Search for a to-do list app and you'll get a few hundred of them, and in the screenshots they're nearly identical. Clean list, round checkboxes, a nice font, a sunny Tuesday with four things on it.
None of that is going to decide anything. What decides it is whether the app is around at the moment you remember something, and that moment almost never happens at a desk.
The one job
An app like this is holding a thought for you. You think of something you can't do right now, you hand it over, and later it comes back when you can actually do something about it.
Say the pasta water is boiling and you remember the car registration is due. You can't renew it standing at the stove, so you need somewhere to put it until Saturday morning. Handing it over and getting it back Saturday is the entire transaction, and everything the app does is either helping with that or getting in the way of it.
Where the remembering actually happens
Nobody remembers things while looking at their list. You remember in the shower, on the drive home, in the middle of a meeting, or four messages deep in a conversation with somebody at work.
And that's the trouble with judging an app by its pictures, because the picture shows you sitting at a laptop with a free hand and a spare minute. Hardly anything gets added there. The stuff that really needs saving turns up while you're holding a bag of groceries1.
The features that are really preferences
Once you know what the job is, most of the feature list sorts itself out. Dark mode, tags, colored labels, board views, priority flags, and a hundred templates are all preferences. It's fine to want them, but none of them will decide whether you're still using the thing in March.
Two things aren't preferences. One is whether you can save something without stopping what you're doing. The other is whether it comes back at you on its own instead of waiting for you to go look. An app that's weak on those two won't get used, no matter how nice it looks.
The question to ask instead
So skip the feature comparison and ask yourself a simpler thing. Where are you going to be standing when you remember something? In the car, in Slack, at the store, or halfway through asking ChatGPT about something unrelated?
Then check whether the app is there with you. Not whether the company has an app for that thing somewhere, but whether you can add a task and check one off without putting down what you're holding. That one question cuts two hundred apps down to a handful in about a minute.
What to try first
Pick one and give it two weeks of your real life instead of your ideal week. Add things at 11pm. Add things while you're driving. Skip a whole day on purpose, then come back and see whether the list still knows what's going on.
If you've stopped putting things into it by the second week, the app lost, and it doesn't matter how good the screenshots were.
Frequently asked questions
What does a to-do list app do that paper doesn't?
- It comes back to you. A sticky note stays wherever you left it, so it only works if you happen to walk past. An app can remind you Saturday morning, and it can be with you in the car and in the apps you're already using. Paper is genuinely fine for a short list you carry all day. It stops working when the list has to reach you somewhere else.
Do I need a to-do list app at all?
- Not necessarily. If your days look the same and you're holding five things, your head and a notepad will do. It's worth getting an app when you notice you've started keeping a backup list in your head because you don't trust the real one.
What should a to-do list app cost?
- Writing a task down and getting it back should be free, on any device. That's the basic job, and charging for it just means people stop writing things down. Paid plans are for the extras: bigger sharing, automations, an API (a way for other software to connect). 42 Todo! is free to start and $4.99 a month for the Personal plan.
How long before I know it's working?
- About two weeks. The sign isn't that your list looks tidy, it's that you've stopped repeating things to yourself in the car. When you trust it enough to forget on purpose, it's working.
Footnotes
- Most tasks die before they reach your list why the seconds between a thought and writing it down decide everything else. ↩
- Why a simple to-do list beats a fancy one what all those settings actually cost you. ↩