OmniFocus 2 for Mac will be here in two days:

Just a little over 48 hours until we ship OmniFocus 2.0 for Mac: http://t.co/AqGGZkzPyv

For as long as I have know that it was coming, I just assumed that OmniGroup would get my $80 on day one.¹

I am not so sure anymore.

I originally switched to OmniFocus from Things, back in 2011. Things had limitations, OmniFocus fixed those limitations, and all was right with the world. For a while.

The last few months have been different. The complexity of OmniFocus has been wearing on me, particularly the new iPhone version. It's too hard to enter a task. There are too many fields. The date pickers are still terrible. There is still no easy way to handle templates on iOS.

Task name. Notes. Project name. Context. Start date. Due date.

It's too much.

Sure, I could pick and choose what I use, but it's this complexity that gives OmniFocus it's power.

For about a month, I have been slowly getting into TaskPaper. I haven't ported all my tasks over - just a subset of work tasks. Sometimes it works great, and the simplicity makes it a breeze to use. Other times, the limitations have me missing OmniFocus.

Simple takes time

I'll need to put together a whole new set of tools to get tasks into TaskPaper easily. I'll need new Drafts and Launch Center Pro actions, along with some way to add tasks by mail. It's all possible, but it also takes time.

There's also the question of scale. I have doubts that TaskPaper will scale well with a large number of projects and tasks. That's why I am starting out small. OmniFocus, for all it's complexity, does a great job of only showing me tasks that can be done now.

I am not saying that I'm done with OmniFocus. I am not saying that I won't buy OmniFocus 2 for Mac.² I am just saying that it's no longer automatic.

Brendan Tobolaski, on his reluctant decision to stick with OmniFocus:

I like a system that allows me to organize tasks by project but, also can make a list of available tasks regardless of the project that they are in. I don’t feel like there is a system that combines both of those and so I must stick with OmniFocus.

Between the OmniFocus 2 stability issues and design / functionality regression, the extremely dated Mac app, and just general complexity, I have seriously considered switching. I came to the same conclusion as Brendan — there just isn't a better solution available today.

Gabe and Phillip have done a great job exploring TaskPaper and plain text based systems. Maybe they'll convince me one day, but for now, OmniFocus is a habit that I just can't quit.

The weekly review is a pretty core part of on OmniFocus. It helps keep you on track and moving toward your goals. It's also a great time to clear out tasks and projects that you just aren't going to do.

The longer I use OmniFocus, the more I break my lists up into separate projects. That's great for organization, but terrible for reviews. At last count, I had over 50 active projects. That is an awful lot to review each and every Friday.

There is a fix, though. It lies in using the review interval setting in OmniFocus for OS X. Simply select the project that you want to change and CMD+SHFT+I to bring up the inspector. Toward the bottom of the pane, you'll see a setting that says "Review every:". Here's where you can set how often to review this project. Let me give you a few examples:

Long term projects

Set the review period for long term projects to a much slower interval. Depending on how long term, it could be monthly, quarterly, or even yearly.

Recurring projects

I have quite a few monthly repeating projects for my job. For the most part, I look these over once a month to make sure everything is in order.

Sort term projects

I stick with a weekly review on all short term projects.

Someday / Maybe

For my someday / maybe list, I simply review every quarter. These items aren't pressing, or they wouldn't be on this list.

That's the gist of how I handle my reviews. I know some people, like David Sparks for instance, have taken to doing a daily review. I don't have the patience or discipline to review my projects daily, even in bite-size chunks.

My first problem to solve when I switched to OmniFocus six short months ago was replicating the functionality of Things’ Today list. In the default state, OmniFocus does not have a way of showing you only things that must be done today. That was how I used Things most of the time, so it was a problem that needed solving.

My solution was to use Due Dates for every “today” task, combined with a custom Due perspective. It worked as intended for the most part. One thing has been grating on me in recent weeks, however – the incessant notifications. For a task to appear in my Due perspective, it must have a due date and time. When that time passes and the task isn’t complete, my iPhone displays an alert letting me know. That’s the idea, of course. But here’s the thing: I don’t always want a notification. Most of the due times are fairly arbitrary if I’m being completely honest with myself. I just want to see the daggone task on my Due screen for today.

Enter Flags

When I sit down on Friday afternoon to do my weekly review, I will address this very issue. Technically, my custom Due perspective is actually a Due/Flagged perspective. It shows tasks that are available and either A: Due today or B: Flagged. The difference is that Flagged tasks don’t yell at me. If I don’t complete a flagged task it just stays put, quietly.

So. Much. Better.

The New Plan

I will still use Start dates for each of my tasks. I don’t want to look at tasks that I simply can’t complete right now. That isn’t useful to me, and it’s one of the great things about OmniFocus. But I will no longer set Due Dates by default. Instead, I’ll only set Due Dates for tasks that I want to be alerted about. All other “Today” type tasks will be Flagged instead.

Having a Today type list is so important to me. Sure, what i really want is to live in the Next Actions list as much as possible. But Today tasks are necessary to plow through. The notifications, however, are less necessary. There’s no downside to switching to Flagged as my default. I will get to recapture just a tiny bit of my sanity. I’ll take it.

Repeating tasks are a core feature of any GTD type system. There are some tasks that repeat on a regular basis – things like taking out the garbage, paying taxes, backing up your computer. Some of these tasks are done daily, some weekly, some monthly, and some quarterly. Being able to schedule a repeating task to remind you to do these things is absolutely critical to keeping you sane, and making sure everything gets done.

Back when I used Things¹, and now that I use OmniFocus², repeating tasks are a staple of my system. I don’t want to have to remember anything. I want my system to remind me to do the things that I need to do. That is pretty much the entire point, after all.

Repeating Task Overkill

There comes a point, however, when your entire daily task list is populated by repeating tasks. You wake up in the morning and look at your OmniFocus Due list, and every single task is of the repeating variety. This is a trap!

When all of your tasks are repeating, that means you are just treading water. You aren’t moving forward on any of your projects. During your super busiest³ times, this is probably fine. But normal times? It’s a horrible, horrible trap. You’ll be checking off boxes left and right, thinking that you’re making progress. Instead, you’re going nowhere in a big hurry.

Always make sure you are moving forward

Look at your Due list for today. If it’s entirely, or nearly full of repeating tasks, it’s time for a Super Review. Go through each and every one of your repeating tasks to make sure they are necessary. If you can repeat them at a slower rate, do it. Maybe you don’t need to check your PO box every week, when ever two weeks will do just fine. You get the idea.

The more repeating tasks you can knock off your list permanently, the more work you can actually get done. Due lists should just be your first stop, not your only stop.

Next Actions

Build a Next Actions perspective, if you haven’t already. This is where you should aim to spend more time, as it will actually move you through projects. This is the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. This is how I set up my Next Actions list:

Basically it shows the next available task of every active project I have. I don’t have to look at things that I can’t do, which means less clutter. When you’re checking off tasks from this perspective, you know you’re really making progress.

During my OmniFocus trial period, I knew I had to do something about the look and feel of the Mac app. Out of the box, it's chaotic and not even remotely easy on the eyes. Fortunately, OmniGroup saw fit to make it pretty customizable. Here are the changes I recommend:

Install a theme

There are tons of OmniFocus themes out there. A great resource is at OmniFocus Themes, which has more themes than you could ever possibly use. The good news it that you only need one. I'm using one called Light Theme, which uses a combination of my favorite typeface ever, Helvetica Neue, and large type. Out of the changes I made, this is probably the most important one. Find a theme you love and stick with it.

Don't live in the Style preference pane. You will destroy hours of time, and gain nothing. Trust me. Find a theme you like and move on, quickly.

Hide the View Bar

I hate this bar. SHFT + CMD + V is your friend, and will rid you of this hideous bar. If you ever need it to create a fancy perspective, you can always show it quickly, then hide it when you're done. There's no need to look at it all day.

Clean up the toolbar

There are a lot of icons on the default OmniFocus toolbar that aren't really needed. Here are the icons I have on my toolbar:

• Inbox
• Projects
• Contexts
• Due
• Flagged
• Focus / Show All
• Next Actions (Custom perspective)
• Search

I removed the Inspector shortcut – CMD + SHFT + I is much, much faster for when you need to bring up the Inspector. Any time you can cut out the mouse / trackpad, you're increasing efficiency.

The Sync shortcut is also gone. By default, OmniFocus for Mac syncs once every hour. If I want to manually initiate a sync for some reason, CTRL + CMD + S does the trick, without the icon.

Set up your Perspectives

Group Actions By: Context

• Sort Actions By: Due
• Availability: Next Action
• Status: Any Status
• Duration: Any Duration

This is the only custom perspective that I currently have set up. Once I get more comfortable with how I use OmniFocus, I can imagine adding one more. I won't set up 5 or 10 custom perspectives though – that just adds too much complexity.

The entire purpose of this perspective is to make sure each and every project I have is moving forward. This perspective shows the next task from every single active project I have. That's it – just one task from each project. That way, even if I have no due dates or flags set for Project X, the next action is visible in this perspective.

Wrap up

That's about it. The interface still doesn't hold a candle to Things.app. I'm gradually accepting that, given the huge advantages that OmniFocus has over Things. These little tweaks did help make it more pleasant to use. Hopefully they give you a few ideas.

Perhaps by now you’ve seen the quick video I posted to twitter. In case you haven’t, take a quick look:

Your eyes haven’t gone bad; I did replace Things with OmniFocus. I, staunch supporter of Things, opposer of OmniFocus. I am now, officially, one of the Cool Kids. I even got my shirt in the mail.

Why the switch?

When I replaced my MacBook Pro with an iPad 2, the writing was pretty much on the wall. The first iPad app I purchased was Things, and the trouble began immediately. Don’t get me wrong – the Things iPad app is excellent. So is Things for Mac, and Things for iPhone. Individually they are all gorgeous, well-crafted apps that get the job done. However, keeping a Things database in sync between a Mac, iPhone, and iPad was at best frustrating, and at worst bordering on impossible. See, there’s that whole lack of OTA (over the air) sync thing. Turns out, it really is a Big Deal.

The Things Sync Dance

In the morning, I like to go over my tasks for the day on my iPad. Setting up the day, marking the important tasks, adding new tasks, rescheduling things, whatever. Now, my iPad doesn’t go with me when I go to work – that’s my iPhone’s job. The trick is getting my changes from the iPad all the way to my iPhone. The Things Sync Dance, as I’ve come to call it, goes something like this:

• Make changes on iPad
• Exit iPad app
• Re-open iPad app to initiate sync with Mac.¹
• Wait for Sync to complete.
• Exit iPad app.
• Open Things app on iPhone.
• Wait for it to sync.
• Go to work.

As you can imagine, this gets extremely tedious and annoying in a big hurry. And if I forget to perform the Sync Dance before leaving for the day? I’m left with a stale, out of date task list on my iPhone, with no fix until the evening.

Introducing a third device to keep in sync is the straw that broke the camel’s back. It’s just not reasonable to keep these three devices in sync all the time… and that means I can’t always trust my task list.

So, about two weeks ago, I bit the bullet and purchased both the OmniFocus iPad and iPhone apps. Sixty dollars gone, just like that. I ran with the trial Mac app, because that was another $80 for a system I really wasn’t sure about. After all, we all know how I felt about OmniFocus before.

Three Things

Your task management system should have three important qualities:

• It should be simple.
• It should help you get stuff done.
• It should be absolutely trustworthy. If you put something into the system, you need to be able to find it.

So, how does OmniFocus rate against these standards?

1. F. There is nothing simple about OmniFocus. The iPhone app is much simpler than the Mac OS app, and the iPad app simpler still… but the overall system is far from simple. It takes quite a bit of time investment to learn the app, which I’ve already begun to put it. I’m only scratching the surface at this point.

2. A+. With the high level of customization available, and especially the Next Actions perspective I set up, OmniFocus is great and telling you what you need to do.

3. A+. The seamless (and free, using Omnigroup’s server) OTA sync means you always have your most current task list with you. That’s true no matter which device you’re using, and no matter where you are. The same cannot be said for Things at all.

Notes

OmniFocus for Mac treats notes like a red headed step child. I have to hit an obscure keyboard shortcut to even see if there are any notes. When I click on a task that contains notes, they should expand automatically. I put the notes there for a reason, after all.

Rating the apps

It’s been said a hundred times that the iPad app is the best of the OmniFocus bunch. My goodness. It’s the best iOS app I’ve ever used. Period. It’s absolutely fantastic. The attention to detail that went into this app is mind blowing. The Review function is excellent, and Forecast is amazingly useful.

The iPhone app is very good, but not yet great. You aren’t able to create shortcuts to custom Perspectives on the main screen, and there’s no Forecast tool.² Supposedly this is in the works for the next major update.

The Mac app is… terrible. More specifically, it’s outdated. Clearly this app was designed in the distant past. It uses the Inspector, for crying out loud. Apparently that was a “thing” long before I ever started using a Mac, because I’d never heard of it. However, if you are willing to install a nice theme, play with the buttons, learn the keyboard shortcuts, and play nice with the Inspector… it’s usable. I purchased it, however unwillingly. I need to be able to capture tasks on my Mac quickly and easily.

Final Notes

Dishing out $140 for a brand new suite of task management apps is not my idea of a good time. I was happy with Things until the iPad ruined the experience. Waiting around for Cultured Code to finish developing Cloud Sync is not feasible, given their rate of development, which makes glaciers seem speedy.

Switching to OmniFocus solved this problem for me. Initially it was an extremely frustrating process, and I tried to learn the new apps quickly. Now that I have a simplified layout set up, and a great Next Actions Perspective… I am thoroughly enjoying the applications. The concept of Next Actions is something that Things doesn’t really do, despite containing a Next list. This Perspective helps me keep all of my many projects moving forward instead of being forgotten. In other words, it helps me get stuff done. That’s kinda the idea of this whole thing, isn’t it?