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Originally Posted by morkafur
I don't doubt what you're saying except to say that I know exactly what my list management/to-do needs are.
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LOL. Sorry but I had shared this very same idea and then realized I only know what I know and nothing else. My requirements for list management/to-do needs have evolved over the years and I'm sure will change even further depending on the circumstances and and demands that I will be facing in the future.
But to say that I know exactly what I want is often an illusion that I will fall in and out of. I can now confidently say that I will never know what I want because my list management demands will change over time.
Previously, I was a firm believer in the Franklin-Covey Day Planner management system with the ABC Priority system. It worked OK in college but it definitely won't work for me now. Then later I got into GTD, fell off the bandwagon, and then hopped back on the bandwagon when I discovered an offshoot called Zen-To-Done (ZTD). This was a simpler form of GTD emphasizing the use of habits to adopt GTD over a longer period of time.
Even now, I'm still evolving. I've been slowly incorporating parts of the "Master Your Workday Now" program into my existing GTD setup to fill up existing holes.
So it's very hard for me to say "I know what I want in a task management system."
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I would also say that I don't want to spend a lot of time climbing a learning curve to learn (and adapt to) a strict methodology imposed by the program.
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But sometimes it is worth it to try something. Nobody ever said dieting and exercising would be easy. Although these fad diets like Adkin's diet or the South Beach diet try to make it look easy, it never really is.
Now, GTD is not for everyone and may be not for you at this point and time in your life. But I've found it has worked well for me now.
If you really want something to work, sometimes you need to put in some blood, sweat, and tears into a system to get it to work. The same concept applies to exercising and dieting.
Sometimes I'll have someone ask me to suggest a to-do program. I'd often suggest starting off with Hit List or Things as a way to start them off. When they've finally outgrown it, I'll scale up and introduce them to OmniFocus.
I hope Things or Hit List works for you. Some might even say to try Toodle-Do. As long as the system works for you, we can only be happy that you can get results that you want.
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To me, and apparently to others as well, it's just not an intuitive program and if it doesn't start to feel that way after 3 hours, it's very much unlike 99.5% of programs I've used.
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Powerful programs are almost never intuitive. Photoshop is a prime example of a power user program that requires a bit of work and learning curve to properly utilize its full potential.
Other similar analogies would be:
iPhoto <-> Aperture
iMovie <-> Final Cut Pro X or Adobe Premiere
RapidWeaver <-> Adobe Dreamweaver
I hope you realize that 3 hours is enough time for simpler programs like Hit List of Things. You'll need to spend way more time to just figure out Final Cut Pro X, Aperture, Dreamweaver, or OmniFocus. These programs are on an entirely different level compared to the entry-level programs.
That's why many programs offer a demo period such as 14 days or even 30 days to try out a program. You'll need to spend at least an hour each day learning the nuances and tricks of a program.
Other worthwhile investments would be to hit upon the various OmniFocus resources available online that will help you gain a better understanding of this powerful program.
I can credit the "Creating Flow with OmniFocus" ebook as being a major catalyst to helping me master OmniFocus. It's well worth every penny.
http://www.usingomnifocus.com/
Another valuable source that I've found is here:
http://www.asianefficiency.com/omnifocus/
OmniFocus may not be the right program for you if you're not willing to invest time into learning the GTD methodology first. You'll need to have a reasonable grip of GTD before tackling OmniFocus. I think there are examples of folks being able to use other forms of task management systems with OmniFocus with varying levels of success.
You might also want to look at OmniFocus for iPad. I've often found this easier to use than the Mac version. Omni Group is actually taking the user interface cues they've learned from OmniFocus for iPad and will be incorporating these user interface changes into a future version of OmniFocus for Mac.
The iPad version is what actually got me into doing the Weekly Review. Once I figured out the Weekly Review, I was able to translate that into a habit that I can use on the Mac version.