Todoist and Hobbies

A couple of months ago I switched to Todoist after years of using Remember the Milk, mostly because Todoist makes it way easier to keep my task list organized. I’ve found that the filter system is way easier to get what I want compared to the smart lists in RTM.

And while I’ve been using Todoist very heavily to keep track of work tasks, it’s tracking things I want to get done for my hobbies that have been a surprising benefit. If you’re like me, and probably most people, you have random thoughts throughout the day about things you want to do, but can’t do while you’re stuck at work.

Project Filters

What I did is setup a Todoist project called Hobbies, and then put each thing I’m interested in a sub project. It looks something like this in Todoist.

Hobbies
    - Coding
    - Cooking
    - Photography
    - Reading
    - Writing

What I wanted was a list of all the tasks that are in any of the sub projects for when I’m looking for something to do.

The first step is filtering all tasks that are in Hobbies and any sub project. The filter #Hobbies will get any tasks in the Hobbies project, but adding another hashtag and entering ##Hobbies instead will get everything in Hobbies and all sub projects.

I then group by project so that each is in its own set on the list.

Due Dates

Here I split into 2 separate filters. I have one with due dates and one without. My thinking is the list with due dates helps keep track of things that need to get done, at least in the context of anything hobby related needing to get done.

For the list without due dates, the filter becomes ##Hobbies & no due date. Short and sweet. These are the things I want to do sometime, but don’t have a specific time.

For the list with due dates I want it to show anything due in the next 2 weeks, but also show anything with a past due date. That filter looks is ##Hobbies & (14 days | overdue) to get anything in the Hobbies project or sub projects and either overdue or due in the next 14 days. These would be things like order concert tickets that have some sort of time constraint.

Subtasks

And finally, I didn’t want to include any subtasks in either view. That just took tacking on & !subtask onto the end of each filter.

Most of the time when I add a subtask it doesn’t have a specific due date, so it didn’t make sense to include them.

The finished filters

Upgrading Todoist

For the first couple of weeks the free version of Todoist was more than enough for me. Most of the features are there without having to pay. What got me to pull the trigger though was the limit on the number of filters I could make. The more I used Todoist, the more filters I started building and it was more than worth the $48 to upgrade and help keep my sanity.