The Power of AI, in My To-do App
My great To-do application now has an AI Assistant
I’ve been using Todoist as my To-do / task management application for many years. It’s a stellar tool and I plan to write a post here singing its praises sometime soon. I’ve recently learned that Todoist now has an AI Assistant - and that piqued my interest.
AI is all over the headlines - more so than ever recently it feels like. AI related news ranges from Microsoft, Google (and other big tech entities) investing billions in the space to users and journalists teasing out the dark side or “going off the rails” fun that can be had with some of the newer use cases. The ‘From Bing to Syndey’ post at Stratechery is a great read on Bing Chat revealing more than one alter ago and lots more.
Happily, the Todoist AI Assistant seems to have a more basic mission and looks like something that can help me step up my task management game. The features list for it is pretty short and sweet:
Make your goals more attainable with the power of AI at your fingertips
Automatically generate a list of tasks to help you reach your goal
Get help making your tasks more actionable so it’s easier to start and complete them
Learn how to break an intimidating task down into more manageable bit-sized tasks
Receive concrete tips on how to achieve your tasks
I feel that I am fairly efficient at some of those things already, but I ‘m sure I have plenty of room for improvement. I have only started trying out the AI Assistant over the last week or so, and on only a few tasks so far - but I can already see how useful it could be.
Here’s an example that I am quite impressed with. My task is Create a NIST CSF Assessment program. I asked the Todoist AI Assistant to break the task down, and this is the resulting set of sub tasks:
I’m looking forward to doing more with this AI assistant, The ball is now in my court to remember to give it this a go for tasks that lend themselves to a better breakdown and so forth.
I want to give a hat tip to Francisco and his excellent Keep Productive YouTube channel, where I first learned of this feature within Todoist.
Are any of you making use of AI features in your to-do or note taking or others apps? If so, I’d love to hear about your experience.
Hi, Patrick! I really liked your story about ToDoIst and AI. I am an active user of ToDoIst and wasn't aware of the AI element. That is good to know.
Regarding ChatGPT, I've actually used it to get some ideas for my blog outlines and articles. I tend to not use the ChatGPT words directly, but the outlines are usually pretty sound.
Anyway, thanks for making me think and increasing my awareness of the ToDoIst AI tool.
Ernie
The "fascinating and terrifying" comment made me smile but cringe, too.
I just finished reading a book called The Precipice by Toby Ord. Toby's book is about the natural and manmade events that could result in the destruction of mankind. (The book is not as grim as it sounds). Anyway, Ord's concern is that AI needs some guardrails or it could take over mankind because it has been "trained" to see rewards. Near as I can tell, NIST is trying to set up some guardrails but anyone with a financial motive to keep running their AI may see such guardrails as a threat.
Cheers! Ernie