How to Organize Your To-Dos with Apple Reminders in 2026

If you want to use Apple's Reminders app to organize your life, how should you set it up? Here's what I would do. Here I am in Reminders on the Mac, but this also works on iPhone and iPad. The very first thing I want to do is just look at my lists that I've got set up and separate out any lists that are not actionable from my actual to-do lists. So I'll have a list of clothes to buy, a grocery list, and a list of places I'd like to go scuba diving someday, but I don't need to see these things every morning when I plan my day. So I'll take one of these and drag it on top of one of the other ones. That creates a new group, which I will call simply Lists. And I'll drag all of my reference lists into that group so that they're nice and out of the way. Then I'll take the default list, which is probably still called Reminders for you, and I'll just go File, New Group, and I will call this group To-Do's. Now I've split out To-Do's from non-actionable stuff. Next what I want to do is take this Reminders list and just right-click it and go to Show List Info and rename it to Inbox. Now what you'll want to do is head over to the Reminders settings and just make the default list be the Inbox if it isn't already for you. This is also a good time to make sure that you've got iCloud synchronization turned on for Reminders so that this all syncs between all of your Apple devices. Next up, what we're going to do is we're going to create a To-Do list for each of the different major parts of our life. So here's ones that I recommend that you start with. Just click this button to create a new list, and I like to have one called Admin and Finances because we all have that kind of stuff to do. I'll create one called Fun and Travel. We'll do Health and Home, and we'll do Relationships. You could also call this Family and Friends, something like that, and we'll do Work. Now what I'll do is I'll take all of these by just shift-clicking them, and I'll drag them underneath the To-Do's group, and now we've got some nice organization in our To-Do lists already. Now if you've got any other big parts of your life that are important to you, you'll want to create a separate list for that as well. For example, for the better part of a decade, I've been a member of a Toastmasters public speaking and leadership club. So I'm going to create a list and call it Toastmasters and just drag that into the correct spot as well so that I have a complete set. Now either when you're creating your list or when you've already created it, you can go to the List Info, and you can give the list a different color as well as maybe a different icon such as, for example, I can do the comment bubble here, and it will look different. Next thing we're going to do is we're going to set up your projects. So normally if you think of a project like a home kitchen renovation or some other kind of work project, you might think you would create that as a list. But actually we're going to create that as a task with subtasks. So one thing I got to do for Toastmasters is to prepare a speech. And that has sub steps that I'd like to break down because I might not do all of that at the same time. So I'm just going to create another reminder, another to do right below this initial one just to break this down. And I'm going to say come up with a speech concept. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to indent this with command square right bracket that makes it sit underneath the other to do and you'll see this first one prepare speech is in bold. That kind of denotes it's a project. Really it's bold because it's a task that has subtasks. So let's fill out the other steps of this project which might be to settle on a speech title, write up the script, rehearse, ask a friend for feedback, and rehearse again until happy. The reason that we're doing it this way as opposed to creating a list is when I finish this project of preparing my speech, I can simply check it off and what's going to happen is it's going to show here in completed. That's really nice. But if I were to make a separate list out of this, if I just right click any of my lists, you see there's no option to archive a list. I can only delete it. So then after I'm done, I'd have to delete it and I wouldn't have that record of what I've accomplished, which I don't like. Next we got to figure out how to set up the date property in Apple Reminders. Let's do an example. Let's say I have to pay my tax bill. That's something that I have to do by a specific date. Now I could add the date right here, but I will just click the eye icon and that shows us this pop up and I'll set the date over here. So let's say I have to do this by the end of the month, which is also the end of the year in this case. So it'll be December 31st. And by the way, for those of you in America, this is our European notation for dates. So I'm setting the date to be the last day that I could possibly do this by. So I want you to use the date property for things that have a hard deadline and technically not even the deadline, but the last start time, the latest time that you could start doing this and still be on time. Maybe if it takes the money a day to get from you to the government tax agency, you'll want to set this to the day before. Now let's do a different example. I'll head over to the work list and let's say I have a big important meeting I need to prepare for. So I can write it to do review documents for client meeting. Again, I'll open up the property panel. And what I'll do is I'll set the date. Let's say this meeting is on Monday. So here's this coming Monday. And I also want to set a time in this case, because let's say my meeting is actually at 3pm. I could do it this way, right? But if it takes me an hour to review the documents, I'll of course want to set this at 2pm. And then this will give me a reminder at the latest possible start time, which is how you should be using dates. One thing I like to do is to use my to do app in this case, Apple reminders to keep track of things that friends are doing that I want to encourage them. So for example, let's say I have a friend, Danny, and he's about to go on a big trip. I might set a reminder for myself to wish Danny safe travels. I feel like these are little things that friends really appreciate, okay, but I want to make sure I text them at the right time. And so let's open this panel right here, Danny might say, Oh, yeah, I'm flying tomorrow. Okay, so I'm going to go over set the date, set that to tomorrow. And he says, you know what, I'm flying at 5pm. So that'd be 1700. However, let's say Danny lives in Dubai, I can use this time zone feature right here to change the time zone from Amsterdam, which is where I live, and instead type Dubai and click OK. And now I'm setting it to 5pm Dubai time. But Apple Reminders automatically translates that to my time, which is 2pm. So I'll be notified at 2pm that I should text Danny and wish him a safe trip. This time zone feature, of course, is also very useful for a task like we did before to review documents for a client meeting. If you are traveling yourself, and the meeting will be in a different time zone. Next up, what we're going to do is we are going to set up a way for us to say I'd like to work on this task today, even though it isn't necessarily urgent, it doesn't have a hard deadline. Here's how we're going to do that. I'll head over to my home list and let's say something I would love to do today is to clean the drainage filter of my washing machine. Okay, let's say that's something I'd like to do today. Now I have this task listed, it's a to-do now, but I don't want to assign a date to it because there isn't really a hard deadline by which I need to do this. It would still be good to do it soon though. So what am I going to do? I'm actually going to open this panel, and I'm going to flag this particular reminder or to-do. Now what that does is I can go to this built-in flagged view, which is pinned at the top over here and I'll see all of my flagged to-do. So I can go back over to home and do another one, and that is take in my wallet for repair. I have a nice fancy wallet, I've had it for many years, it needs a little repair. And I can click the flag right here, it's going to do the same thing. Now under flagged, these tasks will both be listed. So how can we combine these two things to help us plan our day and make sure we tackle both things that are urgent and things that are important? Well here's how we're going to do that. We are going to create a so-called smart list. So that works by clicking this button at the top right here to create a new list. And you'll see that it says here list type standard. Let's just change that to smart list. Now we're going to call this list today. There's already a built-in today list, but we're going to hide that one in a minute. A smart list will show you all of your to-dos, all of your reminders that match certain criteria. So you can set a filter, and the filter is here at the bottom. So I'm going to say, well I want to include all reminders matching any of the following filters. I'll change the first one to say that the date is today, and I'll include items that are past due, because if we miss the deadline, well we better still do the thing as soon as possible, right? And I'll click this button to add another filter, and I'll say the flag is flagged. Now I'll click okay, and now we have a custom today list that will show us items either that have a deadline for today or that are flagged. So meaning we are putting them on our plate for today. So for example, if I go over to work and I have to say reply to the CEO, and that's something that I have to do today latest, so I can add a date of today. Then if I go back to this smart today list, that will be on my plate as well. So important and urgent stuff are all listed here. So what can we do now? We can just hide this built-in today list. So the way we do that is just go to view, and under show smart list, just uncheck today. Then grab our own today list and pin that, and we can put that in the same place if we want to. Now this is the list that we can work out of every single day. So what you can do is a really nice routine in the morning is start in the all list. This shows you all of the tasks that you could work on, anything that's in your inbox or that is listed in one of your lists for the various parts of your life. And you'll see that if there's anything that you'd like to do today, right? Maybe it's paying the tax bill, even if it's not due yet. If you'd like to do it today, very easy. You just go ahead and flag that, and then under your today list, that task will show up there. And if you want, you can sort these things differently and drag them around just to make your to-do list for the day that you can work through. Now is a good point for me to tell you that I have a free Apple reminders cheat sheet that's linked in the video description, and it lists useful reminders tips, but also all the steps that I took in this video as a handy reference for you to go ahead and grab that. What's really awesome about this approach is that tasks that have hard deadlines can show up on your calendar at the date that they are due. So here I am in Apple's calendar app, and you'll see that tomorrow is when I have to wish Danny safe travels. And this shows up as a reminder in between my calendar events. And in the same way on Monday, there's two things that are due. I have to buy a birthday present for someone, and I got to review those documents for that client meeting. And you'll see that this shows up if I just head over to the day view and I go over to Monday, you're going to see that it actually shows up at the correct time on that day as well. So this integration between the reminders app and the Apple calendar app is fairly new. And if these reminders are not showing up for you, you'll just want to open the sidebar with this button and then go to other and make sure that scheduled reminders is checked. Then you'll see your reminders on your calendar at the date you specified. So at this point, I want to talk about terminology for a minute. This app is called the reminders app, but what we're really doing here is setting it up as your to do app as your task manager. And of course you want it to sometimes remind you of things in the form of push notifications. But one reason why, for example, we did something like cleaning the drainage filter of the washing machine doesn't have a date assigned, but rather we're using the flag to put it on our plate for today is because flagging it means it's going to show up under our today list, but we're not going to be bombarded with notifications for things that we'd like to do today, but that are not super urgent. However, for something like this pay my tax bill task, if we hit the 30th of December and we haven't done this yet, that is going to send us a notification and that's really helpful and important for making sure we do things on time. Now I want to show you a little bit more about what you can do with notifications in reminders. So if I just go over to admin and finances, let's say something else that I need to do is to pay the rent. Okay. And let's open this side panel and let's say that we need to do that by the 31st of the month. Latest. However, you don't generally want to do things super last minute. So we're going to use a feature called early reminders. That's over here. And if you do that, it's very simple. You can just say, I want to be reminded one day before two days before or earlier, or you can set a custom time when you'd like to be reminded. So maybe we want to be reminded three days before. Now what happens when we close this is just three days before the 31st, we're going to get a push notification on all of our devices suggesting that we pay the rent that day. Now, what if you want to remind yourself of something that really needs to happen at a specific time, and you're worried that a simple notification isn't enough to make sure that you do it. So let's say one thing I need to do is to move my car in a few hours, because there's a time limit on where I've parked it right now. What I can do is go in and set the date on that, which is today. And the time, let's say that is 7pm today, I need to do that. I can mark this reminder as urgent. Now watch when I do that, what happens? It says there's going to be an alarm on Sevilla, which is the name of my iPhone. So there's going to be an alarm on my iPhone at 7pm, and that's going to break through any do not disturb or whatever. So I really won't miss it. Of course, you want to use this sparingly, right? You don't want to have alarms going off all the time interrupting your focus. But for something where you're like, okay, I definitely have to move my car at that time. This is what you can do. Now there's some other things you can do as well to remind yourself in the form of push notifications. Let's say one thing I need to do is I need to just withdraw some more cash from the ATM, but there's not an ATM right next to my house. So what I want to do is I want to be reminded of this next time I find myself near an ATM. And there's one at my local grocery store. So what I'm going to do, you'll actually see this right here. It says add location. I can go in there and I can actually type the name of a grocery store near me. And I can go ahead and select that. And now the next time when I arrive at that grocery store, I'm going to get a push notification on my iPhone, just telling me to withdraw some more cash from the ATM. Such a handy way to make sure you don't forget things. Another trigger you can set up is to be reminded when you message someone in the Apple messages app. So for example, let's say I want to ask my video editor to include some B-roll of me walking through the neighborhood in our next video. And I just want to ask him this, but it's not urgent. What I can do is open this reminder and under places and people right here, just turn on when messaging, then you can go ahead and select a contact. So I can go ahead and type his name and select him. And the next time that I message him in the Apple messages app, I'll get a notification that says, Hey, ask him to include the B-roll. We're making really good progress now on setting up your reminders app. But there's a few more things I highly recommend that you do. In the meantime, though, if you're enjoying this video, make sure to give it a like and subscribe to the channel. If you want more of this, the next thing that we're going to do is we're going to set up templates for things that you do repeatedly so you can save yourself some time and make sure that you do more consistent work. For this, we'll use the example back in my Toastmasters list of preparing for a speech because that's something that I do from time to time. We can turn this list into a template that's very easy to recreate on command, but we can't make a task or even a task with subtasks into a template. We have to make a template list. So I'll create a new list and I'll just call it temp for temporary. And I will then take these to do's command C, copy them, going to my list and paste them. Then I can go to file and choose save as template. And I can call it, for example, Toastmasters like so prepare for a speech. And I'm saving this list as a template. Now I can delete this list safely. And then the next time that I want to prepare a speech. So let's say this was already done, checked off. Right. I want to do this again. I can head over to file view templates and the template will be listed right here. I select it. I click create list. And now we have a list. This is again a temporary list. I'm just going to grab all of these to do's hit command C back over to my Toastmasters list and paste them in there. Delete the temporary list. There you go. So now I can work through the template. And as you saw, if I just go back to my own template list, you can do this for something like for me creating YouTube videos or you can do a packing list for like a weekend camping trip or let's say you're a real estate agent. You could have a list of tasks to work your way through to help a client buy a property, all sorts of things run wild with your imagination on what kind of templates you can create. Next up is something that is incredibly important. It's actually the number one productivity habit. Let's make sure that you do your weekly reviews. I'll explain more about that in a second. Let's go over to, I think this fits well under admin and finances. We create a new to-do and we call it weekly review. Now you just ignore the suggested date for a second. And what we're going to do is we're going to open that up and then we are going to set the date on this. And for example, you could do this on Sundays. Lately, I've been doing them on Saturday, so I'm going to set this to tomorrow. That's Saturday. And then you'll see the repeat panel pop up right here. By the way, if you're ever not sure where these repeat or early reminders options are, that's probably because you haven't set a date yet. So you've got to set a date first and then these options appear. So I'm going to set repeat to weekly, but as you can see, there's lots of other options. You can even make it custom. Actually I will use custom in this case and I'll say frequency weekly on Saturdays every week. Boom. There you go. So now if I click out of this, it says this is a task that will be recreated every week. Now if you don't know what a weekly review is, you'll learn that in any of my productivity courses, but also I'll put the steps on how to do a weekly review with Apple reminders in my Apple reminders cheat sheet that you can download again, linked in the description below. It's very useful. It just means that you update your to do lists, make sure they're all matching realities so that your system stays really useful and up to date. Up to this point, we've talked a lot about how to organize your to do's with the reminders app, but of course you've also got to capture anything that you need to do to the reminders app to make sure that it's in there to be organized to begin with. So let me show you how to set up quick capture system with reminders on your iPhone. So I am here on my iPhone in the settings app and I'm just going to scroll down to where it says action button. Now if you don't have an action button on your iPhone, you can also do this with one of the controls on your lock screen, but I'll do this with the action button on the side of my iPhone and I'm going to just scroll until I find the setting for making the action button access my favorite so-called control and I will tap choose a control and then I'll just search for the reminders app and if you do that, what you'll find is the reminders app and something called new reminder. So I'll tap that. Now watch what happens when I press the action button on the side of my phone for just a second. And poof we get this thing appearing from the top that is called setting a quick reminder so I can write something down like water the plants right and I can flag that to put it on my to-do list for today or if it has a hard deadline, I can press this panel right here and set the hard deadline. I can tap this button right here and set it to remind me with a notification when I get home or when I get in my car, which in this case doesn't make much sense, but I can do a location-based reminder and at the top where it says inbox right now, I can tap that and just change the list. For example, this is a home task and I'll just press the check mark and now this is added to the reminders app. And while I'm here on my iPhone, I will also encourage you to set up a reminders widget that shows your to-do list for today. Here's how we're going to do that. I'm just going to long press anywhere in the empty space then tap edit at the top left and then tap add widget. Then what you'll want to do is just search for the reminders app, go to the reminders app and just scroll to the right until you find the widget size that you like and tap add widget. I like this one right here. Now you'll see that right now it's showing tasks or reminders that are in the inbox list, but that's not what I want to see. I want to see my today list. That's my to-do list for today. So I'm going to long press the widget and then tap edit widget and I'll tap list and then I'm just going to go ahead and find, if we scroll down that smart today list, you'll see there's a today list at the top, but that's the built-in one. Don't use that one. Go all the way to the bottom, the today list that has that gear symbol to the side of it. I'll tap that one, tap out of it and it'll take a second for the widget to refresh and now I see my to-do list for today right here and I can tap this widget as well and it takes me right to that list. You can also set up such a widget on your iPad or even on the desktop of your Mac. Speaking of the Mac, I'm back here on the Mac and the next thing that I just want to do to clean things up is you see these pin lists at the top here. Let's just get rid of any that we don't use. For example, we don't really need the flag list because anything that is flagged is going to also show up under our custom smart today list. So what I'll do is I'll just go to view, show smart list and uncheck flagged. There's another list called assigned. I have nothing in here. However, what you can do is you can assign to-dos or reminders to other people on Apple devices using this feature. So let's say you and your spouse are working on a home renovation project. You can have a list of tasks for the home renovation and some of them are assigned to your spouse. Some of them are assigned to you, but I don't use it in for this case. So I'll just go ahead and go view, show smart list and poof. Now I've got a little bit of a cleaner sidebar going on over here. Next, let me show you about a few ways that you can organize your reminders a little bit more than we already have. I'm over here in my work list and I've just got some tasks listed that I need to do. What I can do is I can create sections to break these down even further. Like so, I click this button and that creates a section and a very handy way to get this started is not to create these yourself, but to instead right click this list and just choose auto categorize and that's an Apple intelligence feature. So you do need Apple intelligence turned on in your devices. If I click that, it will take a second and then create some sections for me to split up my work tasks. And of course I can still go ahead and edit the title of these sections, but this is really handy to bring some more organization if your list is getting a little bit long. Now another really cool feature that you may not know about is if I head over to view, I can choose to show this as columns so that my to do's are listed like this. And this could be great if you even wanted to do a Kanban board where each column is the status that your tasks move through. Another way to organize your to do's your reminders even more is to use tags. Generally I recommend to use lists like we have been to organize your to do's and you can give your lists different colors and different icons and it will look prettier. But if you want to, you can use tags for even more granular organization. So here's how that works. I'm in my fun and travel list and some of these things are related to skydiving, one of my hobbies and some things are not. So I can take one of these to do's related to skydiving and go ahead and open the info panel and just click tags right here and type skydiving and then tap done. Now what that does is you'll see it says hashtag skydiving and the tag will also show up at the bottom here. I'll do the same thing for this one. You can also open the to do like so and click right here and just apply the skydiving tag. And now what that will do is if I click this tag right here, it will show me all of my skydiving tags across all lists. So if I also had an admin and finances task that is to pay a skydiving bill, I could also put the skydiving tag on that. And then if I click here, I will see all of my tasks. What's really neat is that any tags that you create in the reminders app will actually synchronize with tags that you create in the Apple notes app. If you're using that for your notes, now something else that's really cool that you can do is you can turn an email into a reminder to be reminded to reply to the email or to process it some other way. And then the reminder will have a link back to the email. If you'd like to learn how to do that and learn a bunch more things as well as get these steps that we worked through in today's tutorial, grab my free Apple reminders cheat sheet linked in the video description. Thanks so much for watching. And I hope you have a great day. Ciao.