I don’t know how my gif (which is a super popular meme gif) was flagged and not the not so polite comment. 6 people liked that gif as well lol. And it’s ok to not like the gif and say things politely.
Apparently, ChatGPT 4o also thinks that was a harsh comment.
Generally speaking, there is so much info on there internet, if you don’t like something, you can just skip it, especially if it’s not directly targeted at you or pushed on you. And this wasn’t even spam/nsfw or something on the same lines.
Any way, I’d like to close this topic, and request you to do that too. People like us come here to nerd out and stimulate our brains and not have such unpleasant conversations. I sincerely hope you have a good happy week ahead.
Let’s nerd out on Task Managers now…so OmniFocus seems like a not-so-expensive task manager huh
I enjoyed this episode and how we often return to what works best for us rather than the latest innovation.
I’m a long-term OmniFocus user who has experimented with Things, Noteplan, and a Notion PARA setup, only to find them somewhat lacking. Noteplan was promising, yet managing recurring tasks proved to be unnecessarily cumbersome. Like David, I appreciate OmniFocus’s unique features such as defer, review, and perspectives, which I believe should be more widely available.
For “the final mile,” I also use an analogue method: two pages per day in a lined A5 notebook. I transfer tasks, create a time-blocking schedule, and keep a blank page for any notes that come up throughout the day, all written by hand. This method keeps me from constantly checking OmniFocus, which remains open in the background for capturing new tasks.
If you use Raycast and Apple Reminders you should try out this extension. It basically replaces the two apps Stephen mentioned MenuBar and InstaRemind.
In 2024, I returned to using OmniFocus after not using it for 10 years. So I was upgrading from version 2 to version 4 and they still gave me a 50% discount.
I have been exploring Craft 3 as a replacement for NotePlan for calendar/reminders/tasks. There’s a lot a like about NotePlan, but the need for clunky plugins to handle pretty funadmental stuff like projects and a dashboard made it untenable for me.
Craft 3 is a good start, but not there yet. The devs have promised kanban boards, which would be good, and the collections view is still pretty “beta” feeling, but I’m hopeful it will get there. It has good integration with any calendar you can add to the calendar application, but right now reminders is only one-way sync into Craft, not bidirectional.
I have my fingers crossed it will continue to improve, becuase it’s pretty close to what I need. And it sure is pretty.
Not to mention task management! Recurring dates are pretty hard when all the database you have is a set of markdown files. Not sure how Obsidian manages it, but in Noteplan is cumbersome to say the least.
My take is that a “Swiss-Army” knife approach will never be as good as specialized tools custom-built for their purpose. This is why, though an all-in-one tool is appealing in principle, I don’t find them as good in practice. YMMV, of course.
After listening to the episode and reading the thoughts here, I think there is still a good deal of confusion between task management (checkboxes and lists) and project management (checkboxes, lists, notes, statuses, related projects and initiatives, and historical archives).
I am on Omnifocus for the former, although I don’t need its power as much these days, and Notion for the latter, because I could tweak it to my liking.
But the line between these two product categories is thin, there isn’t as much nice software for PM work, and it might be interesting to hear an episode about PM tools.
I’m with you, and that’s why I want my tools to sync with my calendars and reminders. Then I can use the right tool for the job to edit or view the synced database. For example, I like Fantastical, and I can use it alongside everything else that touches my calendar. I’m still looking for the equivalent for Reminders - and NotePlan is very close. Hopefully if Craft add 2-way sync that will be a good fit.
I’m not sure there is a clear distinction between task management and project management. A project, ultimately, is a collection of tasks that need to be done to achieve a specified outcome. Omnifocus and Things can capture that well.
There are two different problems in planning those tasks. Firstly it is prioritising and allocating resources to all the tasks that emerge from all your projects and that have to be done routinely. Secondly, is planning what tasks have to be done in order to complete a project or part of a project. We tend to think of the first as task management and the second as project management, but they are really two sides of the same coin.
This is why I finally defaulted to Reminders, Notes, and Calendar. It is admittedly a more manual process than I like (there are probably Shortcuts for this, but I struggle to make good Shortcuts), but my content is at least cross-linked. I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but I use one of two methods to connect project notes in Apple Notes to Reminders, as shown below. Again, too many clicks, but it works, and there are no subscriptions required.
I think this is true for simple projects, but not if you’re working on large-ish scale projects, or projects that might span years, or even with clients who ask “3 years ago, the last time we did a campaign about XYZ, what did we do?”
In those cases, Omnifocus doesn’t do the job. It archives too relentlessly. And Things 3 sort of does the job, but only if you kept all your notes easy to find as well and have them archived somewhere.
A project management system could show you all the tasks you did for those gigs, all the notes, all the reasoning and logic behind them, etc.
Switching to PM-style work instead of task management has really made a difference for me in my freelance business. I understand that not everybody needs that level of project management and might get by with lists and checkboxes, but I do think it’s worth noting that as soon as people start talking about using Noteplan or Craft to do the job, I think they’re intrinsically looking for a project management tool. Something that keeps notes and tasks together in a place where they can be archived later, and completed tasks don’t disappear into a hard-to-find archive file (a la Omnifocus).
What about combining OmniFocus and OmniPlanner? I presume they integrate. If so, the missing element would be notes—perhaps using Obsidian? All the “O”s working in tandem?
I guess that is really no different than three other apps.
In this episode David said something that for me tied to something Tiago Forte (of PARA and Building a Second Brain) talked about in a YouTube video… limit your tasks and projects
Tiago - focus your projects, don’t have more than 10 active Projects at one time, it’s just too much and you will become overwhelmed. Choose no more than 10 at a time.
David - Remember the ending scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark? Task managers can get too much captured and stuffed with ideas and TTDs and someday projects. Don’t let it become a graveyard or the room at the end of the movie.
Interesting point in the episode that Reminders is eating away at the middle end of the market. I totally agree with this sentiment.
I actually disagree with this statement. Project management has to incorporate people depedency on an ongoing basics. Task management can have a section where you are waiting for your next action being dependenth on other people or conditions but in projects what you do changes quite dramatically based on inputs from others.
