Hi there, I would like to ask for some opinions. Since I adopted the GTD methodology, I have used Omnifocus, Things, and Reminders, each to great success.
With all this extra time on my hands, I want to adopt a long term solution. I have migrated all of my projects, actions, and reminders to and from each of the above.
My primary function is to not forget anything that is due, a project, a bill, or an email or action I am waiting for from someone else. I don’t have in-depth projects on my agenda that go on for a period of time in my normal day-to-day.
Each has functions I love:
Omnifocus- the weekly review
Things- the user interface
Reminders- the integration with Fantastical
I would love to hear your opinions, so I can make the best choice and not change every time I have extra time on my hands, or a new option is added.
There are many many discussions about this here and elsewhere (e.g., the Omni forums). I think you should review what’s been said already. It’s a touchy subject for many who are on the fence and constantly doubt their decision (shout out to Kevin—intentionally not tagging you, my friend!).
The main takeaway from all of these discussions, for me, is that you’re never going to find peace with an app vs. app debate. These tools are too dynamic, and so are you.
No person uses the same app twice, as its not the same app and they’re not the same person. - Heraclitus
@ryanjamurphy said it well. I don’t know if it’s really possible to say you’ve settled on an app until you realize that you’ve been happily using it for awhile.
The devil’s advocate in me, though, says you should use OmniFocus because it totally rules. Go team!
My choice has been Omnifocus since 2009 when my LifeBalance implementation fell apart. I reviewed possible choices. Palm was being killed and I looked very seriously at the iPhone but ATT service in our area was so poor that I could not switch. However I decided that being Mac based I’d go ahead and go with Omnifocus. Initially I was syncing Omnifocus with Apple Calendar & ToDo’s and then syncing that with my Palm via Missing Sync. Kludgey but it did work. It was very hard to update on the Palm though so I did all my update and review on the Mac and only used the Palm for doing. Missing Sync was increasingly causing me problems, buggy, crashes and generally making me spend a huge amount of time making sure I was properly backed up.
Late 2009 I started looking at a replacement for my Palm phone. Reviewed iPhone again with same results, poor ATT service made it impossible. I also considered android phones but the SW for GTD was lacking and in particular since I loved Omnifocus I didn’t want to change that system at all. Finally decided that I could switch most everything over to an iPod Touch and so I did that in January 2010. I still used the standard Mac calendar and e-mail apps. Other than a major glitch when I made the mistake of upgrading to iOS 4.0 and had to jailbreak my iPod back down a level to get stuff working again worked very well. I did have to carry 2 devices, iPod touch and my Sprint dumb flip phone but it all worked.
I finally got an iPhone 4S in October 2011 when iPhone’s finally came out on Sprint. I consolidated all my iPod apps onto my phone and got down to a single device to carry which was great.
I upgraded to an iPhone 5s in December 2013 and also upgraded the iOS devices to Omnifocus 2.
For quite a while I still ran rev 1 OF and 2 in parallel on my main desktop Mac. The Mac version of 2 was a downgrade as far as I’m concerned and I was faster at editing and updating my projects on the older version. I finally made the switch over to completely in OF2 in late 2016.
Late 2017 I got my current iPhone 8. In 2018 I switched to OF 3 and I’m still there.
Biggest reason, OF is the most full featured and powerful app out there IMO.
I battle with this topic and have bounced off all task manager available.
The only thing that matters is to choose something and use it. For me I’ve landed on Things, the UX delights me every time I use it, only feature missing for me is a single list of tasks ordered by time (just the way my brain works), however with the new multi window feature in iOS and Mac I have a work around.
Any.Do almost calls me back (used it for years), however it’s confusing GUI and lack of consistency across platforms is an issue, however love the today/ tomorrow/ soon/ someday Approach.
Omni focus is great, however to complex for what I need.
Reminders lacks the single list sorted by date, oddly, also adding stuff with dates is just a PITA.
Others have added some great context above, however for most folks I can’t help but feel Things should be the first place to start.