Whining: Things user is sorry that it didn't work out with Omnifocus

Software
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ZLet me just say, like others have, but I feel you. I went through the nearly exact set of dilemmas recently. I appreciate the complexity of OmniFocus. But in some ways you can see the legacy of OmniOutliner within OmniFocus. To many, and for me for a couple years, this level of complexity and Organization has some value. But in the last five or six months I have sought something simpler. When I initially move towards a belief that I needed task management, I debated between things and OmniFocus. But since I had very little experience with the task management system in general, I saw “feature set“ (in hindsight) as the value of a product. I saw feature sets as a quantitative metric, as opposed to a qualitative metric’s.

So, in essence, I made a significant investment into task management with OmniFocus. Spent months fine-tuning my understanding of the feature set in an attempt to build an affective workflow. For full disclosure, I am a college professor Mana Jean anywhere between six and nine classes of 40 students or more, in combination with the fact that I might be teaching between 3 to 5 different class topics in a given semester. And not only do I need to focus on class management during the semester, I also need to focus on pedagogical development between semesters and during the semester — in hopes that every semester will be better than the last.

OmniFocus allow me an opportunity to organize my life. But I ran into the same dilemma. Do I need this much customizability and complexity? My jealousy of the beauty of things three periodically emerged with me clicking into the App Store and reading user reviews here on the forum. It had always irritated me that there was no way to trial things. So I decided to jump in to the iPhone app, as it is not that great of an expense.

What it came down to, as many of sad but if you truly realize, your task manager is an extension of your self. It is a tool that always works in tandem with your own contexts, tendencies, psychology. As you say, there are far too many variables to objectively determine whether this or that task manager is the “right“ one.

The feature that things offers, that really sold me, was the “today“ view and The “start date“ feature. I do recognize that you can replicate these features within OmniFocus with some customization. But the combination of aesthetics and simplicity and things to gave me the flexibility to determine what needed to be done within my chaotic life.

I still find moments where I wish I was back on OmniFocus. Particularly when I take on very complex projects for the college administration or professional development. And maybe I will return at some point in the future. But at this point things does the thing.

(So it goes, in another episode of task management therapy)

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I use Curio with Kanban-type boards to do my project management. When Kanban is not your cup of tea, you can also just use the Status Shelf in Curio to track tagged figures. I consider this aspect one of the hidden gems of the app.

–
JJW

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Curio looks great, but it has no iOS app :frowning: I love doing research inside Margin Note 3 on iPad using Apple Pencil and basically being able to do it anywhere.

But I like the idea of Curio. Reminds me a little of Tinderbox. I will take a closer look at Curio. It looks extremely uselful :slight_smile:

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I have to put in a plug here for Agenda.
It nicely integrates and links notes, reminders, and calendar events together. And keeps getting better.
Available on all the Apple OSs.

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I used it. It is a great app, but I started to hate the way it handled categories and projects. After a while, my left pane was overcrowded … I went to Bear for that reason and Bear can also encrypt notes, which is important to me. But I miss the calendar approach of Agenda.

Agenda is developing at a nice pace, so if they add/change some of the stuff, I would love to come back :slight_smile:

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Can someone really explain what it is that you like about the Things design? I just flat don’t get it. To me it’s clunky and doesn’t provide sufficient info easily.

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From my response up the tread, here was the elements that really sold me.

But to build on that:

  • an uncomplicated “Today” view really provided the key feature for me. Today is a list of things that I am currently working on. Not a list of things that I need to do by today. In effect this is a start date. But the keys here is that if you don’t complete your tasks on “Today,” they just roll over to the next day.
  • the “Evening” feature is nice, but I wouldn’t have switched for that. But it helps delineate what I might do when I get home, as opposed to right now.
  • while aesthetics shouldn’t be a primary motivator, I really do enjoy the look of Things - from typography to layout - the UI/UX in general.
  • simplicity in “view.” I didn’t want to see a lot of data and information until I needed it.
  • efficient gestures are nice - the “Magic Plus Button” (I think they call it on iOS/iPadOS) is a great feature that allows you to create todos in place, as well as headings (I would not pay for the macOS version - too expensive)
  • how the app deals with headings and notes is nice and clean.

But as you say, you want “info” easily. I don’t. Frankly the new Reminders in iOS 13 nearly ruined my excitement about Things, but I find reminders a bit too clunky myself (although it has some features I would love in things)

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In OF all tasks stay available until done. The forecast view gives the due date version. I’ve never even thought about wanting a version of Today, like you describe. That’s not how I interact with my list of things to do. Ditto for the evening thing you describe.

I use contexts (tags) to decide what I can do at home. Or in my case since work and home are the same place I use contexts for all sorts of locations.

Aesthetics is so subjective. I found Things hard to read and confusing to interact with. So much wasted space and so little useful information without a lot of hassle. viva la difference I guess :wink:

Another use case I don’t use. I don’t add things to OF via iOS at all. I do all my processing on my main mac. iOS is for doing and checking things off, whether via iPhone or iPad but not for adding or reviewing. That’s part of inbox clearing for me and only happens at my desktop machine for efficiency. Part of my whole, just because I can do something everywhere doesn’t mean I should. I do things where and when I can be most efficient at them for the way I think and work.

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Our life situation changes over time. When my life wasn’t complicated, I was quite happy with a f
Ranklin-Covey dayplanner and ran my life on that during my college years. I had a structured life with my work and class assignments explicitly spelled out for me. When I graduated, got a job, had kids, and a side job developed, I had to ramp up and get busy with a digital task manager. OmniFocus has managed my life quite well. I imagine that if I retire and or quit my side job, I can transition to Things or even Apple Reminders.

Life ebbs and flows. If you need the power of OmniFocus, it will be waiting.

I think that most of my frustration with OmniFocus (or any other task manager) was that I was in planning mode and tinkering with my setup so much. But once I figured that out, I was good to go. Nowadays, I only visit my task manager when I am doing project curation and reviewing. My last step during planning mode would be to pick the the three Most Important Tasks (MITs) I want to do today and write them on a fresh page of my Bullet Journal or piece of paper. Then I hide my task manager on my Mac so it’s not visible. Next, I go into action mode and look at just those three tasks. I’m not looking at my Today view. I don’t even want to open up OmniFocus or things to see what is on the Today list. if I have to open up my task manager, that is just an invitation for me to get distracted and suddenly go back into my projects list for another task that is more appealing to do other than the three MITs I already selected.

I feel the zen when I don’t have my task manager visible. I am focused on what needs to be done. At mid-day and the end of the day, I go back to my task manager and check the tasks off. I also add any new tasks I wrote down in my bullet journal and process my OmniFocus inbox. Like email, I don’t want to keep my email app open. I already have enough work selected in my bullet journal. I purposely choose midday and end of day to spend time in there. Otherwise, I’ll be stuck in email swamp-land or task manager quicksand and I’ll feel like I’m drowning.

The less time spent in my email app and task manager, the more focused I am on actual work.

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18

It seems that OmniFocus is more like a platform that you turn into anything you want. See @Kourosh ‘s book for that: internal links, unparalleled scriptability and infinitely customizable perspectives make it more like a tool that you can make yours and will look like nobody else’s, but that you can make sing.
Things, in comparison, gives one take on your tasks that out of the box, with a peaceful and simple design. But, ever so subtly, you are forced to work the way it has decided for you, the way it breaks tasks and projects down, the way it decides what « Today » is. If it suits you - and it does for many people with a few well-separated areas of responsibility - good for you. You are right to eschew OF’s complexity.
But if you are juggling with vastly different roles as a freelancer for example I find that nothing can scale the way OF does. Because you can truly create workspaces within OF with links, launch tasks (again plugging @Kourosh ‘s awesome work here) and the vastly underestimated focus mode.

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ooooo I think you hit the nail on the head…

I am a farmer, programmer, community activist, artist, archivist, board member, etc. etc. etc. I can’t imagine handling all my roles in anything less capable.

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Oh a thread comparing OF with Things3, my favorite topic. I sank so much time into trying both over multiple months, I even have a github repository full of applescripts for omnifocus that I execute with Keyboard maestro.

Despite being a “omnifocus power user” I kept going back to Things and the main reason for that is mainly: keyboard shortcuts. Things3 has excellent keyboard shortcuts on all platforms, omnifocus doesn’t and I just can’t get why the omnigroup isn’t finally adding them.

I want shortcuts to quickly change things like tags, project, defer dates, due dates and so on without having to use keyboard maestro to frankenstein my own bindings together (which itself isn’t even working so well because it involves moving the mouse to certain coordinates sometimes). The app is expensive and yet I can’t do basic things without moving the mouse??

Things, on the other hand, is 100% usable without ever touching the mouse. That’s what I call a power tool. Even on iPad I never ever have to touch the screen. A lot of my workflow is quickly tabbing into things, moving some stuff around and tabbing back to my actual work.

There were other oddities like not being able to reorder tasks (which might have been fixed now?) or creating a new task in a perspective not being possible because OF has no idea how to create a task to match all of the perspectives filters.
With applescript and all, I spent far more time organizing OmniFocus than actually using it. OF started taking up mental space to think and research about possible flows I could try to make it better, instead of freeing up mental space and letting me concentrate on the actual tasks.

Things3 isn’t perfect. I want saved searches to quickly filter for certain tasks. Tag support also needs some love to make it good. But in my opinion, Things3 wins for me for being the power tool I need.

Also Things3 is currently 30% off, perfect time to get it.

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You can have “perspectives” in Things. Search for a tag and save the link of the search. It can look like this: Omnifocus and Things.

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Same job. Same concerns. I’ve bounced back and forth between both apps more times than I’m willing to admit publicly. The last move was from Things back to OF when I had a lot of priority tasks for work that Felt scattered and I wanted to get into the same easy view.

Probably could be done with things.

And honestly I wish I didn’t see your post because now my brain is swirling about it again.

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Thank you all for your replies!
I find it always fascinating how hearing that others have the same problem makes me feel better.

@KevinR: I am sorry! My idea of this thread was not to get you thinking about switching again. Seeing all those people with the same thoughts you can now try to think: Well, I feel the need to switch my task manager, but hey, so do a lot of people. I just observe the feeling for what it is and then let go of it…
We’re the anonymous (well, not anymore) task manager switchers!

That being said, I also love discussions about what are the strengths of the two task managers and like to give some of the points I feel Things is ahead (for my situation). I think we all agree that, in general, Omnifocus is much more flexible and powerful. So please don’t read this as “Omnifocus” is bad. More like a wish list (which I did send to the Omnigroup, in case you were wondering).

  • Feature parity on iOS and macOS. Especially, as @fairlydoughnut noted, keyboard shortcuts! It seems like nobody at the Omnigroup is using Omnifocus on an iPad with a keyboard attached (rant).
  • With that comes the ability to filter any list by tags (with keyboard shortcuts). In Omnifocus you have to change the settings of the perspective for that. In general, I feel it is quite strange that the namesake (I’m guessing here) focus mode is missing on iOS.
  • Visible notes: In Things, project notes are always visible. That works better for me (subjective). I can write a sentence or two to clarify the outcome of a project and stick some key dates there. The same for tasks: The notes are directly visible when I tap on a task (and are not buried on page two of the inspector). Either I keep there information I should see when I think about (read: open) the task, or I put there links to either trigger automation or open views in Things.
  • Things is rather defer date based, where Omnifocus is due date based. I prefer defer dates, and so I didn’t find good use of the Forecast perspective in Omnifocus (and love Things’s Upcoming. Sidenote: what a great idea to use a “logarithmic scale”).
  • Add projects to your Today view: You can just have a project in Things’s Today view. Very handy if you just want to make some progress on a project (similar to what @Kourosh proposes) . Also, if the project is due, then not every single task of the project pops up as a due tasks, just the project. Much clearer and cleaner for my taste.
  • Defer dates of a task can be earlier than the defer date of a project (and will show up earlier). This again is highly subjective, but makes so much sense for me.
  • The datepicker! Entering dates in Omnifocus with a keyboard on macOS is perfect, but scrolling the wheels on iOS feels tedious to me. In Things, you have a nice datepicker and you can also type dates on iOS! You can also type and filter in nearly any dialog where you can choose something in Things. Again, this could be easily fixed in Omnifocus (famous words of someone who does not have to do it), however Omnifocus on iOS often feels a bit neglected/unmotivated (to me!).
  • Card view. Also highly subjective. The inspector on iOS takes me away from the current list. I cannot see details of one task and still see the surrounding tasks. The card view in Things feels like less context switches (at least visually).
  • Detached instances of repeating tasks: Repeating tasks have a lot of quirks in Things. But the current instance is detached from the repetion template. That means that you can set a task to start every Monday, but then change it just this once to start on Tuesday, or change the title or whatever, without altering the template. I personally prefer it this way.

Most of those points are more important or only important when you use the app on iOS. So I totally get @OogieM, as Omnifocus is very good on the mac, but switching over to Omnifocus on iOS feels like a step back (to me!).
That may change when OmniJS finally makes it to Omnifocus (and then I will definitely play some Omnifocus like other people play computer games). However, the still quite quirky keyboard support on iOS might be an indicator that those automations might not be so easy to trigger on iOS (which would then defeat an important aspect of cross-plattform-automation).

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Great summary of our discussion and your concerns.

By no means is it the most important, but even if you don’t quite like the aesthetics in Things 3, it is hard to argue OmniFocus is beautiful. Sure it doesn’t have to be, but when your psychology is primed with this kind of fruit for the eyes, I find it easier to work in. Obviously features that aren’t there for you in Things is a deal breaker, but when both can basically do what you need it to do - its hard not to go with what is easy on the eyes.

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Yes and no, sadly.
While saving searches for tags/projects is great, especially combined with an app like LaunchCenter Pro, it still lacks the ability to join search criteria with operators.

It would be a blessing to have the ability to create views by simply combining what is already available as meta data.
Example: “(due date < mm/dd/yyy) AND (tag = waiting) AND NOT(list = private)”

This is the my biggest gripe with Things 3, to be honest.

They could even implement this in the app without creating a new list or section in the main menu just by displaying your saved searches underneath the search box text field in the pop up, if nothing has been typed.
The problem with Cultured Code is that they try to be too minimalist and it is actually harming their product sometimes.

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Similar situation with multiple roles. At my main job I am an employee (“knowledge-worker” in engineering), I have a side-business that involves programming and entrepreneurial tasks, I also am a coach, who is actively training athletes on a 1:1 basis and I engage in various clubs/groups. On top I am a designer myself and have a good sense for UX design and Things hits home and is one of the least clunky and OS-native apps out there.

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Yes, we urgently need better handling for search and tags natively.

Another problem is that CulturedCode is horrible in communicating anything. They are secret about every little step they want to take with their app and as a costumer that really annoys me. It was especially bad during Things 2 times. Most of the times they take the right steps nowadays but I really wish they’d be a bit more open, to give me more confidence in the app

The OmniGroup, on the other hand, communicates actively with its users and even has a forum running for people to come and discuss.

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There is a way to add items to the Forecast/Today view in Omnifocus:
https://inside.omnifocus.com/blog/the-forecast-tag

I do like the Things idea that the Forecast view only shows the project due on a given date, because to can be overwhelming and stressful. However, if you have multiple tasks due today, it will interweave the items between calendar events. Likely if you have that many things to do on the last day, it’s probably not a good thing!. As an alternative, I create a task to “Work on XX” project with a due date or a Today tag as described above and no deadlines for the subtasks.

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