OmniFocus Ideas, Quick Entry and Reminders

[devn]

I've submitted this to the developer list, but I think it's important to have an open discussion rather than private solicitation for features in OF. First off, let me just congratulate the developers working hard on OF personally for putting together a fantastic GTD app. I would just like to submit a couple of my own experiences with analog GTD (Read: pen and paper) and suggest how they might find a nice home in OmniFocus.

QuickEntry, IMHO needs to be a separate application that will run nice and quietly in the background. This is central in DA's book about there being clean lines of separation between different parts of your GTD system. The Inbox shouldn't need the rest of the system to function properly, IMHO. For more than one reason, I think this is why a lot of other GTD apps fail. When I have an idea I want to hit my hotkey and type this second, not fire up an app, navigate to my inbox, click new, and then try to remember what I was thinking about. The absolute smallest number of steps between me and my inbox is crucial.

Another minor suggestion for QuickEntry is double modifier keys to bring it up. I first fell in love with QuickSilver's double-shift, then Google's double-command, and now to complete the triad, I'd love to use double-control to access OmniFocus's QuickEntry.

One last quickie idea I'd like to bring up is setting a "current" task. I would like to be able to click an action and say okay, I'm working on this task right now, and be able to refer back to it should I get distracted. I don't think I'm the only one who gets distracted on the computer and wonders "what was I doing again?"

[xmas]

QuickEntry should work as you want it to, except for the double hot keys.

[chrjohns]

One idea I had today, and I submitted to Omni, is to add "flagged" to the sorting filter so that if I flag something I am working on, it would pop to the top of the list, while unflagged items would still show below it.

[LizPf]

Except Quick Entry won't work if OF isn't running (I just tried it).

I can see what Devn wants ... it would be nice not to leave OF running all the time and still be able to add things to the Inbox. Quicksilver will add some stuff, and that's good (if you run QS), but Quick Entry can do a lot more.

Until I get around to adding more RAM to my PowerBook, I have to watch my app sizes ... I need OF to be small, if it's going to work for me at all. The way I operate, I will keep it open constantly ... still, a stand alone Quick Entry program-let would be a great addition.

--Liz

[guy]

OmniFocus Quick Entry does run as a separate app after OF fires up (per Activity Monitor). Maybe your "stand alone Quick Entry progam-let" idea, won't be so tough for the OmniFolks to do?

In the mean time, my QS now has a trigger to launch OF. Command-option-space launches it, pause a moment to consider a really good next action verb (and allow OF to launch), then ctrl-option-space for Quick Entry. Does this really mean the goodbye to my kGTD inbox trigger...?

[HiramNetherlands]

Until I get around to adding more RAM to my PowerBook, I have to watch my app sizes ... I need OF to be small, if it's going to work for me at all. The way I operate, I will keep it open constantly [...]
--Liz

Same here, even though I'm on a brand spanking new MacBook. I don't have the beta, so I can't check, but I do hope OF will not require too much CPU cycles and memory. In that case, a separate QuickEntry.app is not necessary.

[devn]

I would just like to voice my support again for a separate quick entry application. I understand why the answer to my feature request would be: "well, we have a Quicksilver plugin, so this feature has already been sufficiently implemented without bloating OmniFocus."

I understand why you might think this, but obviously I do not believe it to be true. Look, Quicksilver is great, but I find entering inbox items by Quicksilver to be incredibly tedious. If we are being honest with the end-user's ability to implement the GTD system, we need every single bit of productivity-producing tricks we can find. When I use Quicksilver to enter items, I have to take into consideration syntax, or explicitly specify the property of the inbox item I want to alter. For instance, I need to type: @context="blah" or even "c:". This is totally out-of-control inconsistent with the GTD system. This is /not/ ubiquitous capture. It is tedious capture, "thinking" capture, and is most certainly inefficient.

[jakejohn]

I agree with the need for a separate quick entry application. I would love it.

And getting ToDo items to show up as actual calendar items would make my day.

Thank you for all that you have done,

John

[ptone]

I would just like to voice my support again for a separate quick entry application. I understand why the answer to my feature request would be: "well, we have a Quicksilver plugin, so this feature has already been sufficiently implemented without bloating OmniFocus."

This was discussed several times during the beta. One of the issues is that a quickentry program would have to load nearly as many resources as OF itself, so would not save RAM. The only advantage of it was determined to be a lack of dock icon.

I'm not 100% sure you have seen the quick entry window, it requires no trip to the inbox, can be fired up with a quick keyboard shortcut and dismissed instantly. Its hard to get LESS obtrusive. (although I do like the double modifier tap idea).

#2. Change "Clean Up" to something else. What does the "Clean Up" button do when you click it? It files Inbox actions for you. Shouldn't the name of this button be "File Inbox" or "Organize"?

clean up also hides completed tasks in views. I think there could be a pref to auto cleanup when another app is brought frontmost, or the view changes... Its origin was in the issue with things dissapearing before your eyes when you assigned them to a project.

#3. Is there anyway we can get ToDo items to show up as actual calendar items?

I've written a script to do this, some have had some problems with it, other have had no problems. I have some enhancements planned, but they are on hold while I work on a tool that I think many will find even more interesting.

http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=6434

-P

[Toadling]

I agree with the need for a separate quick entry application.

I don't understand the need or desire for a separate quick entry application. The only way I can see it being of any benefit is if it uses significantly fewer system resources (CPU time or memory) than the main application.

Judging from what I've seen in Activity Monitor, OmniFocus seems very well behaved. It idles nicely (consumes 0% CPU in the background) and has about the same memory footprint as other similar apps. Besides, Mac OS X's memory management is pretty sophisticated and does quite a nice job releasing memory for other apps when needed.

My guess is that a separate quick entry application would probably use the same amount of resources, so what's the point? I think Omni Group's technical judgment should be trusted here.

[ptone]

My guess is that a separate quick entry application would probably use the same amount of resources, so what's the point? I think Omni Group's technical judgment should be trusted here.

I agree, I think the ONLY thing a separate app could add, would be that it could run hidden and not show in the dock, or when CMD-Tabbing.

Now, it just occurred to me, that what Omni may be able to do, would be to have a small deamon that launches at startup and listens for the OF quickentry keyboard shortcut (or clipping or whatever). When this happens, OF could launch as a hidden app (no dock icon). When a user then sends OF a Launch event by double clicking it, it could then appear to launch, but would really just become un-hidden. (I don't mean a simple hide like you can do now, but a run as a background app).

A quit event would still quit, but the listener would stay open to repeat as above.

Not sure what technical hurdles would need to be dealt with, but it would seem to resolve this issue (I personally don't mind it open all the time, but I have 2GB)

-P

[oscarmeier]

I agree that quick entry should work in some fashion without requiring omnifocus to be open. The command shortcut should be universal for the inbox to do it's job of capturing information anytime, anywhere.

[Toadling]

I agree that quick entry should work in some fashion without requiring omnifocus to be open. The command shortcut should be universal for the inbox to do it's job of capturing information anytime, anywhere.

I still don't see the value in running an independent Quick Entry app. Why not just keep OmniFocus running all the time, especially if a separate app consumes the same amount of system resources? Running OmniFocus all the time isn't that costly, at least not on my machine. If it is on yours, you should seriously consider increasing the amount of RAM installed.