[frankrei]

Hi,

I've been using OmniFocus since it first came out in beta form. My favorite feature is that I can synch it between multiple machines and on my iPhone as well (even though the iPhone application is unusably SLOW). These are some reflections on why it's not really working very well for me and how it could be made a whole lot better.

OmniFocus works really well as a quick entry database and this is my main use for it. I think of something that needs to be done and that shouldn't be forgotten and then I just quick fire put into OmniFocus for "later".

Unfortunately the one thing I really hate about OmniFocus is that it is absolutely no good at supporting actual work. The items are there and you can look at them, but as soon as you actually want to organize your work day it all becomes terribly useless.

There's no concept of "now" in the entire program. There's no concept of actual planning either.

In other words, it's only a database with categories.

In order to make it really useful, you somehow need to add a completely different interface for the actual work part of GTD.

There should be a "today", "soon", etc category that is orthogonal to normal organization and you should be able to drag & drop work items or projects into that view without moving them out of their place in the database view.

I should at a glance and always be able to see:

"In the morning I'm working on Project X and I need to get at least items A and B done. I need to drop the kids off at school at 2PM and when I'm back I need to call the insurance. This afternoon, I'll be working on Project B and need to phone X around 5PM, just before I go and pick up the kids. Just before the phone rang I was half-way through item A".

Unfortunately, OmniFocus at the moment feels more like DB2: it's a toolbox for creating your own organization but there's no productivity support built into it at all.

There should be an OmniPlan Light built into it. You should be able to schedule tasks informally (sometime today) or more formally (at 13:00 tomorrow) and then move them painlessly to some other time without having to edit 20 timestamps separately. "Move overdue items to soon", etc.

In other words there a workbench interface that let's the user focus on his tasks.