Tag Archive for: Task Management

OmniFocus vs Things

One of my favorite ways to procrastinate is to change my task manager. It’s fun and feels super productive, but it’s a trap. An equally fun and falsely productive pass time is debating with strangers on the internet about task management apps.

This post is not a salvo in that war, just the documentation of a decision I made for my specific circumstances. I am a huge fan of both OmniFocus and Things; they are both excellent apps. However, I recently switched over from OmniFocus to Things, and I wrote this post to organize my thoughts. Hopefully, it helps you too.

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Learn OmniFocus Session

Spear phishing is when you get a researched, prepared, and targeted email specifically crafted to fool you, the addressee. This is not a Nigerian prince type email; this is a focused attack by an artist. Receiving one is a bad sign. It means a bad person has taken significant time out of multiple days to ruin yours. They will typically impersonate someone important and either scare or entice you into clicking on a malicious link or attachment.

On September 6th, 2022, I thought I was under just this type of digital attack.

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Managing Emailed Tasks With OmniFocus

Almost all of my incoming tasks for work come via email. As much as I love an online collaborative task management tool, I just can’t get away from emailed tasks. So a few years ago, I decided to embrace the emailed task. I used some automation, and now, tasks I receive via email have the highest success rate of any work-related task.

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GTD Brain Dump With Drafts

I made a video about how I use Drafts to do a GTD style brain dump and then send those action items to OmniFocus. This version prompts me with a trigger list so I don’t forget about the critical areas of my life that are not front and center at the moment.

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Anatomy of an Action Item

I have written before about the hierarchy of tasks (i.e., action items) in OmniFocus. In this post, I will zoom in on the base unit of productivity, an action item, and identify the characteristics every action item should have.

I like using OmniFocus and calling tasks “action items.” Regardless of the program you use, and whatever you call the things you need to do, you should think about how they are composed. As of March 2021, I think these are the essential parts of an action item. When I clear to neutral every day, I make sure each action item that goes into my system has been reviewed for each of the following characteristics.

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