[paulduv]

I noticed a recent thread about integrated mindmapping software with OmniFocus, and it got me thinking about just how much of a chasm there is between my planning, and my use of OmniFocus. And I realized, for me, just how unbelievably awesome it would be if a mindmapping "interface" was built in to OmniFocus.

I'm thinking about those two software tools — mindmapping and OmniFocus — are counterparts to discrete stages of the GTD process. I'm quite sure I'm not exploring new conceptual ground — it's pretty fundamental stuff really, but still, when coming across threads and comments about mindmaps, I'm surprised the sentiments aren't more... hopeful, emphatic, pleading.

So I'm wondering how OmniFocus users and developers view the mindmapping/planning piece within OmniFocus:

• Tweeet! That's not what OmniFocus is for. Move along.
• Sure, it'd be handy for some people.
• It'd be ideal, but there are reasons why it can't be done.

Here's my two cents:

Mindmaps represent a crucial and necessary phase in GTD. While OmniFocus is helpful (for me, at least) in big-picture planning, it's not at all what David Allen suggests for planning / blue-sky / 30,000 feet processes. In fact, he emphatically teaches strategies that are not "Thing 1, Thing 2 — subset A and B, Thing 3". Though OmniFocus is not as static and cognitively constraining as a pencil and a sheet of paper, it is fundamentally based on lists and sub-lists, and as such, it's amenable to — no, that's too mild — it's precisely designed to implement — the serial, post-planning "runway" phase.

So I can imagine how unbelievably awesome it would be in my work, but more significantly :) , is it not the case that a pre-OmniFocus software tool, which facilitate and feeds into the OmniFocus/runway stage, would encompass exactly what GTD prescribes, and what its adherents (strict and approximate) must currently do by other means?