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OmniFocus needs to pester more Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
As far as a program that nags you with e-mail, check out Sandy [iwantsandy.com].

Sandy is in it's infant stages. As it stands now, you send Sandy e-mail with something you want to either remember or be reminded of ["Sandy, remind me to take out the trash Thursdays at 7 pm"], and Sandy gets back to you with an e-mail every Thursday evening.

As far as OF nagging, I created a Perspective that has just the actions I need to know about, and leave it open all the time.

Right now it's lacking 2 way calendar support ... and I'd love to see away for it to pick up specially tagged OF actions — not everything, just those actions I choose.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by iancjclarke View Post
I just sent this feedback, I thought maybe people might be interested in discussing it too:
This is going to be vague, but I hope it will be useful because I think this barrier for adoption of OmniFocus for me, will also apply to many other users.

I've been trying to use OmniFocus as part of my general workflow since I received an invite months ago, and I just can't.

I've thought hard about why this is, since rationally OmniFocus is almost everything I always wanted in a GTD app.

Despite having the option of using OmniFocus, when I need to make sure I do something, I find myself either setting an appointment at a vaguely suitable time in Google Calendar (my calendaring solution of choice, which will email, SMS, and/or pop up a notification), or sending myself an email and refusing to read it until I've completed the task.

I think the basic issue is that I don't trust myself to poll OmniFocus frequently enough to ensure that I complete a given task. Sure, once OmniFocus is already part of my daily routine, this isn't an issue, but its a serious inhibitor to the initial trust required to make OmniFocus a part of my daily routine.

I therefore tend to fall back on far from perfect mechanisms that either prod me (Google Cal), or which I do poll on a very regular basis (email).

I would urge you to think about how to make OmniFocus better at nagging the user to perform outstanding tasks, even if OmniFocus isn't necessarily running, or if the user keeps it minimized. Until I can put a task into OmniFocus, and *know* that I will be pestered in a reasonably effective way until I have completed the task, its never going to become my primary repository for outstanding tasks.

I know OmniFocus has some kind of review process for tasks, but frankly I don't understand it, and if I don't, many other users probably don't either - since I'm no idiot.

I hope you take this feedback in the sense I intend it, I would love for OmniFocus to be a part of my daily routine, I just can't see this happening until I can trust it to pester me to "get things done". This may be achievable with scripting, or with configuration, but something so fundamental should be easier to achieve than that.
Yuck. You the kind of person that sets the alarm for 6:00 when you REALLY won't get up until 7:30 and you slap the snooze bar for 90 minutes every morning?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ksrhee View Post
I think I suggested a solution elsewhere, but here we go again.

For me, the simplest solution is for OF to assign alarms to each task that can be passed onto iCal when we synchronize OF with iCal.

In other words, alarms will go off in iCal, but not in OF (thus not violating the sanctity of GTD, which I think should be viewed as a tool, not a unbreakable rule), but folks who need reminders (for those of us who manage multiple projects, tasks, and roles in our lives) will still get reminders.

Seems like a win-win solution to me.
I also would like reminders for certain events (not all), and think that ksrhee's suggestion makes a great deal of sense.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by iancjclarke View Post
I just sent this feedback, I thought maybe people might be interested in discussing it too:
This is going to be vague, but I hope it will be useful because I think this barrier for adoption of OmniFocus for me, will also apply to many other users.

I've been trying to use OmniFocus as part of my general workflow since I received an invite months ago, and I just can't.

I've thought hard about why this is, since rationally OmniFocus is almost everything I always wanted in a GTD app.

Despite having the option of using OmniFocus, when I need to make sure I do something, I find myself either setting an appointment at a vaguely suitable time in Google Calendar (my calendaring solution of choice, which will email, SMS, and/or pop up a notification), or sending myself an email and refusing to read it until I've completed the task.

I think the basic issue is that I don't trust myself to poll OmniFocus frequently enough to ensure that I complete a given task. Sure, once OmniFocus is already part of my daily routine, this isn't an issue, but its a serious inhibitor to the initial trust required to make OmniFocus a part of my daily routine.

I therefore tend to fall back on far from perfect mechanisms that either prod me (Google Cal), or which I do poll on a very regular basis (email).

I would urge you to think about how to make OmniFocus better at nagging the user to perform outstanding tasks, even if OmniFocus isn't necessarily running, or if the user keeps it minimized. Until I can put a task into OmniFocus, and *know* that I will be pestered in a reasonably effective way until I have completed the task, its never going to become my primary repository for outstanding tasks.

I know OmniFocus has some kind of review process for tasks, but frankly I don't understand it, and if I don't, many other users probably don't either - since I'm no idiot.

I hope you take this feedback in the sense I intend it, I would love for OmniFocus to be a part of my daily routine, I just can't see this happening until I can trust it to pester me to "get things done". This may be achievable with scripting, or with configuration, but something so fundamental should be easier to achieve than that.
Trying making your Due Dates close, i.e. if it has to be done by end today put today’s date in the Due Column. This action is then highlighted in the Apple menu bar - I have a red blob with a number 5 in it on my screen which means I must complete 5 things before I finish today. I find it quite a pressure. It makes me look at the list.
 
I have a suggestion, which is simly to extend the current growl notifications to incude reviews. This could be enabled for those of us that are not hardcore GTD types!
 
http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=6584

here is a link to the thread for getting Growl set up.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by xmas View Post
http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=6584

here is a link to the thread for getting Growl set up.
Thanks- but as far as I can see there is no way to set up growl specifically for notification of reviewing due dates at present, which is what I would like to see-
Andy
 
I will echo the sentiments of previous posters; I am having a hard time using OmniFocus to implement GTD, and the easiest explanation for other people might be "Oh, he just doesn't know what GTD /really/ is, or he is just a lazy idiot who doesn't know how to review tasks, collect properly, etc."

At one point, sometime back, I made the suggestion to have OmniFocus nag me. I look back with a bit of perspective now and realize how wrong I was. However, I know deep inside of me, that something is definitely not working for me with OmniFocus and GTD. At the very least, the lowest level, couldn't OmniFocus include some sort of user-specific project list that revolves around implementing GTD within OmniFocus?

My ideal situation would involve a couple of things:

1. a "GTD" enable/disable option to give me access to a few handy features
i. Am I collecting, organizing, processing, or doing? This is never clear in OmniFocus (unless I'm in the Inbox or a perspective, but this is arguable), and so, no matter how much I've cleaned up my system, no matter how many times I've edited project and action verbs to reflect the best situation for me, no matter how many times I've optimized contexts, I still come back to OmniFocus an hour later and feel like the whole thing is just kind of, well, dirty. When I finish a massive review of my system, I wanna lock it down. There is nothing more frustrating than seeing Inbox items I haven't processed, so I process them, and it changes current projects, which means I need to go in and edit those projects. This perpetually puts me into Collect/Process/Organize while I'm in the application. I spend a lot of time at the computer for work, and having OmniFocus to fiddle with has been more of a distraction than an organizational tool. I'm not sure how you'd implement this, but I'm begging for some cleaner lines between different types of workflow in OmniFocus. I don't care if it's a simple bar with buttons that do nothing but let me set what mode I'm in.

ii. In different contexts (of the application, not user-created contexts) there should be some GTD specific information. Am I doing a brain dump? If so, I want access to a list of memory joggers so I can really get it all to 0. Am I reviewing projects? I would like a similar system for this. Consider it GTD-related documentation on a per-context basis.

iii. The weekly/daily review is so important, and I feel like it has gotten really weak attention from OF. I want OF to hold my hand and walk me through my review. When I set a date for review, I want to be reminded of it. This brings me to:

iv. I think a number of these scenarios could be controlled in an application/user specific project that is dedicated to GTD. Think of it like this: There is an "OmniFocus GTD" project that mines your database data to give you suggestions, reminders, and due dates for OmniFocus GTD-related actions. If I set a weekly review on Sunday, I want my user-tailored OmniFocus project to say: "Weekly Review - Sunday @OmniFocus Due:Sunday @7:00PM". This means it's not a nag, it's just a project. If I have Inbox items that have been sitting there for a week, I want OmniFocus to say: "Process Inbox [Overdue Inbox] - @OmniFocus". Of course, all of this would be configurable via the preference pane, it wouldn't be annoying, and it would be a MAJOR help to people struggling to implement OmniFocus as their GTD system.


All in all, I'm happy with OmniFocus I suppose, but this whole game we've been playing "It's just an organizational tool" vs "It's kind of supposed to be for GTD, sort of" is getting really tired. A ton of users who bought licenses to OmniFocus did it to implement GTD with their digital life as a compliment to their giant paper filing cabinets. The least OmniGroup can do is give them some kind of support in implementation. It's like "Here's this totally ambiguous app, and you can implement GTD however you'd like! Trust us! You can! It's probably not easy, but who knows, we haven't really tried, it's not really for GTD anyway, but umm, er, I dunno? Good luck!" I'm not asking for a life coach, but not everyone has GTD habits the first time they fire this up, and they need some freaking help.

Cheers,
D
 
devn,

Thanks for your thoughtful post. Lots of interesting ideas there.

I think you actually are asking for a little automated life coach. And I think that's a wonderful idea! Making GTD really work is all about developing a set of habits. An application that would help with that would be great.

Given the power of OmniFocus, somebody should write a book on "Getting Things Done with OmniFocus". I'm imagining a description of best practices, along with modifications that you might want to make for your own circumstances (for example, if all your work is computer based you might not have many different contexts). The end of each chapter could have a checklist that you could review periodically to see where you need to improve your habits. Then a companion application, like you suggested, could mine your OF data and provide you with coaching. The challenge would be keeping the application from nagging you about things when you consciously choose to do it your own way. That's an interesting problem.
__________________
Cheers,

Curt
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by curt.clifton View Post
devn,

Thanks for your thoughtful post. Lots of interesting ideas there.

I think you actually are asking for a little automated life coach. And I think that's a wonderful idea! Making GTD really work is all about developing a set of habits. An application that would help with that would be great.

Given the power of OmniFocus, somebody should write a book on "Getting Things Done with OmniFocus". I'm imagining a description of best practices, along with modifications that you might want to make for your own circumstances (for example, if all your work is computer based you might not have many different contexts). The end of each chapter could have a checklist that you could review periodically to see where you need to improve your habits. Then a companion application, like you suggested, could mine your OF data and provide you with coaching. The challenge would be keeping the application from nagging you about things when you consciously choose to do it your own way. That's an interesting problem.
Yay! I didn't come off as a lazy jerk with a bunch of feature requests!

I think you nailed exactly what I was talking about. We need some way to drill down into this gigantic wealth of information we're inputting into our system, and make it smart. It's a touchy subject because "smart" can mean so many things, but there has to be a few elegant tools that OmniGroup could build into OmniFocus that wouldn't detract from the idea behind the application, while still providing users with something to help them on their quest to GTD mastery. I've actually been thinking about writing that book myself. I don't know if I could get it published, but the blog traffic might be worth it. Anyway, thanks for your comments. Let's keep this discussion friendly and open and try to get /something/ in the words, even if that means parsing exported comma separated OmniFocus databases. I started writing a little application last night, but it's going to be a lonnngggg time coming, so beware.

Also, Curt: I'm not sure if you missed the way I was explaining it or if you were just discussing, in general, the interesting problem of nag vs. the will of the user, but just for clarification: It seems to me keeping the "Life Coach" confined to a sort of "scriptable project", if you will, would achieve the goal in question. I mean, after all, if it's only a project, then a user can most certainly just check it off or delete the task if they don't want to do it or they think it's a bad suggestion. Perhaps bad suggestions could be controlled by doing something similar to a spam filter.

1. You fire up OmniFocus for the first time and you input all of your information, and turn on the GTD preference pane.
2. Over the next few days it starts learning about tasks you avoid, tasks you keep re-evaluating, projects you keep avoiding, and begins sending you some helpful reminders, ideas, etc. based on this to a project called, I don't know "Personal Assistant".
3. You don't like some of the reminders, so you just delete them. It sees you doing this, and remembers you deleted its suggestion for that project, task, etc.
4. You like some of the reminders and you follow them: You click "complete." to show OmniFocus it was helpful. OmniFocus is watching you. ;)
5. Now, reminders and ideas you didn't like are still put into that "Personal Assistant" project, but they are marked automatically as completed, so if you'd like to see what you've been missing, you just change the view to "All", instead of Remaining, Next Actions, etc.
6. You see a good reminder that you think you would like to receive, so you uncheck the complete box, and boom, rule removed.

Note that this is just an example of implementation, but I'd love to hear some different views on this. How would everyone go about implementing a personal assistant in OmniFocus?

All the best,
Devin

Last edited by devn; 2008-01-12 at 05:47 PM.. Reason: One More Thing...
 
 


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