:52 for today there, all of the tasks you've associated with doing today.
  • 00:56 This will look very much different in your experience because
  • 01:00 you've got a different workflow,
  • 01:01 a different layout, and everyone's experience is going to be all different.
  • 01:06 I mean, I'm someone who likes to look at other people's systems and
  • 01:09 go, I can steal that bit, I can steal this bit.
  • 01:11 So if you're wondering how this is all set up,
  • 01:14 then we can cover that at the end of the feature.
  • 01:16 As you can see here, you've got today.
  • 01:18 You've got next seven days, which hold the next seven days' worth of tasks.
  • 01:21 And you've got Inbox at the top.
  • 01:23 Inbox I find to be incredibly valuable in my daily routine.
  • 01:27 I try and work out as I go across my day how I can optimize this even further.
  • 01:33 But the good thing the inbox provides for me and my day is,
  • 01:35 when I'm doing some bits of work and I wanna clip articles, I wanna clip things
  • 01:39 that are popped into my head, I wanna clip ideas, anything like that.
  • 01:43 What I can do, is I can quickly dump them into my inbox.
  • 01:47 And the good thing about that is,
  • 01:48 I don't necessarily have to work on them until later.
  • 01:51 So what I'll do at the end of my day,
  • 01:53 I would jump into my today's inbox and go okay, where does this go.
  • 01:57 So for example with this, at maybe LastPass,
  • 01:59 that is something that is an issue today.
  • 02:02 I can tag it to my project.
  • 02:04 And I can put it for
  • 02:05 the end of the day, maybe a bit later today, to check in on it.
  • 02:09 So that's something that I can do, and I can quickly clear it from my inbox.
  • 02:13 This way at the end of each day I clear this inbox, ready for the next day.
  • 02:18 And the cool thing about this whole experience is I can click everything from
  • 02:21 links, to image, to documents, to files, to general tasks.
  • 02:26 And I've got this list of things that are on my mind,
  • 02:29 therefore I don't necessarily have to store them in my head.
  • 02:32 I can just bring them all here and process them later.
  • 02:35 This concept has been used in Getting Things Done,
  • 02:38 which is a book by David Allen, I find it very beneficial.
  • 02:42 The idea is to clear your mind as you go across your day.
  • 02:45 I do it, and I found a lot of benefits from it.
  • 02:48 So I used to do this Todoist's inbox like this, but
  • 02:51 the Todoist inbox has a lot of other different things you should know about it.
  • 02:54 If you want to add a new task, you simply hit Add Task at the button.
  • 02:58 You can add Projects, Labels, Reminders, Priorities, and
  • 03:01 Comments, which we'll explain a bit in the next feature.
  • 03:04 You can also sort by date, priority, name, responsibility.
  • 03:08 You can even print this whole inbox section, which is great, and
  • 03:13 email in tasks.
  • 03:14 So you don't have to be inside this experience necessarily.
  • 03:17 There is a quick add function.
  • 03:18 You can quickly clip something into the Inbox.
  • 03:21 The Inbox is pretty much the default function, so
  • 03:23 if I wanted to quickly add something like a haircut, which I actually need to get.
  • 03:28 It will go straight into my inbox ready for later, and
  • 03:31 processing all that information there.
  • 03:33 So it's an incredibly easy way to get started, and
  • 03:36 something that I think you'll enjoy if you use it in an effective manner.
  • 03:40 We're gonna move onto how to setup a project in the next feature.
  • 03:43 That will be a good way for
  • 03:45 you to get started creating your first few projects inside a Todoist.
  • 03:49 I'll see you next feature and check out the exercise for this one.
  • 03:53 What we'll be doing in the exercise is specifically looking at
  • 03:56 some of the triggers, like putting in stuff inside the inbox of the day.
  • 04:00 If you're looking for
  • 04:01 things to quickly add, then we'll have a check list ready for you there.
  • 04:04 I'm looking forward to next feature,and we'll see you in a minute.
  • 04:07 Cheers.

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