May 15, 2019 | Productivity

Automatically sync items with a specific Todoist label to a single Evernote note

This article is going to show you how to sync items from Todoist to Evernote Automatically.

James clear talks about how making a habit or task easy is one of the most important aspects when making sure we actually do it in his book: “Atomic Habits”.  We all have multiple inboxes and sometimes we don’t even realise it.  An inbox is anywhere that receives information. I talk a bit about this in “my top ten productivity tips” blog. It could be your email, whatsapp (or any other instant messaging application like iMessage or Facebook’s Messenger), word of mouth, your note book and even your brain. All of these things collect information for you as the day goes on. The brain is not for storing ideas, it’s for creating them. My solution to this is usually to plug everything into my calendar, todo list and Evernote.

The Problem

One issue I encountered in my day to day, was adding topics quickly and as effortlessly as possible to my upcoming meeting’s agenda. I found that I was getting information from my boss via the phone, email and verbally. It could sometimes be a bit overwhelming. I could very easily just make a new project in Todoist called ‘agenda’ and plug everything in there. And that’s what I did do for a while. Although what I discovered was that I was having to go between Evernote and Todoist in meetings which detracted from the amount of attention I could pay during the meeting. This is not ideal for me. What was ideal for me was plugging everything into Todoist, but syncing automatically to a note in Evernote where I could use the points as headers and make additional notes underneath. The idea is to make Todoist the central “inbox”. Everything is then distributed from Todoist to where it needs to go.

My Solution

Note: This will only work if you have Todoist premium since labels are a feature only available to premium users 🙁

You’ll notice that I titled this section: “My Solution” because I very firmly believe not all solutions are one size fits all. You need to find the solution that works for you. And this is what worked for me: Using one of my favourite websites, IFTTT (If this, then that) I created an applet that automatically syncs any task in Todoist with a predetermined label, to a specific note in Evernote and appends it to what is already there. 

Tools and Resources required:

Step One:

Todoist:

  1. Make a project called “Agenda” or literally whatever else you want. You can call it anything. It doesn’t matter.
  2. Make a label that gives you context, it is important though and this technique won’t work without it.

Step Two:

Create a new applet in IFTTT.com, using the ‘New Applet’ Button

Automatically sync items with a specific Todoist label to a single Evernote note 1

Step Three:

Click ‘this’ to define what ifttt calls a trigger. This is the thing that is going to start our automation’s process. In this case it’s the creation of a new task in Todoist with a specified label.

Automatically sync items with a specific Todoist label to a single Evernote note 2 Choose Todoist as the service

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Step Four:

Select the trigger, in this case it’s going to be “New Task Created with label”. In theory you could use “New Task Completed With Label”, however you need to keep in mind that this will only sync your Tasks to todoist once you have completed the task in todoist which is not always ideal in my opinion.

Automatically sync items with a specific Todoist label to a single Evernote note 4

Step Five:

In this step you’ll you need to stipulate which label to use and which project ifttt should ‘watch’. I usually just specify the label and leave the project on “Any project”. This makes sure that no tasks slip through the cracks and don’t get forgotten. Click “Create Trigger”

Automatically sync items with a specific Todoist label to a single Evernote note 5

Step Six:

Select ‘that’, this will be what is executed once the trigger has been triggered. Again, choose Evernote as your service.

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Step Seven:

We’re now going to choose our action. You can either use ‘Append to note’ or ‘Append a to-do to note’. I prefer the latter, since it’s less bloated.

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Step Eight:

In this step we will be defining what content from todoist gets appended to our Evernote note. Usually just the Task Content will suffice, however i’d encourage you to play around with it and see what works for you.

Another thing to note is that you can stipulate which Notebook the base note will appear. If you don’t by default it will appear in your Evernote inbox.

You can also change the “Title” to anything of your choice. This is the title of the Evernote Note.

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Step Nine:

After you’ve done everything above, you’re basically done. Technically all you need to do is to add tasks with your specified label and they will appear, appended to your Evernote note.

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The task will appear in your note like this:

Automatically sync items with a specific Todoist label to a single Evernote note 1

 

About Ross Griffin

Made Runners Calc a swiss army knife training tool for runners. eCommerce Solutions Consultant at Akinon. Owner and founder of Precipice. Passionate about Running, SEO, eCommerce and Business

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