Hello everyone and welcome back to another video it is Francesco here.
So in today's video, I'm going to doing my Todoist setup video and
this is the July 2018 version
So I've been doing setup videos for about three years now, which is mad!
So hopefully I can add this to the setup tour video
So maybe you can see my progression and how I've gone through things now. I have a
Sort of something to admit before I start this video
I am wearing a Trello t-shirt whilst doing a to do a setup video, which I feel super weird about
The fact that's on while I'm doing this
but it really doesn't matter does it I've worn the Trello t-shirt before during features and
Hopefully it hasn't been too bad. So today I wanted to dive through
What my Todoist looks like now?
For those who don't know I moved two things free for about three months at the start of the year
So things definitely changed and adapted
but it's something that
I've obviously moved back to to do this now
I wanted to say that I did make my title my video a couple of weeks ago a big click Beatty. Goodbye Todoist...
But I did I just wanted to explain myself process there
And also get through a hard point of the fact that you don't necessarily need to switch to do this applications all the time
But hopefully I didn't offend anyone so I've got my notes here
I just wanted to make sure I'm covering all of the points because this has been my biggest change in
My Todoist account since I started I do say that every time but this actually almost reset me completely
reset me as a todoist user and I think it's definitely beneficial on productivity and
Has really helped me so let's dive in so the things that I really think you want to talk about straightaway is the inbox
my projects areas and
Also an additional project area that I've got as well as labels use. So let's start with the inbox now
I've got a few things in here already. I just dumping stuff in there
But as you can imagine the inbox is a vital area for many people now previously
I didn't use inbox as much but now I am filling the inbox up
Dramatically to round about 40 to 50 new items a day
So the traduced inbox is getting used a lot more for me as you can imagine
the experience obviously
Ideas, come to me during the day
But I'm using the todoist inbox is more of an outlet to put that there so
The way that I sort of go around doing that
that's everything from articles to links to you know things I actually have to do maybe defer to later is I will
stop during the day and
Plot out some of those items. So I want to talk a bit more about that in the workflow sign of stuff
Which we'll go into a bit more detail in a minute
Just to note if you want to skip ahead or do anything else you can use a timestamps below
But yeah, the inbox has been a place where have been dumping a lot more links all those items
are they go across my days so I will have
Relatively near the end a day around 40 to 50 of them. Today's actually been super week
I'm on 17 but actually did a refresh earlier anyway
so the inbox has been more of a predominant area for me and as you can imagine that's actually affected my
karma score a lot
So when I was previously doing a lot in things 3 because they don't have a karma ranking and the deletion function
I couldn't really be asked with it
On the web version is I was ticking off a load of items to get rid of them
Not necessarily because I completed them but because I was trying to get rid of them and that's what I'm doing here now
And it's actually a really bad habit
The only reason I'm not doing i'm should be doing it like that
It's because once you select stuff in to do this
You have to go up here to go and delete them and it's once you delete them
You have to go to a secondary screen which seems really long-winded. Maybe there is a keyboard rule cuts. Maybe it's just
Delete, but it doesn't seem to have worked
But as you can imagine that is a bit long-winded, so be just taking stuff up seems a lot simpler to do
Maybe there is a keyboard shortcut. But again dance it affecting my karma, which I'll mention near the end
So probably the biggest area change for me is projects for those who don't know. I used to have a
Project area for everything but during the last maybe year or so. I really fine-tuned it
So I I had like a lot less projects a lot less areas to contend with
Mainly because I wanted to minimize and as you can imagine I wanted to reduce it
So now I have three core projects one is called personal one is called freelance and the final one is called nest
Now personal is essentially all of my personal items
So this could be home family life of vacation activities stuff
That doesn't necessarily fall into the freelance category although a lot of things merge and freelance freelance
Encapsulate everything that I do are towards my projects and activities
So as you can see, I don't and no longer have projects per
client or per our area and this has actually
Stret that reduced my stress level a lot now
I previously had to organize everything into the project areas and maybe I'm under utilizing this but when I go now to
For example today and this is a bad example. I can go. Let me just see the next day
I can see visually really easy. So for example rent, okay
I've got a personal item in there wedge between all of these freelance items
So as you can imagine it's a nice way for me visually seeing stuff and and for me
I actually correlate red to personal and blue to freelance which is more about my brand
so as you can imagine that was a huge revelation for me and as you can meet as you can see
It's really slimmed down that section
So at any given time over the last couple of months
I've really not had more than 60 tasks in freelance at any given point in they're the ones I've plotted far ahead as well and
Impersonal I ran about have 20 in that project. So as you can see, I've really limited and cut down the amount of tasks
I'm using
So I'm really only looking between 15 to 30 days ahead with the task manager
So you're probably wondering what the hell?
What the hell what the hell is this final area called nest now?
I've labeled it yellow but nest is a really undisclosed area for me right now
It's more of a just a notes area
So it's more almost like a some day maybe to some extent. I'm just dumping stuff in there. It was full the other day
I'm just dumping stuff in there. They'd only don't really find
Useful right now or don't deserve to go in the Inbox, but something that I will routinely check
So for example, I would routinely track this at the end of the week
Make sure I didn't have anything there, but it's for these things that I need to put in there for later if that makes sense
so what I would recommend
is
Not taking this advice just yet because for me, I'm just working out how I'm using this so
You know, give me a bit of time to work out what that was. I used to have an area
That are used to dump stuff in but of course that's obviously adapted so you're probably wondering Francesco
How are you losing using labels because used a lot of labels before I'm not using labels at all
Labels were a way for me to bulk out tasks as you can see here. Now. It's a lot more streamlined
There's no necessary labels underneath them
And the reason I'm doing this is because as you can see by my projects area
I've obviously reset I've gone back to personal freelance kept it simple
And what I want to do at the moment is make sure that I'm fully confident on my workflow
Before I move forward with my use of labels. I want to make sure that I am
Optimizing my use of labels to the maximum
So what I will be doing in the next month or so is sitting around while my cell phone going
How can I reduce my time?
By using labels, how can I save time by reducing late using labels?
And how can I reduce the amount of them when I'm using them and then I can set up filters from there?
So as you can imagine
It's something that I'm going to be taking a bit of time out on it's definitely something I will be using in the future
But it's just something that doesn't really compute right now for this process. So as you can imagine
You know
This has changed the projects and labels area has been the biggest change and this sort of workflow sign of stuff
So this is the sort of day-to-day so and stuff
I have between five and eight main tasks in my inbox during the day I'm using
Priorities a lot more not based on energy levels
So previously what did was for example, this could be high-energy tasks ones. It took more of my energy out
And of course they do in this case
But what I'm doing is I'm actually assigning based on
Priority because I think that's the way my work has changed a lot and things through he helped me to work that out
things we did actually have priorities so it made it a lot more difficult to
Define what exactly was the most important thing for the day apart from obviously the deadlines function and things like that
But this is actually more of a visual function for me. So you can see here that I'm using it a lot more efficiently
particularly love this feature and
It's definitely helped me in the last couple of months
so, ah the way that I sort of go about my day wid todoist now is
I have
The David so I have the morning the morning I wake up and my two duis will be pretty much laid out for me
Round about ten up to ten tasks not really any more than that will be laid out ready?
That's from morning tasks. So I would use a morning task to list. So for example, let me just demonstrate
for example tomorrow morning
I'm traveling most of the day
But I would have something like this that can admin tasks to start my day because it's a light
It's full of different tasks in the comments. I'll use comments to fill that up
And basically just small wins that I can start my day with
And that's how I will start my day now when I get to about lunchtime, which is ran about 12 to 2 p.m
dependent on the day, really I
will then go
Okay, I need to reach
Edge or the my afternoon? This is how my sort of productivity is change
I would say I have become a morning sort of person in terms of getting that majority of stuff done. But then
priorities shift
Things come into my inbox things come today in you know, all this stuff comes in
you know ideas happen like I will think of an idea for a video or
Someone will go you need to do a bit of work now then is based on this
So what I'll do is around about let's say 12:30. For example, I'll go. Ok. Let me grab a bit timer my to-do list
I will sit there and reap lot out my full afternoon. Now. This won't take that long
5-10 minutes and essentially from here. I have the rest of the afternoon planned out
I can then go home
or wherever I'm going in the afternoon and then just finish the rest of the tasks that are laid out in front of me and
This has actually saved me a lot of time
previously when I doing it before
it's actually something that I really
Wasn't thinking was too much of a problem. So for example when I was doing before I was literally plotting out my full day
but the end of the day I was like
Maybe losing out on three or four tasks because I was deferring them to the next day
but since I've been doing this
I've actually been very much more efficient in defining what my priorities are as well as
Seeing the short-term and long-term benefits of certain tasks
So that's sort of how my sort of structures changed
It's almost a refresh but it's definitely really helped
So in terms of the next seven days, obviously, this has been a very helpful weary for me
You can see the numbers much lower and that's because I've been more rigor in my structure
in terms of not
Over populating it, but now I sort of plan I guess two to three days in advance
Not much longer. If I'm honest obviously what I'll do on a Thursday night is I'll sit down with my ocean account
Look at my goals and I'll plot the bulk tasks into todoist
So I'll go on to Monday Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday Friday of the week after and go
do
Three things maybe per day that a high priority which will help me work towards my goals, right? And that is a very beneficial
System for me that is like I love doing that actually because it it helps to define what I need to do those days
So that's great. But what I'll then do is the evenings of those items. So for example, let's say it was
Monday evening. All right, let's take today. For example Tuesday evening if it weren't holiday tomorrow
Tuesday evening, I would then plot out my tasks for the next day
And of course when I woke up in the morning, I do them there and then what between 12:00 and 2:00 p.m
On that day, I would then refresh them for the afternoon
But not check in that five minute check in plot. The day really does help
I try and do that two days in advance. So what I'll do is for example on a Sunday night
I will plot two days in advance and have a general structure and then I can just tweak things because obviously things change based on
Energy levels and things like that so you can see that. I'm not really planning too far in advance with this experience
I'm not mapping out too much. But this sort of process is actually really helping me at the moment
I wake up and I don't have to focus on
Planning I focus on doing. Midday. I plan back to it
And then in the evening, I plan so it's like plan do plan do I think that's a thing?
Maybe it's just me
so what I do is well at the start of every week is I use a new theme and
This is actually really just an aesthetic thing
so go into settings and I'll change my theme at the end of the week and this actually helps with
defining
A clear distance between the week before and it will help me remove any negatives to some extent
So for example, let's say I had like a really unproductive week like Thursday night
What I'll do is I'll go I'm changing the theme to this one. And what happens is I get this new clean
Look of the thing and I guess you can
You know feel like you're full refreshing to some extent
This is really stupid concept, but it does help and sometimes if I'm feeling super in the mood
I'll go to change desktop background or Mac. Um, and I'll
go to solid colors custom colors, press this icon here and
Select the background color and as you can see the whole experience and I've done this before you've shown you guys before
How experience blocks out and you can see a really clean looking to do is to count. So that's really good
That's something that I use quite regularly if I'm in a focused zone and that becomes very useful
So additions some of the additions that I've had is my use of comments
I was using subtasks a lot before no longer just use comments
You can pretty much see for the majority of tasks on this list
You can see that I've got comments in there. A lot of them have links a lot of them have checklists in there
I don't use the sub task function because it gets too messy
Even when you click into project, I didn't want to have to go into my project in the moment for freelance
I just want to see it all in one comment system. So the comments are beautiful, obviously
I didn't like them in things free in terms of notes, but I liked subtasks
so this is just an extension of that now you're probably wondering
Francesco you knew during the period of time when yous things free your karma must have been
it was
which really didn't help but
Obviously I'm back now, so that's obviously
Ramped up, but as you can see, my karma has not really improved
Um, obviously as I said with state, I don't really use karma
It's more of just a guideline I guess and just me Singh I use view completed tasks more than I do karma whatsoever
So you can see here
I've completed sixty five out of 14 tasks and answer a combination of me
Clearing my inbox todoist inbox and also a combination of me doing my I think it was 1:00 p.m
Today my review of the day for the afternoon. I was clearing out a certain items are there so you can see it's over
Since I've been moved back it's over populated per day. So that's something that I wouldn't really go off
Maybe I need to change it based on that experience. But again, I feel like that's dead data because I'm just clearing stuff
That doesn't necessarily exist. So maybe that's just a functional thing for me. You can see weekly that's changed a lot
So you see that it's gone up from like
What it was before like two hundred to four hundred and thirteen and that's still me only
Fixing only up to eight to ten tasks on there at a time
But yeah, my karma has gone up as you can imagine it was dramatically
Lower before and my streak I lost my streak as well
I think I put it on vacation mode, but I actually lost my streak
Last week I lost my stream last year. I don't want talking about that
But I did lose another streak of like one, maybe two hundred or something. Like this doesn't really matter. That's my approach to it
So in terms of next steps
The next steps I'm doing is I'm going to be evaluating my labels usage. I'm going to be very
strict about it
I'm going to be looking at my filters playing which ones I can use the most once I've got my label set up
I'm going to be looking at a PA and workflow to
reduce complexity in my todoist account and finally
I'm going to be looking at toggle
Which is a time tracking resource that will help me to manage how much time I'm spending on certain tasks
So guys that was a review of my todoist account as you can imagine
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about everything
But as you can imagine this change dramatically thinned out you're probably going our francesco. It is horrible
Now you had a beautiful setup, but this is actually really gorgeous
the final thing that I had
Was that I occasionally use emoji on personal items really small use
So for example, if I it just brightens up certain personal items but apart from that that's really all that's changed
Anyway, guys, hopefully you enjoyed this video
Let me know in the comments below hit the like button if you enjoyed it
If you're brand new subscriber here hit subscribe as well. And that's all of pitches
I really love to hear from you in the comments how you're using todoist
But as you can imagine welcome to keeper octave humidity if you're new, and I'll see you guys very very soon
Thanks very much guys, make sure have a great week. Keep it up too and see you on Pharisee
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