What do you love about Things 3?

The OF4 iOS beta which has rumbled on for months and honestly I have used it for free for so long I am probably going to resent having to pay for it when it does launch :grinning:

Really appreciate everyone’s thoughts here. I honestly just love reading people talk about their task manager of choice.

Currently I think I’m dumping everything BUT my daily routine checklist into Things 3. I was feeling like the daily routine checklist (either as one task w/ subtasks, multiple tasks, or repeating project) kinda cluttered stuff up. So I’m using Reminders for that.

I recently moved from Omnifocus 3 to Things 3. I was on the Omnifocus Beta 4, and just felt that I did not like the way tit was going. I do love Things and a lot of Things about it. I have a few issues that I am trying to find workarounds with, but in general I love it. I have reached out to a few people to see if I can pay them to solve the problems. Hopefully that will pan out.

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the ease of use on ios / best multiselect around. they have the best keyboard shortcuts support on the ipad bar none. scribble support works beautifully. and the app is gorgeous.

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You may be interested in Due, which I’ve been using for years. It keeps your main GTD system free of mundane routine tasks (e.g. taking meds every day, pay credit card), and it is specifically designed to do a better job of making sure you get those boring but important tasks done.

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Due is a phenomenal app. persistent notifications are awesome.

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As someone who used OmniFocus since it was launched (and in fact a bit before), I switched to Things about a year ago and have been delighted with it.
OmniFocus is great if you’re disciplined enough to use it rigorously and spend time maintaining it, or if your needs are big and complex.

But I realised that all I really wanted was a to-do list with defer dates, that would sync seamlessly across all my devices. Things is doing that very nicely for me.

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If you don’t want to use drafts, I can fully recommend pythonista!

For projects that repeat where the individual tasks need specific dates I use pyhtonista to template and instantiate them. I usually have a task “create next iteration” with a link that will run the specific script in pythonista. You can also pick another automation app. Things has good url scheme support. Anyway, a short look out of the window, and I’m back in Things with my new project ready to go.

For working on the Mac, I was missing perspectives from OmniFocus and build an Alfred workflow that opens saved searches (list + tag filters) in a new window. I couldn’t use things without it anymore. I even replicated it on iOS with shortcuts and the double backtap trigger.

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Hope I don’t repeat too much. But:

Love:

  • Type to instantly search makes it so fast to just jump around and find anything very quickly.
  • Fast and simple. Any time I try to switch to others, I find it gets cluttered and messy.
  • The hotkeys are just so fluid. It’s easy to move tasks, schedule them, or push them by a day.
  • It supports a URL scheme, so you can link to apps that have URLs, and you can have URLs that jump to projects/tasks/searches, or modify things.

Don’t like:

  • You can’t have headings in Areas. Why!? Which means if you want any sort of heading organization, you must use projects.
  • You can’t see Today and Upcoming in the same view. I love OmniFocus for that, but it feels too complex for me.
  • You can’t search for multiple things at once. Like Today + a tag.
  • No ALL view…

I’ve tried Todoist several times over the years, and every time I try it just feels like a clunky web app. And it seems like you can’t even navigate with the keyboard in the iPad app. I see they have basic Kanban boards now too. I really wish I could like it, but I keep being disappointed.

OmniFocus is so close to being perfect for me, but it just looks and feels too cluttered once I get it setup. I especially love scheduled reviews per project. But in Things, it just feels so light and snappy that it doesn’t trigger any sort of anxiety in me. I feel comfortable jumping around, and I think that’s the most important part. I don’t think it is easy to move things or jump around in OmniFocus.

Since snappy navigation is so important, now I’m wondering if I should go give Org Mode another shot… hmm. That, or do my work… haha

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In fact, you can’t use their search to do so, but there are three ways to achieve this:

  1. URL Schemes
  2. List filtering
  3. Shortcuts

URL Schemes

The trick is to ask for a show command and input a list and some filter parameters. Say I want to see tasks from Today view that have both Tag 1 and Tag 2. Here’s the URL:

things:///show?id=today&filter=Tag%201%2CTag%202

A limitation of this approach is that you can’t search for either (OR) tag. It will only work for all tags selected (AND).

Things URL builder will help with both the encoding and the documentation. I made some URLs to help me with comms and errands and have them embedded in the notes field of my calendar entries for such tasks. (More used URLs could be saved to your text expansion of choice and even Text Replacement for triggering via iPhone/iPad/macOS).

List Filtering

  1. Move to the list (say, Today);
  2. Select the Filter by Tag (or tags, but keep in mind the AND limitation as per above);

Specifics on how to filter will change across plataforms.

This way you’ll have only items on that list with such tag(s).

Bônus: it can be sped up even further if you have set keyboard shortcuts for your tags (unfortunately, setting them seems to be available only on macOS, but using it can be done on iPad with an external keyboard as well).

Shortcuts

It will now work on macOS as well.

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@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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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What I like:

  • the clean look, especially on iOS devices
  • the snappy performance and animations that add to this
  • fast sync (onmifocus could definitely see improvement here)
  • Clear text and color schemes
  • tasks within a certain area (when no project is needed)

What I do not like (or like less):

  • the workflow does not really fit me
  • no custom view of data (perspectives)
  • tags on iOS are not very useful to me (too much hidden away)
  • Feels limited on MacOS (no custom views, fixed layout, form over function)

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.

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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.

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