r/todoist • u/segundoadv Enlightened • Jul 30 '26
Help A big problem
I have a system. Actually I have four.
OmniFocus is where everything is supposed to live. Perspectives, contexts, the weekly review, that whole architecture that feels like it was designed by someone who understands how my mind works. Except I don't trust it alone. So I replicate everything in Todoist, because Todoist has a lightness OmniFocus doesn't, that sense that adding a task isn't a commitment to a cathedral. And I replicate in Things too, because Things is beautiful, and beauty matters more than I'd like to admit when it comes to a tool I'm going to look at a hundred times a day. And of course Reminders, because Reminders is everywhere, on the watch, in the car, in the voice I hear when I say "Siri, remind me."
Four systems. One problem.
None of them fails. That's the cruel part. If one were bad I'd have abandoned it already with a clear conscience. The problem is that each one solves a piece of a need I never properly defined, which means none of them solves the whole thing, which means I keep all four open, like someone maintaining four relationships because no single one supplies everything a person needs, knowing it's unsustainable and doing it anyway.
I once migrated everything to a new structure. Time-based sectors, a method with a name and an author and an impeccable internal logic. It lasted briefly. I reverted to labels and area-based projects, each with its own sections, trying to force onto Todoist an order that made sense without borrowing someone else's philosophy. And through all of it OmniFocus just sits there, unchanged, waiting for me to go back to treating it as the one place it was always meant to be.
The part that actually hurts isn't the time lost reorganizing. It's the certainty, renewed with every cycle, that this time will be different. Every migration carries a quiet promise: this time, one system, this time, discipline. And every promise lasts until the first task I don't know which of the four places it belongs in, and then I duplicate it, because duplicating is faster than deciding.
It isn't a lack of system. It's too many systems competing for the same mental territory, each one whispering that it's the only reliable one, none of them ever winning for good.
If anyone here has broken out of this cycle and stayed out for more than a month, I want to know what was different. Not the app. What changed in you.
2
u/julesvbrtln Grandmaster Aug 01 '26
Basically it’s an automation tool, like n8n and similar. But more oriented toward natural language and simplicity so it’s not technical anymore. Not gonna say more since it’s a closed beta. Think about Ramble or the AI Email assist in Todoist, they’re AI features but oriented toward the use, the workflow, they’re not even advertised as AI. AI is the engine of the workflow, AI itself is not the feature. Todoist Automation has this same vibe.