Why I Switched to Things from OmniFocus

The very first post here at The Mac Student was about todo managers.  I personally hold that a good todo manager that fits your brains style of organization is the most important part of an optimized workflow.  In that post I didn’t really commit to using any one task manager over the other.  The point was to share 2-3 of my favorites of the time and let the audience decide which was right for them.

However, shortly after using that article I did finally commit to OmniFocus, which I used up until 2 weeks ago.  Maybe it was simply me getting bored with software and looking for a change, or maybe there was something else there.  I switched to Things, coincidentally the first task manager I used on the Mac right before reQall and OmniFocus.  Yes, I went back to my first and I have to say, it feels go to be home.

OmniFocus is such a great task manager, and I still wonder why it is that I felt compelled to leave the confines of the OmniSphere, and take my tasks elsewhere when things were really working just fine for me there.  One big reason, and perhaps the least relevant as far as function is concerned, is the user interface.  By and large, OmniFocus is ugly.  It is cluttered and complicated.  Now, like I said earlier, it works great and it does its job well, however, there is something to be said for the clean lines and sleek design of Things.  It is just a program that I want to spend more time in, plain and simple.

I eluded to the complexity of OmniFocus earlier.  It is a power user app for the power user.  While a regular Joe might be able to get the right kind of functions out of it, the price tag isn’t worth it for that person.  What you really pay for is the complexity which is great if you know how and or want to go there.  For me, someone who mentors to other students and needs to find the best happy medium between functionality, price and usability, OmniFocus had developed into the red headed step child that really didn’t fit in with the rest of the tools in my arsenal.

So what do you loose when you switch to Things?  Quite a bit actually.  There are many layers of complexity in OmniGroups app to discover, and many layers I probable never took full advantage of.  However, these losses haven’t really bothered me.  There were some features in OmniFocus that I used in order to standardize my entries that I am doing just fine without.  Using Things is different.  After about 20 minutes with the app you have pretty much seen it all, and as such, it is very easy to wrap your head around it and get to work.  I feel like a task manager should really get out of the way and let you get to your tasks.  Isn’t that the point?  Sometime OmniFocus was a task in and of itself.

The HUGE missing feature in Things that is almost a deal breaker is the lack of over-the-air sync.  You have to be on the same local network when you launch the app to get your updated tasks.  This is such a problem, and has almost had me switching back to OmniFocus in the few short weeks I have been using Things.  If I have added 5 tasks for the day on my Mac, I don’t want to have to remember to pull the iPhone out and sync things before I leave the house.  I should not have to do that.  OmniFocus can sync via WebDAV and MobileMe so you can make changes on the iPhone or Mac and they are automatically synced from anywhere.  Cultured Code developers have said that they are working on this, but it has been far too long in my opinion.  I think they should roll out some kind of awesome Things web service and provide over-the-air sync and web access to tasks through that for free just for all the trouble.

So there you have it, I switched from the more robust OmniFocus to the simpler and more elegant Things.  While Things does have some issues, I feel that it is a better fit for more people, and so far I have been very happy with the move.

Filed under: GTD, iPhone, Mac, Organization

Your Second Brain

We could all use a second brain in our lives.  Sure the brain is a fascinating organ capable of storing terabytes upon terabytes of information, but the human brain does not handle data as simply as, say, a hard drive or a dictionary.  Those things are static and the brain is a dynamic living organ.

Not only can the brain have its information removed or replaced, but we only use about 10% of its capacity in the first place.  Unfortunately, as modern students, a lot of what our professors require of us is stuffing our brains with information that is useful only for passing the exam.  This practice is unfortuate, but with larger class sizes at major universities, small group problem based learning (PBL) session can be logistically impossible.

With the constant onslaught  of facts, figures, tables, diagrams, flow charts, slides, flash cards, handouts, PDFs, novels, ball and stick models, spreadsheets and the like, it would be nice to know that we had some second brain available for us to store some of this information.  While this second brain might not help us pass the exam, it is sure to make the everyday information we would rather not forget, remembered.

This ideal second brain would be easily accessed, wherever we are.  Every once in a while it would be nice to just take a nice brain dump into the second brain, and then have the peace of mind that our random thoughts have been stored, indexed, and made ready for later access.  It would help us to remember EVERYTHING.

There is a great tool that I think all student should use for remembering the little things that make life harder if forgotten.  That tool is Evernote.  Evernote is a cloud based service that allows you to “clip” information that is then synced to the online server and then back out to any point of access you have set up.

You can clip website contents (via browser plugins), files or folders (via the desktop application), mobile audio or pictures (via mobile phone apps like the one for the iPhone) and more.  The best thing about Evernote is that it can really be tailored to fit the kind of remembering the individual user needs the most.  I have compared my setup of notebooks and categories in Evernote with those of my friends and there are invariably always major differences, things I never thought of.

The best way to explain Evernote is to give examples of usage.  Lets say you are late to class or a group meeting and you forgot something important you need to remember.  You might not have the time to look down and type that information into your to-do manager like OmniFocus, Things, or reQall, but you can record a quick voice note with the iPhone app.  This voice note will be shot up to the server and dropped into your default notebook.  I call mine the “brian dump” notebook.

If you are tired of all the membership cards and IDs you carry around every day, take a picture of the front and back of each of them and then leave them behind.  You can always get to them via Evernote mobile or online and since Evernote can search text in images, you will even be able to search for the card you are looking for.

Use Evernote to record the audio during lecture (with the instructor’s permission of course) and then play it back for yourself when you are re-reading notes later.

With so many ways to help you remember all the things you need to remember, there is no reason to to get Evernote on as many devices as you can.  If you know it is always there, then you will be more comfortable with trusting your memories with it.  Give it a try, it’s free.

Filed under: Mac, Organization

CONSOLIDATION AND ELIMINATION OF SOCIAL NETWORKS

There are so many great tools online these days.  Tools that allow us to share, connect and experience in ways that a decade ago would have seemed like science fiction.

A pitfall associated having so many social networks so readily avaolable is that they all have something unique to offer and they are all very compelling.  So whats the problem?  If you are like me, you NEED every one of these service.  They are all so useful and free that at every opportunity you drop in your email and password and you are off to a new social network that is going to TOTALLY change the way you use the internet, right?

Here is the thing, about 90% of the stuff we sign up for will do more than waste our time for a few hours, and then we will never re-visit.  Why?  Generally it isn’t that these services aren’t the useful tools we thought they were, but usually they don’t fill a need.

The reason these services exist in the first place is to fill the needs of the user, but we all have only so many of these needs to fill with solutions.

The next time you stumble upon the next great thing, stop and think:

1) What problem does this solve for me?

2) Do I use something that serves a similar purpose?

If it doesn’t solve a problem you have noticed before, you should probably move along.  A service doing something you never though of as a problem before doesn’t mean that it is something you need.  If it is a problem, but you already have a solution in place in your workflow to manage the issue, then you should decide which of the two meets the need best.  Keep one and delete, remove, or unsubscribe from the other.  This will keep things simple while still serving the purpose of keeping you connected.

Ok so you have your ONE twitter, facebook, flickr, google reader, etc application set up you still have to make multiple clicks to get at all of that data.  Sure you get the info you need but it takes time and might not be the most efficient way to manage these things.

Let me introduce you to EventBox.  This application allows you to bring all of your social networks such as Flickr, FaceBook, Google reader with sync, Twitter, last.fm and more into one application.  You then have a single “Unread” box where you can see all of the new information from all of your feeds, tweets, and friends’ status updates in one location no matter their source.  You can of course look at all of that information individually, but I find that this single box lets you see whats happening at a glance in your important social networks without requiring you to launch 5 applications and visit other sites to boot.

You can give this program a try for free for two weeks athttp://thecosmicmachine.com/.

I think you will find that by weeding out the services you don’t need to keep checking and consolidating the ones you do into a single location you will waste less time browsing your networks and more time creating your best work

Filed under: Focus, Mac, Applications, Focus, Mac, Organization, Social Networks

Tell Me What ToDo

As someone who works really hard to stay organized, I sure do waste a lot of time switching between to-do managers.  Each time you make a switch it usually means you have to re-enter EVERYTHING you need to do.  Because most of these solutions have no way to work together (and why would they), this can be a long and painful undertaking especially if you have been using managers for a long time and have many future projects in the pipeline.  Still, the wasted time doesn’t seem to bother me enough, and I have been wandering through multiple tools over the last few months. A few that come to mind are Things, The Hit List, myHomework and, most recently, reQall.

While The Hit List and myHomework were interesting to use, especially the intelligent text features, but for my money (and possibly for your money) Thingswas always the clear winner for me.  its gorgeous interface, simple and sleek controls, and just the right amount of features coupled with an impressive iPhone app made it the clear winner on my Mac and iPhone for a long time.  That probably while it has won so many awards and is held by many to be the greatest to-do manager on any platform.  Even better than the all powerfulOmniFocus from Omni Group.

Oh I haven’t forgotten about THE task manager on the mac.  However, I have always strayed away from the well know client for one reason: $$$.  The price tag for a single user license of OmniFocus is a whopping $80.  Combine this with the iPhone app coming in at $20 and you have a $100 package.  That is a hard pill to swallow for anyone, especially for student who just need to stay organized and focused on their important tasks without going broke.

Things is barely any better.  To get the mac software and iPhone app you are looking at dropping $60.  Still not an easy sell.  So what is a productivity conscious student on a budget to do?  Take a look at reQall.

I will be honest right up front.  I have been using reQall for about 3 weeks now, and it is by no means perfect.  The upside is that they boast a great (and free) iPhone app.  While it is not as polished as some of the afore mentioned options on the iPhone it isn’t too shabby (and its free – did I mention how free it is?).  The big selling point of reQall is its voice transcribing features.  To add a task you simply launch the app, push a big blue button and speak a phrase like, “Remind me to pick up my paycheck at work every Monday at 3:00pm”.  The text is then sent off to be analyzed and returned to your phone.  However, it comes back far more useful than it left.  reQall will have decided not only what kind of task you were talking about (to-do, buy, meet, etc.) but when and where and how often you need to do it.  That is of course if you need to do it at home or work as those are the only supported locations.  You can go into the task and add a location manually to the task manually.  However to use the location aware contextual to-do list (a feature of the pricey OmniFocus) you will also have to program those locations into the “location” section of the app.  The app will also give you random reminders of near and far items throughout the day to keep you on your toes and aware of all the things in your pipeline.  I would say I get about 2 of those a day.

So what about on the Mac?  Sadly, there is no software application for the mac although it is rumored to be in the works.  There is however a web interface that you can of course bookmark and visit for access to your to-dos in the cloud.  In some ways this is superior to an application because the sync is done via the cell network to the cloud rather than over a wifi network the way Things annoyingly requires.  However if you are without a connection to the internet you are out of luck, especially if your most recently spoken to-dos haven’t returned to the phone (which can take up to 10 minutes or longer sometimes).  Also, if you are in class or a meeting and you don’t want to be seen or heard giving your phone orders to remind you about something, you can optionally add your tasks by text and reQall will still work its magic.

It is very important to stay organized in whatever way first your style.  For some it may be pen and paper or sticky notes while others may need the full featured solution of OmniFocus and its $100 price tag.  There may also be a happy medium for those who want to take their task management digital but don’t want to pay for it.  reQall may just fit that bill.  And, if you feel like you need a few more features, there is of course a pro account available (free can only give you so much it would seem).  This freemium service does give all users a full pro account for the first 14 days so check it out.

Filed under: GTD, Mac, Applications, Focus, GTD, Mac, Productivity, Review, To-Do