Inspired by this thread, I have been checking out Amazing Marvin and … am being quite amazed by it so far. I would consider myself an OmniFocus power user and I have been happy with its flexibility and iOS, macOS and watchOS integration. But … I have always struggled with executing all those tasks! Yes, I know, I should just fiddle once a day with the system and simply do stuff during the day. But it is not that easy and straightforward with a system that is focused more on task management than on task execution. I have been pairing Omnifocus with Fantastical, a Pomodoro Timer and Toggle to implement a sort of time blocking strategy… using 4 different apps… but there is still a lot of friction in the process and as a result I still struggle on execution and tend to procrastinate on tasks.
What Amazes Me About Amazing Marvin
Focus on task execution, not tasks management
Work from a daily list
Drag tasks from master list to your day
Time estimate (for executing all tasks of the day)
Estimate how busy your day will be based on the daily sum of the time estimate of each task (calculated automatically) and comparing that to your past averages
Strategies for doing/executing the tasks
Optional goal setting with commitment strategy, optional trackers, linking to projects/tasks
Procrastination count
Days until due count
Estimate of how busy your day will be
Integrated pomodoro timer
Integrated time blocking
Integrated time tracking
Tracks how much each executed task contributes to overal goal
Lots of alternative strategies: can be easily applied like “templates” to existing tasks
Strategies I use
Work from a daily list with morning, afternoon and evening sections
On some days: Time blocking and agenda view (Cal Newport)
Time Tracking and Pomodoro Timers
Super Focus Mode
Daily Higlights (Make Time by Knapp/Zerapsky)
Optional weekly and monthly planning tool and preview
Weekly Review
Habit Tracking (optional)
Additional niceties
It has an animated “life coach” that looks like a toasted marshmallow
It is based on a behavioral psychology approach
It has a kind of playfullness without being distracting
All this is so game changing for me that I have no issues with it being a web based system with (at the moment) an only very basic mobile app.
I am so amazed right now that I am setting Amazing Marvin up as my to do-system of choice. I still have OmniFocus and might not immediately migrate all my tasks, checklists and templates to Amazing Marvin. But I will try to rely on Amazing Marvin for the next 30 days of trial period and then evaluate whether I am more productive and procrastinate less with it than with OmniFocus.
Also, in Amazing Marvin (another life subscriber here), 2-way calendar syncing is seamless and happens almost instantly (at least with Google). This, combined with the Time Blocking strategy, could allow you to allocate some block on your calendar and when the block comes, Marvin will suggest tasks depending on the metadata of the scheduled block (a smart list, category, a tag…)
Its capabilities are practically endless, but the cognitive load is accordingly high and this combined with how these features translate into mobile (it’s basically impossible due to the difference in contexts and devices) made me abandon it for the time being (using Calendar + Reminders at this time). An iPad-specific app, or an iOS native app focused on some specific use cases (for example capturing new tasks) would be hugely useful, though, and I keep an eye on Amazing Marvins roadmap. You never know if these guys are going to hit a home-run one of these days.
I haven’t seen it but my imagination is running wild. For example, if you miss a deadline does the marshmallow’s hair light on fire? (Maybe it has no hair?)
For years now, OmniFocus and I go through a divorce every six months or so and then we reconcile. In one or the recent divorces I went to Todoist, and eventually tired of it. It just seemed overly complicated. OF affords good integration with macOS – except for Mail which doesn’t afford good integration with much of anything – and a quick-capture popup that I am familiar with and like.
I use Due for recurring daily must-do reminders that don’t need to be part of a “project”, or for one-off reminders.
I have found I am more productive by removing all the task managers from my life. Really. I used OmniFocus, Things, ToDoist… and I spent more time managing them than actually getting my work done.
I have converted to a single-tasker. My work is such that I can start and finish a project pretty much in order. And I rarely have more than a couple projects going at once, so I can keep track of it without much assistance. If I have things that need a certain delivery date, I will put that on my calendar. I use Due to remind me of things that need to be done at a given time. Occasionally I will make a physical note to remind of of something.
I understand that not everyone can work this way - although I might argue more people could than do - but it is very freeing. No system to wonder if I am doing it the “right” way, or if software x is better than what I am using. Can’t tell you how many hours I spent looking and researching the different methods and thoughts around productivity, while my projects sat waiting to be finished
That would be nice! Unfortunately, I have multiple relatively complex projects across divisions happening at one time, many tied to our strategic plan with its strategies, goals and tactics. To stay on top of my projects/tasks and those assigned to my team requires a service or application to manage it all. Someday perhaps …
In Things, I would just drag the items, to-dos etc up or down in order to prioritize them in Things. You can separate them too, super easily. Like if you were going to do am and pm, you can add a divider, I believe. Also you can see the tags. No need to open the entry. They are highlighted in a nice, quite unintrusive light grey.
Amazing Marvin is $12/month!!! It appears to be very simple. Is it?
Surprise! I’m using OmniFocus again now, and liking it. I find Wilson Ng’s prioritization tip, above, to be very nice:
I’ve used OmniFocus extensively in the past, so it’s familiar to me. And I’ve thought about something like Wilson Ng’s prioritization technique before, but it didn’t click for me until now.
We’ll see how I feel about OmniFocus in a few days, as it fills up. For now, I’m opening Things daily and copying daily tasks into the task manager of the day. I’m not going to take time to move everything over until I’m sure I’ve made a selection that sticks. This technique makes trying out new task managers easy.
Moving the items is cumbersome if I have a very long list of a couple of dozen items, which I do. If I move one or more items to the top, then focus is at the top of the list. I will have lost my place on the list.
And you can’t add separators to the Today or Anytime views. If you could, I wouldn’t feel the need to switch.
True on the Mac, not on iPad or iPhone, where you can see that the item has one or more tags, but you have to open the item to see what the tags are.
I’m on Remember the Milk (having done Todoist and various others). It has priorities built-in and shows priorities, tags, and due dates inline on mobile and desktop. Lots of ways to capture things. Fairly lightweight but powerful.
Coupled with @Wilson_Ng’s suggestions, the Review feature in OF, and actually doing the reviews periodically, is helpful for stepping back and seeing all the tasks recorded in OF’s brain, flicking away those that no longer matter, or bumping up the priority in others. Review is one feature that brings me back to OF when I’ve strayed, since it’s easy in OF to set the review frequency for a project anywhere from review daily to review every 5 years (or more).
Making task management software useful is all a matter of discipline and habit.
I get delight from knowing I can capture ideas and tasks into OF. Then I get delight when I can review/curate my task lists and projects to reflect current reality. My last delight is knowing that it’s safely recorded in OF and I can forget about it. My mind is free to work on my projects and tasks in front of me.
There is no delight for me in lingering in any task manager and wishing them into reality. I gotta roll up my sleeves and get $#!T done. My delight comes when I finally se the rewards that come after a successful project (usually in a large glass filled with a delightful beverage of choice).
My daily driver is my little notebook. Look at OF, choose the 3-5 main tasks or projects to work on today. Write those done in the notebook. It gives me all the focus in the world. I don’t get distracted by all the possible tasks I could be working on if I’m looking at my task manager.
But we’re all different. I would get endlessly distracted if my OmniFocus window was open. It’s just too easy to switch perspectives and work on something else. My notebook is always present on my desk in front of me. I can’t see anything but those 3-5 chosen tasks.
I think this is a great point. My tendency is to break down my tasks too much and over manage. Digital task managers can become a real rabbit hole. A 75 item paper task list becomes 200 digital tasks. This tends to be because you can endlessly add detail and break things down further and further in a digital task manager when it’s not really needed. All the bells and whistles that I think will help me end up distracting.
yes. I can easily fall into the rabbit hole; “Oh, look. categories and tags. I wonder how other people are using tags? hmmm, I should come up with a cool system to use minimal tags and categories so I can find things easier. Oh, look. Headings, I definitely need those. Look how I can break this task down. Oh, look……”
I can’t really help myself. The only way I found is to stop all together. Keep a simple pen and paper list (yes, i used Bullet Journal for a while, see above) and just focus on getting my stuff finished and out the door. One at a time, rinse and repeat.
I completely understand the need to go minimal to get today’s urgent things done, but I’d say that the protracted re-organizing and cataloging is just you trying to understand your responsibilities and desires. I’ve found that there is an end to it, especially if you learn faster by trying to check a few things off from the views and taxonomies you create.
I don’t use tags. Occasionally in Things3 I might assign a tag. But if I am naming a folder or something I put enough information in there so I can find it again. And evidently you are limited I the number of colors.
Ah, Kayla, are you sure you are in the right century? Actually I can get distracted on the way to, let’s saying looking up my task on Reminders that I may lose track of what I had originally started to do.
I have the SetApp Subscription . Houdah Spot comes with it and what an incredible search engine. It can find anything . But if you are looking within documents that can be an entirely different matter.
I just made a post on omni forums about this. I’m with @MitchWagner : I need some kind of 1-2-3 sorting, and I need it to apply to both tasks and projects. This is what I can’t get OF to do. So much to love about OF, but since I started using it, I couldn’t tell you what my next-most-important project is
What I’m looking for I can whip up in airtable in 10 minutes (see pic below).
Group tasks by project AND
sort/group projects by whatever tag, flag, etc, (in my example it’s “priority”) AND
sort tasks by whatever tag, flag, etc.
What task app can show a view like this? (and has a decent mobile app, unlike airtable.) What I hate having to give up is OF’s e2e encryption, which makes it such a great catch-all-unfiltered-everything bucket.
I started to build it in obsidian with dataview, but I’d really rather spend the next few months doing other things.
I’ve been using Todoist for some time and am happy with the ability to prioritize, tag, and use projects pretty easily. I also enjoy the ability to convert projects into Kanban style boards. I had to do performance reviews for 17 members of my team this past year, and this was really helpful to track and prioritize who was due when and what stage of the process we had gotten to.
While I would appreciate a native app, I use a PC laptop for work so having a robust web experience worked for me. The native iOS and IPadOS apps get regular updates and work well too.
I haven’t seen it but my imagination is running wild. For example, if you miss a deadline does the marshmallow’s hair light on fire? (Maybe it has no hair?)
Actually I can get distracted on the way to, let’s saying looking up my task on Reminders that I may lose track of what I had originally started to do.
