Beatrice Manuel is a productivity expert specializing in apps and tools that help readers work smarter. With a triple degree in Commerce, Accounting, and Insurance, she brings a practical edge to her insights.
I didn't need a smarter task manager. I needed one that could keep up with how my brain actually sounds when it's overwhelmed. That's the thought I had standing in my kitchen at 7:30 AM, mentally juggling a client deadline, a dentist appointment I kept forgetting to book, and the growing suspicion that I'd promised my roommates I'd pick up groceries. Three thoughts, all urgent, all evaporating faster than I could unlock my phone and open Todoist to type them out.
Todoist's newly released feature, Ramble, works because it removes friction at the exact moment tasks are born: when thoughts are half-formed, messy, and easy to lose. It's an AI-powered voice capture tool that turns natural speech into structured tasks with projects, dates, priorities, and assignees across iOS, Android, and desktop. No syntax required. Just talk.
And honestly? Talking to my to-do list felt absurd at first. But once I tried it during a moment of genuine mental chaos, everything clicked.
The capture problem nobody talks about
Tasks die in the gap between thinking and typing
We often obsess over task management systems; the perfect project hierarchy, the right labels, the ideal daily review ritual. But all of that is worthless if tasks never make it into the system in the first place. The problem isn't that we forget to add tasks. It's that the act of adding them creates just enough friction that our brains decide it's not worth it. You're mid-conversation, mid-commute, or mid-thought, and the idea of stopping to type out "Schedule Q1 review with Sarah for next Thursday, high priority, add to Work Projects" feels like too much. So you tell yourself you'll remember. You won't.
This is where Ramble lives, in that split-second gap between having the thought and losing it. You tap the waveform icon in Todoist, speak naturally, and it's done. The task is captured, structured, and routed to the right project before your brain has a chance to deprioritize it.
I tested this during a particularly chaotic morning: "Remind me to email the design mockups to James by Wednesday, send the invoice to the client today, and book that dentist appointment for sometime next week, maybe Tuesday afternoon." Ramble parsed all three, assigned dates, dropped the work tasks into my Work project, kept the personal task separate, and I never touched my keyboard.
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By Megan Ellis
Why typing fails when you're overwhelmed
Your brain doesn't speak in bullet points
Here's the thing about how thoughts actually arrive: they're emotional, contextual, and messy. They sound like "Oh god, I need to follow up with that client, the one from last week, what was her name, Claire, yeah, Claire, sometime this week before Friday."
Traditional task capture wants you to distill that into clean inputs: task name, project, date, priority. But when you're overwhelmed, you don't have the mental bandwidth to translate brain-speak into database fields. So the task gets lost, or worse, you add a vague "follow up with client," and it sits there, useless, because you didn't capture the context that made it urgent.
Ramble works because it accepts messy input. You can say "Actually, make that Thursday instead of Friday" mid-sentence, or "Remove that dentist task, I already booked it," and it adjusts in real time. It mirrors how your brain actually works: fragmented, self-correcting, and non-linear.
I've used voice assistants before, like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa. They all fail at this because they demand structure to some extent. "Add task: email mockups. Set date: Wednesday." That's not how I think. Ramble lets me talk the way I'd talk to a person, and it figures out the rest.
Ramble works because it matches your mental state
Half-formed thoughts need half-formed inputs
The best productivity tools are the ones that meet you where you are. And when you're overwhelmed, "where you are" is not sitting calmly at your desk ready to batch-process your to-dos. You're between meetings, walking to your car, or lying in bed at 11 PM, realizing you forgot three things.
Ramble is designed for exactly those moments. It runs on Todoist Assist and Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash Live model, which means it processes speech in real time with low latency. You're not waiting for it to "think" when it's transcribing and structuring as you speak. That matters because the longer the delay, the more likely you are to ... not bother.
What surprised me most was how forgiving it is. I tested it while walking, with background noise, mid-thought interruptions, and it still parsed everything correctly. "Add a task to, uh, have a meeting with Sophie on Friday... no, scratch that, Thursday please. And oh! Add a sub-task to ask about the project proposal." Boom. Done. Structured task, correct date, right sub task.
It supports 38 languages, works across all Todoist plans (limited sessions on Beginner, unlimited on Pro and Business), and most importantly, your audio isn't stored or used for training. That last part matters. I'm not interested in productivity tools that treat my brain dumps as data mining opportunities.
How I actually use it day-to-day
Morning brain dumps and car ride captures
I'm not a "voice note person." I've tried recording thoughts before, and they pile up, unprocessed, useless. Ramble is different because the output is immediately actionable. It's not a recording I have to review later. Its tasks are already in my system, routed to the right projects.
My morning routine now includes a Ramble session before I even get started with work. I tap the waveform icon and do a verbal sweep of everything rattling around: client follow-ups, personal errands, things I need to delegate. Ramble sorts it all into my projects. Personal stuff stays separate, and everything falls into the right bucket.
My morning walks are where this really shines. I used to lose so many ideas because stopping to type them out wasn't realistic. Now I just hit Ramble (hands-free via Siri on iOS or Google Assistant on Android) and talk through whatever's on my mind. By the time I'm done with my walk, so is all my organizing. No typing. No remembering to "add this later." It's just there.
What voice capture reveals about task management
We've been optimizing the wrong part of the workflow
Here's what using Ramble taught me: we've spent years optimizing task execution, such as better filtering, smarter prioritization, and more sophisticated automation, but almost no time optimizing task capture, which is where most productivity systems actually fail.
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Todoist ran a beta before general availability, and the data backs this up: 76,000 users completed around 290,000 Ramble sessions in the first three weeks. Success rates jumped from ~40% to ~62% as the AI learned to handle real-world speech patterns. That's not because Ramble is a gimmick feature. It's because it solves the actual problem: getting tasks into the system in the first place.
Once people experience frictionless capture, they stick around. They upgrade. They use the tool more. Most voice-to-task tools fail at nuance. They can't handle "add this to my Marketing project, assign it to Jake, make it due next Tuesday, and mark it high priority" in one natural sentence. Ramble can, and does, consistently.
When talking to your to-do list makes perfect sense
The best tools meet you where you are
The first time I used Ramble, I felt self-conscious. Talking to an app feels weird. But then I realized: we talk to voice assistants all the time. We dictate texts. We send voice messages. The only reason talking to a to-do list feels strange is that we've never had one that could actually keep up. Ramble works because it doesn't ask you to change how you think. It adapts to your messy thoughts, mid-sentence corrections, and emotional urgency. That's the insight here: productivity tools fail when they demand you translate your mental state into their preferred format. The best tools just accept the input as-is and do the translation themselves.
If you've ever lost a task because typing it out felt like too much effort, Ramble is for you. If you've ever had three urgent thoughts hit you at once and had no way to capture them all before one disappeared, Ramble is for you. And if you've ever wished your to-do list could just keep up with how your brain actually sounds when it's overwhelmed, Ramble is definitely for you. It's available now across iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and web. Tap the waveform. Start talking. Let your to-do list finally keep up.
Todoist
Todoist is a great extension to help you with listing down all your pending tasks or even to simply take down pointers during a meeting.
See at Chrome Web Store See at Apple App Store See at Microsoft Store See at Firefox Add-ons
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