I have been using pen and paper for my project management so far, but want to switch to a software based system, because for the number of projects I have nowadays paper and pen are too tedious. I first tried TaskPaper: I liked the interface, but I would like some more capabilities like a project list view, iCal integration and capture without application switching. The I was happy to discover that OmniFocus has come out as a beta, entered 200+ actions and projects into my inbox, and have been struggling to get things going from there. It seems that the capabilities are there, but the interface seems so clumsy that it's painful. But, I'm still hoping that's because I have used the software only for a few days. Hence, I decided to post my gripes here and see what I'm missing -- there seem to be happy users of OmniFocus out there. So here it goes:
1) The Inbox cannot contain projects: In my experience, most of what goes into my inbox turn out to be projects. But, OmniFocus by default captures everything as a new action and, when something turns out to be a project, it disappears from your inbox to the sidebar. I would want it to stay right there in the inbox and ask me to add actions to it -- that's my normal workflow.
2) Making actions to projects requires mouse fiddling: In the Getting Started video, it says that there is a keyboard based way to make a project, but actually it seems like some indented action and is then moved by mouse to the sidebar later in the video.
3) The "someday/maybe" is missing as somebody else already pointed out.
4) The keyboard shortcuts are not intuitive. I immediately got Taskpaper's ":" makes a project, "-" an action, "@" a context. Compared to that CMD-], CMD-CTRL-left arrow, and so on in OmniFocus are cumbersome.
5) That there are folders of actions and projects is confusing to me. At least, these should be less prominent than the basic action/project distinction.
Those five are my main gripes so far. I haven't really gotten past the inbox yet, as you will have noticed, and will keep prodding on for a while. There are some more little gripes: too much bold facing, no keyboard based entry for project folders, "Library" should be called "Projects", loosing text of new context or project when I forget to press CMD-return, backspacing in the inbox should skip empty fields, and an easy way to make a task delegated.
I do like "Quick Capture" a lot by the way. iCal integration I haven't tried, but it sounds also like a great feature. But, overall I feel I haven't gotten how to work OmniFocus yet, and may well go back to my Filofax soon.
-- Uli
1) The Inbox cannot contain projects: In my experience, most of what goes into my inbox turn out to be projects. But, OmniFocus by default captures everything as a new action and, when something turns out to be a project, it disappears from your inbox to the sidebar. I would want it to stay right there in the inbox and ask me to add actions to it -- that's my normal workflow.
2) Making actions to projects requires mouse fiddling: In the Getting Started video, it says that there is a keyboard based way to make a project, but actually it seems like some indented action and is then moved by mouse to the sidebar later in the video.
3) The "someday/maybe" is missing as somebody else already pointed out.
4) The keyboard shortcuts are not intuitive. I immediately got Taskpaper's ":" makes a project, "-" an action, "@" a context. Compared to that CMD-], CMD-CTRL-left arrow, and so on in OmniFocus are cumbersome.
5) That there are folders of actions and projects is confusing to me. At least, these should be less prominent than the basic action/project distinction.
Those five are my main gripes so far. I haven't really gotten past the inbox yet, as you will have noticed, and will keep prodding on for a while. There are some more little gripes: too much bold facing, no keyboard based entry for project folders, "Library" should be called "Projects", loosing text of new context or project when I forget to press CMD-return, backspacing in the inbox should skip empty fields, and an easy way to make a task delegated.
I do like "Quick Capture" a lot by the way. iCal integration I haven't tried, but it sounds also like a great feature. But, overall I feel I haven't gotten how to work OmniFocus yet, and may well go back to my Filofax soon.
-- Uli