I’ve been trying to simplify as well. Right now I’m down to Todoist for tasks and Evernote for notes, and I’m trying to stick to just these two because I find I know both tools fairly well, they’ve been around awhile, and they work on anything with a browser.
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I know I’m over a year late, but I use both OmniFocus and Due. And am so THANKFUL for MPU for turning me on to Due (Found OmniFocus well before I found MPU).
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I use Reminders to prompt me to do my physio exercises every two hours and Alarms on the Clock app for everything else that is time sensistive — right on cue the one for breakfast just sounded (I was a heavy drugs regime from my hospital consultant and needed to make sure I ate before talking some the pills and can’t be bothered to alter that since I finished that treatment). Occasionally I will set reminders in Calandar too but not often.
Rarely I use Obsidian’s task list plugin to track completion of certain project goals.
I tried Things again today. I love how Things looks better with less in it. I feel like, because of that, it rewards you for getting things done. Omnifocus, on the other hand, looks great with more in it, so it visually rewards you for usage, but not for completion.
Anyway, I made it 1 day before I needed to use the attachments feature, and then I was right back at Omnifocus. Go figure.
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Similar experience here. Looks nice, but as a Todoist user with natural language input, there was way too much clicking around.
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Jibun Techo Biz B6 Slim paper planner
(the link is for April start, though I use January start) for weekly appointments
Reminders for repeating events and shopping/parts lists
Bear 2 for task lists for work, church and personal.
My task tracking journey over the years has gone something like this: paper lists → hipster pda → remember the milk → todoist → things 3 → splitting work to org mode and personal to apple reminders → personal back to things 3 (work still in org) → everything in org mode with separate views for personal and work.
The thing that still amazes me is that the “system” I use works well with any and all of these tracking methods. Ended up in org mode because it’s the most sustainable tool for my use going forward.
This quote from Paul Ford helped guide my thinking in that regard:
“Emacs is hard to learn, and Org mode is harder, but taken together they offer a sustainable way for me to do things. I’ve used Emacs for decades and it’s possible I will continue to use it until I die; it is a lifelong piece of software.” (1)
Both the BeOrg and PlainOrg apps on my iThings made it possible to use org mode on all of my computing devices.
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Lately I’m using Obsidian. I’m using it as a plain-text task list with minimal automation, primarily for scheduling.
Great thing about a plain text task list is you can move items around in any order you want, and group them any way you want. When I’m organized, I group tasks into three lists: “Now,” “Soon” and “Later.” When I’m focused on particular projects—and therefore disorganized about my task list overall—I create a new group at the TOP of “now,” which consists of the three or four things I need to get done over the next one to three day, ordered in the order I want to complete them. I haven’t found a fancy task manager that lets me easily do just that.
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I TRY to use Things 3.
I just started test-driving Obsidian for task management a couple of days ago using the community Tasks and Calendar plugins. (I haven’t tried Data View yet.) So far, so good.
OmniFocus isn’t quite what I need for the kind of work I’m doing now, but I clung to it nonetheless because I couldn’t find anything else that quite replicated its “defer” functionality. I found that I can use Task’s “start date signifier” and a query built into my Daily Note template for the equivalent of a defer date, and it works just fine.
I create a note for each project or area of responsibility, put it in a folder named “Agenda,” and add or revise the notes as needed.
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I should emphasize once again that I am BARELY automating my use of Obsidian as a task list. I could write out a task list in TextEdit and get about 95% of the capabilities I’m getting from Obsidian.
I live by defer dates and I rarely use due dates, so whenever I’ve used a task manager that didn’t support defer dates, that didn’t bother me too much—I just used the due data as a defer date.
Indeed, my brain can’t absorb the idea of due dates as distinct from defer dates. To me, the important thing is the days I’m going to work on a thing. The due date is important information, but it doesn’t belong in my task manager.
I’m the opposite. I need some mechanism to alert me when I need to start a project and when it must be completed. I consider defer and start dates to be the same thing—when I need to begin the project. For example, defer until/Start on (date)—work on it — complete on due date, e.g., start July 3 —working—complete by August 1.
The due date is when it is due to be completed. I think of this as a “virtual gant chart” for projects. Because Reminders does not have a start or defer date, I use a flag combined with a Smart List to alert me to projects I need to be working on within “x timeframe.” I would prefer having a defer or start date like in OF or Things, but the trade offs are not worth it to me so I use flags and a Smart List to accomplish essentially the same thing.
I was doing further testing of Reminders in Sonoma. You can set a Project with a due date of August 1st and set one Early Reminder for that project. It has some standard settings, such as 1 hour before, 2 hours before, 1 week before, 2 weeks before, and 1, 2, or 3 months before. It also lets you set a custom but does not allow to set it as specific date. If I wanted the Early Reminder to be on July 4th, I would have to set it as 4 weeks before, or 28 days before (not as easy as just entering a date).
I set a reminder for a project with a date of August 1st, with an early reminder of 28 days before (which is July 4th). So on July 4th, I will get an early reminder for this project (this could be your start date). If I make a smart list to show all reminders for the next 7 days, the early reminder does not show up. So it appears that Early Reminders do not get included on any smart lists that are date-based.
Although not what we want, but steps in the right direction. I’ll send feedback to Apple. 
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That is interesting and encouraging. Thanks for sharing and for submitting feedback. By the way, I assume this will also work on iOS/iPad 17?
For me, a due date is the drop-dead date on which something must be completed and delivered to someone else. “Delivered” covers everything from payment against an invoice to submission of an official document to returning comments on another persons work. I need to keep track of them to make sure I’m meeting all my commitments and that I’ve got a good overview of how many deadlines I’m working against during a particular time frame.
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This is the same way that I use it. I either need to deliver something to someone else, or give a presentation, that sort of thing.
Yes, not just more tasks, but it keeps indicating you to the ones that aren’t being shown. When you finish today’s items in Forecast, you’re immediately hit with the overdue items. When a perspective is empty, it invites you to switch from available to remaining. Etc.
I like this. I do add due dates to OF when something has one, but I try hard to avoid using task lists to motivate me. If I’m serious about working on what’s available, then I just need to know when availability starts.
I’ll also use a due date to prompt me to review/further shape a project. That’s probably compensation for never quite being on top of reviews.
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That’s how it’s been all my life.
Term paper is due on . . .
Final exam will be on . . .
Payroll will close on . . .
Location will open on . . .
Be there by . . .
Taxes must be postmarked by . . .
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Similar to how I’m using Obsidian to track all my projects. I’ve added a GTD Context layer on tasks so I can get a next action view easily. Still refining my sytem to handle the many recurring tasks I have but it’s slowing getting more usefula nd better. I like the additional space for notes and references to meetigns and other material I have by creating a note for each project. The links between reference and ancillary material and the actual task detail was always a friction point in my previous Omnifocus/DEVONThink system.
I never quite figured out how to use OmniFocus as a thinking space, which was OK when much of what I was tracking there had been pre-digested, so to speak, into obvious discrete actions.
But I’m doing much less of that kind of work now and need a different tool to navigate my course going forward. So far, Obsidian is filling that need.
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