43 Folders

43 Folders feed subscription icon - Shiny! Drowning in email? Try Inbox Zero to learn sane tips for dealing with high-volume email. And don’t miss the free Inbox Zero video. »

Login or register

Register for free on 43 Folders to comment on articles, post to our forum, customize your visits, and much more. Current users can login now.

Using Anxiety as a HUD for OmniFocus

Greg Newman | Dec 13 2007

I’m sure many of you are already aware and using Anxiety and the same goes for OmniFocus so I won’t go there.

Last night I found that these two apps just go together like wine and cheese. Whatever you do in Anxiety can be synced with OmniFocus through iCal as a bridge since they both sync with iCal. I love OmniFocus but have wanted some sort of a HUD for it so I don’t have to switch back and forth between my work and action list.

I wrote up a narrative on how this works for those of you who are interested: http://www.20seven.org/blog/articles/2007/12/13/anxiety-and-omnifocus-work-in-unison/


‹ Sleep apnea and attention deficit Trusted System Question ›
6 Comments
POSTED IN:
  • 11409 reads
TOPICS: Productivity & Time Management, Anxiety, Applications, GTD, Mac OS X, OmniFocus, Tasks, To Do List

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
wvtechie's picture

Doing it directly

Submitted by wvtechie on December 13, 2007 - 9:24am.

I do something similar with the OmniFocus application itself. Since I have iKey installed, I’ve assigned Command-F8 to open the OmniFocus application. (You could use QuickSilver or other utilities to do the same thing.)

If OmniFocus isn’t running, it’s started. If it is running, it’s made visible and brought to the front. After I’ve entered a new action or checked one off (or whatever), I hit Command-H to hide OmniFocus and go back to my current work.

It’s quick and easy.

» POSTED IN:
noeljesse's picture

iPhone Access

Submitted by noeljesse on December 13, 2007 - 9:52am.

For me the big thing has been iPhone functionality. I have tried Vitalist and Remember the Milk both because they have iPhone interphases. I have not been happy with either.

Are you aware of any Omni-iPhone link?

» POSTED IN:
20seven's picture

Iphone Access

Submitted by 20seven on December 13, 2007 - 11:25am.

noeljesse… It seems that Omnigroup might have done away with their iPhone integration with Omnifocus. There was a integrated ruby on rails app back in the alpha version but I can’t find it anymore.

» POSTED IN:
jelmore's picture

Re: Iphone Access

Submitted by jelmore on December 17, 2007 - 2:43pm.

If I remember correctly, the OmniFolks will make the Ruby on Rails app available as an add-on after OmniFocus ships.

» POSTED IN:
Maluktuk's picture

Great Idea

Submitted by Maluktuk on December 14, 2007 - 10:33am.

I think this is a great idea and would like to implement it, but I’ve been having problems with iCal since upgrading to Leopard. I was setting up synchronization in OF but noticed I needed to add a couple calendars to iCal. I did that, but they do not show up in OF. I don’t know if this is related, but since upgrading to Leopard, my iPhone no longer syncs with iCal.

Has anyone else experienced the same issues? If so, any help you can provide would be great because I think this is a great way to keep on task.

» POSTED IN:
cebailey's picture

Syncing is a pain.

Submitted by cebailey on December 14, 2007 - 1:38pm.

I had this exact same idea about the same time I saw this blog post. However, the quasi-deal-breaker for me was the fact that you still have to sync iCal and OmniFocus, and that brings back painful memories of kGTD, and forgetting to click Sync, and things breaking and so on.

Step 1 to making this less painful would be Applescriptable iCal synchronization. Well, the ical_synchronize action in OmniFocus's dictionary doesn't seem to do anything yet, so I whipped up a script that fakes it with GUI scripting. When the ical_synchronize action works, you'd be able to do this in the background. here's the script:

tell application "System Events"
set wasItVisible to visible of process "OmniFocus"
end tell

tell application "OmniFocus"
activate
end tell

tell application "System Events"
tell process "OmniFocus"

click menu item "Synchronize with iCal" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
if wasItVisible is false then
set visible to false
end if

end tell
end tell

(Beta version, unsupported, blah blah blah.)

I plan to eventually work up some crazy system with folder actions or timed execution or something so that I don't have to worry about syncing at all, but for now, I can just run this script with a Quicksilver hotkey and it seems to get the job done.

» POSTED IN:

About 20seven

20seven's picture
  
EXPLORE 43Folders THE GOOD STUFF

An Oblique Strategy:
Distorting time

STAY IN THE LOOP:

Subscribe with Google Reader

Subscribe on Netvibes

Add to Technorati Favorites

Subscribe on Pageflakes

Add RSS feed

The Podcast Feed

Inbox Zero

The original 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way. Don’t miss the free video of Merlin’s Inbox Zero presentation.

Making Time

3-part series on attention management for artists and makers. Read Bad Correspondence, The Job You Think You Have, and One Clear Line.