I have been thinking about this for a long time, but finally got bored of waiting for cloud sync solution for Things and went on a shopping spree and bought Omnifocus for Mac, iPhone and iPad all in one go.

I have managed to set up the cloud sync onto the Beta server and it seems to work very well I am very happy about that.

Now I understand that the principals in OF are very different from Things. I would like to ask from someone who has used both apps, that:

Can Folders in OF be thought as 'Areas of Responsibility' in Things?

Are Projects in OF like Projects in Things?

Are Contexts in OF like Tags in Things?

How about subfolders, I can have subfolders in Projects, now can subfolders have more subfolders and so on and so on infinitely?

Thanks a lot,
Oskari

[MutantSquid]

As another switcher, welcome to the Land of OmniFocus! I recognize your forum handle from my time over in the CC forums.

OF isn't really all that different from Things (IMO), you just have to set it up manually to do what Things does from the start.

Folders work great as Areas. What gives them even more power is that you can nest them, for example I have two main folders, "Work" and "Personal." Inside "Work" I have folders for each class I teach and my work "areas" e.g. "English Projects" Site Projects," "Miscellaneous Projects," and "Future Projects, and in "Personal" I have folders for "Home Projects," "Scheduled Projects, and "Future Projects." What is nice about this approach is that I set up "Personal" and a "Work" perspectives that focus on the top-level folder for each.

As for Projects, they are pretty much the same as they are in Things. In OF, you can set up the actions of a project to be sequential or parallel, and OF will manage them for you. Also, OF allows you to set up a project as a "Single Action List" which I use as a home to all my single tasks that don't have a project; for example I have a "Home Actions" Single Action List that i dump all the miscellaneous tasks I have at home, such as errands like "Renew Drivers License" or "Pay dental bill."

Contexts in OF are almost exactly the same as Tags in Things, but you can only assign one context to a project. One thing that I initally did not like about OF was that it made me feel limited only using one Context. BUT after actually USING the program, I found that I only needed one Context if I was recording the tasks and projects using necessary details. For example, the task "renew drivers license" could easily have a zillion Tags, like "Car," "Errand," "Mail" "Weekend," etc. But recording the task as "Mail drivers license renewal form" in my "Home Actions" SAL tells me this is something to do at or near home, and giving it a context as "Errand" is all I really need.

I think I remember you from the CC forum as well. :)

Thanks a lot for the reply. That was a big help. Feel a bit lost at the moment, but I am sure in time I will feel at home.

Best Regards.

[ksrhee]

Originally Posted by devastat

I think I remember you from the CC forum as well. :)

Thanks a lot for the reply. That was a big help. Feel a bit lost at the moment, but I am sure in time I will feel at home.

Best Regards.

Welcome aboard. I played with two systems when both Things and OF were released several years ago, but I always used OF more than things given its flexibility, ease of entry, excellent support, and professional organization - just name a few. However, a year ago, having realized that, I dropped Things entirely even though I bought their Mac, iPhone, and iPad programs.

I saw what's going on with over-the-air sync with Things last few days, and it just confirmed for me once again, I made the right choice to go with OF exclusively.

Let me know if I can help you in anyway.

Ok I am progressing with my Omnifocus use. There are lots of questions that arises more I am using the program.

I really like the scheduling and Today view in Things, and I know that you can kind of create Today list by using Flags in OF too. What I find really important in my methodology is that I can "plan" my days ahead by using the schedule method. Let's say that I will add a task to happen in two days time, so I schedule it for that day and and it will then automatically appear into today list.

I know that in Omnifocus I can set start date which is in a way the same thing, however is there a way to get certain task to get flagged on the start date, so that it would appear onto "today list" automatically, or do I need to create these today lists manually by flagging items?

One more question is that is there a way to change the date format to european format, currently it is MM/DD/YEAR, and I would like it to be DD/MM/YEAR but haven't found a way to change this, even in my system preferences my mac has been set up to work in european date format.

Thanks alot :)

[ksrhee]

Not sure about the date format, but I would assume it would follow the system format.

As far as duplicating the today's view in Things.

Here is what you might want to try.

1. Create a new perspective call Today
2. Set Grouping to Ungrouped (or you can set it so that it will group to your liking)
3. Sorting by Due Date (again, you can decide how you want the items to be sorted) #2 and #3 offer flexibility that is not offered by Things
4. Set Availability Filter to "Available"
5. Set status filter to Due or Flagged
6. Set estimated time filter to Any duration.

All the items that you flagged as "today" and things that are due today will appear on your list. I set the default due time to be 11:59 pm; so, all the items that show up will be only today's items.

Now the power of OF is its flexibility. I can create another perspective called Planning to have all the items that are available (start date is today or before) and status to be unflagged. This will show up all the items that I can work on today but not on the today's list. I can select items that I do want to work on today by flagging them in the morning, and they will show up on my Today's list.

Again, you can devise as many perspectives as you need. That's the beauty of OF.

[dhthinker]

General FYI:

Started off in Things - do love the GUI. However, needed something more and went to Omnifocus. Got a little cumbersome so went back to Things.

Finally, I'm back to Omnifocus for good. Several reasons:

1. Cloud Sync - sorry Things but I'm not going to wait while you guys try to figure out what everyone else has

2. Structure - the "flexible" structure of Things is nice and enticing. However, when I've got to run a Company and need a systematic way to organize all my activities by department I've come to realize there is nothing better than Omnifocus.

Took awhile but I'm here and that's that.

dhthinker

[wilsonng]

Welcome to the world of OmniFocus!


I think the beauty of OmniFocus is its flexibility. I've found that my OmniFocus setup has evolved over the years to fit any new methodologies that I had been testing out. We are all unique individuals and we have a certain idea of what our task management workflow would look like. As we discuss methodologies in these forums as well as in other user forums, we slowly adopt new ideas and improve our own workflow and quality of life.

Now, come on over and have some of this delicious and refreshing Kool Aid!

[JF_Herschel]

If you mods don't think it would be perceived as a rude nose-thumbing kind of a gesture, I'd say this thread would be a good sticky. It's the most comprehensive and helpful "Getting used to OF from Things" thread I've seen.

[Brian]

It is a very useful thread, but we try to reserve sticky status to threads that will be useful to the majority of visitors. I'm not sure we're quite at that point here.

It does seem like linking to it from the FAQ would be a good idea, though. I'll do that next - thanks for the suggestion!