Todoist for Beginners: A Complete Getting Started Guide

If your to-do list lives on sticky notes, scattered notebooks, or a growing pile of “starred” emails, Todoist is worth your attention. It is one of the most polished and capable task managers available — flexible enough to handle complex projects, yet simple enough to use every day.

This guide covers everything you need to get started with Todoist, from creating your first task to setting up a workflow that actually sticks.

What Is Todoist and Why Use It?

Todoist is a task management app that has been around since 2007. It is available on every platform — web, desktop (Mac and Windows), iOS, and Android — and syncs instantly across all of them.

What makes Todoist stand out:

Clean, distraction-free interface that gets out of your way
Powerful natural language input (type “Submit report every Friday at 5pm” and Todoist handles the rest)
A robust free plan with premium features available for power users
Strong integrations with tools like Google Calendar, Slack, and Gmail
A well-designed system for priorities, labels, and filters

Todoist works well for individuals who want a reliable personal task manager, as well as small teams that need to share projects and assign tasks.

Step 1: Create Your Account

Go to todoist.com and click “Start for free”
Sign up with Google, Apple, or your email address
Todoist will walk you through a brief onboarding flow to set up your first project

Once you’re in, you’ll see the sidebar on the left and your task list in the center. By default, Todoist shows you the Today view — all tasks due today — which becomes the most-used screen for most people.

Step 2: Understand the Core Structure

Todoist organizes everything into three levels:

Projects — the top-level containers for your work (e.g., “Work,” “Personal,” “Home”)
Sections — dividers within a project that group related tasks
Tasks — individual to-dos, which can have sub-tasks beneath them

Think of it like a filing cabinet: projects are the drawers, sections are the folders inside, and tasks are the individual documents.

There is also an Inbox — a catch-all project where tasks land if you add them without specifying a project. Get in the habit of triaging your Inbox regularly, moving tasks into the right project.

Step 3: Create and Organize Projects

Projects keep your tasks separated by area of life or work. To create a project:

In the sidebar, click “Add project” (or the + next to “My projects”)
Give it a name, choose a color, and optionally pick an icon
Click “Add”

A good starting project structure:

📋 Work
📋 Personal
📋 Home
📋 Learning

As your task list grows, you can nest projects inside each other. For example, under “Work” you might have sub-projects for “Client A,” “Client B,” and “Admin.”

How to add a sub-project:

Click the three-dot menu next to a project
Select “Add sub-project”
Or drag an existing project and drop it slightly to the right under its intended parent

Keep the structure flat at first. Add sub-projects only when a project becomes too large to manage as a single list.

Step 4: Add Tasks with Priorities, Due Dates, and Labels

Adding a task is as simple as pressing Q anywhere in the app (the quick-add shortcut) or clicking the + button at the top of any project.

Set a priority level

Todoist has four priority levels:

Priority	Color	When to use
P1	Red	Must be done today — urgent and important
P2	Orange	Important but not on fire
P3	Blue	Nice to complete, but flexible
P4	No color	Someday / low priority

To set a priority, click the flag icon when adding or editing a task, or type p1, p2, p3 directly in the task name — Todoist will detect it automatically.

Set a due date

Click the calendar icon when creating a task, or just type the date naturally:

“Tomorrow” → sets the due date to tomorrow
“Next Monday” → the upcoming Monday
“April 20” → a specific date
“Every weekday” → a recurring task on Mon–Fri

Add labels

Labels are tags you can apply across projects. They are useful for grouping tasks by context or energy level — for example:

@quick — tasks that take under 10 minutes
@deep-work — tasks requiring focused concentration
@waiting — tasks blocked pending someone else’s response
@calls — phone calls to make

To add a label, type @ in the task name and choose from existing labels or create a new one.

Step 5: Use Sections to Organize Within Projects

Sections divide a project into logical groups. They work especially well for projects with distinct phases or categories.

Example: A “Work” project with sections:

Work
  ── This Week
  ── Meetings
  ── Admin
  ── Someday

To create a section:

Open a project
Click “Add section” (visible at the bottom of the task list, or via the three-dot menu)
Name it and press Enter

You can drag tasks between sections and reorder sections by dragging the handle on the left side of the section header. Sections can also be collapsed to reduce visual clutter.

Step 6: Natural Language Input

This is one of Todoist’s most loved features. When you type a task, Todoist’s engine parses natural language automatically — no need to click calendar pickers or dropdowns.

Examples of what you can type:

Call Sarah tomorrow at 2pm → due date: tomorrow at 2:00 PM
Submit report every Friday at 5pm → recurring every Friday
Buy groceries every Monday at 9am → recurring weekly
Review quarterly goals on April 30 p2 → due April 30, Priority 2
Pay electricity bill on the 1st of every month → monthly recurrence

As you type, Todoist highlights recognized dates, times, and recurrence patterns in blue. If it gets something wrong, you can always click the task to edit the details manually.

Recurrence patterns Todoist understands:

every day / daily
every week / weekly
every 2 weeks
every Monday and Wednesday
every month
every workday
every 3 days starting tomorrow

Step 7: Filters and Views for Power Users

Filters let you create custom views of your tasks across all projects based on any criteria. Think of them as saved searches that update automatically.

Built-in views

Todoist includes several default views in the sidebar:

Today — all tasks due today
Upcoming — tasks for the next several days in a calendar-style layout
Inbox — uncategorized tasks waiting to be sorted

Create custom filters

Filters use a query language. Here are some useful examples:

Filter query	What it shows
`priority 1`	All P1 tasks across all projects
`due: today & !assigned to: others`	Your tasks due today (not delegated)
`@waiting`	All tasks tagged with the @waiting label
`overdue`	All overdue tasks
`due before: +7 days & p2`	P2 tasks due in the next week
`no due date & !#Someday`	Tasks without a due date, excluding your Someday project

To create a filter:

Click “Filters & Labels” in the sidebar
Click “Add filter”
Enter a name and query
Click “Add filter”

Good filters become the views you check daily alongside the built-in Today and Upcoming screens.

Todoist supports team collaboration on any plan, including free (up to 5 people per project).

Open the project and click the three-dot menu
Select “Share project”
Enter the email addresses of people you want to invite
Invitees get an email and join the project once they accept

Assign tasks

Once a project is shared, you can assign any task to a team member:

Open a task
Click the “Assignee” field
Choose a team member from the list

Assigned tasks appear in that person’s Todoist across all their views, just like their own tasks. The assignee and the project owner both receive notifications when the task is completed.

Comments and file attachments

Every task has a comment thread. Use it to:

Add context or links related to the task
@mention a collaborator to notify them
Attach files (images, documents, or links)
Log updates as the task progresses

Comments keep conversation attached to the task itself, so nothing gets lost in email or chat.

Step 9: Integrations

Todoist connects with dozens of tools you likely already use. Here are the most practical integrations:

Google Calendar (two-way sync)

Tasks with due dates and times appear as events in Google Calendar, and the sync goes both ways — changes in Google Calendar reflect back in Todoist.

To set up: Go to Settings → Integrations → Google Calendar and connect your account. Choose which Todoist projects to sync and whether to show all tasks or only tasks with specific times.

Slack

Get Todoist notifications delivered to a Slack channel, or create Todoist tasks directly from Slack messages using the /todoist command or the message shortcut menu.

To set up: Install the Todoist app from the Slack App Directory, then connect your Todoist account.

Gmail and Outlook

Both email integrations let you turn emails into Todoist tasks with a single click — the email subject becomes the task name, and a link back to the email is included automatically.

Gmail: Install the Todoist for Gmail extension from the Chrome Web Store
Outlook: Install the Todoist add-in from the Microsoft AppSource store

Zapier and Make

For advanced automation without writing code, Todoist connects with Zapier and Make (formerly Integromat). You can build workflows like:

When a task is completed in Todoist, log it to a Google Sheet
When a new row is added to Airtable, create a Todoist task
When a GitHub issue is opened, create a corresponding Todoist task

Step 10: Best Practices and Workflow Tips

Do a daily review

Spend 5–10 minutes each morning reviewing your Today view. Reschedule anything that is not actually happening today, add any new tasks that came in overnight, and set your top 3 priorities for the day.

This one habit dramatically improves how reliable your task list feels.

Use Todoist with GTD (Getting Things Done)

Todoist is a natural fit for the GTD framework. Here is a basic mapping:

GTD concept	Todoist equivalent
Inbox	Inbox project
Next Actions	Today or Upcoming views
Projects	Projects
Waiting For	@waiting label filter
Someday/Maybe	A “Someday” project
Reference	Comments or linked notes

The core GTD habit — capturing everything immediately into the Inbox, then processing it into the right project — works seamlessly with Todoist’s quick-add feature.

Keep due dates honest

Only add a due date when there is a real consequence for missing it. If you add due dates to everything, your Today view fills up with tasks that are not truly urgent, and the signal becomes noise.

A better approach: use the Upcoming view to plan the next few days, and let tasks without due dates live in project sections like “This Week” or “Backlog” instead.

Use sub-tasks for multi-step work

For complex tasks, add sub-tasks to break the work into manageable steps:

Open a task
Click “Add sub-task”
Add as many steps as you need

The parent task shows a progress indicator as you check off sub-tasks. This is much cleaner than a long description and makes it easy to pick up where you left off.

The keyboard shortcuts worth learning

Shortcut	Action
`Q`	Quick add a task
`A`	Add task at the bottom of the current view
`G` then `T`	Go to Today view
`G` then `U`	Go to Upcoming view
`/`	Search tasks
`Ctrl/Cmd + Z`	Undo

Todoist Free vs. Pro: What Do You Actually Need?

The free plan includes:

5 active projects
Up to 5 collaborators per project
Task comments and file attachments
Integrations with Google Calendar, Slack, and email

Todoist Pro ($4/month, billed annually) adds:

300 active projects
Reminders (push, email, and SMS)
AI-powered task suggestions
Custom filters and task views
Calendar layout
Themes and custom task durations

For most individuals getting started, the free plan is perfectly capable. The main reason to upgrade is if you need reminders or want to manage more than 5 projects simultaneously.

What to Do Next

Todoist rewards consistency more than complexity. Here is a practical starting plan:

Day 1: Create 2–3 projects and add all the tasks currently living in your head
Day 2: Set due dates on anything time-sensitive and add priorities to the rest
Week 1: Check Today every morning and Upcoming every Sunday
Week 2: Add labels for context, create one custom filter, and try one integration

The best task manager is the one you actually open every day. Todoist earns that habit by being fast, reliable, and satisfying to use — and once it becomes part of your routine, it is very hard to go back to anything else.