[morkafur]

Originally Posted by endoftheQ

Hey Morkafur,

"Yuck!", I'm afraid is sadly right. I've been using Omni products for a longer than I care to remember but OmniFocus has become incredibly dated and it's now an unholy mish-mash even for those poor fundi-GTD'ers chasing the Holy Grail of the perfect GTD system.

If the benchmark for you is how many things you get done and the ease of doing so, rather than how you GTD'd them, then give OF a miss. There have been some fine recommendations above and I've discovered that a variety of apps combined make for the most productive use of my time, rather than desperately trying to shoehorn tasks into this old-fashioned clog.

OF obviously still has its fans but having had it since launch, read the books, used it for years, bought the iPhone and iPad versions and watched release-after-release across platforms, I've come to the conclusion that for me it's a case of watching others applaud the Emperor's New Clothes.

Of course, YMMV!

Thanks for your reply!

I posted an apparent bug where OF is not showing a to-do that's "due" today.

I think I'll just remove OF until a happier version comes out.

"Things" isn't as full featured, but it's nice to look at, is VERY easy to use, and doesn't miss any due dates.

- m

[wilsonng]

I do have to say the OmniFocus can be downright fugly and certainly not the easiest program to use.

But I keep coming back to it because I just can't find some of the unique features in the competitors. Let's compare:

* I would personally love to do away with OmniFocus' inspector window and use an inline editor similar to Things or Hit List.



* I'd like to get more robust repeat features (i.e. Repeat on the first and third Wednesday of the month).

Things doesn't have the robust user interface customization that OmniFocus has. All I can see is the ability to change the size of the font. OmniFocus allows me to tweak and customize the font and color scheme to what I want. Granted, I'm too lazy to figure out color and font schemes and I'm fairly sure that most folks just want to use several built-in themes. You can Google for OmniFocus themes and try out a variety of them so that's nice.

I personally found the Asian Efficiency OmniFocus theme very thoughtful with their color scheme. You can see the download link on this page:

http://www.asianefficiency.com/omnifocus/

I've personally tweaked it a bit further to help differentiate action groups, project groups, and contexts.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5383211/Wils...ciency%20theme

It is certainly amazing what a little change can do when you're able to customize the themes. I actually like "The Emperor's New Clothes" when I can change to a different OmniFocus theme.



* I did like that Things and Hit List have some built-in views for Today, Upcoming (Scheduled), Someday/Maybe. OmniFocus doesn't come with these right of the box. I wished that OmniFocus had these perspectives already preset/created and then allow the user to delete these perspectives if desired.

Creating perspectives can be an intimidating feature and is not obvious to the first time user. However, after getting comfortable with creating perspectives, I feel more comfortable with creating my own views for Today, Someday/Maybe, Active, and Upcoming.

Hopefully OmniFocus 2 will come with some preset perspectives and still allow us to create our own perspectives in a more user friendly way.



* Omni Group finally has their cloud syncing service which is free at the moment. I've seen the Hit List does have an option for monthly and yearly fees for cloud syncing. I wouldn't be surprised if Omni does eventually get around to charging for their syncing service. Or they could just try to utilize iCloud. Of course, doing cloud syncing isn't easy. If Apple couldn't get it right with MobileMe, then Omni and other companies are gonna have a heck of a time getting iCloud syncing just right. Even today, I am slowly seeing a trickle of developers finally get their iCloud syncing down and consistently working after a few attempts at getting it to work.



* The biggest feature that keeps me coming back to OmniFocus is the review function. I just can't function without it. The secret sauce to GTD is doing your weekly review - trimming the hedges, cutting the grass, and weeding out all the projects/tasks that are no longer relevant and just cluttering up your project/task list.

I like the ability to set different review intervals for different projects. Some projects only need to be reviewed once a quarter (every 3 months). Other projects can be done on a bi-weekly or weekly basis. This cuts my weekly review time by a lot. I only have to review projects/tasks when I need to. If I wanted to, I can also just review everything to get an overall picture but I rarely find the need to do that.

Using OmniFocus on the iPad actually helped me kickstart the habit of weekly review because the review function on the iPad is so friendly to use.

In Things and Hit List, I'd still have to review everything. There is no way to set reminders to review everything. This either adds considerable time for me to review or I just end up turning numb and just skimming quickly over a long list of projects/tasks and just wish I could get it over with.



I have been tempted to peek at other programs but the weekly review function has kept me firmly in the OmniFocus camp.

[morkafur]

Originally Posted by wilsonng

I do have to say the OmniFocus can be downright fugly and certainly not the easiest program to use.

But I keep coming back to it because I just can't find some of the unique features in the competitors.

Wow, lots of good info there. Thanks.

You mentioned Omni Focus 2. Based on the development schedule they seem to have, that may not be out for 10 years. ;)

I love the omni products, OF is an exception.

Since I've already paid for Things and I have OF to-dos that don't even show up in the "Due" perspective (I agree with you about the configurability in OF; I like it), I'll stick with Things and wait and hope that OF 2 (1.5?) is a major face lift and is easier to use.

I'm baffled why a to-do that started yesterday and ends at the end of October with a daily repeat doesn't show up as a to-do in the "Due" perspective.

Who has time for that with hundreds of to-dos? Sort of defeats the purpose, right?

So far, Things hasn't missed a beat.

:(

-m

[wilsonng]

I think items that have a due date will appear in the Due perspective.

Having a start date as yesterday will allow a task to show up in context mode starting yesterday.

We go into project mode and "plan" our tasks/projects. We go into context mode and start "doing" our tasks/projects.

Only use due dates for items that have a real deadline (i.e. something unsavory happens if a certain date passes).

Things like due dates would be:

Pay Uncle Sam or file tax extension by April 15th
Get wife birthday present before her birthday


I would never put a due date on something like "cut the grass" because no serious consequences will occur. I'll just push the start date further into the future (plus one week). Of course, this is only good if I don't happen to be living in a neighborhood where the community rules states that I must maintain my lawn.

You might be confusing start dates and due dates in OmniFocus. Try Googling for OmniFocus start due date.


I think I saw this here:

http://help.omnigroup.com/ipad/omnif...Calendars.html


This is from the OmniFocus for iPad help screen but the core concept of start dates versus due dates is explained here.

Well, as for 10 years.... I dunno. Omni has been going for broke and pushing out tons of stuff lately. When the iPad came out, Omni Group and many developers immediately changed their plans and prioritized iPad app development heavily.

Let's see.... We now have OmniGraphSketcher, OmniGraffle, OmniFocus, and OmniOutliner for the iPad. We still have updates to OmniFocus for iPhone. Then they also released OmniPlan 2 for Mac recently with talks about OmniPlan for iPad coming. They are deep in development for OmniOutliner 4 for the Mac and presumably the iPad. A lot of the code work from OmniOutliner 4 will be shared with OmniFocus 2.

So I'm guessing that we will see OmniOutliner 4 first and then OmniFocus 2 a few months later.



This is a February 20, 2012 article with Omni CEO Ken regarding OmniFocus 2.

http://www.macstories.net/stories/in...oups-ken-case/


So maybe we'll see something by the end of 2012?



As we can see by Omni's OmniFocus, Cultured Code's Things, and Potion Factory's Hit list development, developing a task management program isn't easy. It becomes even harder when you're trying to make a desktop program play nice with an iPad and/or iPhone version as well.



You can set a task that will repeat itself 1 day after completed. When you check off the task today, it will create the same task set to start tomorrow. OmniFocus will not be creating 100 iterations of the same task. It will create the next task when you check it off as done. That should help keep the clutter down.

[morkafur]

Originally Posted by wilsonng

I think items that have a due date will appear in the Due perspective.

Having a start date as yesterday will allow a task to show up in context mode starting yesterday.

I have a due date of October 31, 2012 on this to-do with a repeat frequency of every 1 day. I have "Due" set in OF's preferences to show ANYTHING that's due within a week.

Yet, this to-do does not show up in the Due perspective or the Context Mode.

What am I missing?

Thanks,

-m

[whpalmer4]

You're missing a bunch of things :-)

The stock due date views only show things due within your "due soon" interval, or in the past. So, if you've got Due Soon set to 7 days, if you've got something that is due 10 days from now, it will not appear in the stock Due view. You can change that by editing the perspective to show Status Filter: Any Status instead of Due Soon (Due or Flagged and Due and Flagged have the same behavior as Due Soon). I guess the idea is that only showing you the items due in the very short term is less likely to paralyze you, but I wish they had a separate knob for the length of that display, as I'd like to see due items in the next several weeks, but only have the due soon styling applied to items due in the next couple of days.

Setting a start date and a due date on a repeating action does *not* tell OmniFocus you want it to repeat until the due date. It specifies when the first item starts and is due. When that item is completed, the next one will be created by adding the repeat interval according to the repeat policy and setting the new start and due dates to have the same relative position to each other. You haven't specified something that repeats every day until October; you've specified something that needs to be completed by sometime in October, and when you mark it complete, another one will pop up with a similarly wide span between start and due date!

[whpalmer4]

If you do want a repeating action that finishes at some point in the future, add a separate action with both a start date and a due date at the time you want the repeat to end, telling you to remove the repeating task.

[morkafur]

Originally Posted by endoftheQ

Hey Morkafur,

"Yuck!", I'm afraid is sadly right. I've been using Omni products for longer than I care to remember but OmniFocus has become incredibly dated and it's now an unholy mish-mash even for those poor fundi-GTD'ers chasing the Holy Grail of the perfect GTD system.

If the benchmark for you is how many things you get done and the ease of doing so, rather than how you GTD'd them, then give OF a miss. There have been some fine recommendations above and I've discovered that a variety of apps combined make for the most productive use of my time, rather than desperately trying to shoehorn tasks into this old-fashioned clog.

OF obviously still has its fans but having had it since launch, read the books, used it for years, bought the iPhone and iPad versions and watched release-after-release across platforms, I've come to the conclusion that for me it's a case of watching others applaud the Emperor's New Clothes.

Of course, YMMV!

Good info, thank you!

-m

[morkafur]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

If you do want a repeating action that finishes at some point in the future, add a separate action with both a start date and a due date at the time you want the repeat to end, telling you to remove the repeating task.

What I would expect (need) from the software (as Things does it) is that if I schedule a task's start date, a tasks end date, and a repeat frequency, that that task will show up in the "Due" prospective when it's within the number of dates from the Due Date (as configured in preferences).

So, for a daily task, there should be a Due task each day for this (daily frequency) task.

From these postings here on the forum, OF doesn't appear to work this way but I'm not about to change my needs to adapt to a methodology or to this software.

I now have enough information to pass on OF.

Thanks,

-m

[wilsonng]

but if you set the start date, you'll see it in your context perspectives. The start date enables you to see a task in context mode and doesn't necessarily mean that you'll start it on that particular date.

OmniFocus does tend to be rather restrictive in what is defined as "Due Soon." We would have to go into preferences, click on "Data" and select the "Due Soon" popup menu. The furthest you can see out is 1 week.

In another book "Master Your Workday Now", the author discusses that he has generally found in his studies that most people would put higher urgency on anything within the next 7 days. Anything beyond that is still considered "over the horizon" and not quite as urgent.

When you set the repeating task to Due tomorrow, what happens if the deadline has passed? Does anything of grave consequence happen? If it does then it is considered to have a "hard deadline."

We often have good intentions of finishing a task but make the mistake of setting an artificial deadline. We'll put deadlines on things that don't require deadlines. After letting deadlines slip by, I grew numb to the sea of red colored tasks that indicated I was way past due the original I wanted a task to be finished.

After a while, I just ignored the overdue tasks and watched it grow larger. Then I just gave up on everything and watched my task management system fall under the weight of too many overdue items.

One can easily think that assigning arbitrary due dates on tasks will work in any task manager program such as Things, OmniFocus, or Hit List. But this methodology will eventually crumble under its own weight.

I would caution against putting due dates on all tasks. I would use the due date sparingly to enhance its effectiveness. The due perspective should be used only when you really want to see deadline items.

I think the "Master Your Workday Now" book actually opened up my eyes in this regard and helped to break years of trying to assign artificial due dates on everything with the intention that I would get a task done by this artificial date.