OmniFocus makes me a better person because it reminds me to do things, even if they need to be done at a date and time considerably later than when I realize they need to be done.
I agree with Brett on this. I have a lot of unusual things in OmniFocus to help keep me on track with my personal goals and responsibilities. It’s a great tool to get all sorts of things done.
With talk of the Things beta today, I decided not to spend much time with it, and instead re-work my OmniFocus theme. I’m pretty happy with how it came out:
(Click on the image to see a larger version.)
It’s all set in Helvetica Neue, and uses burgundy and brown for due and “due soon” items. You can download it here.
David has put all of wonderful videos on one webpage. If you’re serious about OmniFocus, you need to spend some time on it.
Living with OmniFocus is like having a garden. If you don’t take care of it, weeds take over and ruin it, choking out anything healthy. But if you tend it carefully, it will provide you with beautiful, bountiful results that are delightful.
I didn’t share then about how I keep OmniFocus tended to, but I have a project in OmniFocus named “GTD” that is setup to help keep my system running well.
Back in September, I shared the “Capture Form” I created to take notes in meetings.
I’ve been using this form consistently, but have come to a point where my system breaks down when moving from the paper to my computer. Things aren’t making it in to OmniFocus, iCal, etc. Additionally, in some meetings, I have to have my laptop or iPad with me, so bringing paper and pen seemed like too much to carry.
The ability to have reminders sync via iCloud to iCal on the Mac is a welcome addition to iOS 5. However, this system isn’t nearly as good as it could be.
I set out to try to replicate the core functions of OmniFocus I use. They are:
Here are some notes on things I’ve come across that I like:
As I’ve discussed before, I’m a pretty heavy-duty user of OmniFocus.
Recently, however, I’ve noticed some gaps in my system of managing tasks. Mainly, I struggle getting tasks from “real-life” things into OmniFocus. Tasks that start on my Mac (from Mail, Safari, etc.) are easy to send to the Inbox.
Sadly, most of the time, these “real-life” events are meetings. Say what you will about them, but the reality is that in my day job, meetings are a necessary evil.
For some unknown reason, I’m jonsing to try Omnifocus, the online GTD system of choice for Mac users. That said, my own Moleskine-based GTD system works just fine already. There are certainly advantages to the digital system including easy refactoring of projects and actions and delaying actions until you actually want them to show up in your path. It was these advantages that got me to drop the $80 for it.
To maintain a task list in Evernote is fine and not especially difficult in terms of keeping the data in the app. For me, it gets dicey when I need to access or manipulate the data, particularly on a mobile device. If I keep my tasks in a separate notebook and tagged them all such that I could call them up quickly with a saved search, I’m still looking at what I would consider a prohibitive number of taps + waiting time.
I’ve written at length about OmniFocus here before. It’s a fantastic app, and has quite a following.
This isn’t an OmniFocus-specific phenomenon. Mac nerds cling to and defend their favorite programs will a fervor rarely seen. The TextMate guys beat up us TextWrangler folks on Twitter, while MarsEdit fans scoff at those who like living in WordPress’ web interface.
But in the GTD landscape, the fighting is fierce. Everyone has an opinion on what app and what method is best. But Chris Bowler gets it:
Be sure to check out this screen shot John Rust posted of how he uses the GTD application.
Living with OmniFocus is like having a garden. If you don’t take care of it, weeds take over and ruin it, choking out anything healthy. But if you tend it carefully, it will provide you with beautiful, bountiful results that are delightful.