A post about using Todoist for decision making. How well does it work? I go back and forth, but it’s a thing I do sometimes.
If you’re decisive, I consider you lucky. Or skilled. Or self-aware. Or…something. I’m unfortunately not — at least not in some areas. And over my lifetime, I’ve made too many decisions that were, ultimately, not right for me because (insert reason here…I didn’t want to be “selfish,” because I wanted approval, because of fear…the list goes on).
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Why I’m using Todoist for decision making
While I don’t kvetch (at least not too much) about things like what to have for dinner, what clothes to wear, or what to paint the walls, I do tend to ruminate excessively about things like what to do with my time and energy, or whether to part with certain items that own. {[{I have the history of getting rid of stuff to “clear space,” only to regret it. Well, yes, a good decision-making tool there is waiting to see what you don’t use over a certain time period. Haven’t used that kayak for a year and a half? Gotta go!}]}
While I’m now in the fortunate position {[{After a lifetime of having to track nearly every minute of my time during working hours.}]} that I don’t actually need to use time-management tools, I’ve come to use Todoist in many different ways.
One of the ways I’m using Todoist is for decision making, only for those decisions where I find myself feeling stuck or ruminating.
How I’m using Todoist for decision making
The above is an example of how I’m using it. One of the things I kvetch over routinely {[{At least one I feel I can share here}]} is whether or not to end a particular blog — or whether to even stop blogging entirely. {[{Though, as I’ve said elsewhere, a blog has a hydra-like quality in that if I cut off a blog, several tend to grow in its place.}]}
- Create a new task and set a date for the future when I want to re-address the issue.
- Add a task description with prompts to ask me some questions when I come back to this “task.”
- Add it to a project and add some tags. Make it easily findable, as I’ll be revisiting it again and again.
- Then, in the meantime, when I have a thought about this question or when I engage in the the activity about which I’m trying to make a decision, I use the “comment” field to add little “journal” notes.
Then, when the Todoist task pops up, I have all of these little “no B.S.” notes that help me be brutally honest with myself.
As someone who likes to write, I’ve often found that putting something on a page sometimes helps me to get it out of my head — but I don’t always want to sit down and write journal entries because (for me) they tend to turn into long sessions. But when I’m using Todoist for decision making — making quick, simple entries — it often helps me to stop kvetching, knowing that while I’m delaying a decision, I’ll come back to it later, and I’ve committed to taking action at that time, whatever the decision is.
Other decision-making apps
Just an aside: some other tools for the indecisive that I’ve tried are the Tiny Decisions app and the Pros-Cons decision app.
Tiny Decisions is truly good for only tiny decisions as it consists of things like wheel spinners and random number pickers. You might as well flip a coin.
The pros-cons app is better and a bit more like what I do with Todoist as (as the name of the app implies). You put pros and cons in two columns, give them weight, add a date to make the decision, and the app gives you a green or red depending on the pros and cons you enter. I’ve found myself, however, throwing out a number of decisions in the end.
As Cinderella said in Into the Woods, “I know what my decision is. It is not to decide.” That’s often, unfortunately, me, but I’m working on it with Todoist and journaling.
______You can find any other post on this website about Todoist here.