@ldebritto already commented on this, but this a really important point!
Especially, if you want to use start dates more in the spirit of defer dates à la OmniFocus, then you often need Anytime + tag of interest. Eg, I have tagged my areas, so I can easily see all available tasks of one part of my life.
For how to do it, see the excellent post of @ldebritto above.
That is also a great way to allow further filtering!
Just to make it clear to anyone that didn’t know about this, if you happen to tag an Area (or a Project) with a given tag, then all their tasks will inherit such tag and can be filtered down.
So if @Nils wants to filter his/her Anytime list for work phone calls, he could use both the “Work” and “Phone” tags in conjunction and get an even tidier list.
I badly want headers in areas, anytime, the today view and even the inbox. Headers everywhere!
I find myself in a classic situation of Annoyance With Developers, where they keep rolling out new features I don’t care about, such as markdown in notes, and won’t give me this one simple thing that would be such a big deal for me!
While I agree that headers everywhere would be awesome (currently I use some ---------------“tasks” to structure my today view), I love the markdown formatting in notes! I wish I could also use formatting in task titles.
I had to turn it off because it was SO good it was driving me nuts. And I found I wasn’t good about deleting stuff.
Just in case you don’t already know, you can adjust the notification frequency on a per-task basis. For example, I set some tasks to notify me every 15 minutes instead of the default 5 minutes. Sometimes that’s the optimal amount of annoyance to get something done.
What I like:
What I do not like (or like less):
On MacOS I want a powerful more customisable task manager like OmniFocus, but on iOS I do not need al those features per se. On iOS I want a clean, clear snappy interface like Things, which is easy to use and move tasks around, it is better suited for touch control.
I thought similar, until I saw @ldebritto post above about the URL scheme, shortcuts and list filtering. Once I created that to filter the Today view by just my work tasks, that made a huge difference to me.
I might need to look into the automation a bit more as it might solve this indeed.
I will also have a look at Due, because for some tasks persistent reminders are important to me.
What I loved about using Things is how clean and frictionless it was for everything.
And that’s really why I stopped using it and continued using Omnifocus.
I actually want a bit of friction in how I use a task manager – it’s fine if it’s a few extra clicks or takes a couple extra seconds to fill out everything I need. Or having to adjust things as necessary.
For me, psychologically, I want my task manager to be a tool I use to achieve something, not something I enjoy spending time with. I want it to be in it long enough for everything in there to have a sense of a consequence – but that’s it. Then I’m done with it until the evening.
I don’t run my life out of a task manager, like a lot of people need to. I don’t put daily routine things in there, or simple habits I’m trying to start. After I look at my next few days with it in the morning and make whatever adjustments, I usually have no need to open it up again until the evening (I’ll check things off on my phone during the day).
It was years before I figured this out about myself.
I built templates for my projects in things. They are all tagged, and then I just duplicate the project each time for a new instance. I am the Tour Manager for a recording artist. We have approx 20 shows per month. Each show is a project. I duplicate the project, assign the date am ready to go.
I achieve the equivalent of perspectives by doing quick searches for tags. As another user said, you can also build searches in shortcuts that would also be the equivalent of perspectives.
Yes, that’s right. I know I can’t work on this thing for the next couple of days, so I just schedule it in Things for a couple of days down the line, and it vanishes from my inbox until then. I haven’t really used the deadline yet, but I think your mapping is correct.
My two cents:
I started using Things because of how nice it looked, and, I must say, the user interface is lovely.
In regards to features, if I have the ability to overcomplicate my todo list or fiddle with it, I don’t end up getting work done. So the lack of features (although I completely see the appeal) isn’t a huge downside for me. Although, I agree that the app does seem to be falling behind the bleeding edge of things a bit.
I’d really like to see natural language processing, particularly.
To touch on why I use Things over Todoist, I’ve found that Todoist is a bit “flaky” as an app, particularly on the Mac, because it’s Electron. I don’t have anything against Electron, but there are just some strange behaviours particular to the app that I find odd on every platform. I can’t quite place it… but I do feel it.
As far as I know, start date in Things and defer dates in OmniFocus are exactly the same. Different labels, same feature.
Maybe the only difference, and it’s really just a difference in presentation… once a task “when” day is past in Things, it stays in the today view, and you need to keep moving it, or select the task and “clear” the when date.
In the forecast in OF, once you are past the date the task became available, it no longer shows up in the forecast.
My favourite feature are the widgets.
I have one set to deadlines on my home screen so I can see all my deadlines listed by date and know what’s coming up at a glance. This gives me a great overview.
I also like being able to see what’s in my calendar. Todoist failed on that front.
Finally, being able to add a new task with context is a great help. All my reference data goes into Devonthink and Things grabs the item link so I can quickly get to it.
I would love if Things made a web app that worked as well as Todoist. Just imagine lol.
there is a Thing 4 discussion, just a wish list I guess.
My todoist pro subscription just expired and I was hoping that there is a BF / Cyber Monday discount for renewal but does not seem like there is one coming. I already previously bought Things 3 (Mac, iPad OS, etc).
Just wondering whether people still prefer Things 3 over Tododist (putting cost aside)
I have used every single task management / todo app, more than once in my quest for the perfect middle ground between simple task management and just a little bit of more advanced feature set.
Things I love
Things I don’t love
Yes please!!!
Best would be seven columns to show one week.
The large iPad widget gives me hopes that diverging like this might be in our future.
