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I've been using OmniOutliner for GTD in the past and I had a section for Someday / Maybe and kept lists in there. I had a list for Reading/Research which would contain books to read and web pages to read. OO can store clickable URLs that would open Safari. I don't seem to be able to do this in OF, although the text of the URL can be stored, but then I have to copy and paste this into Safari. Purchases consists of 2 lists - Definite Purchases and Possible Purchases. Items to buy online would contain the URL to the page, and other items would just be listed.

I'd like to keep these lists in OF but will lose the functionality I had with OO. How are you managing these types of lists or are you keeping them outside of OF? I don't want to have to use to separate lists for things like this. Am I missing something? If not, will URLs be actionable from within OF in 1.0?
 
Clickable urls work for me in the notes field in OF. I don't think they work in the actual action description though.

I don't keep a lot of my lists in OF, and honestly, I've never really wanted to. My Someday/Maybe list often has long notes or musings attached to some of the list items, and that just wouldn't work as well in OF's (or OO's) notes field as it does in the program I do use (VoodooPad). I have a "wishlist" I keep in OO which is a list of everything I need to purchase in the near future or would like to purchase at some point. Looking at this list every time I get the urge to make an impulse buy usually stops me cold (thank you Merlin Mann). Sounds similar to your purchase lists, but keeping them both in one gargantuan list makes the prospect of buying anything less attractive to me.

The only list I keep in OF is a list of actions cross-referenced to a list of projects and contexts. I kind of hope that the functionality of OF doesn't expand beyond that honestly. I'd rather OF be really really good at just one thing than suffer the debilitating effects of feature creep.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DamonC View Post
OO can store clickable URLs that would open Safari. I don't seem to be able to do this in OF, although the text of the URL can be stored, but then I have to copy and paste this into Safari.
If you put the URL into the attachments section of an action, it becomes clickable. URLs in the title are (currently?) just treated as text.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DamonC View Post
I had a list for Reading/Research which would contain books to read and web pages to read. [...] How are you managing these types of lists or are you keeping them outside of OF? I don't want to have to use to separate lists for things like this.
I was also keeping lists inside OF but stopped because they were cluttering my view of stuff I needed to do. I had movies I'd like to see, books to read, places to eat, etc.

I use Journler for keeping those lists. I generally drop them into OF first when I think about it (ubiquitous capture!) and on my reviews move them into Journler; I use their smart folder hierarchy to manage things, so my "Places to..." folder has subfolders called "... eat", "... visit", etc.

I just like the app, btw, no involvement in any way. http://journler.com/
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by MEP View Post
Clickable urls work for me in the notes field in OF. I don't think they work in the actual action description though.
Thanks, I hadn't noticed that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by MEP View Post
I don't keep a lot of my lists in OF, and honestly, I've never really wanted to. My Someday/Maybe list often has long notes or musings attached to some of the list items, and that just wouldn't work as well in OF's (or OO's) notes field as it does in the program I do use (VoodooPad). I have a "wishlist" I keep in OO which is a list of everything I need to purchase in the near future or would like to purchase at some point. Looking at this list every time I get the urge to make an impulse buy usually stops me cold (thank you Merlin Mann). Sounds similar to your purchase lists, but keeping them both in one gargantuan list makes the prospect of buying anything less attractive to me.
My problem is that I work in 2 different locations on 2 separate computers. I then have my personal computer so I have 3 different GTD OmniOutliner files. If I keep my lists separate, that's a lot of documents I have to carry with me as I like to be able to review my documents from any location that I'm currently at.

Quote:
Originally Posted by MEP View Post
The only list I keep in OF is a list of actions cross-referenced to a list of projects and contexts. I kind of hope that the functionality of OF doesn't expand beyond that honestly. I'd rather OF be really really good at just one thing than suffer the debilitating effects of feature creep.
Would you mind expanding on the cross-referencing part? It sounds interesting. I completely understand about feature bloat. I don't want to see it have too many things added to it. I want to keep everything as simple as possible for my different locations.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jasong View Post
I was also keeping lists inside OF but stopped because they were cluttering my view of stuff I needed to do. I had movies I'd like to see, books to read, places to eat, etc.

I use Journler for keeping those lists. I generally drop them into OF first when I think about it (ubiquitous capture!) and on my reviews move them into Journler; I use their smart folder hierarchy to manage things, so my "Places to..." folder has subfolders called "... eat", "... visit", etc.

I just like the app, btw, no involvement in any way. http://journler.com/
I keep lists for those types of things too. I would automatically think of keeping them in OmniOutliner, have you ever done this? If so, what made you try Journler for this type of thing, and what benefits do you get over keeping the lists there instead of OO?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DamonC View Post
I keep lists for those types of things too. I would automatically think of keeping them in OmniOutliner, have you ever done this? If so, what made you try Journler for this type of thing, and what benefits do you get over keeping the lists there instead of OO?
I did use OO (I was a Kinkless GTD user before OF, and got to kGTD because I loved OO).

Journler is a different beast. It's geared towards longer writings (it's for journaling...), has some neat features for capturing video, audio, pdfs, etc. so it can act as a repository of your life (the References side of GTD).

But the biggest feature of Journler for me is its smart mailboxes, what they call "Smart Families". http://journler.com/features/full/sm...lies/index.php

Using my Places to... example, I have categories called "Places to go (local)", Places to go (distant)", "Places to eat".

I have a parent folder called "Places to...", that gathers all entries that have a category containing the phrase "Places to ". In this folder I can see *all* the places i want to go at one time.

Within this smart folder is another folder called "... Go", which all the stuff in the category "places to go"; this includes both distant and local places.

Finally, a third smart folder is called "Local", and it is defined as categories with the word "local" in it.

If these weren't "families" of smart folders, the "local" folder would contain any entry that happened to have the word "local" in it ("Places to Eat (Local)", for example).

Instead, I see *only* items that are Places To > Go > Local. What's especially neat is if move this "Local" folder under, say, Places to > Eat, it will populate with all the local places I want to eat, without changing the criteria!
 
Quote:
I would automatically think of keeping them in OmniOutliner, have you ever done this?
That's exactly what I do. For me it's perfect, hopefully with the added benefit of being tightly aligned with OmniFocus. Journier or one of the other similar type apps are huge overkill for this type thing (lists).
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by gary View Post
Journier or one of the other similar type apps are huge overkill for this type thing (lists).
One reason for me to love Journler for "keeping lists" is that I can easily add pictures, pdfs, notes, directions, etc. to the entry. So I suppose for me, it's not so much about keeping lists (with OO does just fine) but keeping information.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DamonC View Post
Would you mind expanding on the cross-referencing part? It sounds interesting. I completely understand about feature bloat. I don't want to see it have too many things added to it. I want to keep everything as simple as possible for my different locations.
That's what OF does by design. It keeps your list of actions, projects and contexts and cross-references them for you (by way of relational database). I wasn't trying to describe any unique process on my part, just stating in a roundabout way that I use OF for the task OF was designed for.

I can understand your point about the multiple documents and syncing them up between machines. I can see how having a list-like feature in OF would be helpful in that situation, but I'm not sure how to incorporate that feature into OF in any way that wouldn't clutter up the interface, thereby reducing the utility of OF's primary features.

If it were me, I'd keep copies of my lists (from whatever application I decided to use for my lists) on a USB key drive (automatically synced with Chronosync or some hacked up open-source-based solution of my own) and just take that with me to each machine. Such lists would probably be really small and would easily fit on a USB key (or the spare space on my iPod or my Palm (which might actually be able to read those lists if I saved them in the right format)). Obviously, that's not exactly ideal for every user.

Maybe it would be worth thinking of ways to include some kind of basic list-making feature in OF, but it would have to really well-thought out, and probably not something tacked onto the 1.0 release. Such a feature would likely require a third view (in addition to Planning and Context view) and could easily clutter up the interface so I'm not really sure it would be all that great an idea. The more I think about it really, the less I like the idea, but who knows what the Omni folks will think.

At the very least, such feature would be related to the primary function of OF, as list making is an integral part of GTD.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by MEP View Post
The more I think about it really, the less I like the idea, but who knows what the Omni folks will think.

At the very least, such feature would be related to the primary function of OF, as list making is an integral part of GTD.
I think that Omni has a great list-making application already: OmniOutliner (Pro). I keep plenty of checklists in OOP, and I've been linking to them from the notes field of relevant actions or projects. For instance, one of my projects is planning a series of workshops; in the project notes I put a link to the OOP outline with a list of possible topics and presenters. I have lists of habits, checklists for getting my house ready for winter, etc. Part of my weekly and monthly reviews involves going over the relevant lists.

Some of them can be moved into OmniFocus: my someday-maybe list, for instance, though for the moment I find it psychologically helpful to keep it separate. (Putting something into OmniFocus seems to involve a commitment, even if I mark it as on hold.) Others I prefer to keep separate, and if it makes sense, to link to them from OmniFocus. But I can see how others might prefer having lists in OmniFocus, and it would be in keeping with the GTD approach. (After all, the context and project modes are different lists, albeit with the same data.) Still, it seems to me that one of the strengths of OF as it evolves is that its list-manipulating features are being tweaked to the specific needs of a GTD project and action manager. I find it more useful for general lists to use OOP's feature set. (Or NovaMind, for mind-mapping "lists.")
 
 


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