OmniFocus - Convince me

Another trial lawyer here. I used OmniFocus for several years, and after always feeling like I was fighting it, switched to Things maybe 3-4 years ago, and it has worked much better for what I do and how my brain works.

Like you, I have many tasks that pop up throughout the day, and I also have bigger items I want/need to handle each day. The “ah-ha” moment for me, which was really transformative, was that instead of creating a task with a “next item,” my tasks are “just did it” items, so I don’t need to bring myself up to speed on why I need to do something. For example, a task might look like, “2021-05-28 - Smith, John - left voicemail for defense counsel re production of safety manual.” I will then set that task ahead a certain number of days, and, when it pops up, I’m up to speed at just a glance. I can dig into the project’s task log if I need to go further. I have much of the process automated with Keyboard Maestro.

David Sparks has talked on the show about hyperscheduling. I can’t do that because of the nature of my days, but I do a simpler, less strict version of it by using Things to put a certain number of important tasks in each day. So I’m “scheduling” my tasks at the day level rather than the hour or minute level. Most weekends I’ll sketch out the week ahead, and try to make each day manageable.

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You want OmniFocus? YOU CAN’T HANDLE OMNIFOCUS!

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Agree, everyone’s situation will be different but I’ve gotten pretty good at saying no between 6-9:30, but as correctly you note, I’m not a sole practitioner so it may be easier for me. :grinning:

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Oh, to have someone to run interference for you.

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It’s a blessing and she takes no prisoners! :laughing:

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I mostly agree with everyone here. I will say this though, try to have system first and then find a software that supports your system. I was wasted countless hours trying to adapt myself to the software.

Build a system on how you ideally want to manage tasks and how you actually can manage your productivity. Then, find a software that best supports it.

For me Omnifocus works best but I really dislike how it looks (this may change soon). I have been using Things for 4 plus years now. What I miss with Things is lack of attachment support and I cannot finish a repeating task early…. What I get is a beautiful design which gives me joy every time i use it. This is also important. For a person like me, visual appeal is huge.

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Regarding Things, if only they allowed drag & drop to the calendar on iOS… you can on a Mac, but I guess it’s some side effect that they haven’t bothered to remove.

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Probably not lazy given what you say is your workload, more likely just disinterested in tech and the resulting overhead.

I don’t think this is a tools issue more a rethink as to your work mode. OF aid great once you have it as you need it, the issue is you have to be interested in 1. Building a system and 2. Implementing it in a productivity tool

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I’d go with Things. You can throw things in, give them a date and forget. You can create projects on the fly. You can organise, but don’t have to. You can also use tags so you can list everything with a single/multiple tag/s. Find is great and easy to access.

I also used OF once upon a time, but it encourages constant tinkering. Things’ capture is quick, iphone, mac, email.

It works even if your life is hectic.

Laziness will kill any system because if you’re not putting all your tasks in one place no system can be trusted and things fall through the net.

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I’ve used OmniFocus since 2011, and over the years have tried others like Things, Tick Rick, 2Do, Todoist, Todo etc, but the one that worked best for me has been OmniFocus, Over the years I have learned a lot and it amazes me that I seem to learn something new every year. I love that my tasks can be deferred and forgotten about until needed. I’ve created custom perspectives for things as mundane as the grocery shopping to one that trackk the TV episodes of shows I want to watch and to al my work related tasks… May sound simple to a power user, but for me it all works, If you are not willing to invest the time, and patience to learn any tool - it isn’t going to work. All those other apps could all work fine, some have features I loved others were not as good- BUT - they were all good in some regard, For me OmniFocus was the perfect balance.

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I jumped in and I’m liking it. I’m about two weeks running now and find it handy. Still learning various functionality, but it fits within what I need to do.

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I spent years tinkering with OmniFocus to get it “just right.” It never was “just right,” but I stopped tinkering quite a while ago, and it’s indispensable for me. The lesson for me is that just because you are using a powerful app, doesn’t mean you have to use every single feature of it. (I still use a lot of its features, but I’ve stopped trying to make it just a little bit better.) Its implementation of deferred tasks makes it worth just about any amount of money because of the way it protects my sanity.

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I’m going to go a different direction than the rest of the topic –

What are you doing now?

If you’re not doing anything intentional to track tasks/notes alreeady, then doing anything will be better than the status quo.

With that in mind, OmniFocus is a powerful tool, yes, but its learning curve and complexities may be more of a burden than a help in the short term.

If you’re not doing much at the moment for task management, I’d recommend using pen and paper to start. It might not be glamorous, but it will get the job done. From there, you can evaluate what works and doesn’t to see if you need a more powerful tool for the job. An excellent, quick method to learn is the bullet journal method. You don’t need the book – just browse through the website a bit to get the gist.

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I agree, you don’t need to use every feature, just the ones you need.

It reminds me of a conversation I heard when I did some work for Microsoft. It was around the time when they were deprecating Works

Someone in the room said the problem with Word is that it was too big and most users only used 20% of its features.

One of the product managers retorted that he spoke the truth, but everybody used a different 20%. That was reason it had to be so feature rich.

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