Want to earn trust from the people in your team, from your boss and from your clients? Commit to tasks and actually follow through with them. Make sure nothing slips trough the cracks.

I covered this previously: you really shouldn’t keep things in your head. Your brain is simply not created to remind you about things that should happen at a specific time. In today’s post I want to list a couple of things I think are important in a todo application. It might help you to pick the right one and get new ideas to use your existing tools to be more effective.

  1. Global hotkeys: For me, this is the absolute most important feature. I need to be able to capture a new task, regardless of the current thing I’m working on. A global hotkey does just this: it doesn’t matter what I’m doing, I can summon a dialog with input to jot down what I don't want to forget.

  2. (Optional) due dates: As a professional with lots of things to do, it is impossible to finish all your tasks as they will come up. Some things are tied to a date and a todo application needs to have a way to attach a date to a task and will remind you to it.

  3. Projects: You probably have more than one project you’re working on. Next to professional projects, you’ll want to use a tool that is able to capture multiple projects and attach tasks to the project.

There are a number of other features that complete a great todo app, like review mode (to help with a GTD weekly review), easy filtering, mobile access, the ability to add tasks by sending an email and obviously you should never have to wait for your tool to launch or to process something before you can continue using it. For me, OmniFocus is the absolute right tool for the job. There are a number of other (cheaper) alternatives, like Wunderlist, Todoist or Any.do. Be sure to check out OmniFocus or one of the alternatives if you’re not already using a tool like this.

It doesn’t really matter which one you'll use, just pick one and make sure you become a power user. Your process matters more than the tool you use, but you’ll need a good system to facilitate you on your way to grow as a professional.