Using Omnifocus at Home and Work
 

I've been using Omnifocus at home for about a year now and I really love it. The problem is that at work we are only using PCs. I've been using different ad hoc systems to implement GTD at work, but I don't really like any of them. I'm thinking of putting all of my work items in Omnifocus and just using Omnifocus on my iPhone at work. Has anyone else done this before? Is it practical to use your iPhone at work to enter and review your tasks?

I know one of David Allen's big things is to not have separate systems for work and home, so doing this would unify all of my stuff into one system. I often find myself thinking about work projects at home and vice versa. It would be nice to have everything all in one place.

The only thing giving me pause is user input on an iphone.

If you have a Mac that you can leave running while you go to work, you could get away from the annoyance of using the iPhone keyboard by using email from your PC instead. Use the mail processing feature (see the help for "Processing Mail messages into actions") to turn your emails into actions that will sync to your iPhone. Then you can rearrange them (if necessary) on the iPhone and execute them. Try managing a couple of projects that way and see if it works for you. Remember, you need to leave the Mail app running on the Mac! I'd set it to check your mail as often as possible, which means you should see a lag of about 2-3 minutes between emailing and being able to pull the new action(s) in via sync on the iPhone.

If you need to attach a lot of documents to your work actions, this probably will give you some trouble, but otherwise it seems like a much better solution than having two different systems (especially if you won't have access to the work data when at home).

I tried the email approach for awhile. It was so unsatisfying that I just bought my own Mac for work ;)

I purchased a MacBook for that very purpose and have been using it alongside my Windows machine at work with very good results for the past 9 months. It makes a bit difference having OmniFocus on a Mac client at work. Though a costly solution, OF is well worth it. John

I've thought about buying a Macbook, but that really seems like overkill. I'll try just using the iPhone for a while to see how I like it. After just a few days, I have to say that it is really nice to have a single, unified GTD system.

This sounds like a great solution, unfortunately my company won't allow Macs on the wifi network, so I still wouldn't be able to sync them up.

So far, I've liked inputting everything using my iPod. I don't have the luxury of owning a Mac at all, so I only use my iPod for home and work to input everything, and I haven't had any problems or complaints doing so. So I don't see why only using your iPhone for input can't be feasible.

[QUOTE=marisa8184;71424]This sounds like a great solution, unfortunately my company won't allow Macs on the wifi network, so I still wouldn't be able to sync them up.[/QUOTE]
Not true -- you can run your own wifi network just between your computer and your iPhone/iPod. No hardware or cooperation required. Use the "Create Network..." item in the Airport menu to set it up.

Rereading the whole thread, Marisa8184, what is the scenario you are looking at? The original poster wasn't bringing a Mac to work, just an iPhone, but it sounds like you are thinking of something else. My previous remark in response to you was directed at a situation where you had your Mac and your iPhone in the same place and wanted to sync them but didn't have access to the network. It doesn't make sense for the case of the original poster, however.

Hi jcarucci,

I'm providing a Basecamp to OmniFocus (and vice versa) synchronization called Spootnik ([url]http://www.spootnik.net[/url]). If you like, you can sign up for a one month free trial and check if it solves your problem.

- Lars