A heartwarming tale of organization, determination, and redemption. An Oprah Pick of the Week!
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I'm a right-brained "creative" type. I hate being forced into structure. Boundaries frustrate me. I douse categorization with bodily fluids. And yet, I was drowning in a sea of disorganization. Scraps of paper were clogging my nostrils. Dozens of half-empty journals were weighing me down. And worst of all, there was no clarity in my thoughts.
I don't know how I first discovered David Allen's "Getting Things Done," and I suppose it doesn't matter. It was a revelation, especially his description of what it feels like to not have a system that you trust. He was speaking directly to me.
From there, it was an easy leap to OmniFocus. I bought it when it was still in beta, and quickly got to work. But then I got frustrated with its interface and left for Things, something a lot of people seem to have done.
And again, like many others, especially that prodigally kid from the Bible, I returned to OmniFocus, wiser and clearer than I had been before.
Things had a friendlier appearance, and was much simpler and easier to use. And while there, I realized what I missed from OmniFocus, and even more importantly, what drove me away in the first place.
The first was Contexts. To me, that is the weak point of the GTD system. It sounded great on paper, but in actual practice, it frustrated the tar out of me.
I "get" it: You want to organize your tasks by your physical state so that you become more productive. Surely, you can't send out your emails when you're not at your computer! You can't buy office supplies when you're not at the office supply store!
But that didn't work for me. Either I had to totally micromanage my projects to a very ridiculous degree, or not do it at all. My therapist calls this "all or nothing" thinking, and fine, I suffer from that cursed malady.
Even worse, though, I couldn't think that way. If I'm at my computer, I don't want to do all my computer tasks. I want to work on a specific project, and if that project requires me to send an email, then run to the hardware store, and then meet a contact for drinks, then so be it. The realization for me was that I don't have to be as dependent on Contexts if I don't want to be. I need to keep them simple, such as "Errands," "Personal" and "Work." For me, further subdivisions lead to being too scattered, and then to anger. So much anger.
The second thing that drove me away from OmniFocus was the aesthetics of the application, especially the Contexts window and that horrible salmon color. I hated it so much. I couldn't look at it. The layout of the toolbar bugged me too. It was cluttered and crowded and repetitive, and the icons didn't communicate what I needed them to.
This probably sounds silly to many of you, but it's a genuine sentiment. I believe in beauty in everything, even a task manager. And when I came back to OmniFocus, I realized that now, you can actually change the appearance of the application enormously! (To be honest, this functionality may have existed from the beginning and I may not have realized it, because at that time, I didn't know what was bothering me about OmniFocus.)
And this is one of the grandest qualities of OmniFocus: that the developers, be they ninjas or pirates, really, really, really put a lot of thought and polish into their application. I mean, not only did they put in this functionality to change the program's looks, but to also save your settings as themes. Awesome!
Lastly, it seems that the trip to Things was an integral part of getting to terms with OmniFocus. The simpler structure there made me realize that I hadn't organized my projects properly in the first place. The Areas of Responsibility allowed me to really focus on how I can use folders in OmniFocus to separate my projects into functional mental spaces, not just a place to cram stuff.
OmniFocus is now "it" for me. I love the way it looks now. The toolbar is now the model of zen. My projects are organized better and clearer. The program's integration with so many other applications out there, and its peerless syncing are just icing on this near-perfect cake.
What can be improved? I'd love to see OpenMeta support. The inspector window bugs me, and I wish it was a slide-out drawer. And the interface could still stand to be a bit less fussy.
But as of right now, I'm feeling pretty darn good.