todoist-time-blocking

name

todoist-time-blocking

description

Plan and review work on a daily and weekly cadence using a small prioritized task slate (inspired by the Ivy Lee method) with Todoist time-blocking. Use when the user asks to "plan my day/tomorrow", "time block my tasks", wants a "nightly review", a "weekly review" or "weekly planning" (Fri afternoon through Sun evening), or wants to clean up incomplete tasks from a finished day or week. Provides plan_day (proposes up to six ordered tasks fitted around existing calendar events and writes them back as timed Todoist tasks), nightly_review (reconciles completions, reschedules or un-dates incomplete items), and weekly_review (light retrospective + stalled-project sweep + per-day soft schedule for the coming week via date-only Todoist dates). Depends on the `todoist-api` skill (td CLI) and the `gws-calendar` MCP tools.

Todoist Time-Blocking

Method (brief)

Pick up to six prioritized tasks for the day, work them sequentially, and reconcile at day's end. Unfinished items roll into the next day's slate. Derived from the Ivy Lee method — see references/method.md for origin, what this skill keeps vs. changes, and boundary cases.

Excluded project: #Ideas

The #Ideas project contains non-actionable brainstorming items. Never surface, propose, or write back tasks from #Ideas in any function (plan_day, nightly_review, weekly_review). Filter it out at query time by appending | ##Ideas negation or by excluding projectId after parsing JSON. Do not include it in stalled-project sweeps, candidate pools, stragglers, or completion counts.

Core principle: time-block through Todoist, not by creating calendar events

Set --due with a time and --duration on each task:

td task update <id> --due "YYYY-MM-DD at H:MMam" --duration <Xh|Xm|XhYm>

Todoist's Google Calendar integration renders the block on the "Todoist" calendar automatically (sync lag ~1 min). Do not create parallel events on the Personal or other calendars for Todoist-tracked work — it causes duplicates and clutter.

Never assign Todoist priorities

This skill does not use Todoist's priority field. Never include --priority, -p1/-p2/-p3/-p4, or any equivalent flag in td task add/td task update calls. Never display [P1]/[P2] tags in proposals. If a task already has a priority set, leave it untouched — don't read it, don't surface it, don't sort by it. Importance is conveyed by slate position and the per-task rationale, not by a stored priority value.

Required tooling

• td CLI — see the todoist-api skill for full syntax.
• Google Calendar MCP tools: gcal_list_calendars, gcal_list_events.

Verify both before proceeding. If the user's Google Calendar does not show a "Todoist" calendar in the list, mention it — time blocks won't render visually until they subscribe.

Confirmation discipline

Always present the proposed plan (or review actions) and wait for explicit user approval before writing to Todoist. Do not batch "propose + execute" into a single turn. This holds even when the user's request sounds like a direct instruction — judgment calls (which tasks make the slate, how to slot them, which stragglers to push) are exactly what the checkpoint is for.

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Function: plan_day

To execute the plan_day workflow, you MUST read references/plan-day.md first.

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Function: nightly_review

To execute the nightly_review workflow, you MUST read references/nightly-review.md first.

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Function: weekly_review

To execute the weekly_review workflow, you MUST read references/weekly-review.md first.

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Operational notes

• Six is a ceiling, not a target. If only three things matter, block three.
• Time-box only what you'll actually do sequentially. Don't block email triage or Slack — those absorb residual time.
• Respect the order. Lower-numbered tasks come first chronologically when slot shapes allow. If importance and available slot-shape conflict, surface the conflict rather than silently reordering.
• Durations are honest. 30-min tasks get 30 min, not padded to look fuller. Underfilled days are a useful signal.
• One plan surface. Todoist is the source; the Todoist Google Calendar layer is the view. Nothing else.
• Cadence. plan_day runs daily (Mon–Fri plus Sun-for-Mon). nightly_review runs Mon–Thu. weekly_review runs once per week (Fri afternoon through Sun evening) and subsumes Friday's nightly_review.

References

• references/method.md — derivation from Ivy Lee, what's kept vs. changed, boundary cases
• references/heuristics.md — work window defaults, calendars to query, buffer table, prioritization hierarchy, slot sizing, td command formats, timezone handling
• todoist-api skill — full td CLI reference