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Quote:
Originally Posted by iannarino View Post
One of the features I like about Things is that all of your completed tasks are captured in a logbook, removing them from your views while retaining them for future reference. Anybody know how to handle that in OF?

I also like that there is an Areas of Focus tag. I am using Project Folders now for my Areas of Focus in OF, but I am not sure if there is a better way.
What's wrong with just showing "Completed" tasks in OmniFocus? Super easy to do... just show the view bar and select "Completed" instead of Available or whatever your defaults are.
 
Let me ask this: Is there any equivalent to the "Someday" and "Postponed" functions in Things?

For those who haven't seen it, you might have guessed it's essentially a place for tasks that you want to get to eventually but don't want to see right now, and a place to postpone until a particular date. Does that go against the GTD system?
 
Quote:
Is there any equivalent to the "Someday" and "Postponed" functions in Things?
I don't know how those work in Things exactly, but there are multiple ways of handling the issue in OF. I use all of these in different situations:

- have a context which is marked as On Hold called "Someday"
- use Start Date to mark the project or action as "Pending"
- mark the Project "On Hold" (doesn't work with actions or action groups)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by FredH View Post
Let me ask this: Is there any equivalent to the "Someday" and "Postponed" functions in Things?

For those who haven't seen it, you might have guessed it's essentially a place for tasks that you want to get to eventually but don't want to see right now, and a place to postpone until a particular date. Does that go against the GTD system?
In OF you can specify a start date for a particular task, and set it in the future. If you then view "available" tasks, you won't see the tasks that start in the future. It works quite well. I didn't know about this until I looked at Things and then somebody mentioned it (I hadn't been using start dates).

For indeterminate dates, or things at some point in the future you could assign them to a project on hold, and then only show active projects. These things would disappear and the way to find them would be to view projects that were "on hold." Takes a specific step to view it, but takes a couple seconds.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by iannarino View Post
One of the features I like about Things is that all of your completed tasks are captured in a logbook, removing them from your views while retaining them for future reference. Anybody know how to handle that in OF?
If you want to physically separate completed projects from active ones, then why not create a Logbook folder, and move completed projects to it when you are done with them. You can collapse the folder, and it will take up minimum room, just like in Things.

Or you can just use View/Perspectives to manage what you see, as has already been discussed.

Just my 2¢.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by bongoman View Post
The deal breaker for me at present with Things is that all projects are treated as parallel in nature - there is no way to work with sequential projects. I don't know about you, but the vast bulk of my projects tend to be sequential.

The net effect of this is that when you are filtering your next actions by context-based tags within Things, you are presented with actions that are not doable yet as the preceding actions have not been completed.

So if Project A is sequential and has two tasks, Task A tagged with 'mac' and Task B tagged with 'out' and I filter my next actions to only show 'out' tasks, then I will be presented with Task B. Which is unworkable for me.

This might well be a function of Things being in alpha and that this will be sorted out in due course.
i was bugged by this too until i realized that if i don't want an action on one of my @context lists yet, i simply shouldn't tag it yet. it can sit there in the project and if it isn't tagged i can easily ignore it. when i'm reviewing the project it's super-easy to pick a few actions that i could do next and tag them with their @context. this isn't as nifty as OF's automatic next-action management but that doesn't bother me, in fact i like the simplicity of the things way. to me using OF felt like i was building a giant complicated machine whereas with things i feel like i'm just making lists (which is the sort of gtd i'm used to, so i am liking things better).
 
If Omni Focus had a way to have multiple tags, then it would blow away the competition. However, with that major feature lacking, a program like Things can actually be more functional for many users.

I hope OF does implement tags or some way to have an item in more than one context.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by markb View Post
i was bugged by this too until i realized that if i don't want an action on one of my @context lists yet, i simply shouldn't tag it yet. it can sit there in the project and if it isn't tagged i can easily ignore it.
Every time OF (or some other GTD app) incorrectly shows me something it shouldn't, and I have to mentally block it out, a kitten dies.

One of the things I like about OF (when it's working right!) is that I can look at a context and know that it's really the next physical action can do for that project, or at a project list and know that the actions that are showing up can actually be done now in the appropriate contexts.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Journey View Post
If Omni Focus had a way to have multiple tags, then it would blow away the competition. However, with that major feature lacking, a program like Things can actually be more functional for many users.

I hope OF does implement tags or some way to have an item in more than one context.
Yeah, I was anxious for multiple contexts or tags at first as well. But the more I thought about it and the more I used OmniFocus, the more I realized it wasn't that important to me.

I actually think that in Things, the system begins to break down as you add more and more tags. It starts becoming cumbersome to manage, and adding a new item becomes tedious. I've tried tagging in other apps as well (e.g. Yojimbo) and came to the same conclusion. Eventually, I would either end up abandoning tags or cut back to adding only one or two tags to each item.

While I guess I wouldn't mind seeing multiple tags in OmniFocus, there are other features I think are more important, like app performance, particularly searching across large databases with lots of open nodes.
 
 


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