Did you ever get the sense that you just had so much to do personally and professionally it was tough to keep it all straight? Toodledo is a set of incredibly powerful tools to increase your productivity and organize your life.
I learned about this web app almost 15 years ago and have been using it ever since. I read David Allen’s book called Getting Things Done (GTD).
Toodledo has become my favorite productivity tool that’s perfect for small business owners and their teams no matter what the industry. We all have way too much stuff to do to keep it all in our brains. We need a place, a trusted place to store all.
Here’s a little bit about the progression of how I started using it.
- I did a brain dump. I sat down for about an hour and just entered everything I could think of that I had to do and entered it into the program.
- Next, I looked at each task and asked myself the simple question of whether or not I would ever need to do this again. If I did, I simply made it a recurring task. There are seemingly endless options for setting the frequency interval. You can have it repeat every day, every other week, once a year, every third Friday of the month, every first Monday of the new quarter – the possibilities are limitless.
- For more complicated tasks, I realized if enough time passed, I couldn’t quite remember how to do what needed to be done (reports to create & review, worker’s comp audit preparation, annual 401k testing, etc.), so I added a simple note, and the task reminded me of how to do it. Then, I realized they were tasks that already had how-to documents written, so I just added a link to the document within the task note. Then, I took the step further and created how-to videos in another one of my favorite applications called Screencast-O-Matic and then added a link to the video.
It’s really easy to collaborate and assign tasks to team members. As the owner, it was great for me because it reduced my need to remind people to take care of their recurring tasks.
In the past five years, I’ve sold two businesses and have left the owners with my Toodledo accounts. Every task that I hadn’t delegated away to others lived inside of Toodledo. In the case of my most recent sale, I made a short screencast video using Screencast-O-Matic and added the link to just about every task the new owner had to take over from me. It not only made the post-sale transition easier, it also helped him to learn my exact process. In the past year, he has undoubtedly improved and refined some of what he learned from me and has continued to use Toodledo as his trusted guide for taking care of everything he needs to do to run his business.
With Toodledo and the process I explained above, the number of questions asked throughout the day has dropped dramatically and has also eliminated tasks not being done due to forgetfulness. The only thing you have to remember is to open Toodledo! The owners are in the process of finding a buyer for their business and are following my lead in terms of creating their complete list of regular tasks in the application, so they have a smooth transition with the new owner when the time comes.
Simply tell Siri to create a reminder that automatically syncs with Toodledo. Clients have things they need to remember to do daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually.
If you set up an account for yourself and like it, think about creating a Toodledo account for each position in your company. Imagine how much this would help with onboarding, performance, and as an aid to “replacing yourself” when team members want to advance in the company.
Do yourself a favor and visit toodledo.com now and give it a try. Also, be on the lookout for an upcoming article on how I use Screencast-o-Matic. If you’d like to see a short video demonstration of how you can use Toodledo to help in your business, click the link below and I will send it out to you.
I’m Scott Miller and I’m the owner of thegrowthleague.com. I make these videos and write these articles to help business owners get more profitable, reduce the chaos and build something they can sell for a lot of money when they are ready to move on. If you want to learn more about how I help clients book a call with me by clicking the link below.BOOK A CALL