What do you use to organise your tasks and projects? I have been using Omnifocus and occasionally Reminders on my iPhone and Mac to stay organised for many years.
Both apps – along with others for improved collaboration – have worked well at reminding me to do any task in my work and personal life. Over time, I realised I needed more tools to make sure I was as productive as I could be:
Calendar
I know if a task takes at least 30 minutes to complete, I am more likely to get it done if I added it to my calendar. This works really well and after completing what I have to do, I can tick it off my to do list too.
Pomodoro
There are some projects that have so many tasks, you may not know where to begin or sometimes is quite difficult to just start. For this little problem, I use the Pomodoro technique to get going in 25 minute chunks.
Habit tracking
The daily habits I’ve been doing for years – meditation, exercise, yoga and journaling – make me productive in my day-to-day work. Because these are now second nature, I stack new habits onto these to get new things done, like reading, walking and flossing every day.
Using a to do list and simple reminders wasn’t enough anymore, not with the extra tracking I now needed.
I try out A LOT of to do apps. All. The. Time. Often, it takes me around ten minutes to evaluate them and figure out they aren’t suitable. I learned what I need them to do, that the UI should be intuitive and the features need to be comprehensive, without being overwhelming. Sadly, most apps aren’t very good ticking all of these boxes.
I came across TickTick from an email and have been using it for over a month. I love it already. It’s really easy to use, looks nice and clean, and does so without being flashy or using unnecessary UI animations.
Screenshots of TickTick features
TickTick calendar 
TickTick Pomodoro 
TickTick Habits
I have now dropped three other apps I was using! TickTick handles calendar integration, Pomodoro setting per task and habit tracking (which is currently only in the iOS app) really well. And it does A LOT more:
- The interface is a familiar left-right column view of lists, tasks and subtasks
- Groups for ‘life areas’ or big projects, lists for projects and further detail including subtasks
- Filtered and arrangeable smart lists of Inbox, Today, Tomorrow, Next 7 Days, Assigned to Me, Completed and Summary, plus tags too
- Kanban board view (for those who enjoy the Trello layout)
- Calendar subscription and viewing TickTick tasks in your calendar app
- Templates, descriptions, email tasks, attachments, arranging tasks
- Themes including dark mode
- Statistics view so you can see how productive you are
- Import from other apps (Todoist, Wunderlist, OmniFocus, Toodledo, iCal)
- Markdown in description field coming soon (Nov 2019)
- Check out the full list of features
TickTick has a stunningly good web app, an intuitive iOS app (w/habits) and an excellent native Mac app with Pomodoro right in the menu bar (and sound effects or white noise while you work, if you so choose). It’s so good.
I use apps like Asana, Trello and Basecamp for collaboration, but have yet to test how well TickTick works with others. From what I have read, it seems to handle communications and projects well.
And get this: It only costs $2.79 a month / $27.99 a year for Premium, but you can do a lot for free too.
I’m interested in what you use to get organised. What do you need from a system and what works well for you?
