Super-Organize Your Business in 5 Steps With This One App

Is your lack of organization burying your business? Todoist to the rescue, in five easy steps:

Sometimes, a great idea for a business, a plan and funding aren’t enough. Many businesses have fallen due to lack of organization. The key to avoiding this pitfall is to know where your faults lie (face it, we all have them) and keep those bases covered.

Toward this goal, I have devised a hack for an underestimated, oft-forgotten app. If you’re the type of person whose business correspondence is becoming buried under a vast multitude of varied-purpose emails in your inbox, it’s time to re-meet Todoist.

Step One: Set up your Todoist account.

Go to https://todoist.com/. Account setup is quick and straightforward.

Step Two: Tailor your Todoist to suit your business needs.

Remove all distractions. This means get rid of any Projects that do not fit into the direct needs of your business. This would include deleting “Movies to watch” and “Personal”, but per your professional needs, might include “Errands” and “Shopping”. If it isn’t a business action, delete it. This is done by clicking on the three dots to the right of the heading and choosing “Delete Project.”

Then, add in any other projects that could be missing. For example, “Accountant”, “Virtual Assistant”, and whomever else you may have on your team. Yes, there are more up to date apps out there, with more bells and whistles to do basically the same type of thing, but for the techno-phobic, Todoist keeps things minimized and handle-able.

Step Three: Set your settings.

Go to the top right corner of the page and click on the cog wheel icon. Choose the second option down, “Todoist Settings”. Click through the headings at the top of the page, one by one, and set each item to work for you. Don’t stew too much over these choices, as they can be changed whenever necessary. No need to get stuck here – proceed first and tweak later.

Step Four: Fill in your tasks.

First, rack your brain. Dump your memory, broken down task by task, onto your list. Be sure to make good use of your project subheadings. For example, if you have named a project “Accountant” on the left side of the page, go into that project and add tasks on the right side of the page, one at a time:

• 2016 Income/Expenses report
• Transfer payment to suppliers
• File 2016 tax forms

Then, go through your emails and add more tasks. If you have other members on your team, pick their brains and add their suggestions to your lists as well.

I have had clients who prefer that I, as their virtual assistant, go through their inbox and phone other team members to take care of this part of the process, as well as to set up daily reminders and “nag lists” to forge through to clearer skies. That’s just fine, so long as it gets done.

Step Five: Log in every day and accomplish what needs to be done!

Todoist has a nifty little feature that measures your accomplishments, ever-challenging you to keep the percentage of success up. On the top bar of your screen, there is an arrow, pointing either up or down, along with a number, which is the percentage, either positive or negative, of change in number of tasks accomplished over the past 24 hours. As each task is completed, be sure to click the circle to the left of that task to mark it as done.

Step Forever: Succeed!

Enjoy breathing fresh air rather than drowning. Enjoy satisfied emails from your customers and other involved parties, when they see that things are getting done in a timely, organized fashion. This should lead to more recommendations and referrals to an ever-widening pool of customers and clients. Satisfied customers are repeat customers, so getting your act together and under control means more money in the bank!.

Submitted by Aviela