OmniFocus for iPhone – a GTD application reviewed

A simple Google search for omnifocus is revealing more than 220.000 results (as of October 2008), which, for a personal task manager application, is a lot. And I would say that this popularity is well deserved by OmniFocus. Not only because it won the Apple Awards for Best iPhone Productivity Application in 2008, but because is a really useful piece of software. OmniGroup, the makers of OmniFocus, are well known in the Mac world for their OmniOutliner and OmniPlan products. I used OmniOutliner a lot until I shifted to mind mapping but I still use it from time to time even today. As for OmniPlan, it was a key factor in big projects, when I used to run my own online publishing business.

But from a large structure planning application to a personal organizer implementing GTD there is quite a gap, and one cannot expect to apply the same knowledge in both areas. Maybe this is why OmniGroup made some very interesting moves back in 2006-2007, bringing into the development team of what they called at that time Omni Fu the icon GTD blogger Merlin Mann, and the maker of a popular GTD implementation called Kinkless, Ethan Schoonover. I dare to say that OmniFocus wouldn’t be what it is today without the advices and know-how of those GTD gurus.

But enough with praises, and let’s start reviewing OmniFocus for iPhone. I expect this post to be rather big, so put aside some time to read it. Also, I must say that the intended audience for this goes from the unexperienced iPhone user who wants to increase personal productivity to the moderate GTD follower, so if you fall between these categories, give it a read.

GTD with an iPhone

The first and the most important thing about OmniFocus is its compliance with the GTD methodology. For those of you unaware of this concept, GTD is a methodology invented by David Allen, which can dramatically boost one’s personal productivity. In short, by using GTD you are doing stuff (Actions) grouped together (Projects) in specific locations (Contexts) and by taking one step at a time (Next Actions). OmniFocus lets you add your Projects, fill them with Actions, assign them to Contexts, and see when and where you can do them. But a picture is worth a thousand words (have I already said that?) so here is how the home screen of OmniFocus looks like:

OmniFocus home screen

Projects and Contexts are just usual handles for task management, so these are pretty self explanatory, but what you can see at a glance in the home screen is also the time constraint for your activities. Being able to see on the home screen how many tasks are due soon, how many are overdue and how many important (flagged) tasks you have is such a time saver. Another noticeable thing is the lower sidebar, which features icons for nearby contexts, syncing, and quick add an action to Inbox. That lower bar is available all over the application. Simple and clear interface.

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My Top 13 iPhone 3G Applications

My iPhone journey started before the iPhone was even born, at the time when all we knew about it were rumors and suppositions. That didn’t stop me to imagine what could we have if we’ll combine an iPhone and GTD. Apparently, this is one of the most read articles from my blog, by the way. Several months after the official iPhone launch I managed to get my own iPhone (and learned how to jailbreak it, of course). Weeks after I got used to it, I wrote a description of my top 13 applications for iPhone. Time flies real fast, and now I replaced my first iPhone with an iPhone 3G, a device which, together with AppStore, changed the rules of the game pretty big. So, it’s time to write my new list of top 13 applications. For iPhone 3G, this time.

iAdd

<shameless self promotion>

iAdd is my own productivity app, it was just launched June 30 and I thought it would be relatively relevant to put it here too. Since this is actually the list of apps which I’m currently using, and since iAdd is really an app I’m using, I don’t see why not. So, in short, iAdd take its name from Assess – Decide – Do, which is my own life management framework (click on the link to learn more) and it aims at integrating your day to day life with your productivity requirements. If you do GTD, iAdd will feel like a breeze.

Although iAdd works on an iPhone 3G it is in fact an iOS4 app, one of the neat things about it being the ability to add and manage local notifications. Just read the launch post to learn more about this productivity app.

iAdd is available on the AppStore for only 2.99 (for a limited time). Get a grip on it here.

</end shameless self promotion>

Calendar

With the latest 2.1 firmware, the iPhone Calendar is now a mature application. Now you can have all your Mac calendars synced, or you can choose from within iTunes which ones do you want only on your iPhone. You can see events from all calendars if you want, or you can chose only one calendar to focus on. I started to use iPhone Calendar for much more than simple events or reminders. For instance, the second event you see in the screenshot above is in fact an exercise for my personal mission statement. After working several days on my personal mission statement I thought it would be interesting to put a daily reminder early in the morning that will list that personal mission. I’ve been doing this for two weeks now and the results are very interesting. But I plan to write more about this way of using tools in a larger post about the Law Of Attraction.

Notes

Surprisingly rising up, Notes is one of the easiest way for me to capture ideas. I use it whenever I don’t have my computer around, because of it’s interface simplicity. Also because of the “email this note” capability, which I found it extremely rare across other similar applications. What you can see in the screenshot above is a typical idea brainstorming. These are barely scaffolds for my posts, or for things I want to do. Usually, a scaffold like this is totally transformed in 6-7 or even more iterations. Some of the ideas are just going to thrash, but most of them are integrated into my daily work routine.

Mail

Widely recognized at the most important improvement in the 2.x firmware series, Mail is finally a very robust tool for online communication. I can use it for PUSH email, like the yahoo mail, for POP accounts, like the one on the mirabilis.ro domain, and for IMAP like Gmail. There is another extremely important improvement in the latest iPhone Mail App and that is the ability to select multiple messages for deletion. I get easily over 100 messages / day and deleting them one by one is more than I can accept, in terms of email management. Also, viewing attachments is so much easier now. Really an asset.

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iGTD goes commercial, Omni Focus goes pretty well

From a blog post in the iGTD website I heard today that Bargiel, the Polish developer of iGTD, is planning to go commercial with a professional version of iGTD. The current development model of iGTD is donationware.

Well, this is something very predictible, and also very natural. We all have to make a living, in the first place, and if we do contribute a great deal of value through our actions, like giving a great software to the community, then it’s normal to receive something back, in terms of financial value. The core differences between the current version of iGTD and the professional version will be related to multi-user functionalities. There were some hints in the interface (have you noticed the “Delegated” status for an action? I guess it was inactive for a reasson, much more like a hint or a promise) and also some normal strategical thinking: if it’s something that you use for your own personal productivity then you’ll make a donation, if you want, but if you plan to use iGTD on a team, share tasks, contexts and projects (these are some of the goodies in the Pro version) then it is supposed that you will make some money out of it, and you can pay the fee to the developer. So, once again, this is not surprising at all. The only thing that I expect now, it’s the new application. I’m highly curious about it.

And the main reason for that is Omni Focus. I tested it pretty often in the last few days, and as far as I saw on the Omni blog, I’m not the only one . I must say that they are taking it very seriously, there were some days with two or three builds and tons of bug fixes. It starts to look like a pretty decent application to me. Even if it will costs money, the balance is favorable to Omni Focus. Why? Because I already have two of their applications: Omni Plan and Omni Outliner Pro, and if Omni Focus will integrate with them, then it will be a logical decision. And if I will use Omni Focus for my business, it makes little sense to continue to use iGTD just for personal user, I will end up with a ton of duplicated data.

This is why I am so curious about the Pro version of iGTD. Because, despite the quality of the Omni products (which I will continue to use) having a really slim application, fast and fat free, for managing my tasks at the office and at home, will be a big plus. And maybe a really hard decisions for me…

I am really happy to see the speed and the level of professionalism in the GTD world. It is expectable to see that for people that are obsessed with productivity, but still… I don’t see any other sector of the digital apps where the speed of development is near close to the GTD race (and I haven’t spoked yet about the second version of ThinkingRock, the java-based surprise that may come from Australia…)

OmniFocus alpha – first impressions

So, I finally got a chance to put my hands on a bleeding-edge version of OmniFocus. This is alpha software, and I only had access because in a moment of inspiration i signed up their mailing list. Now, that was a good decision.

Omni has asked me nicely to keep those builds private and this is exactly what I intend to do, however, since we already have the excellent video tutorial from Ethan (beware, around 25 megs to download), I think some screenshots are allowed. So, here we are:

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  • there are a lot of things form other Omni products: inspectors, styles, etc I use OmniPlan and Omni does look familiar to me…
  • there is also a very subtle resemblance to kGTD, at least at the colour level, this is nice also
  • the Filter thing, this is definately the most important feature for me so far: you can filter on almost any parameter you can think of
  • seems like a little cumbersome, iGTD gave me a “flexibility” impression, and OmniFocus gave me a “corporate” impression
  • seems also a little resource hungry, but this is just an impression, I haven’t had time to test it as I should be

Omni main screen:


You will notice that this is the Projects view, there is also the other one, with a “@” sign, called the Contexts view.

Below are the inspectors:


Task inspector


Context inspector


Project inspector


Dates inspector

My first impressions after less than 48 hours since the first opening is that is usable software. Is it alpha, so you may encounter surprises, but it’s usable. Unfortunately, my other projects are keepeing me from filling it with serious data and start fiddling with the Filters feature (which I consider to be the most important one) but I guess in a few days I will be able to do that. Fortunately, until then we may have a public beta.

What I like:

What I don’t like:

Again, those are first-look impressions, not reviews, so take them with a little bit of salt. I really look forward to write stuff about it as I go along. Until then, as dani suggested, I updated my list of GTD application in the sidebar with iGTD.

OmniFocus goes live with beta testing

More good news for the GTD followers these days. OmniGroup announced today that OmniFocus enetered its beta testing stage.

They opened the door to the first beta testers today, which means they will make a first copy of the OmniFocus available for the guys that signed up to do so… I also signed up and I’m pretty much intrigued about what OmniFocus may come up with. As they said on their corporate blog, the last traces of vaporware are gently started to leave. It was about time, anyway…

I used extensively in the last few weeks iGTD and yes, I am a convert. The last 1.4 version of iGTD has pretty much everything I need to stay on top of my tasks. It doesn’t make coffee still, and I agree this must be changed in the near future, but until then, I am more than satisfied with this. But Omni guys are full of surprises. Let’s see what it will happen.

OmniFocus video and feature presentations

Yeap, we already have a video folks, and it’s about OmniFocus again. You can find it here, and it is made by the father of Kinkless GTD, Ethan Schoonover, who apparently has been helping the Omni crew in the last couple of months. I must say that this is somehow obvious by looking at the OmniFocus interface, which clearly borrows some concepts from kinkless, but I will leave this up to you to judge.

One other interesting news, this time from Omni blog, is that we can expect a first beta in no more than a couple of weeks, and that most of the efforts has been geared towards a standard file format that will be compatbile with future versions. This is something that I lilke.

First OmniFocus screenshot

Well, it seems that finally we can see what’s behind the guys at Omni Group. It’s about the hiper-hyped OmniFocus GTD-enabled software announced several months ago, we finally have a face. They posted a first screen-shot, and from what I saw it looks pretty interesting. I am a public fan of their products – OmniPlan proved to be an incredibly valuable resource for my company project plannning so far – and I constantly use their OmniOutliner for quick sketches or fast annotating documents.

This is the original screenshot of what they offer – of course, all the credits and copyrights goes to them – so far…

What we may expect in the first – still unknown release date – version of OmniFocus:

• Quick entry panel, accessible via keyboard shortcut from any application
• Import for kGTD documents
• Focus feature for opening a specific folder or project in its own window
• Project or context work views, both with extensive filtering and sorting options
• iCal synchronization (enabling you to get to Palm and other devices)
• Printing support that will include printing to index cards
• Project outlines include hierarchical tasks and task groups
• Pop-up calendars for assigning start, due and completion dates
• Project and task filtering by project state, dates, next actions, available actions and more
• Rich text support for project and task notes
• Ability to attach files to any task or project

A part of the more orthodox GTD-centric approach, iGTD does already all of this. And the latest version, (1.3.5 at the date of this article) offers .Mac integration and MailTags integration. Wow, we do live interesting times. I am already impatient to see more of the OmniFocus, signed on they beta tester list, and hope to get my hands on fresh, beta realease ASAP .