Hello everyone!
First of all, I would like to thank the whole OF team for thinking about us poor people who have no special interest in GTD but still need an application to help them manage their tasks despite the obvious influence of this organizational method on the development of the application.
Secondly, let me say I chose OmniFocus over the rest because of its high degree of customizability. Unfortunately, despite that fact, OF still is way too GTD oriented and I find myself struggling with it every once in a while. Even the font customization is based on GTD, so I end up deactivating features like coloring "next actions" and sobbing because of my inability to color flagged items instead. I find absolutely no use in having OF tell me what my next actions are supposed to be but do rely very heavily on the flag system and would like to be able to pick up my flagged items with one quick look at the screen. Would it really be too much to ask to add more options to the font changing feature in OF?
On the other hand, I believe that the thing most non-GTD OF users have trouble with is the use of folders and projects. I know this has been discussed over and over again, but I think that the problem could be very easily solved by adding a second category of folders, sub-folders, that could be customized independently. Let me try to explain.
As most people do, the only two folders that I use are called "Work" and "Home". Inside those folders, are projects that are actually "titles" instead of projects. Unfortunately, I find myself forced to use action groups as projects, something that OF does not like at all. I have tried everything to use OF correctly but it just doesn't fit my working method. As a filmmaker, I usually have many projects (literally) in preproduction or postproduction at the same time (spots, music videos, films, etc) that need to be treated separately. I obviously need to have different "folders" for each thing going on at the same time, otherwise having everything under a single "Work" folder would be insane. Inside each folder, I also need sub-folders for the different departments involved (screenplay if I am still writing, cast, production design, cinematography, etc) who also have their own needs and have to be treated separately, and only inside those folders would be the projects and then the actions and/or the action groups. The issue I am constantly having with OF is that it is absolutely impossible to customize the folders and the folders inside other folders separately, meaning that they are treated as if they were hierarchically the same. If I actually did all of this, I would end up with tons of folders that would look exactly the same, one on top of the other, when all I am really asking for is a big "title folder" on top and many other smaller folders piled up underneath it until the next big "title folder" announcing the beginning of a new list of things to do related to another project in the works. Phew, I hope I am not being too incoherent.
Anyway, thank you very much in advance for reading this and I hope my post will be viewed as a suggestion and not a complaint. OF has made my life easier since I discovered it and I am very happy owning every single version of it (desktop, iPhone and iPad). I only wish I was able to organize my life just as GTD dictates so I wouldn't have this kind of issues. Nevertheless, I still use OF many many times a day and intend to keep doing so for a very long time.
Any suggestions would also be highly appreciated!
First of all, I would like to thank the whole OF team for thinking about us poor people who have no special interest in GTD but still need an application to help them manage their tasks despite the obvious influence of this organizational method on the development of the application.
Secondly, let me say I chose OmniFocus over the rest because of its high degree of customizability. Unfortunately, despite that fact, OF still is way too GTD oriented and I find myself struggling with it every once in a while. Even the font customization is based on GTD, so I end up deactivating features like coloring "next actions" and sobbing because of my inability to color flagged items instead. I find absolutely no use in having OF tell me what my next actions are supposed to be but do rely very heavily on the flag system and would like to be able to pick up my flagged items with one quick look at the screen. Would it really be too much to ask to add more options to the font changing feature in OF?
On the other hand, I believe that the thing most non-GTD OF users have trouble with is the use of folders and projects. I know this has been discussed over and over again, but I think that the problem could be very easily solved by adding a second category of folders, sub-folders, that could be customized independently. Let me try to explain.
As most people do, the only two folders that I use are called "Work" and "Home". Inside those folders, are projects that are actually "titles" instead of projects. Unfortunately, I find myself forced to use action groups as projects, something that OF does not like at all. I have tried everything to use OF correctly but it just doesn't fit my working method. As a filmmaker, I usually have many projects (literally) in preproduction or postproduction at the same time (spots, music videos, films, etc) that need to be treated separately. I obviously need to have different "folders" for each thing going on at the same time, otherwise having everything under a single "Work" folder would be insane. Inside each folder, I also need sub-folders for the different departments involved (screenplay if I am still writing, cast, production design, cinematography, etc) who also have their own needs and have to be treated separately, and only inside those folders would be the projects and then the actions and/or the action groups. The issue I am constantly having with OF is that it is absolutely impossible to customize the folders and the folders inside other folders separately, meaning that they are treated as if they were hierarchically the same. If I actually did all of this, I would end up with tons of folders that would look exactly the same, one on top of the other, when all I am really asking for is a big "title folder" on top and many other smaller folders piled up underneath it until the next big "title folder" announcing the beginning of a new list of things to do related to another project in the works. Phew, I hope I am not being too incoherent.
Anyway, thank you very much in advance for reading this and I hope my post will be viewed as a suggestion and not a complaint. OF has made my life easier since I discovered it and I am very happy owning every single version of it (desktop, iPhone and iPad). I only wish I was able to organize my life just as GTD dictates so I wouldn't have this kind of issues. Nevertheless, I still use OF many many times a day and intend to keep doing so for a very long time.
Any suggestions would also be highly appreciated!
Last edited by Brunosc; 2010-08-14 at 05:52 PM..