2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44
For my long practice of self-organization, GTD has become the best, although not ideal, system, and OmniFocus 2 is the best organizer for GTD for Mac. That's what we'll talk about.
The power of GTD lies in the system of collecting, sorting, viewing, controlling and making decisions. A GTD application, at a minimum, should support all of these processes. Ideally, all these processes should, thanks to the application, be simple and fast. Let's take a look at the validity of OmniFocus 2's claim to be the best GTD app.
Collection ("Inbox")
OmniFocus 2 has everything you need to quickly add tasks to your Inbox. You can display the window for creating a task using custom hotkeys:
As you can see, in the window you can enter all the data about the task (note, project, context, start time and due date) or quickly type in the name and send the task to the trash.
You can create a task in your Inbox by sending an email to a dedicated email address. The subject of the email will become the title of the task, and the content will be placed in the notes. On my iOS devices, I typed OmniFocus email into the app and create tasks in two taps that way.
And one more way - through the context menu "Services":
And so that you don't have to open the context menu every time you select text, go down to the "Services" item and find the option to send the selection to OmniFocus there, set up a keyboard shortcut. This is done on the "Keyboard shortcuts" tab of the keyboard settings:
With this setup, using the shortcut will send each selected text to the OmniFocus 2 Inbox.
Sorting ("Projects")
For the possibilities and convenience of sorting, you can create folders and three types of projects: with sequential, parallel and separate cases. In the case of sequential tasks, only one task will always be active in the project, after which the next will become active. Therefore, if you select the filter Available, only the first tasks from the sequential projects will be shown.
Why projects are needed, I think, there is no need to explain, and folders can be adapted to areas of responsibility: professional activity, health, relationships, development, spirituality, finance, and so on.
View ("Check")
Review is the periodic review of projects and tasks in order to keep your finger on the pulse and not miss anything. We set the frequency of viewing for each project, and with this frequency it appears on the "Review" tab.
It looks like this: we open the "Check" tab and look at the tasks of the NNN project. One task was marked with a flag, another was given a deadline, and the beginning of the third was postponed. After all the necessary manipulations, we mark the project as checked and forget about it until the next hit on the “Check” tab.
This helps not to miss anything important and saves us from everyday review of projects, which are enough to check once a week or even a month.
Control ("Forecast")
The "Forecast" tab has a similar task, but with actions and appointments scheduled for the whole day or for a specific time of the day. It syncs with your calendar and collects the scheduled deadline in OmniFocus and the scheduled one in your calendar in one place.
This tab helps us not to miss appointments and events or deadlines assigned to tasks.
Decision making ("Contexts" and "Perspectives")
The Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is the concept of time, which tells us the date or the length of time remaining before the event or elapsed from it. Kairos is the right time (Kairos is the ancient Greek god of a happy moment).
They say that Pushkin collected the names of the picky critics of his works in a special vase and, when the kairos of a caustic mood taught, he took out one at random and wrote a poisonous epigram for the hapless critic.
In the GTD system, the concept of kairos is conveyed by the word "context":
The context can be assigned according to the mental and physical state (vigorous, headache, exhausted …), according to the place of stay (office, hypermarket, home …), according to the people with whom it is necessary to discuss issues (the council of the enterprise, Ivan Ivanovich …), according to the available tools etc.
GTD rules only allow one context to be assigned to a task, and OmniFocus 2 strictly adheres to this rule. But this is not always justified, and one has to create contexts like "Internet + Mac". But the application allows you to set geographic coordinates for contexts so that reminders are triggered as you approach a given location.
And for even faster decision-making, there is an opportunity to create perspectives:
As you can see from the screenshot, this is a simple filtering of tasks by project (folder), status (marked, in the near future, by the deadline …), availability (first available, left, everything, completed), duration, context or content of the text fragment in the name or task notes.
For quick access to the perspective, you can set it a keyboard shortcut or add it to favorites, which will place it in the left sidebar. The four upper tabs in the screenshots are the perspectives I created.
Outlook syncs with iOS versions in both directions, making it much easier to make decisions about the next task.
Disadvantages of OmniFocus 2
No matter how hard the developer tries, it is simply impossible for imperfect people in an imperfect world to create an ideal application without flaws and shortcomings. OmniFocus 2 is no exception.
The first drawback (relative) is the price: the basic version for OS X and iOS will cost $ 40; Upgrade to Pro - $ 40 for OS X and $ 20 for iOS (if you purchased a previous version of OmniFocus, the upgrade to Pro is free).
The second drawback is synchronization. It is slow and gives errors if you created or changed a task offline without synchronizing the device with the actual data on the server before.
And the third drawback is difficult for me to describe in words. In three years of "relationship" with OmniFocus 1 and 2, we have not been able to become good friends with him, and why is not clear. It seems that there is everything that is necessary for a great GTD application (I put up with the lack of synchronization), but I constantly experienced difficulties in making decisions and seeing the whole picture of projects and tasks.
Perhaps the problem is that I had been using MLO for five years before and had never been able to switch to OmniFocus. So I recently installed CrossOver and switched back to MyLifeOrganized. But that is another story…
So. If you consider organizers for OS X and plan to use the full power of the GTD system, then OmniFocus 2 is better for you today.
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