Most productivity apps trap their best features behind paywalls, but if you know how to tap into a project management app’s free features, you can make the best of it. Todoist is one such platform. I’ve relied on its free plan for years to manage client projects, personal learning goals, and daily routines, and honestly, I’ve never felt the urge to upgrade.

The trick is learning how to manipulate what’s already available into something that feels custom-built for your workflow. These five setups transformed my free Todoist experience from basic task lists into a productivity system that actually sticks.

Credit: Todoist

Todoist

Todoist is a great extension to help you with listing down all your pending tasks or even to simply take down pointers during a meeting.

Nested projects become your personal workspace hierarchy

Structure beats chaos every time

The free plan gives you up to five active projects, which sounds limiting until you realize that Todoist lets you nest tasks infinitely within each project. Instead of treating projects as broad categories like “Work” or “Personal,” I structure them as activity hubs with nested sub-tasks that create mini-workflows.

For example, my “Client Relationships” project contains individual tasks for each client, and underneath each client name, I nest specific deliverables, meeting notes, and follow-ups. When I open that project, I’m not staring at a chaotic list of 40 tasks — I’m seeing organized sections that collapse and expand based on what I need to focus on right now. The nested structure in Todoist mimics the folder systems we’re already familiar with from file management, which makes it intuitive to navigate.

This approach also works brilliantly for learning goals. My “Personal Growth” project has nested categories for books I’m reading, online courses I’m taking, and skills I’m practicing. Each book becomes a parent task with chapter-by-chapter breakdowns nested beneath it. Every course gets its own nested section with module-specific action items. Todoist’s free plan doesn’t limit how deep you can nest, so you’re only constrained by how organized you want to be.

Priority levels create a visual triage system

Color-coding focus without custom labels

Todoist’s free plan includes four priority levels (P1 through P4), and while premium users get custom labels, you can repurpose these priorities to create your own productivity framework. I don’t use them for traditional urgency anymore. Instead, they’ve become a visual system for categorizing task types.

P1 (red) tasks are deep work items in my setup: writing projects, complex client deliverables, or anything requiring uninterrupted focus. P2 (orange) flags collaborative tasks that depend on other people’s input or scheduled meetings. P3 (blue) marks routine maintenance work like email processing or administrative tasks. P4 stays as the default for everything else. This visual triage system means I can glance at my Today view in Todoist and immediately understand what kind of energy each task requires, then batch similar work together.

The beauty of repurposing priorities this way is that Todoist automatically sorts tasks by priority level in most views. My deep work naturally rises to the top of each project, making it easier to tackle high-impact items first. It becomes more about intentionality than urgency.

Natural language parsing eliminates friction

Speed matters more than you think

Todoist’s natural language processing works on the free plan, and it’s arguably the feature that’s kept me loyal to the app. You can type “Submit proposal every Monday at 9 am starting Dec 2” and Todoist instantly understands the task name, recurrence pattern, and time. This seemingly small feature fundamentally changes how quickly you can capture tasks.

Before I embraced natural language input in Todoist, my task capture process involved multiple clicks: add task, click the calendar icon, select date, click time dropdown, select time, click repeat settings, configure pattern. Now it’s one line of text. The friction reduction is massive, especially during meetings or when ideas hit you mid-workflow. I can dump tasks into Todoist faster than my brain can forget them.

The parsing even handles relative dates like “tomorrow,” “next Friday,” or “in 3 days,” which means you’re not constantly calculating dates in your head. For recurring tasks, phrases like “every weekday,” “every other Tuesday,” or “every month on the 15th” all work perfectly. This speed advantage compounds over time. Every second saved on task entry is a second you’re staying in flow instead of wrestling with interface mechanics.

Filters replace premium sections

Build custom views from free features

Premium Todoist users get sections within projects, but you can achieve similar organizational power using filters, a feature available on the free plan. Filters let you create custom task views based on criteria like priority, due date, project, or keyword searches. I’ve built several filters that function like personalized dashboards.

My “@focus” filter shows all P1 tasks due today or overdue across all projects, giving me a single view of my most important work. My “@waiting” filter searches for any task containing the word “waiting” in the title, which I use to track items blocked by other people. A “@quick” filter surfaces all tasks with a due date of today that are tagged P4 — these become my filler tasks for low-energy moments between meetings. Each filter in Todoist becomes a lens for viewing your tasks differently, and you’re not limited by premium section restrictions.

The free plan allows up to three filters (more with premium), but three well-designed filters can cover your essential views. Think about the perspectives you need most:

• What needs my attention right now?
• What’s waiting on others?
• What can I knock out quickly when I have 10 free minutes?

Build your Todoist filters around those questions.

Free labels create a personal tagging system

Limited tags force better thinking

Todoist’s free plan includes 500 personal labels (more than anyone needs). While it limits filters, you can still use as many (or as few) labels as you need for your tasks.

I use around 15 Todoist labels for context switching, such as @home, @office, @errands, @computer, @phone, @low-energy, @reading, @writing, @planning, @reviewing, and a few client-specific tags. These represent the actual contexts where I complete work, not arbitrary categories. When I’m at my desk with two hours of focused time, I filter by @computer and @writing in Todoist to see only relevant tasks. When I’m running errands, the @errands label shows me everything I can accomplish in that context.

This location and energy-based labeling system in Todoist works because it matches how we actually move through our days. You’re rarely thinking, “I should work on my health goals now.” You’re thinking, “I have 30 minutes at home before my next meeting, what can I do?” Context-based labels answer that question instantly.

The free plan forces productive constraints

Less becomes more when you commit

After years with Todoist’s free tier, I’ve learned to think of the five-project limitation as a feature rather than a limitation. It forces me to think carefully about what deserves project-level organization versus what can live as nested tasks within existing projects. This constraint has made my productivity system leaner and more maintainable.

Premium features might offer more flexibility, but the free plan’s limitations push you toward simplicity that actually works long-term.