Regarding Liz’s comment, the standard GTD wisdom is that dates apply to projects and the waiting for list. All other date- or time-sensitive action or information should be in your calendar. About the repeating action, I wonder whether a list-management tool like OF is the right place for it. Most people use their calendars for this, either repeating appointments, or time blocks. Just my 2c!

When OF finally makes its way to me (with my luck, the day before its official release), I’m going to be starting from scratch without doing an import. I’ve got enough stale tasks sitting around that it’s a good excuse to sit down and do a total review, cutting and pasting between kGTD and OF. I do the same when I buy a new computer rather than simply importing everythiong from my old system.

Maybe it’s just an anal thang…

@Barry et al.: No, I have no problem at all talking about iGTD. I actually like it a lot:

http://www.43folders.com/2007/04/08/igtd-quicksilver/

In general? In the interest of my sanity (and in maintaining a reasonable signal to noise ratio) I don’t try to cover every GTD app for the Mac that comes out any more (and there are a LOT of ‘em these days). I do look at most of them at least twice, and then try to focus on the ones I consider the strongest. Totally subjective, I’m afraid. Thank God there’s about 5,000 other tip-shoveling “life hack” sites who can help pick up the slack. ;-)

But yeah, FWIW, I think iGTD looks really swell. And you can’t beat the price.

Also, I’ll let the cat out of the bag just a bit to say 43f has a nice treat coming soon for fans of iGTD. So stay tuned.

Oh, also, please don’t worry about hurting my feelings if OF doesn’t work for you, either in theory or practice. Seriously. But conversely I hope I can be forgiven for not being importuned into “selling” OF over any other tool. It’s a weirdly personal decision, this stuff, and there’s no right answer for all folks, all the time. It’s like arguing over condiments.

That said, I’ve selfishly tried to push every feature that I need into OmniFocus, as has, if I may say, Mr. Schoonover. We’ve held our positions in innumerable (innumerable!) friendly Talmudic debates over GTD and not-GTD, and so far, for myself, I’m pretty happy with where things are headed.

Finally, if you have feedback of any kind for the OmniGroup folks, you totally should share it with them. It’s hard for me to imagine a group of people that’s more open and responsive to what their users ask for. It’s actually kind of astounding to watch. I could never be that good a listener. :-)

(Disclosure: I like OG, I contribute to the project, they’re friends of mine, etc., etc., YMMV)

good points as usually

The problem with starting from scratch is that there are so many systems out there that require you to REstart from scratch. In the end, you feel like you’ve accomplished nothing at all.

I’m not criticising Omnifocus, I love the company, but if they want to make something really useful it would be something like an importer from existing apps and an easy exporter to other apps. After all, one of the the core-principles of productivity is efficiency. So far, that’s a quality that I’ve missed in all current productivity-apps.

I’m using iGTD. It works alright, and new features are coming out. I really like the Omni products I’ve used, though, and would consider switching. How is OmniFocus different from / better than iGTD?

Merlin:

I’m glad to be somewhere in the queue for OmniFocus, sounds like a great product. Over the last few months I’ve been happily using iGTD. Can you take a few minutes to compare/contrast based on your experience with both.

Greg

Have you looked at iGTD from a very clever programmer? And now it is free.

http://bargiel.home.pl/iGTD/

I believe it is much better than Ethan’s scripts or the look and feel of OmniOutliner Professioinal.

Taxonomy : Somewhat a critique to Schoonover’s way of organizing things? I’ve seen the screencasts and I got to say that he has a “lot” of folders in his projects pane.

For the people like me, who does not have the oportunity of testing OmniFocus (I would love to like I tested OO3), I hope you talk a little about printing to index cards, and how to set up a system just based to be synced with index cards (I mean, physically and in the mind). I think that the index card thing is successfull because it is a way of thinking.

I got always an index card on my desk showing me just my today actions, or actions for a specifical context (for example @calls and @email). This is just so good because it’s like an abstraction of what you can do and got to do in a certain time. Index cards help to having always the “big picture” of whatever you got to do. When I use apps like iGTD or kGTD, I just feel lost between a flow of information and the system itself overwhelms me.

A feature I would like to see, finally, is keyboard strokes… for example “c+” (like in Google Reader for labels), a way of fast switching to a context to another, and so, having fast knowledge of your contexts and next actions. Maybe some kind of script like “export context to sticky note”, who passes for example your “@calls” to a Stickies note, would be nice for achieving what I described as an index card way of thinking and acting. The idea is how to pass from complexity (a GTD system must support complexity) to simplicity, because I’m a little bit persuaded that human brain acts always simple.

Good to know you are a contributor to the project. It is rare to find a blogger/programmer in this day and age of templates, plugins and spoon fed webmasters. Anyway can’t wait for the release…

www.blackyard.net

I’m an OmniFocus alpha tester, and I have one caveat about pre-move clean-up.

When I began testing, I cleaned and moved my Kinkless file.

However, OF didn’t have date support yet — no start or due dates. I’m glad I didn’t get rid of my Kinkless dates, because as soon as OF implemented dates — there were my Kinkless dates, ready for use.

As OF stands now, there aren’t any recurring or repeating tasks. I’m hoping that OF will pick up my data on this, too.

OmniFocus, and GTD aren’t right for everyone. Some people’s minds think best GTD style, some don’t. I tried iGTD, and Thinking Rock, and several others, but none of them matched the way I want to run my life. OF, even in it’s pre-natal alpha state, works well for me. But it may never work for you. Once it’s in beta (all features present), try it, but don’t complain if it’s not as “right” for you as a different program.

-Liz

It would be fun to read Merlin’s history of the systems he has known and “trusted”. As far as I can tell he has used a combination of iCal, Entourage, index cards, Moleskine notebooks, plain text files, and Kinkless in the last couple of years. It could make for a nice cautionary tale.

Second the full weekly review before using a new system. I just moved from a Palm system that I’ve been using in one form or another (since 1995) to Tracks. Part of my temptation was to just export everything to Tracks from JPilot, but several technical reasons prevented that from happening. What DID happen, though, was a methodical review, the likes of which I hadn’t had time to perform for 6-8 weeks prior. Talk about exhilarating! suddenly my new system had all of the allure that the previous system lacked, with fresh next-actions for me to tackle and “do”. So, if you really want to get the most out of any new application (be it Omnifocus, pen-and-paper, or digital papyrus) do the weekly review first. You’ll only short-change your new system if you don’t.

I’ve been using iGTD and really like it. Have received invitation to test OF. Fired it up once and shut it down. Right now it has zero ability to import emails or other files and my workflow is heavily dependent upon that. It’s one reason I love iGTD.

So I have OF but will not test it until it has a full feature set. But it will have to be a VERY strong app to get me to leave iGTD.

I used kGTD with Omnioutliner for about a year. Despite several close-the-door, don’t-bother-me sessions, I have never been able to get my head around the flow and structure of the program.

In comparison, I have found iGTD simple and intuitive. I’ve been using it for two months now and sent a donation to Bargiel. It is still a work in progress, but the basic structure provides most of the features that most multitaskers need.

“Get up-to-date before changing systems”: Sure. Though switching itself can be an opportunity to prune during the changeover.

“Changing systems is hard/stressful”: Actually, if done correctly it’s simply a mechanical process. Much like a physical move, if you’re up-to-date, things are grouped properly, etc. then it’s work, but shouldn’t be too bad. That said, if you’re new home doesn’t have what you need (I haven’t been tracking OF) then the rude surprises aren’t good…

Importantly, it’s not the instrument, it’s the musician: Tools and gadgets are fun, but it’s how you use them that matters most. If you’ve formed the essential habits around GTD, you’ll be fine switching - as long as you don’t fall into the “tool trap” (working the tools, not the system).

Finally, the few times I’ve switched (between paper formats) I’ve used it to simplify. For example, the last time I consolidated all actions except errands into one list.

Related: Another GTD Plus - Moving offices made much easier http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2006/02/another-gtd-plus-moving-offices-made.html

I think omnigroup.com says it’s out to 250, not 2500 people.

According to the forum, they sent invitations to “another” 250 people last week.

According to an email they sent to the beta-announce list, they’re invited at least 1,600 people.

My wife (who is a school teacher) and I are both just now reading the GTD book and we watched the video of the OmniFocus demonstration today. We are both very excited about it and look forward to starting the process from scratch. We are even going to be working on some curriculum to teach the GTD principles to her students to help them get organized. Lord knows they need it. PS, love your site, love kinkless and look forward to loving OmniFocus.

Man, I must be the last person on the list >_<

I’m not sure it’s fair to ask Merlin to comment on other GTD apps, particularly iGTD. Merlin just spent 2 months using OF, so he’s going to be naturally biased, and crucially, he’s involved in the development of OF (and he discloses this fact).

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I’m glad that someone who has a great grasp of GTD is involved in developing a GTD app. On the other hand, I’m sad to lose an objective reviewer of great competence, since he’s now heavily biased to one product (conciously or subconciously).

In the end, I’m afraid, as usual, you’ll have to try both apps yourself, and see what works best for you.

I admire the enthusiasm, talent and sheer work ethic of the iGTD programmer. However, I also worry about two areas when it comes to iGTD: how well it lends itself to being a true GTD implementation, and how fiddly it’ll turn out to be. With OF, I feel fairly confident it’ll be a true implementation of GTD (Merlin’s involved!), and from what I’ve seen of OF, I do like the relative simplicity of the app (“it grows and shrinks with your needs”).

I haven’t made up my mind, and I won’t be able to, until both OF and iGTD have come out fully and I can use them both for some time. I wish both OF and iGTD teams the best, and choice is always good!

And, I’m very excited by how we now have at last several good GTD apps for the mac!

I really like the idea of OmniFocus, but I don’t think I will be able to use it as a replacement for my current system until it provides some sort of server-based storage for my info. Accessing the data in multiple places is important to me, and I’ll even use my own server for storage if they just build in some sort of SFTP/SCP syncing mechanism!

Do you find yourself getting lost in GTD recursion when managing your workflow for a project that will serve toward managing your workflow? ;)