I’ve been using Todoist for the past few weeks to manage a client project with about a dozen moving pieces—design revisions, content approvals, multiple review rounds. My usual approach (sticky notes + a spiral notebook) was starting to cause missed deadlines, so I wanted something more structured. Here's what I found after actually running a project through it.
Setting up a real project in Todoist
I started by creating a project called "Website Redesign" and added tasks like "finalize homepage mockup", "review copy #2", and "get legal sign-off". The natural language date input is genuinely fast: typing "tuesday 3pm" instantly sets a due date and time. It worked about 85% of the time—once it interpreted "next thurs" as the wrong week, and I had to adjust manually.
What surprised me is how quickly I could break a vague goal ("update blog templates") into subtasks and add labels like @design and @waiting. The real value came from the filter system. I set up a custom filter "today & (p1 | p2)" to see only high-priority work. That was the first day I actually finished everything I planned.
The AI scheduling: useful but not magical
Todoist markets itself as an ai smart to do list app, and its smart scheduling feature does try to reschedule overdue tasks based on your working hours. In practice, it works okay for single tasks but struggles when a dependency chain exists. For example, I had "send client invoice" set for Friday, but the sub-task "update hours log" was still undone. The AI rescheduled the invoice anyway, which created confusion.
If you're looking for the best ai task manager 2026, I’d say Todoist isn't there yet. The AI is reactive, not predictive. It doesn't learn your work patterns or suggest task order based on past behaviour. It's more like a smart calendar cleaner than a true assistant.
Where Todoist shines (and where it doesn’t)
The free tier is genuinely usable. You get up to 300 tasks per project, 5 active projects, and basic labels. That's enough for a freelancer or a small team trial. Calling it a free ai to do list app 2026 is fair—you get the core scheduling intelligence without paying. But the free tier removes collaboration and file uploads, which might be a dealbreaker if you work in a team.
One realistic tradeoff: the priority system (p1-p4) is simple to use but lacks nuance. A p1 task that’s actually low urgency but high importance sits next to a true emergency. I ended up using labels to differentiate, which adds overhead. If you're comparing Todoist with specialized daily planners like taskly, you'll notice that taskly is designed more for rigid daily planning with goal tracking, while Todoist leans toward flexible project management. That's a style choice, not a flaw.
Mild friction: mobile vs. desktop
The mobile app is fast, but the filtering interface is cramped. Building a complex filter on a phone is frustrating enough that I only do it on desktop. Also, the “Today” view automatically includes tasks that are overdue, which sounds fine but sometimes clutters the view with work I've already handled. I'd prefer a manual "focus mode" that shows only what I’ve scheduled for today, not what I failed to do yesterday.
Final practical judgment
Todoist is a solid tool for managing medium-complexity projects—especially if you value quick task entry and reliable cross-platform sync. But it's not a true AI assistant, and the free tier has real limits. If your workflow is highly structured with daily routines and habit tracking, a dedicated planner like taskly might serve you better. For everyone else, Todoist is worth testing, but go in knowing the AI is still a work in progress.
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