Motion vs Todoist

Motion is a task list on steroids! This is why we’ve used it here at Efficient App for the past several years.

You can place tasks within Motion and it will auto-schedule them on your calendar, adjusting them as you have meetings that come up. It’s one of the only task management tools that allows you to actually see if everything you need to get done in a day is realistic (because if you have 5 hours of meetings and 6 hours of tasks, you’ll understand why you’re running around for 11 hours a day and never have time for that book in bed!).

Not only that, you can also manage entire projects as a team within Motion (how we use it), which is super handy if you’re a business.

• More advanced functionality than traditional task management tools
• Valuable for busy professionals and teams who need better organization
• Team collaboration features, including task dependencies
• Schedules tasks on your calendar for you, using AI

• Not ideal for users seeking a free tool
• Lacks integrations with third party tools
• May feel over-engineered for those who only need basic task tracking

Motion combines your calendar and task and project management into one system. Instead of just listing tasks, it takes into account in your actual availability and automatically schedules your work, so you can see what is realistically achievable in a single day. You can use it on your own, or with a team.

You also get an AI Agenda with Motion. How this works is every day, you get a brand new list view of tasks in a document. You can use it to jot down any extra notes or to-dos for the day, and then the next day, you get a brand new list automatically generated for you with task items listed by the priority you previously set.

You can fully manage projects end-to-end within Motion. Beyond it's calendar view, it also has Kanban views and Gantt views and project workflows for repeatable projects (e.g. we use it for our content creation workflow, from scripting to filming to editing as a team).

So if you have any "projects" that you are consistently working on (whether personal or for work), Motion is a tool that can bring it all together.

Simple to-do apps are designed mainly for individuals, with any team features created as an after thought. Motion includes team functionality to help you collaborate on projects.

You can even set task dependencies, meaning one team member can indicate they are blocked until another task is completed. This adds a level of structure and clarity that a lot of traditional task managers miss.

Motions prices range from $19 to $34 per month (Individual to Team plans).

Todoist is one of the longest-standing task management apps (founded in 2007!). You get exactly what you'd expect from Todoist — the ability to create tasks, prioritize them, and organize them with labels. You can view your tasks in a list, kanban view, or calendar view (paid tier).

With the rising popularity of time blocking, Todoist has received immense pressure from it's customers to build a calendar view and allow for task time blocking. That said, time blocking is a secondary feature to Todoist and is quite barebones compared to other daily planners. Many folks integrate Todoist with Sunsama or Akiflow for the full daily planning experience.

If considering Todoist for business, whether you're an individual or a team, there are better task management apps available that will give you more productivity power (e.g. other tools that will allow you to schedule meetings, time block tasks, manage projects, see your workload, and collaborate with team members), so as a heads up, make sure to consider those before diving head first into Todoist for business.