Now, that was mean, I admit. For the people that are not so into GTD, or productivity, OmniFocus is one of the most hyped GTD applications for Mac OS, and ThinkingRock is a Java application that closely follows the GTD methodology. And being Java is cross-platform, obviously. OmniFocus is not launched yet, but has had is share of buzzwords allready.
The guys at Omni just started a discussion related to their upcoming product, which is not even in beta for now, and, hey, I was a little provoked by this. Why not trying to clarify my own techniques and processes. For that, I only have one piece of software and that is ThinkingRock, so far.
As a GTD-er – not quite a religious, but a fairly addicted one – I must say I use regulary my software. I used it at least 10-15 times a day. The most important part is project management, meaning the organisation of projects and subprojects. ThinkingRock has a good support for that. The other important part is the weekly-review, in which I actually review all my info in the software, and by all I mean even “future items” and “information items” – these are two ambigous names for the Someday/Maybe concept from GTD, that ThinkingRock has implemented. Claire from ThinkingRock has been so kind to tell me after my review, that they will change the names in the future version. Again, for a weekly review, ThinkingRock does very well. You can reprocess an action as a thought, make it into a project, and so on.
One thing I don’t use so often is the printing capability. And I also don’t think I’ll use it soon. Basically all my communication with my employees is done digitally from my part. There is a small part of paper-work that they direct to me, but that’s manageable as it is, I rarely copy parts of it into my system. If I need a list for my errands, I just select the context errands, and copy by hand on a small piece of paper my shopping list. It is moderately small, so I don’t need a printer.
One other part I don’t use, is the syncing part. As I already wrote in this post, GTD for people living in transition countries tends to be a little spartan. For this reason, I don’t carry – a aprt my phone – any mobile device that would help me capturing or reviewing my tasks. And since I do not carry a PDA-esque device with me, I don’t need the syncing feature. But, recently, there are some new terminals with PDA capabilties that I intend to buy, and I suppose this could be pretty soon a priority. ThinkingRocdk does not have yet something like this. You can carry the whole application if the device is Java capable, but this seems a little too much for me.
One part that really hurts in my GTD effort is the lack of a Quicksilver-ish way to add random data. The Java platform and the whole application architecture of ThinkingRock is not so permissive for that. So, I found myself often stuck with my Quicksilver console opened, and no way to easily translate my thoughts into my system. Then I create small text files with Quicksilver – can have a look here for a small tutorial – and then copy / paste the content into ThinkingRock.
So, a ThinkingRock clone – solid project management, I mean – with Mac interface, Quicksilver integration, and good syncing capabilities would definately be a choice. The price, at this moment, is not important. ThinkingRock is free, but if there is something that is worth paying for, no problem.
It would OmniFocus be worth of paying for?
[tags]OmniFocus, ThinkingRock, productivity, mac os[/tags]
