[ambi]

I actually found Inbox before I found OF and initially I too liked the idea. However, once I became comfortable with the GTD idea and internalised its steps, I found the "ubiquitous" capture philosophy of Inbox to be, well, too ubiquitous. To my surprise, I found Inbox was holding my hand a little too tightly.

For example, let's stick with email. I try hard to follow Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero approach. Basically, I try to keep my inbox completely empty. This means that, several times a day, I (manually!) check for new mail, and then I methodically and ruthlessly go through each one following the gtd workflow. Most of my email is actually routed straight to the trash and a few can be responded to in a one or two line response so I do that right away. Those that are actionable I use the clip-o-tronic thing-a-ma-bob to send it to OFs inbox. Many of these are simply to read later. Once my email inbox is empty I know all my actionable items are in OFs Inbox ready for processing. Nothing is missed. This *is* a two-step process, unlike Midnight Inbox, bit what I like about it is that I actually *do* have to think about the message a bit. I found that Inbox actually deferred my thinking until later. I prefer to do it right up front because the I can trash things sooner and I LOVE trashing things!

About the capturing thoughts, I do that all the time with OF through the quick entry. Whatever I'm doing, if a thought pops into my mind, I lay down a mighty option-command-space, type in my thought, and I know it is in OFs inbox ready for processing. For files, I highlight a file in Finder, lay down a mighty option-command-. and a link to the file appears in OFs Inbox. It *is* true, as you say, that you have to remember to do this, and it *is* true that this requires thinking. But, again, I found it best, for me, to think about and contemplate every item that crosses my path and put it in it's appropriate place. I found that Inbox just ended up in practice clogging up the entire workflow with too much noise and not enough signal. Coupled with the fact that it is way too buggy, and the developers are a bit on the slow side, I find OF to be a much better fit for me. I also have a few index cards on me to jot down ideas and a good old inbox tray sitting on my desk. About two or three times a day, I cycle through these and empty them.

Finally, I guess I want to summarise by saying that I think Midnight Inbox's greatest strength is also it's greatest weakness; by taking the thought process out of the collection and processing phase, you treat everything in a very uniform manner. But very little of life is so uniform. In the end, it of course is a personal matter. Of the trio of Things, OF, and Midnight Inbox, I find Things to be the least structured, and MI to be the most structured, whereas OF fits somewhere in the middle (probably closer to the structured side), and that's the sweet spot for me.

PS, sorry for the stream of consciousness, I'm procrastinating!