Todoist is a free online to-do list and task manager that has one of the cleanest and easiest to use interfaces I’ve ever seen. It’s power comes from its simplicity and intuitiveness and also because it allows a multitude of services to integrate with it. Launchy, Gmail, Widgets, Mobile access and a host of others.

I will be doing a full review of Todoist sometime in the future, for now, let’s focus on how you can use it with Launchy to add tasks right from your desktop and how you can create a task from an email with one click.

Launchy

Integration with Launchy enables you to add tasks from your desktop, without the need for a browser or anything else. This is great if you want to quickly add tasks on the fly, since time is not wasted by opening your browser, loading the app, and entering the task.

Installation

For me, Todoist integration did not work with the new 2.0 version of Launchy, as many other plugins don’t either. If you want integration to Todoist, you will need to get a previous version for now. Go to the Launchy Sourceforge page and select version 1.25 instead of 2.0 and everything should be ok.

First of all, go to the info page, click on Launchy and download it from the website. Once you have it, you need to quit Launchy and place the dll in the Launchy plugins folder. If you didn’t change the install path, this will probably be “C:\Program Files\Launchy\Plugins”. When done, run Launchy again and open the plugins page through the right click menu. Find the Todoist plugin, click on options and enter application token, which can be found in the account section of the preferences page. Once you’ve entered the token, you should be able to use Launchy and Todoist.

Usage

All you need to remember is simple syntax. You enter tasks by typing “Todoist”, pressing tab and typing the task and pressing enter. This will add it to your default list, which you can change in the Launchy settings. If you want to add it to a different Project right away you need to bring up launchy, type “Todoist”, then press tab, add the task text, press tab again, and type the project name you want to add it to.

If you want more control, you can also add tags and due dates using Launchy. Tags can be added using the at-sign, and dates using the the “larger-than” sign. The following task would be added to the “Organization” project with the tag “work”, and a due date would be set to tomorrow, at 5pm: “Go through all my emails>tom at 17 [press tab] Organization”.

If you create projects often, you may need to go back to the Launchy plugin options and refresh your list, since it won’t always be refreshed automatically. If you get an error saying that there is no such project, and you know that in fact there is, be sure that this list is updated.

Gmail

I don’t think Gmail needs any introduction, what Todoist can do with it is truly unique though (although Remember the Milk has also come up with a solution). You need to install a bookmark, which you press when a message is open, and it will let you add the email as a task to Todoist. You can play around with the name, mark it done and so on.

Installation

Head over to the info page and click on the Gmail integration guide. Click on “install bookmark link” and drag and drop the large “delegate to Todoist” link to your firefox toolbar. This only works if you have a bookmark toolbar open though.

Since I hate bookmark toolbars, I just put the toolbar between the URL box and search box at the top. It contains only one icon, the Todoist bookmarklet, so my interface stays neat and clean, and usable, now that’s productivity!

Usage

Once that’s done, all you need to do is press the bookmarklet when you want to add an email as a Todoist task. You will be able to define the name, the date and the project to which you want to add it to, and that’s it. A nice little Gmail icon will show you that a specific task is linked to an email, which you can open right from the Todoist interface.