We’ve gotten a lot of requests for this episode, so here it is, our Task Management Smackdown. In one corner, David and The Omni Group’s Omni Focus. In another, Katie and Cultured Code’s Things. The duo discuss their system for managing tasks and how their preferred application helps to get things done. The verdict: the Mac has two excellent programs.
Links of note
Things – Cultured Code
David Allen, Getting Things Done
Curt Clifton – Omni Focus Scripts
Advanced OmniFocus & iPhone Client
Jeremy Burton’s Take on OmniFocus v. Things
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (38.6MB)
Katie did not mention this, but in Things, one can combine Areas of Responsibility with Projects. Just draft a project to an Area of Responsibility. Hence, an area of responsibility might be the French classes I teach. Within that area of responsibility the different units I teach would appear as projects.
Also, one can copy a project with all of its tasks (enter no dates), and keep the original as a template if one is planning on reusing it.
Thanks Katie and David for another great show! It was a pleasure to speak with you, Katie as part of your preparation and, as usual, you both did a very thorough job covering the topic. I think it worked really well to present both Things and OmniFocus in the form of a friendly “showdown’ and I agree that both are great applications. I ended up choosing Things and have been happily using this application for almost a year and a half.
A few other details about Things to highlight that weren’t mentioned in the Podcast:
* Cultured Code recently added a slew of keyboard shortcuts to Things that are well worth learning. If you’re keyboard focused like I am, knowing these shortcuts can greatly increase the efficiency of sorting tasks and performing weekly reviews. For example Ctrl+{ moves the start date forward one day for the select task(s) and Ctrl+Shift+{ moves the start date forward an entire week. On the Cultured Code website you’ll find a “Keyboard Shortcuts” PDF that is a handy reference.
* Similarly, single letter shortcut keys can be used to add/remove tags. For example, I have configured Things such that highlighting a task or a group of tasks and pressing the “e” key adds or removes the “Errand” tag.
* Tags can be assigned to both Projects and Areas. All tasks within each Project/Area automatically inherits the tag. For example, I defined an Area called “Household” which has an associated tag of “Personal”. All tasks added to this Area automatically receive a tag of “Personal”.
* I find the Make Repeating feature, available through the action menu in the lower right of the task entry area, very useful. As the name implies, it allows you to create recurring tasks from a flexible array of choices. For example, you can have tasks automatically show up on the last day of the month (e.g. to remind you to make sure there’s enough money in your account to cover a rent cheque) or have tasks show up Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week if there are specific things you need to do on these days. I regularly use this feature to remind me to call people on their birthday, to make sure my car is serviced regularly and for pretty all routine activities.
* As André mentioned, Projects can be added to a specific Area. One advantage to this approach is that it allows projects listed under Active Projects to be logically grouped. I’m hoping that Cultured Code will make this grouping more obvious in a future version of Things. For example they could have a disclosure triangle that adds/reveals all projects associated with a specific area.
good show, 1 vote for omnifocus
Terrific show! I very much enjoyed listening to the ways you each use your systems.
The one thing that clearly carries through – your system must match your style of thinking or it won’t work well. I can’t see either of you being happy if you switched (David using Things and Katie using Omnifocus). While we can make any system work for us, a system that does not fit the way our brain works will be a constant struggle.
At the moment I use my own kludgy system which has lately caused me to miss somethings (oops – not good). An upgrade is in order. From your show and from reading about each of these, I believe I will be using Omnifocus. It appears to be a better fit for me. Guess I’ll be busy this weekend getting a new system set up. (now to make sure I don’t get so involved in the system I forget to do the tasks -heh)
Thank you so much for the showdown. It is an excellent way to get a feel for how different methods work very well for different people.
AWESOME SHOW! I am totally hooked. As if I need more podcasts…
But one thing I can’t find is this “switch” option in Omnifocus that David talked about. Where is it?
I own both programs, like both, but I use Omnifocus right now. It is much more GTD adaptable in my opinion. My wife uses Things and seems to be suiting her well. Could the preference be gender based? Just curious….
P
OmniFocus for me. Love the sync. Handles lots of tasks well. (Also use it in my law work.)
I jump into OmniOutliner for quick, low-overhead checklists.
Really love Scrivener for organizing projects (trials, appeals, teaching).
This was another terrific show. However, for the next show might you make a “shout-out” for a third extremely popular and promising task manager? The Hit List is still in beta but is extremely stable and mature. It is more elegant than OmniFocus and Things and its strength is keyboard-options and simplicity. Have you guys looked at it? If so, could you comment on it?
One more thing: you left out the Archilles Heal of testing task manager: data portability. My understanding is that task managers keep their tasks and projects in propriety format making it difficult to transfer ones 1000 tasks to a different app,
P.S. I am not associated with the Hit List company in any way. http://www.potionfactory.com/thehitlist/
@Todd Another woman for Things!
I have also used OF.
Things is way easier, simpler, and less intimidating. Half the time I did not know if I was looking at the right list in OF, because there were so many possible permutations. I also do not think in terms of “parallel” and “sequential” tasks. I just need simplicity.
Things is perfect for me.
Just to add one brief comment to The Hit List… It does appear that there are third party iPhone apps that do allow The Hit List to sync with your iPhone.
Sorry to belabor this but Matt Neuberg has 2 really funny short videos criticizing OmniFocus’s sometimes crazy interface. Its worth watching if you need a laugh. Note that although he is not criticizing the CURRENT version several of his criticism still stand in the latest release.
http://www.apeth.com/omnifocus/omnifocus.html
I downloaded both of these. Wanted to give them an equal shot even though Omnifocus really appealed to me when I listened to your show and I thought that would be THE one I would use.
With both of them I used a small project list along with necessary daily todos. I still have to put the lion’s share of my “stuff” into the list, but didn’t want to do that until I had figured out which list would suit me.
After 3 days I have decided to go with Things.
I have to say I’m surprised. There are some excellent methods used by Omnifocus that I really liked, but the points I didn’t like were enough to move me over to Things.
I love that Omnifocus uses MobileMe to sync. I like the way it sets up projects. But the one thing – the deal breaker if you will – that really annoys me, is the utter lack of an easy way to show what is due “today”. I listened to the screencasts and even did some searching in the forum, but never did find a good method that wasn’t work to accomplish. One easy button or set that would show me today’s list of “stuff”. I spent nearly 3 days on Omnifocus – trying to get it set up and learn the ins and outs – it was not happening.
I set up Things late at night. Within 1 hour I had all my projects and todos ready to go – the same list I had used in Omnifocus. Even though I have quite a bit to learn about how it all works to use Things to its full extent, the basic methods are easy enough to get up and running quickly.
I don’t have much time to devote to learning organizing software. That’s just the way it is. Therefore, I’ll stick with Things. If Omnifocus was more intuitive for me, I would have stayed with that.
Interesting and unexpected.
I’m surprised not seeing Reqall on the list
http://www.reqall.com/
It does a great job especially at voice reminders then transcribing them and sending you notices before the scheduled task via email or text message.
I’m really happy about TheHitList as well from potion factory.
It is mostly the way you can do everything from the keyboard. I hated the way omnifocus forced my hand onto the mouse ALL the time.
And the way it lets you setup smart folders that search todo’s based on very flexible set of criterias.
Great app. Waiting anxiously for the iphone app, but the programmer is such a perfectionist (sigh).
- Thanks for another great show: Jens Poder
@durbrow
What are the third party apps that lets you sync hit list with iphone?
- Jens Poder
@durbrow
Oh well never mind… researched it myself, and am up and running with appigo sync. Sync via wifi now. To cool.
Thanks for the tip.
- Jens Poder
Another great podcast. Thanks for continuing to make these.
I don’t use Things or Omnifocus, but I still enjoyed the general discussion on GTD and task management. There are a number of principles that David and Katy discussed that can be applied to anyone’s task management situation.
Personally, I’m in a situation where I cannot use my Mac exclusively for my work. Therefore, a Mac-only solution like Things or Omnifocus isn’t feasible for me. I use Remember The Milk, and I *highly* recommend their service. The iPhone app is superb too (syncs over the air). For any fans of GTD who use Remember the Milk, I recommend checking out this post: http://blog.rememberthemilk.com/2008/05/guest-post-advanced-gtd-with-remember-the-milk/. I use a variation of the method described there. The most useful part of this system is defining context-based tags (e.g. @home, @work, @mac, etc). David and Katy describe a similar process. I find it very effective.
Additionally, I use Evernote–again for its cross-platform compatibility (OS X, Linux, Windows). Typically I use Evernote as a mind dump. I dump anything in there that could potentially become a task, project, or just reference material. When I “process” my Evernote inbox on my Mac, I can rapidly fire tasks into Remember the Milk using LaunchBar and email. This works great.
Hi,
thanks a lot for the very exciting podcasts you two create.
I´m a very happy new mac user and now the owner of a snapscan s1500.
I got the windows model, here in germany its much cheaper than the mac spezific package.
I did not need the mac adobe 9 bundle, in the win package is the mac driver cd included, and the scanner runs like a charm. Scanning reeeeally fast.
I took the yep … bundle to, my workflow is now awesome.
Greetings from Germany,
keep on going,
Gerhard
This was my favorite episode of your most excellent podcast so far. I was getting frustrated by my apparent inability to get GTD to work for me and this episode gave me the kick in the behind I needed.
Since listening (twice) I’ve finally managed to integrate OmniFocus in my daily work and so far it’s working like a charm. I finally feel on top of things again and I’m getting a lot done (evidenced by a very nifty “Completed” perspective in OmniFocus).
Thanks to both of you for creating a much-needed podcast, I look forward to each and every one of your shows!
Tom
Thanks a lot for this interesting episode. Just want to leave a hint to my favorite task management software: http://orgmode.org/. I’m not a programmer but a lawyer, so i am not the typical emacs user. I like the flexibility of orgmode so it is my most important application since about two years ago. And: there is also an iPhone App called MobileOrg (http://mobileorg.ncogni.to/).
Why is it every time I listen to your podcast, it costs me money? I am now the proud owner of an OmniFocus license. Your podcast got me to finally take the plunge. Tried Things, but it doesn’t fit my workflow. It really is a matter of preference. Both are excellent, but for the way I work and think, OF does it.
SO, $80 for listening to this podcast. I am afraid of listening to any high end hardware reviews you might do.
Thanks for a great podcast. I listen when I’m doing my morning walks. There’s something about the tone of your show that allows me to be able concentrate whether I’m walking or running. Keep up the good work!
I enjoyed your podcasts and have been confirmed in my previous decision to go with Omnifocus. I like the interface of Things but do need the sequential sequence option for many of my projects, which Omnifocus offers. I also appreciate the MobileMe syncing of tasks so that I can keep up-to-date even in my Windows-work environment. But the killer feature was the very helpful support forums and Ninjas provided by the Omnigroup.
For simple daily routines I was using Habits on my iPhone as I considered that Omnifocus was just overkill for those repetitive tasks. But then I found that splitting up my tasks between ‘trusted places’ was counter-productive in trying to apply a more focused approach to task management. I therefore followed the advice on the Omnifocus forums for creating a single various action folder just for those routines, that do not clutter up in my Due lists. So far it is working very well.
Well, my next task is to learn to apply Mail Act-On 2 and Launchbar – both of which I have downloaded after listening to your podcasts.
I’ve owned Things for nearly a year now. The devs do need to make syncing more useful and intuitive, but I feel that way about most indie software! The iPhone app is absolutely a step in the right direction.
Things has made me measurably more productive in the time that I’ve owned it, and was well worth the $.
Great show. I bought OmniFocus when it came out, but switched to Things a few months ago. I think Cultured Code have done a great job of making a program that allows you to start really simple and then gradually build complexity in as you understand the software.
A couple of other things:
1. I hope that sometime you’ll take a look at Pagico ( pagico.com and help.pagico.com ; the latter has great videos explaining the program). For me its chief claims to fame are its ability to gather all kinds of project-related files together, its multi-layered tag browser; and its graphical calendar in which you can see how various projects are related to each other timewise.
2. I appreciated the mention of Zenbe Lists. But it occurs to me that it’s missing a really useful feature: list instances. Not sure if that’s a good term, but let me explain with an example. I have a list called Short Research Trip, which I pull up every time I go away for a couple of days. But I don’t really want to be checking off items in the master list; I’d rather that were left totally untouched, and I could work from a copy of the list, which I would also edit (adding any special items for that trip, and deleting items that weren’t relevant) before working through and checking items off.
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Well, I thought I’d revisit this because I have just switched from Things to Omnifocus. I really really like Things – on my desktop. It was working for me. However, even though I thought I could get along with a less than optimum iPod app, I found out the hard way that when the todo list is not available, work worry trebles.
I have various tasks that are repeating. It’s the nature of my work. On the desktop Things was wonderful taking care of my lists. I didn’t have to try to remember what I had done, what I still needed to do, what was coming up. (I can’t tell you how much that cut the stress of my job!)
Unfortunately, repeating tasks do not sync to the iPod app!
When I was traveling and using my iPod app as my Things list – this suddenly became a HUGE issue.
Also, they’ve had a number of updates of the desktop and the ipod app. Each time the syncing became more odd on my iPod. I had tasks that weren’t supposed to be there showing up. I have finally reached the end of my patience.
The other day I moved to Omnifocus. It is different than Things, but I will work through the learning curve. I now realize how important it is to get all my tasks on to the iPod app.
I believe they have made a few changes that I like since I first did the trial. It will take me a while, but I can’t work with a GTD system that doesn’t cover all “things” all the time.
If Things can get their act together and get the syncing working properly – I might consider going back – but once I get OF in place and learn the process, there may not be much point. Live and learn I guess.
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