How to Add Tasks to Toodledo Using Siri

To-do lists are good, and to-do lists which are easy to use are great. What is easy to do gets done; that's human nature. "Easy" takes a variety of forms for various people. When a new "to-do" arrives, some people:

• Just try to remember it. They don't need any book or device, and don't have to carry any sort of system with them. The challenge, however, is that memory is fallible, and lots is forgotten and drops through the cracks.
• Write on whatever scrap of paper is available. Again, they don't need to carry a system with them. The challenge, however,  is keeping up with all of those random pieces of paper.
• Write on their hand. Nothing is "handier," if you are in mood for a bad pun. The challenge, however, is that if good hand-washing practices are in place, those to-dos disappear.
• Call their own voice mail. Nothing falls through the cracks. If one has a many to-dos, however, a great deal of time is spent transcribing voice mails and adding them to the to-do list.

What if you or I could talk to our phone, and what we say wind up on our to-do list? That's what this post and the next demonstrate for you.

My journey with voice input started with Jott, and when Jott began to charge for its services, switched to reQall. Both of those services allowed me to dial one phone number, which I had programmed into a speed dial key, and talk. Within a few minutes, I would receive an email with everything I had said in my message transcribed into text. The to-do was out of my head and into my email. When I handled email later in the day, I would handle that to-do as well.

Voice input has become more sophisticated, and Siri is probably the best known tool for it. Those who use Siri probably know of the "remind me" command. "Remind me to pickup dog food on Friday" triggers an entry into an app called "Reminders." Reminders is the built-in to-do app on the iPhone.

But what if you use Toodledo as your to-do list? Is there a way to add a reminder with Siri and that reminder wind up in Toodledo? The answer is "Yes."

You would of course, need to have the Toodledo app installed on your iPhone. From Toodledo's help page, the instructions for getting Reminders to show up in Toodledo are as follows:

1. First, tap "Settings" inside the app and select "Reminders Syncing". Then, turn on importing from the Reminder's app. 
2. Now, everything that is added to Reminders will be automatically added to Toodledo as well. To use Siri, simply activate Siri and say "Remind me to ...." and it will be added to Reminders and Toodledo. 
3. If the tasks are not importing, go into Apple's Settings app and tap "Privacy" and then "Reminders". Make sure that the switch is turned on for Toodledo.

This process gets the to-do into the Toodledo app on the iPhone. When the iPhone syncs with the server, the to-do shows up in Toodledo on the desktop computer, laptop, or any other device using Toodledo.

In the next post, we will show how Android users can use Google Now to get to-dos into Toodledo.

Are you new to Toodledo and wondering what it is all about? I composed a 6-post series that will help. It begins with this post.

If you are already using this technique, let me know how it is working for you.