- [Francesco] Okay Amir, welcome to Tools They Use podcast. You are officially the second
guest to ever return. So that's good news, and your first one was the third most popular
podcast episode, so that's good.
- [Amir] Wow. Yeah it's quite some years ago.
- [Francesco] Yeah!
- [Amir] Isn't it?
- [Francesco] Yeah! I think we first talked maybe 4 or 5 years ago wasn't it? Over Zoom
or maybe Hangouts or something like that?
- [Amir] Yeah.
- [Francesco] Yeah, because I remember I was in my University dorm room doing the call
and you were at home I think.
- [Amir] Yeah I was actually vacationing at the time I think.
- [Francesco] Oh!
- [Amir] Yeah, with my family.
- [Francesco] That's a good dedication, then.
- [Amir] I don't do that anymore.
- [Francesco] Yeah.
- [Amir] I do podcasts doing dedications, but.
- [Francesco] But in the early stages.
- [Amir] Yeah, I did that.
- [Francesco] Well it was great to have you. And obviously you've been working hard with
Doist for the last couple of years, well not the last couple of years, ages!
- [Amir] Yeah.
- [Francesco] How is everything with you and the team at the moment? You've just come back
from your retreat, how's everything going?
- [Amir] I think it's going quite well, yeah, I mean we are doing a lot of changes that
people can't really see.
- [Francesco] Yeah.
- [Amir] And we are kind of just modernizing the code bases, the infrastructure, the models.
And this will actually open up for a lot of other exciting features. So we are really
improving like the back end and also front end and just like, the clients. So hopefully,
you know, people will actually see, you know, much more stability. I don't know, we don't
probably have a lot of issues with stability, I think.
- [Francesco] No, you don't.
- [Amir] Yeah, but the thing is like, you can become much better and we have actually
found ways to do much better engineering.
- [Francesco] Yeah. So that's something we will be investing. But the thing is people
don't really see that, not on the surface. But the thing is, if you really want to take
this to a whole new level, you have to have almost perfect systems.
- [Francesco] Yeah.
- [Amir] And like, the backbone has to be perfect.
- [Francesco] That's it.
- [Amir] Or else if you lose some data or something like that, it's very very frustrating.
- [Francesco] Yeah, 100%. And you did a lot of changes to the IOS and Android apps and
obviously the blue P3, I loved it personally, I know it's changed the way that I use it
on a day to day basis. Have you found that the user feedback's been good so far?
- [Amir] Yeah, I think so. I mean, of course, you know, when we have so many users, always
you will have some people complaining.
- [Francesco] Yeah, of course.
- [Amir] So some people complained a lot.
- [Francesco] Yeah.
- [Amir] But I think that most users actually like that change and it kind of like makes
it unified. And actually, also, the reason why we are doing this change is like the upcoming
features that are coming are like depend on having these features. So we also don't want
to drop like a nuclear bomb right away and just like destroy everybody's workforce. So
we are doing that in stages.
- [Francesco] Oh yeah you don't want to change too much but you want to do it gradually.
- [Amir] Yeah and actually some of the changes that are coming they're going to be very significant.
- [Francesco] Very exciting. One of my first questions was really about like intentional
task management. I think there's a lot more, from my own reading, there's a lot more pieces
about intentionalism and trying to be a bit more focused in what you do at work. And I
always see Todoist as an app that is good at that, because it has a clean interface
and I think it's very minimal in it's structure which I like. It's an app that I feel comfortable
adding five tasks to and just getting those during the day. Have you found that people
have been using Todoist and following a similar methodology like intentionalism?
- [Amir] Yeah, I mean honestly I think there's different groups of people and actually most
people, they don't really want complexity, they don't want to fiddle with their systems
they just want something that works that can kind of help their life and days and get more
structure into that. So, also, like the things that we're actually going to do in the future
is kind of like removing and reducing some of the complexity. So you can't fill that
much with the system and basically we try to optimize for like the best ways of working
with Todoist. And actually some of the big changes that are coming are like sections,
so we actually already have that in like a...
- [Francesco] Marked down format, is it? Would you say it's marked down? No, it's not, it
wouldn't be.
- [Amir] It's not, yeah, it's basically like sections are going to become like real objects.
- [Francesco] Ah, lovely.
- [Amir] So basically if you ever used Things then we will have basically that kind of structure
on sections. And it will make it much easier to actually structure projects, and also you
can be able to archive sections and stuff like that. So basically that's one way where
we can remove some of the flexibility, but then like, we make things much more simple
and much more powerful as well. Because in the current system sections are kind of a
hack, so they don't really mean anything, just, like, you know, visual. In the new structure,
they are actually real objects and tasks belong to sections and stuff like that.
- [Francesco] Oh, lovely. That's something I would benefit from massively. I think a
lot of people will be happy that that feature's coming out. We're at the Business of Software
Conference in Cambridge, you gave a talk this morning, maybe you can round up, briefly,
what that talk was about?
- [Amir] Oh, I mean it wasn't anything to do with Todoist
- [Francesco] No.
- [Amir] It's just like remote work and yeah, like creating effective teams inside this
environment and stuff like that.
- [Francesco] Fantastic, yeah. I actually missed it, but I will be looking forward to
watching it online 100%. Which is a pain because I was only like 15 miles away or something
like that.
- [Amir] Yeah, but I mean, yeah. But there's a cool thing about recorded sources like you
can always watch them later.
- [Francesco] Yeah, that's it. And obviously Todoist isn't only Doist's main project a
lot of it's attention has been on Twist your team communication tool. How has that been
progressing and what are the things that are gonna be exciting in the future for users
of that?
- [Amir] Yeah, honestly I mean we're still focused mainly on Todoist like, Twist is still
like a small team that does that. I mean I'm not really skilled at team yet, yeah so that's
something that's...
- [Francesco] Slowly growing
- [Amir] Slowly growing. I mean we are also very mindful of just not, you know, over committing
and over hiring.
- [Francesco] Yeah.
- [Amir] It's much better to be a bit conservative and actually have like a market adaption before
you pour more fuel on the fire. I mean we are very excited about that market as well
and the whole asynchronous of actually working I think that's going to be like, the way of
the future.
- [Francesco] Yeah.
- [Amir] Yeah, and then we just want to make a product that actually, you know, is as good
as Slack and that's like a very high bar to cross. So we are working on that and it's
very challenging to create world class products.
- [Francesco] Well we use it at Keep Productive to keep pretty less stressful ways of... Because
I think a lot of people at this conference have like said, "Oh we use Slack and it's
hard to keep in touch" "with all these channels." And I've actually pointed them towards Twist
because it's such a simple way of working and it's going back to the point of intentionalism,
you're intentionable about posting a thread, and then that thread can start a conversation
so I think you're doing good, I think it has some potential.
- [Amir] I mean definitely, and we do have like an adaption, I think we probably have
over 1,000 teams using it around the world.
- [Francesco] Oh really?
- [Amir] So it's kind of like getting traction and acceptance. But the thing, is changing
to a better system is very hard, people need to change their habits. And the thing is,
also, Slack is very addictive and like, fun, you know drugs are also addictive and fun.
That does not mean that the...
- [Francesco] Slack drugs yeah.
- [Amir] Yeah, yeah.
- [Francesco] I know what you mean.
- [Amir] So, actually getting people to switch from their habits is incredibly hard, and
that's kind of the challenge that we're also facing is kind of like this. Regardless of
how good it is, there's a hurdle for people to cross. And, you know, as you learn more
and explore more into this market I'm pretty sure that more people will actually become
aware that, you know, maybe being online all the time, chatting all the time chatting in
like, one liners, isn't the best for your wellbeing, or for your productivity.
- [Francesco] Oh 100%, yeah. Well I think it's probably gonna demand a lot of education
around that topic and I think, if you want my opinion, I quite like the Ambition and
Balance blog, I'm a regular reader. And I quite like that you explain a topic that's
quite, and obviously the content team put so much work into that so that's really good.
- [Amir] Thank you, Francesco.
- [Francesco] You've obviously been hard at work on templates and now they're going down
a treat with a lot of users, but your next sort of mission is Boards, right? Obviously
you've hinted at it, have you got anything, any sort of clues on how far that is away?
- [Amir] I mean honestly, like, there will be some bombs dropped before the Boards, yeah.
That's the thing, in order to bring Boards to Todoist, we need to simplify the product
and something that I think many people will not really like that much is we're going to
kind of remove, or at least that's the plan right now, like multi indenting tasks.
- [Francesco] Okay.
- [Amir] Yeah, so I think some people hate this.
- [Francesco] Is that sub tasks, right?
- [Amir] Yeah, so basically you have a task, you have sections, tasks and sub tasks, you
won't have sub sub tasks.
- [Francesco] Ah, okay yeah.
- [Amir] And the reason is most users actually don't use sub sub tasks.
- [Francesco] Yeah.
- [Amir] And they make the whole obstruction much much harder, the interface much much
harder, and it's actually very hard to make this work inside Boards.
- [Francesco] Yeah.
- [Amir] The thing is, you know, we'll explore this, maybe it doesn't really make sense right
now so I can't really say "Okay we are going to commit to this."
- [Francesco] Yeah.
- [Amir] But that's at least the thought process like in order to actually do really do well
like Boards, we kind of need to go that way. And then I think we also exploring right now
is task details. [Francesco] Oh okay, yeah. So basically each task will kind of become
like a mini project where you have like all your sub tasks, and you'll be able to manage
that, comments, files, everything will kind of be...
- [Francesco] Like a card format, almost.
- [Amir] Exactly.
- [Francesco] Lovely.
- [Amir] Yeah and that's also a change that is basically going towards the Boards view
because in the Boards view it doesn't really make sense to just have like one single task
without any kind of details attached to it.
- [Francesco] Yeah, so you almost have to like change the structure of Todoist in order
to get ready for this Boards launch. That's quite exciting then. Is it a lot of work,
I can imagine?
- [Amir] Yeah there's a lot of work and I'm pretty sure a lot of people will also hate
that but the thing is like, we kind of need to do these compromises. In order to actually
take the product to the next level we need to do some compromises. You can't just add
Boards and have like, you know, everything that we did 10 years ago.
- [Francesco] Or else it would just mess everything up and it would be even more complicated down
the line, so.
- [Amir] Yeah and people will not actually be able to use it so it's really about simplification
as well and figuring out, you know, how can we make this more powerful, but also more
simple? The thing is I mean I'm just telling you this but I'm actually unsure how the future
will unfold.
- [Francesco] Yeah, but --
- [Amir] So when we actually do the Boards they will be like a really bad feature and
we will actually not ship them.
- [Francesco] Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, you've got to work it out and you've hinted at it
already in terms of what it will look like but it might not look like that at all, so.
Might be slightly different.
- [Amir] Exactly, exactly. So that's something, like we actually change how we actually do
feature releases. So we actually want, when we ship stuff, that it's actually quality
and not like some, you know half ass attempt
- [Francesco] Yeah.
- [Amir] to solve a problem.
- [Francesco] Yeah, no it's a good idea. And sort of like a final question to wrap up,
obviously a lot of the Keep Productive community are Todoist users, I'm a Todoist user, big
fan of it, as you may know. Have you got anything else that you wanted to let them know that
might be coming in 2019, or might be your focus in 2019 that they should know about
or be excited for? Obviously Boards is pretty big.
- [Amir] Yeah, honestly first of all, we are so glad for all of the support that we are
getting from people, all of the feedback, yeah. The thing though to note is also like,
we have so many people using our product it's kind of overwhelming at times as well. But
we really do appreciate it and really listen to customer feedback, and we make changes
based on that. But of course it's always about compromises, and a lot of decisions that we
make are kind of very hard decisions, because you can't really build a product for everybody
like the app. There's some really tough calls that need to be made and the same thing is
regarding these major features I think during this year it will probably be one of the most
exciting times in Todoist history because since the inception, we have actually never
really tried to reimagine what Todoist could be, at least not in this level. And right
now we are doing that, we are trying to think of, you know, what can this actually become?
- [Francesco] Yeah.
- [Amir] And I hope, you know, that we do this we cannot make a product that's much
more better and that cannot help people even more in their lives and in their work and
stuff like that.
- [Francesco] Yeah, well that's really good. Well thanks for, well it's weird because I
don't have to go like "Oh, bye!" on the phone, isn't it?
- [Amir] Yeah.
- [Francesco] Thanks for taking the time out to do the podcast, and have you got any final
messages of where people can visit you or find you on social media?
- [Amir] Yeah, I mean you can follow me on Twitter, it's @amix3k, I actually tweet a
lot, so.
- [Francesco] Yeah, you do.
- [Amir] Yeah, sometimes I also tweet features that are upcoming or just things that we are
thinking about so you can follow me there. And yeah, like I said, you're doing an amazing
job Francesco as well
- [Francesco] Oh, thank you.
- [Amir] on all of your work. Yeah and I think there's a cliff in the productivity space
because a lot of people are still struggling, you know, creating their own systems.
- [Francesco] Yeah.
- [Amir] And actually applying all the knowledge, and I think that you two have groups of people,
people that really are super, you know, geeks about this and know everything, and then people
that know anything and I hope that, kind of, we can also shift so we have more people that
maybe know a bit, but not everything.
- [Francesco] Yeah, I think that's healthy.
- [Amir] Yeah.
- [Francesco] Yeah, definitely. Well thanks for coming, and I appreciate you taking your
time out. But thanks Amir, and thank you to everyone who's watching, or listening in this
case. Make sure to have a great week, keep productive, and I'll see you guys very very
soon, cheers.
- [Amir] Bye bye.