Toodledo Adds Start Date Underlines Feature

The Toodledo team just added a new feature which is quite important for my MYN system users. It’s the ability to display underlines on tasks that have a start date of today.

This Is Important for Two Reasons

First, in MYN methodology, if you set the start date of a task to the future, the task is hidden. Then on that date the task reappears at the top of the corresponding priority section in your visible task list, ready to work on.

In Outlook with MYN settings, it appears there on that day underlined. The underline draws your attention to the task, reminding you that it just appeared that morning, and that there might be a significant reason you scheduled it for today. It helps the newly arriving task stand out.

Toodledo never had that capability, but now it does.

The second reason it’s important is that in the MYN methodology, there is an optional 4th urgency zone called Target Now (see Lesson 16 in my Toodledo-MYN video set or Lesson 15 in my Outlook-MYN video set). The Target Now section lists non-critical opportunity now tasks that you really want to act on today. It’s a great way to add focus to your day.

The way tasks are tagged for that in Outlook MYN settings is to for you to set the start date to today, which causes it to be underlined, and so it stands out clearly at the top of the normal priority section.

Toodledo never had that underline capability, but now it does.

Interestingly, this was one of the few features Toodledo lacked, with respect to MYN. Given that it is now here, and given that Toodledo handles due dates much better than Outlook, I’d say that Toodledo is now the best MYN platform out there.

Okay, so next, let’s talk about how to activate this new feature.

How to Activate the Feature in Toodledo

For it to work, the underline feature requires that the Start Date column to be present, which it should already be if you are using MYN settings in Toodledo.

Once that’s there, then go to the Settings window (click your profile in upper right, then click the gear icon); scroll down the settings list about half way and find Row Style, and then click Edit; then use the third dropdown to choose “Title is underlined if Start Date is Today.” Save the changes. Be sure to refresh your tasks screen after that. Set a task to a start date of today and you should see an underline on the task name. And future scheduled tasks will now come in underlined.

Future Plans: This Setting will be part of the MYN Methodology Preset

The Toodledo company is also committed to making this feature a part of the MYN Methodology preset that you can activate at this link. That should arrive shortly; but for now, you’ll need to add the underline setting by hand, using the steps above.

Another Nice New Feature

Another nice new feature that Toodledo recently added is the ability to multi-select tasks for batch editing. For example, you could select a batch of tasks to add today’s start date to, to make them all Target Now tasks, in one click. This new Toodledo feature is written up here.

So that’s it for the new features I want to highlight. Many more new features are on their way in Toodledo, I hear.

My Thoughts about Toodledo and Its Pricing

By the way, for the rest of this article, I am going to go off topic and rant a bit. Read on if you like, or quit reading here, because the guts of the article are what you just read above.

So here goes. I know a lot of you felt frustrated by the price increase the new owners of Toodledo implemented at the start of the year. I’ve been completely silent on this, mainly to let people vent and get their frustrations out, and hopefully find their own peace with it. But I am now ready to state my opinion on it, and here it is: I highly approve of the price increase. I think it was overdue, I think it was badly needed, and I think it was absolutely correct. And by the way, I have no financial ties with the company. Zero. I just love the product.

One reason I support the increase is that the company can now start adding a ton of new features, like the two features I just listed. Being able to rapidly add new features like that is hugely important for a software product, to keep it viable and relevant in a rapidly changing software world.

You know, I strongly feel that the previous owner was—is—a fantastic guy. He is a deeply principled person who, with sincere passion and purpose, created a world-class product all on his own. I truly believe Toodledo is, by far, the best task management software out there, hands down, and this single person, Jake, did it all, basically by himself, along with raising a family and having a real life to boot. He simply loved his vision, and he made it happen. And you as a Toodledo user are benefitting from the results of his blood, sweat, and tears.

But Jake could only do so much. Think about it: he was the sole programmer, the sole marketer, the sole website developer, and the sole support staff. And as the years went by, as I continued to work with and teach others how to implement MYN on the Toodledo product, I came to feel that, from a business perspective, that owner (bless his heart) was giving away way too much for free. Unlike Microsoft or Google, who can give away or underprice certain products as loss leaders (Outlook.com, Gmail), thus leading buyers to their other high-priced products (Office 365 at $12.50 per user per month). Or by making a ton of money off embedded advertising: think Google. Unlike companies like that, Toodledo was Jake’s only product. And yet, still, he gave most of it away for free. And also, out of principle, he did not embed ads. Again, bless his heart.

But in my mind, if the Toodledo product and company were to thrive as a viable and growing software business, the product really needed to be priced at its full value—and I didn’t think it was. This was a world-class product, comparable in feature robustness to web-based products like Salesforce.com, or Travelocity, that was mostly being given away free.

The results? Happy users, but very limited ongoing development. For example, simply to update his Android app, the previous owner had to crowd source his development work—which is a slow and risky way for a company to do product development. And he had to back-burner tons of really cool features that people wanted. Features that I wanted that would help my MYN users. For example, this underline feature I wrote about above—I personally requested that from the previous owner over five years ago, and it never got in. And my MYN users were one of his biggest customer sets.

But now, with the recent price increase, I feel it really is priced at its value, and not coincidentally, the new company can now afford to hire a team of programmers who can really advance this product to even higher levels. When I asked the new owners for the underline feature back in December, it arrived in Toodledo in only a few months!

And let me be clear. In my mind, you don’t have to wait for that many new features. Even with the current feature set, Toodledo is by far the most powerful task system out there in terms of raw capability, customizability, and intelligent design (Windows Desktop Outlook Tasks is its only real competitor). It’s the only system that I recommend to people who cannot use or who refuse to use Windows desktop Outlook (Mac and Gmail users for example), and it is even better than Windows Outlook tasks in many ways. As you may know, I have a full video training set on how to use MYN with Toodledo—it’s the only other task platform I will teach MYN on, besides Outlook. That’s how strongly I feel about the quality of Toodledo.

And in my mind, if Toodledo, because of its superior features, even gives you back as little as 10 minutes of wasted time a day, the new price is an absolute bargain. I mean think about it: for the cost of one Starbucks Mocha per month, you can get an advanced feature set that gives you a way to really take back control of your workday, in ways that almost no other product can do.

So my opinion? Flat out, even at the new price, Toodledo still seems like a really good deal to me, given the quality of the product.

Anyway, that is my 2 cents on Toodledo pricing. Place your counter rants in comments below, I am ready.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

6 Responses to Toodledo Adds Start Date Underlines Feature

  1. Tony Brannigan says:

    Hi Michael

    I completely agree regarding the pricing. One less coffee a month for all that functionality!?

    Unfortunately ToodleDo has one serious flaw – there is no desktop app. There are some 3rd party apps that sync but they fit ToodleDo into their model, rather than replicating ToodleDo.

    Of course the website is fine if you’re online, i.e. if you aren’t in a plane, train, old building, rural area, etc etc. Unfortunately for some people it’s a deal breaker.

    Regards
    Tony

    • Michael Linenberger says:

      Thanks Tony. I’ll ask the new owners if they have plans for say, a Microsoft Store app. In the meantime, have you tried TaskAngel? Two years ago when I was using Toodledo as my main task server (I am back to Exchange/Outlook now, more of my clients on that), I was using TaskAngel—a third party Windows desktop app that, at the time, I thought worked pretty well for exactly what you are referring to. Here is a link to my writeup: https://www.michaellinenberger.com/blog/taskangel-to-do-list-software-for-toodledo-users/
      I can’t recall how hard I had to work to match it to Toodledo functionality or to make it work for MYN.But I don’t recall it being hard. But no Mac version. They do have an iPad version. And Toodledo, of course, has an iPad version. I think it saves your data/changes when on a plane, too (but I could be wrong).
      Michael

  2. Harry Spinks says:

    Hi Michael,
    I thought I’d check out the pricing on ToodleDo (https://www.toodledo.com/). There isn’t any pricing on their website. Actually, it says it’s free.
    I had to log in to see the pricing in my profile.
    The Plus version is only $60 per year. You’re right, that’s a very good price for what it does. Definitely a bargain.
    Your newsletters are great and always have useful information.
    Thank you!

  3. Ricardo says:

    Toodledo for iOS is not available on Apple Appstore anymore, and the app on my Iphone stopped working today, all tasks, tags, folders etc were gone.

  4. Michael Linenberger says:

    Thanks Ricardo. I just asked Anant about that. He said “We will be rolling out an iOS app update by end of this week and all will be working again.” Apparently the old app inherited from previous owners got so old that it’s code base was no longer supported on the Apple App Store and had to be pulled, and timing got out of hand relative to releasing and inserting the new app that they’ve been working on for 6 months. It’s the new app that will be released end of week. Also, see this Blog update from Anant: https://blog.toodledo.com/april-may-june-2020-update/
    Michael

  5. ToddZ says:

    Hi Michael – I found your site while reading TickTick forums, looking to migrate from Toodledo. This week saw a completely bungled iOS deployment and a near total lack of communication from the company to panicked users who’d seen all their data disappear. When Anant finally posted, he showed zero concern, contrition, or apology to paying customers. In the Toodledo forums, even the most optimistic die-hard users are increasingly convinced that whoever is now “running” Toodledo is running it into the ground.

    I’m excited to learn about the MYN method, but after subscribing to Toodledo since the beginning, I’ll be regrettably cutting my losses and looking elsewhere for a safe platform to work with.

Leave a Reply to Harry Spinks Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.