Things 3 vs Todoist

Started on May 6, 2020.

Things 3

There’s no natural language input (extra for dates). But the add forms let you tab through from one field to another. It’s not as frictionless as natural language input, but it’s not too painful either.
Having explicit concepts for areas and projects is nice. However clicking on area shows the projects underneath them, but not the tasks in the projects, so it’s of limited utility. In the sidebar, the projects aren’t intended in from the areas. They have a icon and the area name is in bold, but it still requires some effort to distinguish projects and areas.
Projects can have multiple headings in them.
Tasks can have both a start date and a due date. Tasks without either date will show up in the Anytime view. Today’s tasks are also in the Anytime view, so anytime should really only be checked if I am done with all the day’s tasks and want to do something that isn’t scheduled.
There is an explicity Someday list, so I can add things that are long-term, or very low priority.
I like the Today view, it shows me all tasks that are currently available to work on, as well as the time left until things are due. But I suspect it will quickly get cluttered if there are lots of overdo items.
Adding repeating tasks are a pain due to the lack of a natural language UI. The available date can be set to a few days before the due date, which is a nice touch.

Natural language input is pretty great. Adding items is a snap.
Areas and projects have to be faked by nesting projects. Clicking on a project does not show nested projects or the tasks in them. The nesting and indentation does make it pretty easy to distinguish faux areas from projects.
Projects can have multiple sections in them.
Tasks only have a due date. Tasks without a due date only show up in their projects. So if there’s something I could do when I have free time, I have to check each individual project. I don’t know if that’s actually an issue in practice.
The today view gets quickly overwhelmed by overdue tasks. Not being able to separate tasks that are available to work on, from ones that are actually due today makes me feel uncomfortable. I suppose one way to get around that is to triage tasks every day, so that nothing is actually overdue, but that would mean that low-priority things I don’t get to could repeatedly be postponed. That in turn reduces the severity of something being “overdue”.