Why I settled with Apple Reminders
In my last post which you can find here, I wrote of how I sort of changed my whole mind around productivity tools and how it affected my productivity. The main reason for choosing Apple Reminders over others like Things 3 or Todoist mainly comes down to the simplicity. Now I am not saying that these third party apps I mentioned aren’t user friendly, it’s more about how Apple Reminders integrates with macOS and iOS that just makes things so much easier and frictionless. Siri works better and Reminders also works really great together with the rest of Apples stock apps. Also Reminders actually, in my opinion offers a lot of features that other third party apps don’t. Also it’s free to use on all your Apple products which just makes it even better.
My really simple workflow
Now this may not apply to everyone, but the workflow I have set up is super simple and never lets me down. I wanted something that would be organised just enough I wouldn’t miss important tasks or loose myself my system. Something I also value a lot is being able to quickly add new tasks as they come up throughout my day to later be sorted in a daily or weekly review. This I think is one of the most important steps of a successful task management system, as the friction to add new tasks needs to be minimal.
The finished product
Initially what I came up with is a universal list for all my reminders named ”Reminders”. It does not matter if it’s a personal, home or school task, it all goes into the same list, ”why is that?” you may wonder. It mainly comes down to the fact that organising tasks into different areas of life isn’t serving a purpose for me, as I know what type of task it is just by looking at it. A task as ”Clean the house” belongs to my home, so I don’t need to organise that in a different list as it just created more friction of adding it. The only thing I value is for the task to show up on the right day as it needs to get done.
What I also have done is set up two smart lists called Inbox and Someday. Its nothing advanced, actually the inbox list shows all my tasks that don’t have a date, time or location assigned to it. This way I can quickly add all my tasks into the Reminders list and filter out all the ones which I haven’t scheduled yet. This way I don’t need to worry about manually putting it in an Inbox list. The same goes for the Someday list, instead it only includes tasks with the tag ”Someday”. Remember, it still belongs to the default Reminders list, it’s just a way for med to filter out specific tasks. Also it makes moving tasks from my inbox or reminders list super easy.
Then it’s pretty straight forward, I use the Today and Scheduled for viewing all my scheduled tasks, and that is it. Then I just have two different Grocery lists in a folder as I live at two places and need to separate those two from each other.
Managing projects in Apple Notes instead of Reminders
Now I won’t go in depth of how I manage my projects, what I can point out is that nearly everything is handled through Apple Notes. And that includes the tasks for the project as well. This could be done in many ways, and I do it differently for every project. However what I noticed I will most often do, is to either have a main note pinned in the project folder with all the tasks related to the specific project. This note also includes a lot of other information, such as deadlines, key information etc. Now if the project is bigger than usual with a lot of tasks, I pretty much create a pinned note called ”Tasks” and organise them with the help of headers. And that’s it, I can have everything together in one place without needing to switch between apps.
Apple Notes is not ideal for scheduling tasks since it is primarily a notes app. However, when I have a task that needs to be completed on a specific date, I simply add it to Reminders. Typically, I only create tasks for actively working on the project, such as “Work on assignment.” This approach helps keep my task manager organized and focused on relevant tasks, reducing the overwhelming feeling I used to experience.
iOS shortcuts and Raycast
To make the experience with Apple reminders even better, I use iOS shortcuts together with Raycast. For you who aren’t familiar with Raycast, it’s basically a Spotlight replacement but on steroids. These two tools really makes a big difference in the day to day life of using Apple reminders.
My shortcuts
I mainly use the 4 shortcuts above, and I really haven’t felt the need for anything more. And if I in the future feel like I am missing something, chances are likely that it could be built with the shortcuts app.
- Reminders — Makes it possible to quickly navigate to my reminders list from the lock screen with the help of one single tap. I have this set up as a lock screen widget.
- Remind me — Gives me three choices of locations I often want to be reminded of something when I arrive. The shortcut basically asks me for a task and then what location, which is a very seamless way of adding location based tasks for med as I don’t even need to go into the app.
- Groceries — I earlier mentioned that I have two grocery lists as I live at two places, therefor I can quickly from my today view use this shortcut to quickly add new stuff to a specific list. When this runs, it asks me which list out and then takes me to it. Super simple but super useful.
- Wash timer — Asks for how many minutes until the wash is finished, sets a reminder with the title ”Wash is finished” and then reminds me. No need to set up annoying timers anymore!
Raycast Reminders extension
Above you see a popup window of Raycast’s Reminders extension and one of its commands called Quick add. It’s a super helpful feature for being able to quickly add new reminders without having to switch apps or interrupt whatever I may be doing at the time. The extensions also offers a lot of other commands which I also use sometimes. For you who are familiar with Things 3 and its quick add feature, this is very similar just that it’s made for Apple Reminders instead.
Conclusion
That’s all about my simple yet powerful setup for Apple Reminders. People often make things more complicated when it comes to productivity and tools. I believe in the principle of “less is more” and suggest not overcrowding your system with tasks. Filter out the unnecessary noise and focus on actionable and valuable tasks in your task manager. Otherwise, the system can get overwhelmed with irrelevant tasks, leading to a feeling of being overwhelmed.
