[MattArmstrong]

I'll be a devil's advocate here.

Feature request: simplify OmniFocus.

OmniFocus is too complex: Folders, Projects, Actions, Singletons, Action Groups -- I've been using the product for weeks and am still confused.

Enter http://www.llamagraphics.com/ -- this program presents a simple outline. There is only one kind of thing in the outline, a task. Task's become "projects" by virtue of having children. Children must be completed (either in parallel or sequentially) before the parent shows up in the task list. Any task can be repeating, or not. All tasks have a context (the default is "Any Context" so uncategorized tasks are easily spotted).

There! I just described Life Balance task/project structure. Doing the same for OmniFocus is impossible to do as succinctly.

In Life Balance I can have a project that has a single gating action followed by 3 parallel actions like so:

- My Project (set to sequentially execute)
-- Gating Action
-- Parallel Actions (set to execute in parallel)
--- Action1
--- Action2
--- Action3

I just tried to express the above in OmniFocus -- I can't figure out a way. Action groups seem to execute sequentially with no option to change it.

I realize OmniFocus is pre-beta and that my complaints may be about pre-ship warts that already have solutions planned. I'm just throwing it out there that it'll be great if all these different kinds of "things" you plan with in OmniFocus can be unified into something simpler to work with.

[MEP]

Why aren't you using LifeBalance? What weakness does it have that drives you to try OF?

[brianogilvie]

Originally Posted by MEP

Why aren't you using LifeBalance? What weakness does it have that drives you to try OF?

I can't pretend to speak for the original poster, but I left Life Balance because I got sick of using an interface on my Mac that was designed for the screen of a Palm PDA. It's a great program for keeping track of what I have to do, but a lousy program for entering data efficiently.

[dashard]

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

I can't pretend to speak for the original poster, but I left Life Balance because I got sick of using an interface on my Mac that was designed for the screen of a Palm PDA. It's a great program for keeping track of what I have to do, but a lousy program for entering data efficiently.

Ditto that.

[danvtim]

They recently released version 4.0 FYI

[richardripley]

Originally Posted by danvtim

They recently released version 4.0 FYI

I gave LB 4.0 a whirl for about 2 days. After it duplicated all my entries and made a mess of my iCal calendar I have given up on the application. Every time Life Balance is updated (which is rarely) there is are problems that should have been solved in beta or alpha. I had terrible problems with Life Balance in the move from 2.0 to 3.0 which was about half a century ago.

;-)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the finished OF and I'm slowly migrating away from LB to OF. There are quite a few things I don't get about OF but I'm learning.

[petro]

Originally Posted by MEP

Why aren't you using LifeBalance? What weakness does it have that drives you to try OF?

Why have I moved on from Life Balance? Development has effectively stopped. The company exists, but they seem to focus on new platform support (Windows Mobile, Vista, etc.) while there's been a huge laundry list of minor enhancements requested by existing users for years. Llamagraphics has taken to heavily censoring their user forum because there were so many complaints from customers. I waited 2 years in the hopes I'd get a few minor features. I gave up.

I moved on to MyLifeOrganized, which is a Windows app I run under Parallels. It's fantastic, but it's a Windows app. I'm constantly dealing with issues on cutting/pasting between OS's, Parallels being a memory/CPU hog, etc.

If I could have some basic functionality that Life Balance and MLO (MyLifeOrganized) has, but on the Mac platform, I'd be set. Hence why I'm investing a lot of time in to OF.

So the main things I want:

- An easy hierarchy - why should i have to worry if it's a project or task list or task? Why can't OF just figure this out? Just allow me to create a hierarchy and nest things within each other

- Priority to my hierarchy. Some tasks and projects are more important in my life. Lt the important or time critical things float to the top of my to do list


Remember the idea of a life/task managing application is to GTD. Not that I'm a strict follower of GTD, but I have found that OF takes a lot more of a learning curve than Life Balance or MLO to setup, and I spend more time on just organizing my tasks.

But the UI features are great!

[brianogilvie]

Originally Posted by petro

Remember the idea of a life/task managing application is to GTD. Not that I'm a strict follower of GTD, but I have found that OF takes a lot more of a learning curve than Life Balance or MLO to setup, and I spend more time on just organizing my tasks.

Maybe you're overplanning? From one standpoint, it can be liberating to brainstorm everything you have to do to move a project to completion, but from another standpoint, that might be overkill. If you have a next action for each project, and you regularly review your project list (once a week, at least), you might not need much more. OF has a lot of features--and no manual--but you can ignore many of them if you don't need them.

I myself am constantly trying to resist the urge to sharpen my tools (play with software) instead of actually getting work done. Tools do need sharpening, but not beyond the point of diminishing returns.

[petro]

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

Maybe you're overplanning? From one standpoint, it can be liberating to brainstorm everything you have to do to move a project to completion, but from another standpoint, that might be overkill. If you have a next action for each project, and you regularly review your project list (once a week, at least), you might not need much more. OF has a lot of features--and no manual--but you can ignore many of them if you don't need them.

I myself am constantly trying to resist the urge to sharpen my tools (play with software) instead of actually getting work done. Tools do need sharpening, but not beyond the point of diminishing returns.

I see your point, but this is where I don't think the theory of GTD suits me well, and I use some concepts from other people's time/life management suggestions. I agree I should spend less time using the tool, hence why I want to be able to pre-set priorities.

I want to setup the goals in my life that are important to me. I want an application like OF to help me achieve the goals in my life. Some things are more important to me. For a simple example, going to the doctor is always more important to me than doing the laundry.

I hope OF won't just be a strict implementation of GTD to the point of not having enough flexibility to meet various people's needs. I think priority is a very valuable feature. It allows me to setup what projects are more important, thus they float to the top of the list. Otherwise I spend my time looking through a huge list of projects, and getting overwhelmed all the time trying to decide what to do. I want to be able to setup my goals up front, otherwise I will always choose the easy task, but not the task most important to obtaining the goals in my life.

[curt.clifton]

petro,

You'll probably be interested in this gigantic thread on priority.