I have been using ToDoist, (not as an OmniFocus replacement of course because its very basic for me), but to know its features, and two of the things that i liked and would love to see imlemented in OmniFocus are these.
A system to know how productive we have been, in the lastest days.
and an AI (implemented Today) that can suggest us when to move our tasks easily.
That’s an interesting interface twist. Feedback and report isn’t highlighted and featured in OmniFocus. But I think we are starting to see a change from OmniFocus 1 which had more of the OmniOutliner feel to it. With the introduction of the Forecast and Review perspectives, we’re starting to see new user interface elements added. Maybe feedback and reporting can be implemented. You can send an e-mail to omnifocus@omnigruop.com to propose and add votes to this feature request.
Personally, I rarely look at any completed tasks. I’m too busy moving on to the next group of tasks to even worry about old completed tasks.
I’ll take this idea one step farther - I think Omni needs to seriously consider some of Todoist’s other features as well:
Natural language parsing. i.e., “buy beer for poker night every 3rd tue @shopping #home_chores” to have a buy beer task that repeats every 3rd tue and gets a context of shopping and project of home_chores. As @dieqohc said - once you use this, you can’t “unsee” it and the OF quick entry seems very much less so (unless you never ever add dates/contexts/projects there) . This works anyplace you are entering a task - not just the quick-entry popup.
Multiple contexts per task. I want to be able to put @email and @bob_g in a task because I might run into bob in the elevator before I get a chance to email him. Or @joe_t, @grace_m, and @alice_x, because I don’t really care which one I ask whatever question I have because any of them would be able to answer.
Calendar picker for dates. I can’t think of an app where I enter dates that doesn’t use these. Even websites use them almost universally.
Perspectives that are really just saved live queries. In todoist I can create a “Filter” that looks like: batteries & p:home & @shopping & !(@target | @bestbuy) & 7days which will give me tasks that contain the text “batteries” in my home project that have the @shopping context and are due in the next 7days unless they are tagged with @target or @bestbuy. Silly example, but it’s very powerful way to build views of your tasks that help you focus on what you want/need to see at any given point.
SMS/email/Push reminders. These should be an added attribute to a task separate from the due/defer dates. Todoist allows you to add as many of these as you want (well, I’ve never tried more than 2) and assign when you want to get them regardless of whether or not you have due dates assigned. Yes, you could argue that if you’re doing GTD, your daily/weekly reviews would make it so you don’t need the reminders, but David Allen must have never had to checkin on Southwest Airlines flights.
Progress tracking (todoist calls it Karma) seemed super silly at first, but I find myself being strangely motivated by this feature.
I’ve been using Omnifocus since the late v1 days, and I love it. But I’ve seen some folks using todoist and decided to check it out… and i’m very impressed with some of the features (like above). Todoist has it’s shorfalls as well - no defer dates being the biggest. And it certainly doesn’t have that “native look and feel” that MacOS users love - I hope there’s a v3 coming soon to bring OF at least back on par with the rest of the field. If so I’ll be there with my fistful of dollars…
