Introducing Smart Schedule, a More Intelligent Way to Plan Your Day
Get suggested due dates based on your personal productivity habits
It’s the rare day when we get to cross every item off our to-do lists. It’s a fact of life. We almost never accomplish everything we set out to do at the start of the day.
And that’s okay. To-do lists aren’t for getting absolutely everything done. In fact, they’re most powerful because we can’t get everything done. They help us prioritize our limited time and intentionally plan (and re-plan) our days and weeks to make sure we’re working on what’s most important to us. But instead of adjusting our plans, it’s easy to let those overdue tasks just pile up day after day, week after week.
When you have 50+ tasks due in a day, your to-do list isn’t helping you feel organized anymore. (At that point, it’s likely just inspiring guilt and anxiety with a dash of existential dread.)
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone — over 70% of Todoist users have overdue tasks! That’s why we’ve built a new, AI-powered feature called Smart Schedule.
Smart Schedule uses predictive modeling to help you easily plan out your tasks for the day and week to come. It learns your personal productive habits, and takes into account patterns across all Todoist users, to predict the best possible due dates for your tasks.
That means those 50+ overdue tasks you have hanging around can be quickly rescheduled en masse, while new and unscheduled tasks can be easily assigned to the best due dates. In this way, Smart Schedule makes it much easier to stay on top of your to-do list and roll with the punches when your day doesn’t go as planned.
How it works
When finding ideal due dates, Smart Schedule takes into account:
- Your habits — Usually catch up on emails on Monday morning? Is Saturday your reading day? Smart Schedule will learn your habits and suggest dates accordingly.
- Task urgency — Based on anonymous data from across all Todoist users, Smart Schedule estimates the urgency of any given task.
- Workdays vs. weekends — Smart Schedule learns which types of tasks can be done on weekends, and which should always be scheduled during the week (for example, “Finish draft” or “Check email”).
- Upcoming tasks — Have a full load for tomorrow, but a wide open Friday? Smart Schedule will try to balance your task load over the next 7 days accordingly.
- Your daily and weekly goals — Todoist lets you set and track goals for the number of tasks you want to complete every day and week. Smart Schedule will recommend due dates to help you meet your specific goals.
- And more…
You’ll always have the option to accept, edit, or reject Smart Schedule’s suggestions. As with all AI-powered features that “learn” over time, Smart Schedule’s date predictions will become more and more accurate the more you use Todoist.
Excited to try it out?
First, be sure to upgrade to the latest version of Todoist on all your devices. You’ll be able access Smart Schedule in all Todoist apps in one of 3 ways:
- Rescheduling overdue tasks – In your Today or 7 Days view, click or tap Reschedule Overdue. In one click, Smart Schedule will suggest new due dates for all of your overdue tasks.
2. Adding or postponing a single task – When you open the scheduling calendar on the web or swipe to reschedule a task on mobile, the quick scheduling options will now include a recommended due date from Smart Schedule.
3) Rescheduling multiple tasks — When you select multiple tasks at the same time, you’ll now have the option to reschedule all of them using Smart Schedule’s recommended dates.
Completely private and secure
We know that with today’s technology people are rightfully concerned about the way companies use their data — we are, too! We want to be upfront and transparent about how exactly Smart Schedule works:
All your personal data (for example, when you usually complete tasks that include the word “email”) are processed automatically by the Smart Schedule algorithm. That means it’s never accessed by any service outside of Todoist and never seen by any of our team members. It’s still completely private and completely yours.
All past user data that informs date predictions (for example, what kinds of tasks do people usually mark as urgent) are aggregated and anonymous. None of our team members see personally identifiable information and we never share your data with unauthorized 3rd parties without your permission.
We’ve updated our privacy policy to make all of this information completely clear. It’s of the utmost importance to us that you feel confident keeping your personal data in Todoist. If you have any questions about how we handle and safeguard your data, please reach out at support.todoist.com.
To-do lists have always been passive tools that rely on you, the user, to keep them organized and up-to-date. We think that your to-do list has the potential to be so much more — a personal assistant that actively helps you manage your schedule and organize your life.
In the future, we’ll be exploring new possibilities for making Todoist smarter for you. This first version of Smart Schedule is just the start.
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