Comparisons

Todoist vs Things 3 vs KeptMind: honest review for ADHD

Three popular task managers, three different philosophies. Here is which one fits which ADHD brain.

Todoist, Things 3, and KeptMind are three of the most discussed task managers in ADHD communities. Each has passionate advocates. Each has real weaknesses. Here is an honest comparison.

## The three philosophies

Todoist is built on the GTD (Getting Things Done) philosophy: capture everything, organize by project, review regularly. It rewards consistent maintenance and is most powerful for people who have a reliable weekly review habit.

Things 3 is built on the philosophy of beautiful simplicity: a clean, opinionated interface that makes the daily Today view the center of your workflow. It is Apple-only and rewards people who do a daily review.

KeptMind is built on the philosophy of capture-first: get the thought out of your head as fast as possible, let the AI sort it, show only what is doable right now. It is designed for people who lose tasks between the thought and the app.

## Capture speed

KeptMind wins clearly. Voice capture from the lock screen in under 12 seconds is faster than any input method in Todoist or Things 3. For ADHD brains that lose thoughts before they reach the app, this is the most important feature.

## Daily workflow

Things 3 wins for daily workflow. The Today view is clean, focused, and well-designed. The "This Evening" section is a useful addition. The Upcoming view makes the week visible.

Todoist's Today view is functional but less opinionated. KeptMind's Today view adapts to your energy level, which is unique but requires you to tag tasks with energy levels.

## Reminders

KeptMind wins on reminders. Push → SMS → call escalation for critical tasks is not available in Todoist or Things 3. Things 3 has local notifications only (no SMS or call). Todoist has push notifications but no escalation.

## Platform

Todoist and KeptMind are cross-platform (iOS, Android, web). Things 3 is Apple-only. If you use Android, Things 3 is not an option.

## Price

Things 3 is a one-time purchase (~$50 for all platforms). Todoist Pro is ~$4/month. KeptMind Pro is ~$9/month. For long-term use, Things 3 is the most economical if you are Apple-only.

## The verdict

For ADHD brains that primarily struggle with capture: KeptMind. For ADHD brains that primarily struggle with daily prioritization and are Apple-only: Things 3. For ADHD brains that manage complex projects and want powerful filtering: Todoist.

## Three task apps with different design philosophies

Todoist, Things 3, and KeptMind are three of the most-discussed task apps in the ADHD community, and they make different choices about what task management should look like. Todoist optimizes for cross-platform power and customization. Things 3 optimizes for opinionated minimalism on Apple devices. KeptMind optimizes for capture-first, energy-aware ADHD-specific patterns.

No single tool is universally best. The right choice depends on your platform, your maintenance tolerance, and your specific ADHD bottleneck. This comparison covers the substantive differences and the user types each app fits best.

## Todoist

The most platform-agnostic of the three. Available on iOS, Android, web, Windows, Mac, Linux, and even Apple Watch. Sync is reliable across years of use. Project hierarchy is sophisticated; labels and filters allow advanced custom views; natural-language date parsing is excellent.

Todoist works best for users who want power and are willing to maintain a system. The maintenance is real — users who do not regularly review and prune accumulate inbox clutter that eventually drives abandonment. For ADHD users with strong-enough executive function to sustain weekly review, Todoist is among the strongest options. For ADHD users who have not been able to sustain weekly review in past tools, Todoist often produces the same pattern.

## Things 3

Apple-only (iOS, iPad, Mac). The interface is genuinely beautiful — many users describe it as the most pleasant task app to use, period. The opinionated structure (Today, Upcoming, Anytime, Someday) is constrained enough to prevent the over-customization trap that affects Todoist and Notion users.

Things 3 fits users who want minimalism within Apple ecosystem and value design. The constraints work for many ADHD users because the structure prevents elaborate system-building. The Today view in particular functions well as a daily scope-limiter. Cross-platform users are excluded by Apple-only design; Windows or Android users cannot benefit.

Things 3 is also one-time purchase rather than subscription. The pricing is moderate, no recurring cost, no upgrade pressure. For users tired of subscription fatigue, this is genuinely valuable.

## KeptMind

KeptMind is the most ADHD-specific of the three. The voice-first capture, AI task parsing, energy-aware Today list, and escalating nudges target ADHD failure modes more directly than the other two. The trade-off is less customization power and a younger product with less of a track record.

KeptMind fits users whose past attempts at Todoist-class or Things-class tools have collapsed under maintenance load. The lower-maintenance design survives bad weeks better than power-user tools, and the capture optimization addresses the specific moments where ADHD users typically lose tasks before they reach any system.

## Side-by-side comparison

Capture speed: KeptMind > Things 3 ≈ Todoist. Lock-screen voice capture is uniquely fast.

Customization power: Todoist > Notion would be if it were on this list > Things 3 ≈ KeptMind. For users who actually want sophisticated filters, Todoist is the clear winner.

Maintenance load: KeptMind < Things 3 < Todoist. Less to maintain means more durable use across years for ADHD adults.

Aesthetic and feel: Things 3 > KeptMind > Todoist. Highly subjective but Things 3 wins on visual design.

Cross-platform reach: Todoist > KeptMind > Things 3. Things 3 is Apple-only; the others are cross-platform.

Pricing model: Things 3 (one-time) ≈ Todoist (subscription) ≈ KeptMind (freemium). All reasonable; pick what fits your purchasing preference.

## Frequently asked questions

### Which has the best Today view?

Subjective, but Things 3 is widely considered the most polished. KeptMind's Today view adapts to energy state which Things 3 does not. Todoist's Today view is functional but less visually distinct from other views. The "best" depends on whether you value polish or adaptive behavior.

### Can I migrate between them?

All three support data export, but the structures differ enough that migration is partial. Most users do not migrate the full backlog; they archive the old system as a reference, start fresh in the new system, and re-add only items that are still active. This produces less continuity but better adoption of the new system.

### What about teams?

Todoist has the best collaboration features of the three. Things 3 has none — it is single-user. KeptMind is also single-user focused. For team task management, Todoist is the clear pick among these three; for individual ADHD productivity, the choice depends on the other factors.

### How do I decide?

Three questions in order. Are you Apple-only and value design? Try Things 3. Do you want power and have the executive function to maintain a system? Try Todoist. Have you abandoned Todoist or Things 3 (or similar tools) before? Try KeptMind. The honest self-assessment usually points clearly to one of the three.

## What to do this week

Pick one of the three based on the questions above and commit to using it for at least 30 days. Resist the urge to evaluate all three simultaneously; comparison evaluation produces analysis paralysis without producing real adoption. The 30 days reveals whether the tool fits your actual use better than any review article can. After 30 days, decide whether to continue or switch — but make the decision based on real data, not on the next round of reviews. Most ADHD users who eventually settle on a stable task tool got there by committing to one option for long enough to evaluate it honestly, then making one deliberate switch if needed. Perpetual evaluation is the trap; bounded evaluation followed by deliberate commitment is the path to a system that actually holds.

## A note on long-term practice with todoist vs things vs keptmind

Most ADHD adults who eventually settle into stable productivity practice describe their relationship with topics like todoist vs things vs keptmind as evolving across years rather than locking in after one decision. The first six months tend to involve more experimentation than feels comfortable; the second six months produce the early signs of what fits; years two and three are where the practice consolidates and starts to compound. Treating any single intervention as a permanent answer is usually a mistake; treating the willingness to keep adjusting as the durable skill is closer to how successful long-term ADHD productivity actually works.

What this means in practice: do not commit to perfect adoption of anything you read about todoist vs things vs keptmind. Commit to running a focused experiment, observing the result honestly, and either keeping or releasing the intervention based on real data from your specific life. The data will sometimes contradict the consensus advice, including the advice in this article. When that happens, trust the data rather than the consensus — your ADHD brain has its own pattern, and the right configuration for you may differ from the median user. The discipline of personal calibration over imitation is one of the more underrated parts of long-term ADHD self-management; it produces durable systems where copying produces brittle ones.

Across years, the small habits compound. A single capture saved in the right moment is small; a thousand of them across two years rebuild your relationship with reliability. A single calendar buffer respected on Tuesday is small; the cumulative on-time arrival rate across months changes how you experience your own life. Treat each small alignment with what your brain actually needs as a deposit in a long-term account; the interest rate on those deposits is higher than any single dramatic productivity transformation, and the cumulative effect is what produces the genuine improvement that ADHD adults seek and that the right systems quietly deliver.

## Common pitfalls when applying these ideas

Three patterns repeat across ADHD adults trying to integrate practices around todoist vs things vs keptmind. First, attempting too many changes simultaneously. Adopting five new habits in a single week is the most common path to abandoning all of them within a month. The discipline of one change at a time, with three weeks between additions, looks slow but produces the only durable results. Second, treating productivity practice as a moral obligation. When the practice becomes "I should be doing this," it triggers the resistance pattern that ADHD brains apply to obligations generally, and the practice collapses. Reframing practice as experimentation rather than duty preserves the engagement needed to keep going through the inevitable rough weeks.

Third, comparing yourself to ADHD adults whose productivity practices look impressive online. Social media surfaces survivor stories and selectively presented success; the median experience of building any ADHD productivity practice involves substantial messiness, repeated false starts, and stretches that look nothing like the highlight reels. Your real progress at the six-month mark will not look like the polished narratives you read about; it will look like a stack of partial wins, abandoned attempts, and one or two practices that actually held. That is the real shape of success, and recognizing it as success rather than as inadequacy is itself one of the more important internal shifts of sustained ADHD self-management.

## Building from one small win

If this article overwhelms you with options around todoist vs things vs keptmind, pick exactly one element and run it for seven days. Not three elements, not a system; one specific change. At day seven, evaluate honestly whether the change produced any visible benefit. If yes, continue for another two weeks before adding anything. If no, choose a different single element. Most ADHD adults who eventually arrive at sustainable practice describe the path as a sequence of seven-day experiments stacked across months, not as a single decisive transformation. The pace feels slow in the short term and produces durable results in the long term, which is the trade-off most worth making.

The internal narrative around small wins matters as much as the wins themselves. A seven-day experiment that produced a small improvement is a real success, not a disappointment compared to some imagined dramatic transformation. Treating small wins as actual wins rebuilds the relationship between effort and outcome that years of unsuccessful productivity attempts often erode. Across enough small wins, that relationship becomes durable enough to support the larger changes that initially seemed out of reach. Most adults who eventually live well with ADHD describe the journey as cumulative small wins rather than single breakthroughs, and that lived experience is what the literature also points toward when read carefully.

## Coming back to this article in a few months

Articles like this one tend to read differently at different stages of the ADHD productivity journey. On a first read, the volume of options often feels like more reasons to feel inadequate; on a re-read after six months of practice, the same content often produces specific recognition of which parts now apply and which do not. Bookmark this article and return to it after running an honest experiment. The second visit usually surfaces nuances the first read missed, and that pattern of returning is part of how ADHD adults eventually integrate productivity ideas into actual life rather than treating them as one-time information. The most useful productivity content for ADHD users is the content you read, ignore for a while, and come back to when a specific need surfaces; that pattern of delayed application is normal rather than evidence of failure.

## Related reading

If this article was useful, these related guides cover adjacent ground and are worth reading next:

- [Keptmind vs Todoist ADHD](/blog/keptmind-vs-todoist-adhd) - [Keptmind vs Notion ADHD](/blog/keptmind-vs-notion-adhd) - [Keptmind vs Tiimo](/blog/keptmind-vs-tiimo)

Each of the linked articles approaches the topic from a slightly different angle, and reading two or three of them together usually produces a more complete picture than any single article can. The shared underlying neurology means that improvements in one area often unlock progress in others, which is why the topics interconnect even when they appear separate at first glance.