My last project has been moved out of Omnifocus and into Obsidian. I then removed the Omnifocus icon from my doc.
End of an era.
I started with Omnifocus in late January 2009. It served me well for years but was increasingly more difficult to integrate with my larger projects like LambTracker and AnimalTrakker development.
I started playing with Obsidian as a replacement in April of 2022 and it’s taken me this long to get my templates and procedures all settled and convert all my projects out of Omnifocus.
It is now my task and project management system.
I very rarely change tools so this is a monumental occasion for me.
Nice! I really like the idea of having project information and tasks together in Obsidian. I’m hesitant to make the move from Omnifocus to Obsidian because for certain tasks I need notifications and easy availability on the iPhone and Apple Watch. I could put certain tasks (Routines etc.) in Reminders and project related tasks in Obsidian, but I’m afraid it would complicate review too much. Also I find it hard to think of a clean separation between which tasks to put in Obsidian and which to put in Reminders.
@OogieM did you move all your tasks/ todo’s to Obsidian?
Horses for courses. I’ve quit OmniFocus numerous times, in favor of something else, then always gone back. The last time, after quitting OF to use Todoist for a couple of years, then returning, was when I decided to stay with OF for the long term. I enjoy working with it; I depend on the OF share extension and the quick add dialog. And, I may be the only person who thinks this, I like the redesigned apps. The consistency of a cross-platform focused task manager app is something I need, and I don’t want to have to roll my own in Obs.
Easy peasy. I use mobile to check things off primarily. I have a dashboard note that groups my tasks by context and I can just work from that. I have a shortcut to easily add notes using dictation into my Obsidian inbox folder for processing later. I do most capture of stuff on a paper notebook I carry in my belt pouch all the time but I can use my phone when one hand is busy, holding a sheep for example.
I don’t have an Apple watch but I do use my phone. But I also do NOT like any notifications so I’ve never explored that. I also never used reminders for anything. I did have a Siri Omnifocus thing set up where I could tell Siri to Remind me and the item ended up in my Omnifocus Inbox. With all the problems of Siri misinterpreting stuff it was always hit or miss. Using Shortcuts and apple dictation is resulting in MUCH better interpretation of my spoken items and now they end up as notes in my Obsidian inbox.
For me except during the conversion from one system to another there is only ever one single place that is the keeper of particular types of things. So I’ve never had a blended system with tasks in Reminders and in Omnifocus for example or any other task system. It was always all in Omnifocus except during the conversion to Obsidian. Before that it was all in Life Balance and before that a Palm Pilot (later a treo) and the very first was on paper in a custom daytimer like system I made.
Yes I did move all of my tasks, and todo’s including checklists I used only occasionally and all my recurring projects that happen on a yearly basis but start in a particular month into Obsidian.
Never used the share extension at all. I also never used the quick add because it was too easy to overload my system with junk that way. So I always have a staging area or inbox that things go to initially before being included. Many end up in the someday/maybe lists I keep. A fair number end up in the trash.
That is a big driver to Obsidian for me. I can run it on Mac or Linux systems easily. I am sharing part of the information in my vault with a person on Windows and yes, it includes tasks in that set of stuff I share. I run it on my phone with no problems, and on my iPad where I integrate it with my reference reading and highlighting using the Readwise Reader app. I can review on any device. I have some dashboard notes that I use for review. So it’s far more cross platform than Omnifocus ever was. I can even share things now with my husband who uses Linux systems exclusively and has an Android phone. That was never possible before.
Do you want project information in markdown? If so, you might want to look at NotePlan. One of the updates recently included notifications. I’ve not used them much so I’m not sure whether it’s what you’re after (or if they work on Apple Watch), but they do work generally.
Unlike many folks here I don’t switch tools often at all. So it is a big deal for me to eliminate tools I have been working with for years. At this rate I’ve probably only got one or 2 more major tool switches in my lifetime.
Seriously though, it’s nice to see how my Obsidian system is evolving.
I suspect my next 2 big changes will be with mail clients and calendar. That may happen sooner rather than later.
Apple calendar quit syncing with my iPad and iPhone when the emergency Ventura upgrade came out. I’m going on 30 hours now tih apple support on my various calendar problems all without any resolution at all.
Mail is and remains a problem but I haven’t found a better solution yet. My issues with it are the problems when my mailboxes get large. I use all POP email so I always pull all messages down and I keep a lot. I do still refer to messages that are 20-30 or more years old so it’s not like I can delete them. They don’t import easily into Obsidian or I’d just move them all there. There are somewhere over 90k messages I’ve saved and refer to regularly.
Congratulations on making the move. I did the same thing late in 2022. I cannot remember when Omnifocus 1.0 came out but I had been using it for a long time. I used it on my iPads, Macs, iPhones, Watch… I dabbled for a time with Todoist but it didn’t have any more power to integrate with my note taking system than OF did, so I went back to Omni. I ran extensive macros on my Mac that helped to integrate OF with Mail and Notes and DevonThink, but it was always a kluge. Of course, hardly any of those luxuries existed on iOS until fairly recently. As good as OmniFocus automation is now, it’s still not an integrated “environment”.
Since I started dabbling with Obsidian in 2020, I wondered what could be possible if Project Management and Tasks could be integrated directly with the notes. I have explored/installed a number of plug-ins that support workflows for PM and task management. Along with that I have adapted ideas from the Obsidian community. Slowly but surely I was able to build up a system that encompassed more than task tracking. In Obsidian I use daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly notes. I embed tasks and track them with the Tasks plug-in and Dataview plug-in. I use a workflow that captures Goals; all of my projects are now linked to a goal. If a task isn’t tied to a project then it’s not helping me achieve a goal; so it becomes an errand or a reminder. Sometimes I put those in Reminders, sometimes in Obsidian. (Incidentally, there is a plug-in that links Reminders to a note in Obsidian.) Using Obsidian Canvas, Kanban, the Daily Note Outline plug-in and Tasks Timeline plug-in I can view, track, filter and manipulate the tasks more extensively than I could using OF Perspectives. I can add progress bars to visually inform me. And I do all of that inside the app where I capture web data, ideas, notes and write longer form items. Obsidian is my new integrated “environment”. It stays synced across all devices and I can quickly access a to-do list on any device using a custom view called Taskido inside Obsidian. As noted, Obsidian works as both a quick capture and a longer form writing tool.
While I acknowledge this could all get broken or rendered obsolete; that is the same for all software. This works now and I steadily add to it. The interoperability of Obsidian with standard data frameworks and plain text make the system more resilient. Lately I have installed TfTHacker’s Cornell Note-taking custom add-in. It’s a brilliant adaptation of a time honoured note taking system that also implements Tufte style notes. I can’t do that with OmniFocus; farewell old friend.
About a week ago I sent an email to Omnifocus support asking if it would be possible to replicate (for Omnifocus) an existing (and very popular - by number of downloads) Obsidian plug-in that allows you to have Todoist tasks integrated directly into Obsidian.
By the way, the Todoist Obsidian plug-in is really rather “sweet.“ It allows you, with a code block typed into your Obsidian page, integrate Todoist tasks into Obsidian by project and label. The plugin also works very well when it comes to Todoist with recurring task. Finally, the plugin is two-way - in that allows you to add tasks to your Todoist app from within Obsidian. (I should note that, in order for the Todoist/Obsidian plugin to function, you do have to provide your private Todoist API key to the Todoist/Obsidian plugin.)
I got a very thoughtful response to my email from Obsidian support within four days of my sending the email out. Kudos to Omnifocus support!!
The person at Omnifocus support who responded to my email said that they had opened a request for the creation of a plug-in of the sort that I requested (that is, a plug-in for Omnifocus like the Todoist/Omnifocus plug described above). The responder aLeo asked me to furnish information about the Todoist/Omnifocus plugin. I provided that information by emailing a link to the GitHub repo where the plugin software resides.
So, maybe, just maybe, we who want to use Omnifocus and Obsidian “together” (in order to have an all-in-one note-taking/task management app) can get what we want. I’m assuming here that there’s no technical “blocker” that would prevent an Obsidian plugin developer from replicating for Omnifocus what the Todoist/Obsidian plugin developer accomplished.
May I recommend that others who are interested in having this Omnifocus/Obsidian plugin become buildable (whether the plugin is built by Omnifocus or, as is more likely, by an independent developer) “petition” Omnifocus to make sure that the building of such a plugin is technically possible - that is, whatever tech made it possible to build the Todoist/Obsidian plugin is available under the hood at Obsidian.
