Braintoss is the perfect tool for capturing information on the go, something that is a key element for successful GTD. Here is everything you need to know to set up Braintoss for Todoist.
One of the many practical challenges we face every day is to capture a thought or idea before it vanishes. The way our brain works is not optimal for the life we live today. A random reminder can come to us when we least need it.
How many times have you been sitting in the car while your brain reminds you that you are low on toothpaste? That good idea on how to describe a problem comes to you when the only tools you have is a bottle of shampoo and a towel. Shure, Aquanotes is the solution for the latter, but for most other times I find Braintoss to be my trusted buddy.
What Braintoss does
Braintoss is really a quite simple app. It can record audio, take a picture, or let you type text. Any of these three types of captures is sent to a predefined email address. The power of Braintoss lies in its simplicity. The app has three buttons. It does not take a genius to guess what for. When you have recorded your message, you hit send. That’s it!
The function of Braintoss is really to let you capture your thoughts on the go and then forget about it until you come back to the office or are otherways able to process your email. Or in my case, my Todoist inbox.
There is more to Braintoss than what you see at a first glance. When you copy and paste a URL or share a website from your browser to Braintoss, the app will add metadata to the email like title, description and the meta-image. If you take a picture of a QR code or barcode, the information will turn up as text in Braintoss. What does not work very well is the transcription of your audio recording to text.
I was getting up every morning and doing something that was difficult, but I was doing it, and I was improving. That knowledge is a great motivator. On the final day, I did 60. Note - The syntax doesn't support every day except. So if you only want the task to repeat on specific days of the week, you have to express those explicitly as per the following. Every monday, friday. Every Monday, Friday ( ev monday, friday; every mon, fri; ev mon, fri; ev mon, ev fri also work) every weekend. Step 1: Authenticate Any.do + Todoist. ( 30 seconds) Step 2: Pick one of the apps as a trigger, which will kick off your automation. ( 15 seconds) Step 3: Choose a resulting action from the other app. ( 15 seconds) Step 4: Select the data you want to send from one app to the other. ( 2 minutes) That’s it! However, typing 'everyday except tuesdays' never works for me, and I wonder if there's a simple shortcut I'm just missing. As of right now I work around this by either physically dragging and postponing the tasks to Thursday or by writing 'every monday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday' to try and skip those days.
A neat feature is that Braintoss will include location data in every note. This is provided as a link to your coordinates that can be opened in Google maps. (This feature can be turned off.)
Braintoss and GTD
As long as your GTD system supports emailing stuff to the inbox, Braintoss can help you to get the idea out of your head and into your system. Below, I will show you how to set up Braintoss for Todoist. If you are using a different system, you can still follow the instructions from item 3 onwards.
Setting up Braintoss for Todoist
Setting up Braintoss for Todoist, or any other tool, is easy: If you want to send Braintoss notes straight to your Todoist inbox, this is the way to do it:
- In Todoist, go to your inbox and click on the Project Actions icon in the top right corner.
- Click on “Email tasks to this project”.
- Copy the email address.
- In Braintoss, click on the gear icon in the top left corner.
- Select Add e-mail address.
- Paste or type in the email address.
- Set this email address as the standard address to use when sending notes.
- Test by sending something from Braintoss.
Braintoss can also be configured to send emails to other services like Evernote and OneNote. To have Braintoss send to an alternate email address, simply long-press on the Send button and choose the address you want to send to.
If you want to learn more about the tools I use in connection with the five steps in GTD, read the below blog post.
The 5 steps of GTD and the tools I use in each step
Read More
Configuring the Braintoss email settings
You can configure the content and format of the email from Braintoss by sending a text note from the app. The setting change will apply to the email address that you send to. This means you can have different settings for each email address in Braintoss.
Below is a list of the different setting names:
- Footer on
- HTML on
- Caps off
- Thumbnails on
- AudioAttachment on
- TextAttachment on
- PictureAttachment on
- Prefix [Braintoss]
- Postfix
- Location on
- ImageRecognition on
- Transcribe on
- Metadata on
- SubjectSize 58
To change settings send a Braintoss note in the format:
set <settingname> <value>
For example: “set footer off” or “set caps on”
Alternatively, send a note with “set plain” to strip everything except the attachment or with set default to return to the default settings.
Todoist Everyday Except
Use “set postfix …” for adding a #tag or a @notebookname.
A short time ago, I created a video about being reactive versus being proactive, and one of the things that can really make a difference in your work day is being proactive about your tasks and your email
Several of you have told me that you worry about dropping the ball. And I totally get that! That sinking feeling that results from forgetting to do something, or from letting something slip through the cracks is just completely awful, isn’t it? Which is precisely why you need to keep all your to-dos in just one place. No sticky notes. No little slips of paper. No spiral notebook that you spill water all over and the water-based ink gets washed away ruining pages and pages of notes, ideas, and to-dos. (Yeah, that happened to me!)
Todoist Every Day Except Today
Enter Todoist. I heard my friend and fellow Executive Assistant Stephanie Brackett mention that she uses Todoist so I thought I would check it out.
This is an amazing tool that no matter what CRM you are using, you can implement Todoist, pair it with your Gmail account and your Google calendar to create a bullet-proof system for keeping track of everything you need to do. All you have to do is get into the habit of using it.
Obviously, this does not replace the checklists you use for your listing process or your contract to close process. Todoist is what you use to manage your projects and other tasks which are not on any of your existing checklists.
With Todoist:
- You can schedule a task for any day at any time and it will put it on your calendar. You can also create recurring tasks, so if it’s your job to check for incoming reviews every day, you can add that as a task that automatically shows up in each day’s task list.
- You can send an email to Todoist, archive the email, and when you’re ready to work on the items in that email, you can use Todoist to open the email in a new window. This allows you to empty your email inbox by sending those to-dos into Todoist rather than letting them sit in your inbox.
- You can manage your personal and professional life right out of the same app using the Projects feature. Categorize and sub-categorize everything so that visually it makes sense to you.
- You can drag and drop to rearrange tasks.
- You can view everything you need to today, or you can view everything you need to do for a particular project. Being able to switch views is super important for being able to see an overview of everything you need to accomplish today versus being able to mark off everything you need to do for a particular project.
- Share projects with anyone else who has a Todoist account.
Of course, there are bells and whistles that are pretty dang cool too! With the premium version (just $28.99 per year) you can now:
- Add labels to your projects. This is especially helpful if you are following David Allen’s Getting Things Done book which asks you to categorize your to-dos based on where you are: on your phone, at your computer, at home, etc.
- Create templates. Although I think you should have a strong CRM managing your listing and closing to-do’s, perhaps you have a simple checklist with several items on it that you use on occasion. Save and apply the template whenever you need to execute that checklist.
- Set up filters to customize which tasks you look at.
The basic version of Todoist is free and once you add it to your Gmail, you won’t likely need to pay for the premium version if you have a strong CRM managing your listing and closing to-dos.
I thought about creating a video for you that would explain how I set up my Todoist, but I changed my mind after coming across Carl Pullein’s video series on Todoist. He has by far the most comprehensive video tutorials for Todoist. By watching the first ten videos, you will have a very good understanding of how to use Todoist. Carl’s video series is 120 videos long if you desire to get to mastery level!
Here’s a screenshot of my Todoist just to give you an idea of how I have mine set up:
You’ll notice that I have a project called Work and a sub-project called Listing Manager. Currently my role as COO involves managing the admin side of the business as well as managing the listings. Before too long I’ll be hiring someone to take over the Listing Manager part of my job which is why I have it separated out. I time block for that role specifically and I make sure I do the Listing Manager tasks only during that time block. It really helps me manage my day to create that separation.
If you are the sole Executive Assistant on your team, I would highly recommend you create Projects based on the roles you are filling such as Listing Manager, Transaction Coordinator, Marketing Manager, and Runner. That way you can group your to-do’s and time block specifically for those roles.
I also have my Goals as a project. It’s nice to be able to review my goals daily when they are right there in front of me!
I subscribe to several email lists and will often want to read the email or the article linked in the email at a later time. That’s why I have an Articles to Read project. I dump those emails into that project which gets them out of my inbox. Then I can block time on my calendar to go back and read those.
I deliberately keep my list of projects limited; I didn’t want to visually overwhelm myself every time I open the app.
Todoist isn’t the only to-do manager out there. I’ve heard good things about Wunderlist and Gqueues as well. The key is to find something that works for you and that you will consistently use.
To finish up, I found this quote by Peter Drucker: “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” SO GOOD! Manage your tasks. Display your leadership ability by doing the right things. Because, as we all know, not everything matters equally.
Give it a try and let me know in the comments how it works out for you. I’d really love to know what Projects you set up for yourself to keep yourself organized!
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