Things -> Omnifocus
 

I have been thinking about this for a long time, but finally got bored of waiting for cloud sync solution for Things and went on a shopping spree and bought Omnifocus for Mac, iPhone and iPad all in one go.

I have managed to set up the cloud sync onto the Beta server and it seems to work very well I am very happy about that.

Now I understand that the principals in OF are very different from Things. I would like to ask from someone who has used both apps, that:

Can Folders in OF be thought as 'Areas of Responsibility' in Things?

Are Projects in OF like Projects in Things?

Are Contexts in OF like Tags in Things?

How about subfolders, I can have subfolders in Projects, now can subfolders have more subfolders and so on and so on infinitely?

Thanks a lot,
Oskari

As another switcher, welcome to the Land of OmniFocus! I recognize your forum handle from my time over in the CC forums.

OF isn't really all that different from Things (IMO), you just have to set it up manually to do what Things does from the start.

Folders work great as Areas. What gives them even more power is that you can nest them, for example I have two main folders, "Work" and "Personal." Inside "Work" I have folders for each class I teach and my work "areas" e.g. "English Projects" Site Projects," "Miscellaneous Projects," and "Future Projects, and in "Personal" I have folders for "Home Projects," "Scheduled Projects, and "Future Projects." What is nice about this approach is that I set up "Personal" and a "Work" perspectives that focus on the top-level folder for each.

As for Projects, they are pretty much the same as they are in Things. In OF, you can set up the actions of a project to be sequential or parallel, and OF will manage them for you. Also, OF allows you to set up a project as a "Single Action List" which I use as a home to all my single tasks that don't have a project; for example I have a "Home Actions" Single Action List that i dump all the miscellaneous tasks I have at home, such as errands like "Renew Drivers License" or "Pay dental bill."

Contexts in OF are almost exactly the same as Tags in Things, but you can only assign one context to a project. One thing that I initally did not like about OF was that it made me feel limited only using one Context. BUT after actually USING the program, I found that I only needed one Context if I was recording the tasks and projects using necessary details. For example, the task "renew drivers license" could easily have a zillion Tags, like "Car," "Errand," "Mail" "Weekend," etc. But recording the task as "Mail drivers license renewal form" in my "Home Actions" SAL tells me this is something to do at or near home, and giving it a context as "Errand" is all I really need.

I think I remember you from the CC forum as well. :)

Thanks a lot for the reply. That was a big help. Feel a bit lost at the moment, but I am sure in time I will feel at home.

Best Regards.

[QUOTE=devastat;95420]I think I remember you from the CC forum as well. :)

Thanks a lot for the reply. That was a big help. Feel a bit lost at the moment, but I am sure in time I will feel at home.

Best Regards.[/QUOTE]

Welcome aboard. I played with two systems when both Things and OF were released several years ago, but I always used OF more than things given its flexibility, ease of entry, excellent support, and professional organization - just name a few. However, a year ago, having realized that, I dropped Things entirely even though I bought their Mac, iPhone, and iPad programs.

I saw what's going on with over-the-air sync with Things last few days, and it just confirmed for me once again, I made the right choice to go with OF exclusively.

Let me know if I can help you in anyway.

Ok I am progressing with my Omnifocus use. There are lots of questions that arises more I am using the program.

I really like the scheduling and Today view in Things, and I know that you can kind of create Today list by using Flags in OF too. What I find really important in my methodology is that I can "plan" my days ahead by using the schedule method. Let's say that I will add a task to happen in two days time, so I schedule it for that day and and it will then automatically appear into today list.

I know that in Omnifocus I can set start date which is in a way the same thing, however is there a way to get certain task to get flagged on the start date, so that it would appear onto "today list" automatically, or do I need to create these today lists manually by flagging items?

One more question is that is there a way to change the date format to european format, currently it is MM/DD/YEAR, and I would like it to be DD/MM/YEAR but haven't found a way to change this, even in my system preferences my mac has been set up to work in european date format.

Thanks alot :)

Not sure about the date format, but I would assume it would follow the system format.

As far as duplicating the today's view in Things.

Here is what you might want to try.

1. Create a new perspective call Today
2. Set Grouping to Ungrouped (or you can set it so that it will group to your liking)
3. Sorting by Due Date (again, you can decide how you want the items to be sorted) #2 and #3 offer flexibility that is not offered by Things
4. Set Availability Filter to "Available"
5. Set status filter to Due or Flagged
6. Set estimated time filter to Any duration.

All the items that you flagged as "today" and things that are due today will appear on your list. I set the default due time to be 11:59 pm; so, all the items that show up will be only today's items.

Now the power of OF is its flexibility. I can create another perspective called Planning to have all the items that are available (start date is today or before) and status to be unflagged. This will show up all the items that I can work on today but not on the today's list. I can select items that I do want to work on today by flagging them in the morning, and they will show up on my Today's list.

Again, you can devise as many perspectives as you need. That's the beauty of OF.

Ok I have now managed to do a nice Today list where all flagged items as well as due/due soon items will appear.

However a major problem I have is I cannot set items that should be starting today to appear in the list, unless these items have a due date.

That is very problematic as I rarely use due dates (unless there really is an due date for the task). So what I want to do is let's say have a task 'buy new monitor' then schedule it -> I know that next saturday I will have good time to buy the monitor, however I don't necessarily need it next saturday so no point putting a due date.

Then I want this task to appear on today list on Saturday to remind me that its a good time to go and buy the monitor.

So is there a way to do this in Omnifocus?

Best Regards.

Assign a start date to the task in addition to flagging the task. That combination will work just the same as scheduling a task/move to Today does in Things.

So you mean that as I assign a start date, I flag the item at the same time? Doesn't that mean then that it will arrive on today list before the start date as I have flagged the item - and flagged items will appear in today straight away?

Thanks, I think I got it now.

I have to set availability filter to Available.
Status filter to Due or Flagged.

Then when I set a start date, AND flag the item, it will appear in the today list even there is no due date at all with the task.

Great I am very happy this is possible i OF as I heavily rely on start dates on my methodology :)

If anyones interested, after an intensive 6 hour session I have now managed to make Omnifocus work very much like Things. I now have Today, Next, Scheduled and Someday perspectives in my OF. This is great as i get the workflow of Things as well as all the benefits of Omnifocus (nested projects, forecast, advanced reviewing, great project view, cloudsync etc..)

Only "extra mile" I have to do is that when I schedule my tasks, I have to remember to flag them in order to get them automated into Today list on a start date (as well as to get my Scheduled perspective to be formatted correctly). However I can still flag items to appear onto Today list.

I have no idea how you are "supposed" to use Omnifocus, but this gives me a great startup in a familiar methodology I so much have grown to love, yet it gives me the flexibility to use the advanced features of OF.

I didn't think this was possible, but it was.

P.S Wish there was a way on the iPhone app to get chosen perspectives into the main screen like in the iPad version.

[QUOTE=devastat;95451]If anyones interested, after an intensive 6 hour session I have now managed to make Omnifocus work very much like Things. I now have Today, Next, Scheduled and Someday perspectives in my OF. This is great as i get the workflow of Things as well as all the benefits of Omnifocus (nested projects, forecast, advanced reviewing, great project view, cloudsync etc..)

Only "extra mile" I have to do is that when I schedule my tasks, I have to remember to flag them in order to get them automated into Today list on a start date (as well as to get my Scheduled perspective to be formatted correctly). However I can still flag items to appear onto Today list.

I have no idea how you are "supposed" to use Omnifocus, but this gives me a great startup in a familiar methodology I so much have grown to love, yet it gives me the flexibility to use the advanced features of OF.

I didn't think this was possible, but it was.

P.S Wish there was a way on the iPhone app to get chosen perspectives into the main screen like in the iPad version.[/QUOTE]

Great.

If you don't want to use due dates at all and use start dates exclusively, you can set up the perspective focusing on start dates. I have a view that shows all available tasks grouped by start dates and sorted by due dates within the group.

Again, the key is flexibility offered by OF. I can put several perspectives on the toolbar and flip back and forth . . .

I believe you will realize that once you have set up the system in OF, you will do doing more to getting things done rather than spending more time trying to work around the limitations imposed by Things.

My understanding as far as OF for Mac, iPhone, and iPad is that they will migrate best of features of each version onto other platforms, but certain things will be different given different platform design philosophy (e.g., screen size, etc.).

[QUOTE=devastat;95448]Thanks, I think I got it now.

I have to set availability filter to Available.
Status filter to Due or Flagged.

Then when I set a start date, AND flag the item, it will appear in the today list even there is no due date at all with the task.

Great I am very happy this is possible i OF as I heavily rely on start dates on my methodology :)[/QUOTE]


My version of Today is pretty much the same but I set it to:

Context Filter: Remaining
Grouping: Due
Sorting: Due
Availability: Available
Status Filter: Due or Flagged
Estimated Time Filter: Any Duration

I tend to think that I want my "due" items up on top and then flagged items on the bottom.

I really try to knock off tasks in my "Today" perspective before looking at the other perspectives.

Due items are time sensitive and should/must be done. I look setting it to show Due items in 1 week. This gives me at least a 7 day heads-up notice of any incoming deadlines.

Then the flagged items are my Big Rocks of the Week that I am currently interested in.

Once a week during my Weekly Review, I unflag everything and then go through my projects to flag or reflag my Big Rocks. This gives me a chance to refresh and change my Big Rock projects.


In addition, I have a "My Agenda" perspective that is set to:

Context Filter: Remaining
Grouping: Context
Sorting: Due
Availability Filter: Available
Status Filter: Any Status
Estimated Time Filter: Any Duration


This is more of a general list of all the Next Actions that are available to me. This perspective shows a list of all Next Actions that I can do if I don't have anything left in my "Today" perspective.

Am I missing something, or is there no way to get a task to repeat on something like "1st Tuesday of the month" as you can in Things?

We've got a feature request open on that kind of repeat pattern, but I'm afraid it's not supported in current versions of OmniFocus. If you send mail to the [EMAIL="omnifocus@omnigroup.com"]support ninjas[/EMAIL], they can attach you to that request. (Ones with more customers attached tend to get assigned higher priority.)

[QUOTE=devastat;95451]If anyones interested, after an intensive 6 hour session I have now managed to make Omnifocus work very much like Things. I now have Today, Next, Scheduled and Someday perspectives in my OF[/QUOTE]
I wonder if you'd care to share your recipe for your Next, Scheduled and Someday perspectives? I've found your Today approach useful in replicating some of what I enjoy in Things but I'm not very clear on the rest of it. Any more guidance you can render would be appreciated.

[QUOTE=wilsonng;95526]My version of Today is pretty much the same but I set it to:

Context Filter: Remaining
Grouping: Due
Sorting: Due
Availability: Available
Status Filter: Due or Flagged
Estimated Time Filter: Any Duration
[/QUOTE]

My today perspective is the same except under Context Filter I have 'active'. Can I ask what the advantages of changing it to 'remaining' are?

@Andrew Scott Sure, here are my perspectives:

[B]TODAY[/B]

[B]Context[/B] viewmode ([B]Context Sidebar:[/B] Remaining)
[B]Grouping:[/B] Ungrouped
[B]Sorting:[/B] Duration (I use estimate column for re-ordering tasks in Today list)
[B]Availability Filter:[/B] Available
[B]Status Filter:[/B] Due or Flagged
[B]Estimated Time:[/B] Any Duration

[B]Restore:[/B]
Layout
Selection

[B]Always[/B] open in a new window

[B]NEXT[/B]

[B]Context[/B] viewmode ([B]Context Sidebar:[/B] Remaining)
[B]Grouping: [/B]Project
[B]Sorting:[/B] Project
[B]Availability Filter:[/B] Available
[B]Status Filter:[/B] Any Status
[B]Estimated Time Filter:[/B] Any Duration

[B]Restore:[/B]
Layout
Selection

[B]Always[/B] open in a new window

[B]SCHEDULED[/B]

[B]Context[/B] viewmode ([B]Context Sidebar:[/B] Remaining)
[B]Grouping:[/B] Start
[B]Sorting:[/B] Start
[B]Availability Filter:[/B] Remaining
[B]Status Filter:[/B] Flagged
[B]Estimated Time Filter:[/B] Any Duration

[B]Restore:[/B]
Layout
Expansion
Selection

[B]Always[/B] open in a new window

NOTE! You have to flag items when you schedule them. Otherwise they won't appear into today list nor be seen in Schedule Perspective.

[B]SOMEDAY[/B]

[B]Context[/B] viewmode ([B]Context Sidebar:[/B] Remaining)
[B]Grouping:[/B] Project
[B]Sorting:[/B] Project
[B]Availability:[/B] Remaining
[B]Status Filter:[/B] Any Status
[B]Estimated Time Filter:[/B] Any Duration

[B]Restore:[/B]
Layout
Selection

[B]Always[/B] open in a new window

[B]FORGOT TO FLAG?[/B] (This prevents me from forgetting to flag Scheduled tasks)

[B]Context[/B] viewmode ([B]Context Sidebar:[/B] Remaining)
[B]Group Actions By:[/B] Start
[B]Sort Actions By:[/B] Start
[B]Availability:[/B] Remaining
[B]Status:[/B] Unflagged
[B]Duration:[/B] Any Duration

[B]Restore:[/B]
Layout
Expansion
Selection

[B]Always[/B] open in a new window

Thanks for your swift response. Very useful. Your settings are a little different to the ones I was experimenting with. I'll try them for a while and see how they feel.

[QUOTE=gary;95687]My today perspective is the same except under Context Filter I have 'active'. Can I ask what the advantages of changing it to 'remaining' are?[/QUOTE]

doh... you're right. I didn't really need remaining. I guess I had overlooked it because I usually have this Today context set to open in a new window with the toolbar and the left sidebar hidden. This gives me proper focus.

I'll be changing it now but it doesn't seem to affect anything really because I don't have the sidebar shown.

Thanks. :-D

[QUOTE=devastat;95688]NOTE! You have to flag items when you schedule them. Otherwise they won't appear into today list nor be seen in Schedule Perspective.[/QUOTE]

That's the missing piece! I can't believe I had never figured that out. What a relief! Thank you.

[QUOTE=wilsonng;95695]doh... you're right. I didn't really need remaining. I guess I had overlooked it because I usually have this Today context set to open in a new window with the toolbar and the left sidebar hidden. This gives me proper focus.

I'll be changing it now but it doesn't seem to affect anything really because I don't have the sidebar shown.

Thanks. :-D[/QUOTE]

No problem. I kept switching between both and couldn't find a difference :)

[QUOTE=gary;95803]No problem. I kept switching between both and couldn't find a difference :)[/QUOTE]

I looked at my sidebar. If I set Context filter to Remaining, it will show all contexts in the sidebar - including contexts that have no tasks in it.

If I set the Context filter to Active, it will show contexts that have at least 1 task in it.


I was thinking that it might be a good way of pruning contexts that I no longer need if I set it to Remaining.

Hi,

I am yet another former user of Things. The folks over at CulturedCode are a nice bunch, but I couldn't continue to wait for a decent cloud synching solution to emerge. All in all, I'm quite happy with OmniFocus, and The Omni Group in general. You can just tell the folks here are serious about what they do, and are very knowledgeable to boot.

I've read GTD a few times, but I always fell off the wagon. Whether or not this had anything to do with the lack of motivation I had to use the system due to inept software is anyone's guess. I'd say it's about 50/50.

Purchasing OmniFocus has re-motivated me to want to commit to the GTD lifestyle. I just did my initial purge of all of my thoughts and things I had to do out of my mind and into OmniFocus, and I feel like a 10-pound weight has been lifted off my chest. That feeling alone is worth the price.

I hope I can stick with it this time around. I know that the quality of life that results from having all of those incomplete loops out of your head and onto "paper" is worth the dedication.

Is there anyone else out there like me that struggles to stick to their regimen? Or maybe you were that way in the past. What got you over your hump?

Hah, I feel like I just poured out my heart at an AA meeting.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks guys,

Jeff

Welcome to the forums, Jeff!

From what I'd seen working with customers over the years, my biggest piece of advice would be to not try to completely overhaul your workflows all at once. It sounds great as a theory, but folks often forget that learning takes time and effort, especially at the start.

I see a lot of folks get frustrated and overwhelmed at this point. They wanted to be getting more done, but they tackle too much and feel like they're getting less done because they're trying to do too much at once.

Instead, I'd recommend you start by building the Capture habit - get things recorded so you don't have to worry about forgetting it. Gives you some stress release, and should be doable without reducing your overall productivity.

At the beginning, do a one-hour weekly review, organizing your info and marking off stuff you've completed. Then, once you get your feet under you, you can scale up the effort you spend on the "organize" and "do" steps, which is where you'll see the real productivity gains.

It's a bit like starting a new exercise regimen - there are benefits to be had, but you have to start gradually to get to the point where they become apparent.

Hope that helps! If you have more questions, fire away either here or in a new thread; we've got some very helpful folks here, for which I am eternally grateful. :-)

I agree with what Brian says. GTD isn't something that you pick up right away. I remembering being overzealous and trying to do all the steps at one time only to fall off the wagon.

Adopting the GTD system takes time. I took my cues from Zen To Done:

[url]http://zenhabits.net/zen-to-done-ztd-the-ultimate-simple-productivity-system/[/url]

This version of GTD argues that you should get efficient at one part of the GTD system and then go to the next step.



For me, OmniFocus/GTD finally clicked in when I started doing the weekly review. During the weekly review, I prune my OmniFocus projects. Look for projects that can be deleted because they have been de-prioritized (either the time has passed that it is no longer relevant or I finally realized that this project is no longer important to me).

It's hard to trust your project/task list if you don't review it. By reviewing it every week, you'll be confident that your projects and tasks are still relevant today and there is no clutter in your life. Be vicious and go through your projects.

I tend to set new projects automatically to "On Hold" status in my Someday/Maybe folder. I already have enough active projects to keep me busy. During the weekly review, I'll go through my active projects and see which ones can be put back into Someday/Maybe. Then I'll look at my On Hold projects to see which ones I want to activate.

By placing many of my projects on hold (Someday/Maybe), I don't have to worry about seeing those project/tasks in my context view.

HTH

I've read GTD and I'm due to read it again, but I really like the idea of taking GTD one step at a time. I'm very intrigued by the idea of mastering the Capture habit first and I wanted to ask how everyone goes about doing that. I'm not so much concerned with whether you write things down on paper first. I'm curious how the inboxes or perspectives are set up. I think there could be a lot learned from seeing how everyone else has made OF work for them.

Devstat — Welcome over to Omnifocus. There seems to be quite a few of us migrating from Things.

Is there a way you can post a screenshot of your TODAY perspective? I would love to see how this works.

Thanks.

Thought I would chime in here.

Devastat started a short synopsis within the Things forum as well about OmniFocus (hello Devastat!). So, for the sake of my own interest, I tried out OF over the weekend. Here's my 2c (copied over from the Things forum) ...

**************
Things is a task management application with a focus on tasks as actions to be scheduled for time, filed in projects or areas, and tagged for filtering on various points of relevance. Its strongest features(*) are its consistent and generally intuitive user-interface; ease of entering, filing, filtering, and tagging actions, projects, or areas; flexibility to tag actions in various ways; and self-contained approaches to presenting views of the data base of actions.

OmniFocus is a task management application with a focus on projects that have actions to be set in context, sequenced in flow, scheduled for time, marked for duration, and flagged for importance. Its strongest features(*) are the ability to schedule sets of tasks for parallel, sequence, or one-step processing and the flexibility for how to store and view the data base of actions.

(*) - out of the box ... YMMV as you tweak the application
**************

As a note in context of this thread, I have found that NOT using a diligent "Things" approach (that has Today, Next, .... lists) currently works better for me. I just keep a Next perspective. The ability to schedule start and due dates on actions, as well as the ability to set those actions to be sequential, parallel, or one-step for processing, has more than adequately pared down on what actions appear in this Next list, so that I have no real need to further sub-group actions explicitly in to a "Today" type list.

@thackett Hi thackett nice to see you here! Sorry i just noticed your post now. I will put on a screenshot of my Today perspective, do you mean the layout or the settings?

@DrJWWMac Good to see you here!

@thackett This is what my Today perspective looks like.

[ATTACH]1850[/ATTACH]

Notice that I use the estimated time column for ordering tasks in my today list. For anyone interested, here is more discussion about settings in the Today perspective: [url]http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=20623[/url]

And a very useful video (when creating the layout for it): [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIu8JI4rKQM[/url]

And here is my toolbar in the "Things" setup.
[ATTACH]1852[/ATTACH]

Things > Omnifocus > Things > Omnifocus FINALLY
 

General FYI:

Started off in Things - do love the GUI. However, needed something more and went to Omnifocus. Got a little cumbersome so went back to Things.

Finally, I'm back to Omnifocus for good. Several reasons:

1. Cloud Sync - sorry Things but I'm not going to wait while you guys try to figure out what everyone else has

2. Structure - the "flexible" structure of Things is nice and enticing. However, when I've got to run a Company and need a systematic way to organize all my activities by department I've come to realize there is nothing better than Omnifocus.

Took awhile but I'm here and that's that.

dhthinker

Welcome to the world of OmniFocus!


I think the beauty of OmniFocus is its flexibility. I've found that my OmniFocus setup has evolved over the years to fit any new methodologies that I had been testing out. We are all unique individuals and we have a certain idea of what our task management workflow would look like. As we discuss methodologies in these forums as well as in other user forums, we slowly adopt new ideas and improve our own workflow and quality of life.

Now, come on over and have some of this delicious and refreshing Kool Aid!

If you mods don't think it would be perceived as a rude nose-thumbing kind of a gesture, I'd say this thread would be a good sticky. It's the most comprehensive and helpful "Getting used to OF from Things" thread I've seen.

It is a very useful thread, but we try to reserve sticky status to threads that will be useful to the majority of visitors. I'm not sure we're quite at that point here.

It does seem like linking to it from the FAQ would be a good idea, though. I'll do that next - thanks for the suggestion!