TeuxDeux Daily Checklist To Do

This is the app I use to organize my Simple and Minimal life. Other than a Morning Pages journal, I don’t have a piece of paper in my house. I don’t use the calendar as Google calendar keeps track of the few appts I schedule. This is where Teux Deux comes in. I use it to remind me of projects and steps to complete them. An empty list is what I’m going for — Goal Zero style. I like how fluid it is with the ability to arrange and rearrange according to my priorities. I have an ideal day mapped out at the very top, to remind how I want my day to unfold. Tasks and Errands seem to be the categories I stick with and projects come and go. I like being able to personalize the border to color in the rainbow. I used Microsoft To-Do/Everlist for the past few years which is more robust in that endless detail can go into each objective with a ‘notes’ feature but Teux Deux without the ability to add details, forces me to keep it simple. I wish I had the ability to hide the calendar because I just don’t use it. This is the cleanest and most minimal digital organizer I’ve found so far.

Just the right, intuitively-easy mix to help you focus and tackle “What’s going on today/this week/in the future” at a very reasonable price (especially if you opt for the annual rate) … if you need “a bit more”, you can try “Things” or supplement your TeuxDeux experience with something like WorkFlowy or Dynalist, but the reality is that “TeuxDeux” should be more than enough to help out most people from most walks of life; perhaps the best feature is it’s balanced approach to “Robust enough for most people, but simple enough for even middle school students to dive right into” approach which helps you always keep your agenda manageable enough by design so that you never encounter the mental blocks that can come along when dealing with overly-complicated productivity apps. The team has been around for a LONG time and makes consistent, but only meaningful improvements that thoughtfully keep enhancing the user experience without ever feeling “forced” and added on “just to appear like they’re keeping busy on the development side”. Even if you eventually move on to a more complex app, it’s hard to see how you can ever feel regret by staring out with this one. One of those very rare “really can’t go wrong with this one” sort of apps. This is coming from a long-time user/tester of just about every sort of productivity app since the mid-2000s; sometimes, “less truly is more”.

I’ve tried every to-do list app out there. I’ve also tried offline systems from bullet journaling to sticky notes to my own homegrown paper-based system. Every couple years I throw in the towel and come back to TeuxDeux, and I’m always so glad when I do. Everything else requires too much maintenance to actually be usable as a day-to-day to do list. TeuxDeux brings a feeling of calm to my overcommitted life, and lets me keep track of what I have to do, simply. The recent UX and UI improvements are delightful, and have only made it more of what it’s always been: a piece of paper that’s a lot harder to lose, doesn’t make you rewrite things, and comes with just enough structure to keep you on track. I still use Todoist for managing projects like home improvement or planning a vacation, but for keeping track of everything I have to do each day and keeping the overwhelm at bay, there’s nothing like TeuxDeux. I think that actually points to the big idea behind TeuxDeux, and I’m so glad they’ve stuck with it all these years: if your to-do list app has the power to manage projects, your to-do list app is probably too complicated to manage your to-do list. Thanks TeuxDeux for keeping it simple all these years, and especially for all the recent improvements to the iPhone and web apps! They really make a difference. TeuxDeux is a joy to use in 2023.