I recently migrated from Obsidian Tasks to Todoist — This was a great decision. Here I’m sharing how I did it, with all improvements I can think of included.

Before we begin: I want you to know I’m writing as concise as possible and only share what’s truly relevant to not waste any of both of our time.

System improvement

The time between switching from one application to the next is a great time to overthink your system, and the only viable time to radically change it.

Obsidian
Now that I’ll use Todoist for tasks, in what ways can I adjust my Obsidian workflows to make it a better place for ideas and information?
Todoist Which features do I *need* to use? Which are just wasting my time?
What boundaries do you set yourself for storing information in Todoist (within descriptions or uncompletable Tasks) — At some point they fragment your knowledge base between Todoist and Obsidian or any other app you use.

Tags
Which tags can I remove?
Which should I add? (Do I want to add it but didn’t want to invest the time to do so in the past?)
Projects/Areas
Can I merge two projects/areas that are similar?
Should I separate a project/area? (Has it become too large?)

Priorities

What does each priority mean to me?

Other Considerations

Because Todoist’s UI is easier to use, you’ll be more inclined to label and mark your tasks correctly.
You can expect to be aware of more tasks — From my own experience, asking “How can I improve my organization” would be helpful.
Maybe you want to explore or switch to a task/information management paradigm like *Getting Things Done*, *PARA* or the Eisenhower-Matrix. Now is the time to do so.

Feature exploration

Get a rough understanding of Todoist before migrating your system.
General UI

Watch a video. Follow along if you want to.

Understand filters Filtering is the only feature that you have to spend time learning
Read the guide: Introduction to Filters — (You can only use the English version of the queries in Todoist — Switch to English, or they’ll be translated mistakenly)

Migration

1. Create Projects Color them so you can see which project’s tasks you completed in the productivity view
2. Create sections or migrate the existing ones I mainly have `Recurring` and `References`, and in some cases sections that separate by the type of task.
3. Migrate tags
Add additional tags that are useful within Todoist. E.g. @10min+, @1h+.
4. Migrate recurring tasks You can use this script I wrote to migrate all your Markdown tasks to Taskpaper tasks that can be imported into Todoist over the Taskbone integration. If this does not work for you, and you have Todoist’s pro version, you can use the AI assist by pasting the markdown tasks into its prompt.
5. Migrate one-off tasks Ask yourself: How old is this task? What are the chances I’ll ever actually do it? Do I have to migrate the task, or was it optional/low-priority all along?
6. Migrate templates Use the task-migration workflow again
Use a prefix to mark template projects. You’ll check against this prefix in all your filters (next step).
7. Create/migrate filters
Identify your most useful filters and migrate them
You can add new filters, e.g. `Downtime`, or `Scheduling Needed`
8. Optional: Create kanban-like boards for projects, endeavors to have an overview of them.

Migrating from Obsidian Tasks to Todoist