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In a work context, I'm using it to create agendas that I distribute to clients that I am undertaking consulting work for.

My role requires fairly complex business discussions with business owners of firms with turnover in the millions of dollars. The meetings run for 2-3 hours per session.

To keep things on track I create a nice looking agenda with major topic areas and some sub points for their consideration. I create a PDF of this version to give to them, however beneath that, in OmniOutliner, I have a lot more detail that is for my eyes only. Questions to ask, issues to consider, that kind of thing.

When I'm in the meeting I use OO for iPad with the document open. While the client is usually looking at a printed copy of the basic PDF document with headlines I sent them, I am working from the detailed outline. This helps me keep control of the meeting.

Most of the time I still end up taking notes with a pen and paper, because it's still too fiddly to type, write in a meeting environment with an iPad. But the software certainly helps!
 
@Splinky: Nice description. Would you be willing to share a generic agenda you create? (Obviously with all inappropriate details not included.) I haven't used OO in this specific way, but it seems to be a great usage. I'd love to see one of your examples, mainly for "look and feel" type inspiration.
 
I use OmniFocus a lot, and I couldn't even recite to you the 10 Commandments of GTD! I just find it extremely helpful for organizing all my todos in a sane, easy manner.

Honestly I think it's easy to get up and running with OF, especially if you're not trying to follow the GTD religion. OO does not come close to the ease of use, and ease of mind, that OF provides for all my various to-dos.

(Caveat: I'm a very busy person with several different projects at the same time. For a less busy person OO might work fine.)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mitchellm View Post
@Splinky: Nice description. Would you be willing to share a generic agenda you create? (Obviously with all inappropriate details not included.) I haven't used OO in this specific way, but it seems to be a great usage. I'd love to see one of your examples, mainly for "look and feel" type inspiration.
I wish I could, but there's probably a bit too much IP tied up in it all!

But essentially, it's about creating an outline of multiple levels and hiding/showing dependent upon the audience, and the level of detail required.
 
What I like about it is that you can "fold" children up into the preceding level. I have an outline for environmental law that I started in OO's predecessor, MORE II, over 20 years ago. It is certainly over 3,000 pages with at least 30 "level 1's". But it is easy to find topics in the middle, copy out of it to create an outline of subsets, create handout materials, etc.

It is my memory. My file cabinet.
 
i use omnioutliner for all sorts of things where you start off with a blank sheet of paper and jot down ideas at random then organise them later. omnioutliner makes this so much easier than trying to do it straight into a word processor, or textedit. some examples:
meeting agendas
shopping lists
packing lists (if you're into that sort of thing)
itinerary planning
outlining / structuring writing - anything from memos, through lecture notes, to essays, dissertations, plotting fiction
business presentations

- no limits really - basically anything where you would like to throw down ideas without having to worry about the final structure, and organising, editing and refining later.

the attraction of outliners is their flexibility, you don't have to commit to anything, in terms of structure, you plan, organise, edit, and compose on the fly. it's so much more fluid than a word processor.

i personally use omnifocus as a 'my memory' and organiser, along with my calendar - although OF evolved out of omnioutliner, and resembles it in many ways, i feel its purpose makes it quite a different animal. i have things in omnifocus like 'prepare documents for british council' with dates, and organisational sub-tasks and so on, but the preparation of the documents themselves i will do in OmniOutliner - and the linking facility between the two programmes is priceless here.

Last edited by kened; 2014-01-23 at 05:25 AM..
 
I just wanted to thank everyone for posting in here. It gave me some great ideas and I've been trying it out. I think I may be starting to get the hang of it. :)

Ironically, I found this article a few days ago which also happened to answer many of my questions and taught me a little bit to use it better:

http://tidbits.com/article/14478

I figured it may come in handy for some others here. It's not only a great review, but also describes the wonderful features of OmniOutliner. I hope you all find it as useful as I did. :)
 
 


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