Get Productive
How Todoist Can Help You Achieve Your Reading Goals
Make reading a regular part of your routine
I have been a faithful Todoist user for years now. I transitioned from a paper Bullet Journal to this digital task manager and I haven’t looked back. If I don’t get a task entered, it likely won’t get remembered or completed. My life is run through my Todoist (and by extension, my smartphone).
And that includes reading! I’ve been a voracious reader my whole life, but as I’ve gotten older my professional and personal obligations take up more time, and I don’t have as much time to read leisurely as I once did. I also started reviewing books for publications, so I started having deadlines to follow with my reading. I found myself needing some better guidance on achieving my personal and work reading goals.
Enter my favorite productivity app.
Make Reading a Regular and Scheduled Task
I have projects in Todoist for my personal life, my work tasks, my shopping lists, and even tasks for church. So why not for reading? I have a project called Reading List where I enter each book I want to read as a main task and add in a due date if I need a review completed by a deadline.
Within a task you can add more information. You can have sub tasks, which is where I enter in chapters or sections of a book and can schedule out when I need to complete those chapters so I finish the book by a deadline. Sometimes all I can manage is a chapter a day, but Todoist reminds me to get that chapter read.
I also like to use the comments area to enter the number of pages in the book and the book synopsis. This helps me judge how much time I may need for the book, and jog my memory of what the book is about when my reading list gets a little long.
Organize Your Reading Interests
You may be like me and read A LOT of different things, many at the same time. I usually have a book club book, a non-fiction title, a genre title, and maybe one other book on my Current Reads. That’s a lot to juggle! I can separate my various reading lists into sections in Todoist, like "Reviews," "Book Club," and simply "Interesting," and use that to organize my TBR lists.
I do a lot of my reading on my smartphone, which is convenient and helps me to read faster. However, if I don’t have the physical book in front of me, I may honestly forget about a book I should or need to be reading. So having a little reminder in my task manager is a huge help.
Get to Inbox Zero
I also have a section in my Reading List project for Articles. I’m subscribed to a number of newsletters, and like you I don’t have time to read everything at once when I want to. Part of my routine of achieving Inbox Zero is to skim through the newsletters in my inbox and if it looks like something I want to read, I forward it to my Todoist for later reading. (That’s right, Todoist will allow you to email it tasks!) For newsletters that are more aggregates of news, I’ll add the links of articles I want to read later to my Todoist. I do this when I’m scrolling through Twitter — I’ll add articles I want to spend more time with to my Todoist.
Not only does this clear out my inbox faster, but I have a list of newsletters and articles I can read during spare moments of my day. I can make use of my time by enriching my mind with the items that are relevant to me. Plus, I get to check that off as a task completed!
Using Todoist in my everyday life has absolutely transformed my productivity and my happiness, knowing that the things I want and need to accomplish are getting attention. Including my reading into my task manager has helped me to finish the books I need and keep all my reading interests in a central area I can refer to.
Use my referral link to upgrade your Todoist account to Pro! I’m a huge fan of the app and think it’s a small price to pay for such a high-quality product that makes life so much more organized!
