By week three, one of two things is happening.
Either there’s a steady hum of activity and the team has found its rhythm, in which case this lesson is a just-in-case, and you can keep doing what you’re doing.
Or things have gone quiet. Comments are tailing off, and you notice someone has slipped back to organizing their work the old way. If that’s what you’re seeing, it isn’t a failure, and it isn’t a sign you chose the wrong tool. New habits are hard to form. And a shared habit, one the whole team has to form at once, is harder still. A stall at week three is normal. What matters is what you do next.
So here’s what to do next: four steps to get the workspace humming again.
1. Check the People Tab
The People Tab lets you see each person’s assigned tasks and overdue count at a glance. Sort by any column to quickly spot who might be stretched, and click into anyone’s task list (organized by project, priority, and due date) without having to ask them.
The People Tab lives right in your team workspace overview, next to the Projects Tab. To access it:
- Click your team name in the left sidebar.
- At the top of the workspace, click the People Tab.
A team filter can narrow it further. See everyone’s work this week for a team-wide view, one teammate’s upcoming load to see who’s overloaded, or unassigned and unscheduled tasks to catch what’s falling through the cracks.
Add a team filter to your Favorites for quick and easy access.
2. Reach out – one person, one-to-one
Pick the person who’s drifted most, and message them directly. Skip “Is everything OK?” or “I noticed you haven’t logged tasks in a while” – both put the other person on the back foot before the conversation even started.
Instead, try:
“I’m just checking in. What’s getting in the way of using Todoist for you?”
The answer almost always points to one of four things:
- An ability gap – they’re not sure how to do something.
- A notification problem – they turned notifications off, and it felt like the workspace went silent on them.
- A structural problem – the way the workspace is set up doesn’t match how they actually work.
- A buy-in gap – they weren’t really sold on this in the first place.
Each has a different fix, and you really can’t tell which one it is until you ask. If you’re not sure how to solve what they raise, a quick search in the Todoist Help Center covers most of the specifics.
3. Resist the urge to add
When something feels shaky, the instinct is often to add – a new project, a new label, more structure – to feel more productive. Usually the opposite is what’s needed. A stall rarely means the system is too small; more often it’s become too complex for how the team actually works.
So before you build anything new, look for something to remove. A team should feel the system getting lighter over the first month, not heavier, and simpler is also what keeps everyone pointed at the work that matters.
4. Make room for a small win
Sometimes a drifting teammate doesn’t need a fix; they just need one easy, low-stakes loop closed. Keep it light: “What are you hoping to get done this week, and where could those live in Todoist?” Walk through adding them together, and ask them to mark one complete once it’s done.
The first task someone completes after a stall is what restarts the habit. For them, and often for the people who see it too.
You know you’ve got momentum back when:
- One person who’d drifted is active in the workspace again.
- At least one piece of structure has been simplified or removed.
- A task has been completed since that recovery conversation.
A rollout usually recovers the same way it started, one real task at a time.
One lesson left. It’s a different shape from the rest: the questions your team will actually bring you in the first couple of weeks, and how to answer them so a question doesn’t morph into a complaint. It’s worth going in ready rather than improvising, so it’s the last thing to do before you’re done.
You’ve got this!