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Folks who work in PC-based environments, how do you apply Omnifocus? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Hi all,

I am an insurance broker working in a firm that is well-rooted in Microsoft. I'm trying to determine if it's worth using Omnifocus if the vast majority of my time (about 75%) is stuck in front of a PC. I've been using Toodledo these past few months because it's a web-based task manager that I can access virtually anywhere.

That said, I do have a Macbook Pro and I've thought about bringing it with me wherever I go. But for those of you in my situation, how do you all apply Omnifocus when you're stuck in a Microsoft-only environment?
 
Many companies are willing to let employees use their own computers. I would simply ask my boss "is it ok I use my mac at work for organising myself?" Apart from that there are lots of practicalities depending on your company's IT structure that are impossible to list here. I have a cheap desktop PC at work that I use with remote desktop (RDC) say, 50% of my time. If needed, I send tasks to Omnifocus by email, but most of the time you simply get your OF Quick Entry atop whatever you look at on the PC. One thing though: You are on your own here, it seems. If so, you should know your Mac well, and you should be able to actually increase your efficiency by bringing it to work. If not, there is a risk you'll just be considered an eccentric by your colleagues, I'm afraid.

Good luck!
 
This is very tricky as I cant connect my mac to the network, so I dump off my omnifocus files on usb, load it onto a mac at work (which is standalone and an old G4/450, not on the network) and use it to keep organised and brainstorm.

At the EOD, I dump it and any other files back off to usb stick and put onto my mac at home. I dont want to take my main mac with me to work in case of loss or damage etc.

It sort of works but is not ideal and I cant get anything out of it onto the PC (e.g. omnigraffle exports nicely to visio). So yes, it is a problem, but at least I have some nice Apps on the mac to help me out.

___

Mark
 
I use OmniFocus on my iPod touch. It's always by my side. I can view my contexts, add tasks into my inbox. I can always sync to the MacBook Pro when I get home. From there, I'd work on my MacBook Pro and do some serious project planning and other things on the notebook.

I would accumulate tasks into my OmniFocus inbox on the iPod touch. At home, I would sync back to OmniFocus on the Mac. Then I would clear my inbox to zero (put it into its appropriate project folder, brainstorm projects, etc.).

If I'm not allowed to bring the MacBook Pro to work, I would probably use Microsoft Word's outline format to do some brainstorming and project planning. Then I'd e-mail it to myself. At the end of the day, I'd log in to e-mail to get the outline from my email inbox and incorporate it into OmniFocus.

You can always e-mail tasks to yourself and let OmniFocus parse grab it and parse it out for you.

But if I was allowed to bring my MacBook Pro, I would do that. Would love to see a full-featured OmniFocus on the iPad. I guess that project is still in the gestation stage. The first version of OmniFocus iPad will just be the same app with the same features but resized to fit a larger screen. Supposedly a more feature-rich version will be coming later.

Last edited by wilsonng; 2010-03-31 at 05:33 PM..
 
I use OF at work on my iPhone. It's great! I don't even really have a Mac for OF - I just use my wife's MBP at home. I installed OF there in her account and she let's me use it to do reviews. But I honestly do most of my OF work on my iPhone now, especially with the perspectives. And I sync with a SwissDisk WebDAV server, so I my iPhone stays synched to the cloud anytime I wish throughout the day, as I make OF changes.

I really only use the MPB OF to do the fine tuning of my workflow in OF. Using the big screen also saves time. But once everthing is reviewed and I'm into "Getting Things Done" mode, the iPhone is actually better, since it's always at my side in my iPants.

I do hope that Omni Group keeps adding more functionality to the iPhone, since it is my go-to device for OF. I would especially like project based perspectives (since I find them more useful), and perhaps a voice activated way to create Inbox actions. To me, one of the purely powerful ideas behind GTD is to get the crap out of my head and into the Inbox. But along with that must be a way to "quickly" get the crap into the Inbox. There should be some sort of requirement that says "in five or fewer finger clicks to create an Inbox action" - it's got to be fast.
 
Well I ended up dumping my iPhone due to AT&T's terrible service. So now I'm without a mobile OF device. That said, I sort of realized that I rarely if ever use OF on the go.

95% of my work can be done at a desk w/ my MBP in front of me. As such, I decided to stick with OF and just hump by MBP wherever I go.
 
The Taskpaper text format, which can be exported from, and imported into OmniFocus, is very easy to work with, and can be edited with various on-line and local tools including a Windows editor called TodoPaper.

I use it on Windows both for capturing projects and actions that come to mind, and for working through action lists. (Easily emailed to and from OS X, and extracted from, or absorbed into, OmniFocus, which is, of course, much more powerful for weekly or daily reviews).

The various Omni action fields (dates, done, duration etc) can be exported and imported as Taskpaper tags.

--
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mischka07 View Post
Well I ended up dumping my iPhone due to AT&T's terrible service. So now I'm without a mobile OF device. That said, I sort of realized that I rarely if ever use OF on the go.

95% of my work can be done at a desk w/ my MBP in front of me. As such, I decided to stick with OF and just hump by MBP wherever I go.
Do you have OmniFocus for the iPhone? You can also use it on an iPad in double-res mode. Hopefully, OmniFocus for iPad will arrive soon. The iPad with OmniFocus for iPad will definitely be easier to lug around than the MBP.

Last edited by wilsonng; 2010-05-13 at 09:11 PM..
 
I use OF on my iPhone and it's really god but it takes time to add a lot of actions on a small touchscreen.

Would it be possible to keep the Mail.app and OF running on a Mac at home, mailing actions to yourself and let the Mail.app rule add those actions to OF and automatically sync the actions to the cloud and then just open OF on an iPhone and have all those actions there?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by qtus View Post
I use OF on my iPhone and it's really god but it takes time to add a lot of actions on a small touchscreen.

Would it be possible to keep the Mail.app and OF running on a Mac at home, mailing actions to yourself and let the Mail.app rule add those actions to OF and automatically sync the actions to the cloud and then just open OF on an iPhone and have all those actions there?
Sure, I do that quite often. Works OK, so long as you remember to send your messages as plain text format. I use it most often for getting the URLs of web pages I want to read or reply to into OF from iPad/iPhone. I don't believe you can create new projects (or contexts) that way, however, so setting up new projects would be a bit of a headache. You would have to create a new project on the iPhone, sync, wait for the Mac application to sync (which you could accelerate by sending an email action to it, which will cause a sync a minute after it is received from the Mail app), then send the action(s) for the new project. You could also jury-rig something with Applescript that ran when you emailed a certain address and had OmniFocus create a new project, if doing so is a frequent need.
 
 


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