Next To-Do: a Shortcut for your next task in Reminders.app

Fill out the tasks you want to accomplish, then roll a d6 to determine which one to work on. Roll again to determine how long to work on it.

That's the super simple premise of Paper Apps' TODO and it's extra fun and engaging as it's done in a physical notebook and, ideally, with an actual dice as well. It gamifies your day-planning while also removing the burden of having to choose a task or how much time to invest on it.

I really liked the premise except I didn't want to write the tasks every day so I thought of applying the pattern to my digital to-dos. It's definitely less fun and gamey than the real pen-and-paper thing, but it's still very useful and specially helpful when you can't be bothered to decide what to do next.

Fortunately it's possible to accomplish this with Apple Reminders, which is what I already used for my to-dos, thanks to its integration with Apple Shortcuts.

The shortcut picks one random item (overdue or due-today) from a list in Reminders, then it randomly picks a duration between 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, and 45 minutes, then it shows a message with the result and asks whether to set up a timer for the chosen duration. That's it! Naturally it works on macOS, iPadOS, and iOS.

If you think it might be useful for you as well, feel free to grab the Shortcut here (please note that it won't work "out of the box"; you must specify which list from your Reminders you want to use. I haven't figured out how to make this part of the shortcut).