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Has anyone else out there tried Things? I really like the simplicity of the "Today" category and how simple it is to knock items off my "Today" list (by choosing "not today" so I can really focus on what needs to get done now, only to have these items reappear in my Today list automatically the next day. Things doesn't appear to have the flexibility/depth of OmniFocus. However I like the front-end of Things and was wondering if anyone could offer up suggestions on how one would set up OmniFocus to behave in a similar fashion. Thanks! -Bart
 
Things' "Today" marker is virtually identical to OmniFocus' "Flag" marker. Tick the items you're interested in and view them in the default Flagged perspective (or create your own perspective with custom settings to your liking).

-Dennis
 
I find Things unusable.

There's no way in Things to actually see a list of next actions.

Let's say you have a sequential project, with Task A to be done in Context 1 followed by Task B in Context 2.

In Things, if you view the list of Context 2 actions, then it will show you Task B as a next action when in fact it is waiting on Task A to be completed first.
 
You're right, bongoman. That's one of the many reasons I personally prefer OmniFocus. Things only has parallel projects and no concept of a sequential project. And probably 90% of my projects are sequential.

That's not to say Things doesn't have some nice aspects. But OmniFocus has it beat in just about everything that's important to me.

-Dennis
 
I would have to agree also , their iphone syncing is a major mess right now.
To the person looking to recreate " today " functionality in omni focus .
Set up a custom " today" perspective like Dennis suggested and if you make it show only " available " items , [for this you must use start dates ] you can use the " defer " script posted in OF extras , multi-select all the tasks you don't want showing in " today's " list and run the script , defer their start by one day and they'll come back on again tomorrow .
I find this way easier than " things" scheduling method of making tasks reappear [really, you're deferring , same thing ] but the scheduler is still buggy and some tasks don't come back when they're supposed to .

of course you'll use flags mark items as " today " and that way you don't have to mess with due dates . If you filter on " available " and flagged , even though they're still flagged, when you " defer " them, they won't show until tomorrow.

hope that helps .

Last edited by ext555; 2008-11-25 at 04:21 PM..
 
To me the big advantage Things has is that there app is much cheaper. both for the desktop and iphone. I really don't need a gps part of omnifoucs since it's unlike i'll get a iphone over an ipod touch.
 
I don't know. I think you usually get what you pay for. For an app that is so important in so many areas of my life, I want the best I can afford.

-Dennis
 
Thanks for the feedback. I will try some of these suggestions and see if I can have the best of both worlds.
 
I think Things "Today" feature is a major strength and something that OF can't match on the iPhone. Today integrates sceduled tasks with manually selected tasks in a unified, simple view that I find very usable. Using Flags in OF doesn't replicate this. Setting the Start or Due dates on items can achieve something similar but it's far more cumbersome than the "Show in Today" mode of Things. The Next view in Things, although less structured and less powerful than OF, works very nicely and rapidly as a daily review mechanism, allowing for very easy allocation of tasks to Today.

It's not my intention to promote one app over the other--horses for courses and all that--but I'd dearly love to see OF maintain it's finesse and power while gaining some of Things elegance and simplicity. If OF ever allows the combined viewing of Due and Flagged items then it will be wonderful, at least for me.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Scott View Post
I think Things "Today" feature is a major strength and something that OF can't match on the iPhone. Today integrates sceduled tasks with manually selected tasks in a unified, simple view that I find very usable. Using Flags in OF doesn't replicate this. Setting the Start or Due dates on items can achieve something similar but it's far more cumbersome than the "Show in Today" mode of Things.
One big difference is that Things' flag (the "today star") has a much narrower meaning than the OmniFocus flag. The Things "today star" means exactly one thing: "Do this today." The OmniFocus flag, on the other hand, is a generic marker than can mean virtually anything; it has more flexibility but is perhaps harder to use in a very specific manner (mostly due to view bar limitations, I guess).

The Omni Group said they were considering smart folders for a future release; maybe that feature would allow you to build a perspective displaying flagged *or* due items in a single view.

Personally, I think there's a subtle but significant difference between importance and urgency. And I don't think I'd want to see both of those kinds of items mixed together in one monolithic view.

To me, items that are important (flagged items in my OmniFocus database) are things I want to draw my attention to but don't necessarily want to do today or even set a due date or start date on. I want to see these items in a separated list because there tends to be a fair number of them (often 20-30 or more) and I want to be able to sort, group, and browse them independently of all my other actions. OmniFocus' flagged filter works perfectly for this.

Urgent items, on the other hand, are things that are date-driven (usually by a due date). They are distinctly different from my important (i.e. flagged) items, although sometimes an item might be both important and urgent, so I'll assign a flag and a due date. Like my important items though, I want to see the urgent items in their own specific list without the clutter of the usually unrelated important items.

I wonder if maybe the Omni Group was making the same distinction between importance and urgency when they designed the current view bar. But I agree that it'd be nice to have the flexibility to mix these items if you want.

-Dennis

Last edited by Toadling; 2008-12-23 at 10:17 AM..
 
 


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