Year: 2008

Cheating on Things…with OmniFocus

There are a lot of good reviews about Things, and the CulturedCode developers are frequent commenters on reviews of GTD software that include Things. Things is a beautiful application that works amazingly well for a beta. And I certainly can’t complain about the nearly one year free trial while it’s been in beta. But I got tired of the regular pop-ups telling me that a feature is not available until the release version, and having to re-organize my Today list every morning was getting a little old. So I decided to give OmniFocus a try. Only a 14-day trial, kind of a bummer after a 9 month trial with Things, and I do wonder if I can be satisfied at the end of 14 days, about which application is right for me. I mean it took a lot of use for the nit picky items I mentioned above to start to bug me in Things.

As background, I’ve listened to the Unabridged recording of David Allen’s book Getting Things Done multiple times. The concepts were like a huge breath of fresh air to me and really made sense in the context of the many tasks I was trying to keep track of. That is what prompted me to go looking for a GTD application for Mac last winter.

There are a lot out there. The ones I considered last winter:

  • iGTD – maybe it is the interface design, but it just looked complicated and obtuse to me. It’s got a lot of happy users so it is worth checking out.
  • TaskPaper– sweet little app if your task list is short….mine is VERY not short.
  • OmniFocus – too expensive and every review I read said it was not quite as good as Things. That was then and this is why I’m writing now.
  • Things – right price and seemed to do everything I wanted. A nice little intro video from a user made it look simple.

There were a few features in Things that threw me from the start. 1) Areas v. Projects. Though I have spent a fair amount of time reading about the subject in the Things forum, I still don’t understand how to use Areas effectively, but I do have close to twenty. 2) There didn’t seem to be a way to see everything. I was always worried that I was overlooking some item, maybe hidden away in Scheduled or Someday. I really wanted a view that showed me everything relevant so I could do a quick review each morning. FWIW, after this long trial, I have come to trust Scheduled. It has always worked reliably, popping tasks to the Today list when their time is up. Someday can get overlooked, but honestly the few things I put in there were things I will probably never get too. That said, I think what I really wanted was a function in between Scheduled and Someday. There are tasks I want to review when I look at everything, but I want to decide when to review them. I don’t like having them dumped in Today and waking up to an 80 item Today list to cull through and reorganize.

Some issues that have bothered me after the long trial. 1) Maybe it is because I have so many tasks, but clicking a task seems sluggish. Things is especially slow to de-select an item. Sometimes I don’t know if I have not clicked in the right area to de-select or if Things has just hung up for a few seconds. 2) I guess not being sure if I have clicked in the right place after several months of use is one of my issues too. 3) I’ve never made much use of Tags. Probably I need to simplify my Tags even further. My Things are tagged, I just don’t use the available filters (though they look very cool!). Maybe it is that fear of missing something when it is hidden.

So I downloaded OmniFocus last night and watched the excellent OmniFocus Basics Video, produced by OmniGroup. (There’s also a Perspectives video in the Resources section on the main OmniFocus page.) I also did a quick scan of the manual and downloaded the one page reference chart.

A lot of reviewers have found OmniFocus’ interface design lacking. I think it is great and functional looking, whereas Things interface looks a little like a toy with all its eye candy. To me the <return> based item entry is much more intuitive, than Things’ <space><return>. I like that Omnifocus has all the pertinent data; Project, Context, Start Date, Due Date, Duration, in one line; and that I get to choose the Columns displayed. I don’t care much for having to click an icon to add a Note, but that seems to slow me down less than navigating the item entry box in Things. At first I didn’t like being limited to one Context per task, but I quickly saw the benefit of that, when I realized I never used Things Tags because mine were too complex. OmniFocus also has estimated Duration as a separate feature so time doesn’t have to go in your Contexts. Interestingly I have 23 Tags in Things and 22 Contexts in OmniFocus. For the most part they don’t map. I took the 11 most useful Tags from my Things list and added a Context for non-computer tasks and some subcontexts for errands.

A surprising realization to me was, while all the reviews I’ve read said Things was the simpler of the two applications, for me the reverse was true. OmniFocus was more intuitive and fit better with my workflow (admittedly somewhat shaped by using Things for several months). OmniFocus’ Views and the ability to organize Projects and Single Action Lists within Folders were more useful and made more sense to me than Things implementation of Areas. Though the two features are very similar. OmniFocus may have a more bells-and-whistles at this stage (comparing a release candidate version of OmniFocus to a beta of Things), but I think the basic usage of OmniFocus is more straightforward.

The cost of OmniFocus at $80 is a drawback, but not more than I would be willing to spend on a program I use everyday. The larger developer force behind OmniFocus is a plus. OmniGroup seems to be able to implement changes more quickly than Cultured Code. As a Blackberry user I was disappointed to see Things developers suddenly turn their attention to getting an iPhone version out the door to keep up with the release of OmniFocus for iPhone, pushing off the release date of the desktop version yet again. Though the upside is that Things is free as in beta, for another 3 months.

Overall I am impressed with OmniFocus. Enough to switch from Things to OmniFocus permanently? I don’t know yet, but I will create a task in both to let you know.

If you give OmniFocus and/or Things a try be sure to watch the videos first. It’s a few minutes spent that will save you time and get you up to speed using these applications and having fun organizing your task lists right away.

Iron and sleep

After my last 24-hour mtb race in August I had to visit the doctor and got a number of long overdue medical tests. Basically the tests were all a waste of money, everything was fine, except for the $7 iron test.

My iron levels were low. Not surprising for a woman/veg/athlete. I have been vegetarian for nearly 20 years and mostly vegan for the last 4, but in the previous 6-9 months (maybe longer) I had been increasingly tired. Tired in a different way than I had been before. I felt like I was always in a fog. Even after a good night’s sleep I never felt completely awake. Work was torture. I had a hard time concentrating. Not only could I not stay up all night and crank projects out, it was even difficult to get anything accomplished in the morning, usually the most productive time of the day for me. I was starting to believe it was just the aging process. Then I found out about the iron deficiency.

I started taking a vegan, liquid iron supplement. I don’t remember if it was the next morning or the day after that I woke up feeling awake for the first time in many months.

A couple weeks later my partner heard James Maas, Power Sleep, speak at a conference. Though the importance of regular 8-9 hours per night of sleep had been expounded on by our most, excellent physical therapist/healer we didn’t really take it seriously until Dr Maas’ lecture. His story of how Sarah Hughes won the 2002 Olympic Gold Medal in Women’s Figure Skating by skipping early morning practice and getting a good night’s sleep every night was especially motivating.

The most surprising thing to me was how hard it was for me to sleep well the first week or so; even though I was very sleep deprived. While I am not getting 8-9 hours every night, I am sleeping 7-8 hours most nights. Between the sleep and the iron I am feeling energetic, enjoying work, accomplishing more, and my training is going better than ever.

I am not recommending that everyone take iron. Too much iron can be as bad or worse than too little. It is worth the ~$7 iron test, especially if you are a meat eater and/or man. I do recommend that everyone get more sleep, but I have said that before. You should be trying for 7-9 hours of sleep a night, with the same bedtime and wake time (without an alarm) and the last hour is the most important!

“This is Water”

David Foster Wallace hanged himself a week ago. He was the author of several novels including, Infinite Jest, a book I managed to finish sometime in 1997, and one I remember and talk about more than almost any book I’ve read since.

I heard his 2005 commencement address to Kenyon College was published in today’s USA Today and went looking for it on the web. It is worth a read if you have a few minutes.

Thanks to the USFS!!

Thanks to the USFS employee(s) that cleared the Dike Trail!! What a great surprise! I had a great 8 mile run yesterday from one end to the other and back, with no stops for climbing over trees.

I had given up on trying to keep the far 2.5 miles clear because between pine beetles, aspen worms and high winds, there was a tree down every few yards. I counted about 60 in one mile a few months ago. I know it was a lot of work to clear that section!! Thanks to the USFS!