Omnifocus, Things, 2Do etc..... You know where this is going

OmniFocus
#9

Wow, thanks for all the responses so far.

It just goes to show one of the main strengths of OmniFocus (IMO), is the amazing support on the forum. The in depth answers are really appreciated.

Funnily enough, I asked a similar question to a predominantly “Things” based crowd, and the answers were all very simple and short - I guess the users of the software represent in their own way!

My main concern with OmniFocus is that I just don’t think I’ll get anywhere near the complexity people here have.

200 plus projects and tasks? I’m never going to have that. I’ll rarely (if ever) use it for work, and my home life apparently isn’t as complex as others here!

I fear the whole “sledgehammer to crack a nut” scenario would be the case if I did everything through OmniFocus.

If I take the very basic stuff I’ve added so far (to both things and OF), things is winning out on the fact it’s 1 tap less to get to the same info - Plus I’m not overly keen on the OF UI on iOS (i imagine you have to use it for quite a while to get familiar with everything, which I appreciate).

Do people “project” thier home lives in OF? Or you predominantly using it for work purposes?

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#10

I put everything I want to get done and can’t do immediately into my system. I don’t want to think about it.

For example, I need to get a new drainage hosepipe for my washing machine. I don’t know anything about it, so I have a project with actions for researching, purchasing and installing it. It might sound daft to put down all those steps, but it’s important to know how it’s going to get done.

It sounds like another app might be what you want. If at some point you get a strong workflow religion, you may find OmniFocus will help you with that.

3 Likes
#11

You will use the complexity only when you will need it. There will be features that you may never use but it’s nice to know that you have that capability.

For example, I’m not a programmer but I do see a lot of Applescripts and Workflow Automations that I can just plug into OmniFocus and use. I might be daring and try to tweak just a little step to fit me better.

In the same way, I probably use 2% of the entire capabilities of Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Word. But it’s there if I ever need it.

Is there a user forum for Things users? I’m interested in seeing the other side.

Never say never. When the s**t hits the fan and a series of emergencies tumble upon me, I feel safe knowing that I have a very capable task manager. I don’t want that day to come but it’s better to know that I have a capable tool in OF3.

I bought a water blaster at Home Depot a couple of years ago. I really wanted a 4200 PSI water blaster. But Home Depot was out of stock and only had the 3600 PSI water blaster in the store. I needed it that day and purchased the 3600 PSI water blaster. I thought “eh, I won’t use it that much anyways.” But the more I used it, the more I wished I had gone to another hardware store and paid more for a 4200 PSI water blaster. The 3600 PSI blaster was OK. But it takes longer to do the pressure washing job I needed. If I had the 4200 PSI water blaster, I’d be grinning on Easy Street.

So I’m gave my old water blaster to my cousin and grabbed myself the more powerful water blaster. My cousin thinks its OK but he also liked the 4200 PSI water blaster more. It took less time to do the job over the older, less powerful model.

It’s my life that’s in OF. I keep checklists, current projects, single one-off actions, weekly/monthly/annual maintenance tasks, someday/maybe projects. Everything is in OF. I live on an island. You’d think I’d be drinking pinã coladas, walking around in beach flip-flops, and sunbathing. I’m as busy as I can be out here in paradise.

In GTD parlance, anything that requires more than one step is considered a project.

Remember, you can scale up or down in OF when needed. You can always stay in Things 3 and then buy OF3 when you’ve finally pushed Things 3 to its limit. Yes, Things 3 does feel like it has its limits. But your ceiling is much higher in OF3.

I had the same question when I first encountered GTD. Things was a nice app but all the bloggers were talking about OF1. I took my cue from that. Life gets complicated sometimes. Better to to get that sledgehammer.

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#12

To me, a project is anything I want done that isn’t done yet. So that could be making an orthodontic plan for my daughter or planning Mother’s Day or building a document at work or having our summer vacation. I don’t think too much about work vs. not work in this regard, because I see everything as commitments (with different reasons, of course).

As @wilsonng said above, I think the hardest part is about defining your workflow: what sorts of things will you track, how will you track them, how will you decide what to do/not do, and why will you decide in those ways? Once that is cracked, then the tool’s job becomes helping you to execute on those decisions regularly, and helping to manage the outcome of those decisions, whatever too that may be.

Particularly as you get in to this, I, personally, would over-index on comfort. In what manners of thinking and with what tools are you most comfortable? I think that assures the strongest on-ramp to success (I did all this with pen and paper for quite some time because it gave me an intimate feeling of control).

Also, the decision you make now isn’t one you have to swear by through sickness and in health until death do you stop tagging; you can change your mind later. Of course there is a switching cost, and that does need to be taken into account (I don’t mean money here, I mean time, attention, and habit reformation), but it isn’t impossible.

An additional two cents.

ScottyJ

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#13

Dont worry about complexity – Omnifocus could be just as simple, or complex, as you like. And it’s just as good for home life as for work. If you feel that Things has the features you need and a model that works for you – choose it. It has an attractive simplicity ready to use. But since you have taken the time to try different applications and to ask about Omnifocus in this forum, it’s easy to assume that you would like to do things your own way. Then you should choose Omnifocus. It can be whatever you like. And it can be that without adding complexity.

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#14

The handy thing about OmniFocus, as has been pointed out in this thread numberous times already, so just let me reiterate – it’s as complex a system as you want it to be, or in the best case, need it to be. It (mostly) doesn’t say “this is how you are supposed to work”, it grows over time and more and more fits your personal lifestyle and your choices.

Don’t need contexts / tags? Don’t use them.
Are used to tagging everything everywhere and ideally have your existing controlled vocab? Go tag-happy.
Are a very hierarchical planner? Use sequential projects and a folder structure.
Like quick action lists and don’t want to organise much? Use parallel projects, or only a single parallel project, as a catch-all.
Want to readjust your system after a year, introduce more tags or get rid of them completely? Well, go for it.

More important than a software’s capabilities though are whether it allows for a trusted system – or doesn’t. For me, OmniFocus has enabled a trusted system using Macs, iPads, iPhones, and pen and paper I can totally rely on. Key for this are deferred actions plus the review process. Also stability and, later, sync. Others were able to get to a trusted system using Things, or Outlook, or whathever. The important bit is that you CAN trust in the system you set up with your software of choice.

Soon I’ll have been using OmniFocus for a decade, and well, it never failed me or, rather, the system I built with it. It just works if set up properly. And the set-up isn’t anything you have to do at day one. It can grow (or shrink) depening on what your life asks for at the moment.

Best from Switzerland,
-Sascha

5 Likes
#15

I’ll also reiterate something I’ve said… One of the best “features” of OF is the community behind it - The in depth responses and personal ideas are incredibly inspiring - Thank you.

I think part of my problem is that I don’t follow strict rules (I read the GTD book by David Allen, but it didn’t really click with me).

If I had some things on my mind like @heyscottyj, I probably wouldn’t break them down quite as much into a project, and they’d be a bit broader, top line tasks.

This is where (on iPhone at least), Things3 has the edge. I can see my overview quicker, and the input seems to be quicker/easier.

I appreciate you can use OmniFocus for simpler systems (heaven knows I have a very simple system), but I think OmniFocus loses a lot of it’s main selling points when “dumbing”down the software.

I can fully see the advantages everyone has discussed here, for larger systems, and the scalability of OF is far greater than anything else.

I’m just not sure my system will ever be that complicated, and I fear I would over complicate it, just to use the more advanced capabilities of OF.

It’s funny… the biggest draw to OF for me right now, is the history of the app, and the community that goes with it.

In the same way that the biggest turn off for Things, is… this history of the app (slow development etc), and the lack of community that goes with it.

I think I’ll try and set up a simple system is both, and see what I prefer.

Right now, having the projects on the home screen of things (iPhone), feels easier and looks better than the same set up with OF (less taps as well).

I can’t see myself ever using custom perspectives, despite really wanting to. But that is probably because I don’t follow the same way of working that most people here seem to.

Again though, thank you for all of your insightful responses!

If anyone has anything else to add, I’ll be all ears 😁

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#16

For any projects that are your current focus or you visit often, I would create a custom perspective. You could make individual perspectives for each project or one for all those currently on the hob.

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#17

Hi Nick,

Very interesting question. I´ve used Things for a few months and 2Do for a year and half. Both are very good apps that have different limitations and appeals. Things is quite pretty but it is quite limited in handling projects and hierarchies, at least for my needs. It is an app more appealing to users that want a simple and direct approach to task managing instead of more features and customizations. One think that I found fascinating is all the options for repeating tasks. Even now Omnifocus 3 does not have an ´end of repeating´ option: repeat until a date or repeating until 4 or 5 iterations of the task. Things handles this perfectly.

2Do is much more powerful than Things and is developed by one person, which is something formidable since the app is very functional and has some amazing features. Its Smart List (the equivalent of Omnifocus´s perspectives) includes options that are still not available on Omnifocus 3. One example: filter tasks that starts on 5, 6 or ten days or two weeks, or filter tasks that starts between 10 and 20 of June, etc. I like that we can attach a link to the task and access it with easy: on Omnifocus (2 or 3) we must tap on the task and then go to the note section only to tap again on the link. It is not a big deal, but it makes my life easy, anyway. Smart Searches handles quite well multi-tags search and Boolean logic (OR and AND). It comes with the free version, no need to buy Pro. Another feature that I like is notifications: Omnifocus 2 had a very limited approach to notification, something that was changed in Omnifocus 3. Still I think that 2Do is better than Omnifocus 3 due to its nagging notification, something that It seems that will available on Omnifocus 3 in near future, so there is going to be little or no different both apps regarding this feature.
What are the limitations of 2Do regarding Omnifocus? There plenty of them: some are quite relevant to my workflow, others not so much. Let me point some of them:

  1. Limited Structure. On 2Do we have Groups, List, Projects and Tasks. Groups and Lists are more like ´Folders´ on Omnifocus: they cannot be completed, do not have start or due dates. Their function is mainly to organize projects and tasks, both like Omnifocus. However, once we create a task, there is no way to create a subtask and a subtask from this subtask, like Omnifocus allows. Action Groups is a killer feature of Omnifocus for many reasons but one of them is that we can really break down a huge project in small, manageable tasks, something that is quite restricted on 2Do: a project can only contain tasks, never subtasks. Are there any plans to change this? Unlikely since this would break 2Do compatibility with CalDav and other serves. This is not a problem for Omnifocus since it has its private server. The way that 2Do handles structure is for me almost a dealbreaker. I can use the app, sure, but I feel that it always imposes its narrow structure on the way that I plan and handle my projects.

  2. Development. Makes no mistake: Fahad Gilani, 2do developer, is an amazing developer. I respect him very much for 2do and for all his efforts through many years, charging much less than would be suitable for 2Do and completely refusing any appeal to a subscription business model. I admire him a lot and I want 2do to succeed as well. But he is the sole developer of 2Do, an app that has versions for Android, Mac and iOS. It is too much for one single developer who doesn´t even make a living from his app. 2Do has its updates, bug fixes and etc, but its development is slow if we compare to Omnifocus. This is understandable, but it is still annoying that it takes years for implementing new and distinct features to the app.

  3. Attachments. I don’t really use attachments that much, but 2Do is more limited than Omnifocus here. On Omnifocus we can attach various audios and photos to a task or project; on 2Do, however, there is only one place to a single photo or audio, and nothing more. This could be frustrating for some.

  4. Custom Perspectives x Smart Lists. Smart Lists is the most powerful feature of 2Do and I think that it fares well when we compare them to Omnifocus 2 perspectives. I like to see how many tasks are going to start on this week, on two weeks from now, on one or two months… 2Do is perfect for this and Omnifocus 2 not so much. I still don´t like the way that Omnifocus handles tasks that have defer date: custom perspective organizes them in too broad categories (within this weak; June/2018, etc) while 2Do is much more specific (Tommorow, two days, next two weeks, 30 days from now), etc. On 2do we can see tasks’ start date immediately while on Omnifocus 2 we had to tap on it for visualize it, something that is annoying. 2do supports multi-tag search, Omnifocus 2 not so.

One think that Smart List handles poorly and custom perspectives are quite superior is the way that we can narrow our search to specific folders and projects. On 2do we can only narrow our scope to a group and that´s it. If I want to make a custom perspective that deals with two very specific projects, I can do this. I can make a perspective focused on only one project, two folders, a folder and three projects from another folder, etc. It is a very relevant feature for me and it one thing that Omnifocus 2 does quite well.

Summing up: even though 2Do´s smart lists have some features that I found useful and better implemented than Omnifocus 2 custom perspectives, I prefer custom perspectives for allow me to better specify projects and folders that I want to see.

Custom perspectives on Omnifocus 3 have everything that was already available on Omnifocus 2 and many more. It supports multi-tag search, complex Boolean logic (AND and OR) and many more while we still can perfectly narrow our focus on specific projects and folders. I don´t think that there is any other task manager that has a feature as powerful and useful as this one. The only one thing that is still missing is the option to manual sorting, a feature that is missing too on 2do Smart List.

Things, 2Do and Omnifocus 2/3 are great apps that have quite distinct appeals. I do not think that is fair or useful to compare Things to Omnifocus since both apps have very different approaches to productivity. If you are more inclined to tasks, maybe – and I said maybe – you can find Things appealing, but if your workflow is geared toward projects, 2Do or Omnifocus would be more appropriated.

How can we decide between 2Do or Omnifocus? It depends on how much power over your projects and tasks you will need. Let me give you a visual cue:

Project 1
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
Task 4

Project 2
Task 1
Subtask 1
Subtask 2
Subtask 3
Task 2
Subtask 1
Subtask 2
Task 3
Subtask 1
Sub-Subtask 1
Sub-Subtask 2
Sub-Subtask 2
Subtask 3

Project 1 displays a simple and limited structure. If your projects are like this – or you can fit them on this structure without losing any relevant detail -, you can use both 2Do or Omnifocus without feeling restricted. Your choice is going to be made based upon aesthetics and other elements. However, if your projects are more like Project 2 (that is my case), and you need to have control over every task (start dates, flagging, notes, etc), than I am going to make the choice easier for you: get Omnifocus and forget the rest.

Most of the things that Omnifocus does could be replaced with other task manager, but there a few things that only this app can handle well and if you really need some of these functions, I don’t think that you are going to be productivity with other app.
Best Regards!

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#18

I’ve done a lot fo moving around too. I decided to come by to OF because of the additional of tags. I also brought Creating Flow with OmniFocus. I’m also going iPad only right now and I want the most reliable apps and to find the apps and processes that truly fit my workflow. A little more to your questions:

Things 3
The Good:

  • beautiful and clean
  • tags

The Bad:

  • No central place to view tags

2Do
The Good:

  • Deeply featured

The Bad:

  • Cluttered

Omnifocus
The Good:

  • Clear philosophy of task management
  • Custom perspectives and central place to view tags

The Bad:

  • Clear philosophy of task management (could make you feel boxed in)
  • There’s a learning curve

Todoist
The Good:

  • Multiplatform

The Bad:
I just don’t like it. It doesn’t appeal to me for some reason.

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#19

The answer isn’t what you want to hear, but there’s not a correct answer. What feels right to you? Which one will you want to open everyday? They’ll both do the job. They are both excellent.

I just switched back to Omnifocus when OF3 came out, but had been using Things 3 because it is such a great app on iOS. Omnifocus 2 on iOS started to chafe when I was spending more and more time away from the Mac.

Things 3 is amazing. It’s a joy to use. It’s simple, but despite what some OF users will tell you, Things can handle a lot of projects and tasks. Some of the most demanding task management people I follow online are using it and loving it. Of all the task managers I’ve used, it feels the most like working with paper when you’re making a list. You can enter a new task and still see the other tasks that surround the new one. Being able to just add a quick stupid task to your today view without opening an inspector makes it feel more agile or nimble.

I’m back to Omnifocus because it’s been my nice warm blanket for years. I’m comfortable working in it. I know how to customize it to the way I work, depending on how i work that day. OF3 fixed a lot of what was wrong with OF2 on mobile.

I do miss some of Things 3. But when I use Things 3 I miss some of Omnifocus.

That’s the rub. Again, they’re both excellent. They both have pros and cons. There is no right answer. You just have to pick one, and stick with it long enough to really learn how to use it. Keyboard shortcuts. Quick open. Adding tasks quickly. Etc…

So really it comes down to what feels right. What you’ll actually want to open and use. And then some discipline to stay the course.

TL:DR - Omnifocus seems to be the right one for me. But it isn’t the right one for everyone.

6 Likes
#20

I just use it for personal, non work stuff. I work in a big organization, and have to stick to its own mail, skype, agenda ecosystem to relate with others, 90% of my work is meetings and workshops.

I guess most of us do have family, health, finance, hobbies, friends, home & car maintenance issues and want to maximize our enjoyable time That’s complicated enough for me to take advantage of omnifocus, though I admit I’d love to have a less complicated life.

For long I thought that ‘organizing’ my free time was a self defeating purpose, since it didn’t feel ‘free’ anymore. But then (as I grew older) I had to recognize to myself that the feeling that I was not taking care of important personal things didn’t work for me anymore, so I started trying Omni.

Come to think of it, I don’t see myself using omni for my personal life at 20 yrs old, but I do at 50.

I chose Omni to be able to scale up and not needing to change the application in the near future. I admit I enjoy complexity, being an engineer, so maybe that’s another (hidden) reason I chose Omnifocus.

1 Like
#21

Again, I just want to say thank you for all of your answers.

I’ll reiterate… This community is hands down one of the best things about OmniFocus.

To give you guys an update (and to anyone else who stumbles across this thread) - I’m currently giving Things3 my full attention.

The reasons behind that are very specific to me and my workflow, but here it is:

• I don’t have a large project library or many to do’s. Whilst OmniFocus does indeed cater for big and small, I found it to be a little overbearing with such few tasks.

• I’m not a big user of tags/contexts, so that rules out one of the negatives of Things. If I did want to have saved searches for tags/context, I’d certainly use OF.

• I predominantly use the today/upcoming views on Things - Again, because I don’t have a huge amount of tasks to do, I find this a very easy way to look at my to do’s.

• There is something very pleasing about using Things3 - I would never chose a task manager based on look, but if all things are equal, it goes a long way in helping to make your decision.

• I use my Mac a lot, and wanted something instantly which was going to work perfectly - With OF3 for Mac not coming out for a while, I didn’t want to get annoyed by the little discrepancies it currently has.

The downsides that I’ve found with Things3 are:

• Lack of community forum - But I’ve made a Discord server for people to discuss set ups etc, and it’s already over 30 people (in just over a day). However it’s still a long way away from what the Omni Group has here.

• Scalability - Whilst Things can cater for multiple projects and a large task library, I can see that OF3 will be better suited given it’s customisation, and the ability to hide work you don’t need. The reality is, I don’t think I’ll ever get to that point.

Thanks again for all of your comments, I’ll stick around the forum to see if I can learn any new bits about OF3!

3 Likes
#22

I feel like I used every major todo app on the app store since 2009, and I’m finally settling with Omnifocus 3. Omnifocus 1 and 2 gave me headaches, and I felt like I was configuring my tasks more than actually getting things done. I bought things 3 because it was gorgeous and extremely user friendly, but I don’t like the developer. You weren’t allowed to talk about the competition in their forums, and they shut it down because Things 3 was by years so it got pretty toxic. They took way too long to come out with cloud support with Things, and they do a poor job with updates and communicating with their community. For an example they told a user they had no plans to include picture attachments and didn’t tell them why, and another user said they have a 5k mac and the font is too small. Their page says they may include adjustable fonts in the future, and that the default size is fine for all modern macs.

I still bought their mac and ios apps because it’s probably the best UI i’ve seen since the app store launched, and I figure it would help me get more stuff accomplished because it’s so well made.Then Omnifocus 3 came out. The UI looks very similar to OF 2, but it feels a lot easier to use. I don’t use it much, but I like the picture attachments. I like how I can see a list of tags from every project without need to search for them. The custom perspectives is awesome because it goes straight to the type of tasks I want, kind of saved searches. This has the best filters i’ve ever seen for any todo app. I don’t use it much now, but location tasks seems really cool to remind you to do things when you get there. Finally Omnifocus has great communication with their users since version 1, and I didn’t mind buying the app even if I ended up dropping it shortly after, but I don’t think I will. Things is fine for managing tasks, but Omnifocus is an absolute powerhouse for managing your life. For anyone that manages a lot of tasks, I would imagine Omnifocus 3 is much better than Things 3 for the custom perspective features alone.

2 Likes
#23

You can visit YouTube and see @eddiecoyote’s thoughtful videos about switching between OmniFocus and Things.

Video 1: Things 3 over OmniFocus 3 (beta) 23 minutes

Video 2: OmniFocus 3 (not beta) wins over Things 3 (43 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhDadc_lbzk

I love the headers in Things 3 and keyboard commands on the iPad edition. Wished OmniFocus groupings would have a more clear font that separates my groups. Otherwise, I’m happy with OF3.

1 Like
#24

The second video is actually very interesting.

It’s long, but it’s quite valuable because it is obviously a real-world setup. Most people who play with Things to see if it would work for them, do not have a lot of tasks entered in the system. But @eddiecoyote obviously has his entire setup in there, which gives you an accurate view of how it performs in a real situation.

For starters, it emphasizes how useful sequential projects are. And what’s more, it shows you Things 3 cannot handle this at all. There’s a strange thing going on where Things does not let you reorder tasks that have a Start Date. I’m actually really surprised by this because it makes the application unusable for me.

Imagine a project with 4 tasks for simplicity’s sake.

  1. Create a paper
  2. Confer with professor about paper. +1 month This can be done only in a month since the professor is on holiday.
  3. Tweak paper
  4. Submit paper

Now, Things 3 will hide task 2 under “Later” and display todo items 3 and 4 as available right now before task 2. But 3 and 4 can only be done after task 2 even becomes available. And as the video explains, the only work around would be to put artificial start dates on the remaining tasks.

And here’s the thing: in a sequential system, as soon as you mark task 2 complete, the remaining tasks will, one by one, appear. As they should. Even more interesting: suppose the professor is back early. Great, you adjust the date in OF, or mark it complete and the rest of the sequence still falls into place. In Things, you’d have to readjust every start date.

Now image that there are 15 items remaining instead of 2.

The video also shows what I highlighted as soon as Things 3 was released: headers are only visual separators. That’s it. You may say: so what’s the big deal? The big deal is you’re working on a hierarchy that doesn’t exist. As a result, you cannot hide, collapse, or play around at that level. That means a huge project is forever at the same level: (Area) > Project > Task > Checklist. And all headers are always visible leading to a cluttered view.

Another strange feature of Things is you cannot perform a system-wide search for a single tag. Tag searches are restricted to the current view. And there seems to be a huge bug where Things does not show the actual to do items when you search for a tag: the video shows that it is consistently not working.

For me the video, again, illustrates the key difference between Things and OmniFocus.

  1. Things always wants to show you all of your stuff. Even if you cannot work on the tasks.
  2. Things wants you to manually sift through everything all the time until you find stuff to do and triage it to an appropriate view. Filter by tag, go to upcoming view, search for this, star it for Today.

OmniFocus lets you focus on the stuff you can do right now in a view that shows you what’s relevant at this moment.

And @eddiecoyote actually sums it up beautifully:

Every time you stop and have to think for a second, that you can or cannot work on something, that takes a little bit of your cognitive power away. Some of your focus goes away.

1 Like
#25

Can you share the Discourse channel here? I’m curious.

That’s what I thought once upon a time…

My task list would be way too long under Things. I would be intimidated with having to scroll through several screens to find that one task. I use OF’s custom perspectives to shorted the list of tasks. The shorter the list, the more focus I attain to get work done. I cannot live in a task manager that doesn’t have smart lists or custom perspectives to narrow down my list. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cultured Code is trying to figure out how to fit smart lists (custom perspectives) into Things 3.

1 Like
#26

Sure - It’s https://discord.gg/jX36qgy. Would be great to get your input - We have a channel for “other apps”, so you might be able to field some OF3 questions there.

I watched Eddie’s videos last week (although he hadn’t made the most recent one where he found OF3 to be better for him than Things3).

I think he is a perfect example of someone who has quite a comprehensive task list, and is looking for those little extra features to really make one piece of software stand out. The fact he’s gone from OF, to Things, to OF, to things and back again, highlights the fact that both apps will do what 90% of the population want. It then comes down to personal preference, or needing one feature that the other app doesn’t have (be it sequential projects, headers, custom perspectives, UI etc).

@deedubau - You make an extremely valid point about CC - I remember the issues around cloud sync, the shocking development responses, and the non existent development of Things3 - It was the main reason I really wanted to make OF work (hence the investment in it before hand).

I’m hoping (fingers crossed), that CC have turned a corner now, because they seem to be pushing out updates (big updates), far quicker than ever before.

The lack of “community” spirit is still a negative, but maybe I can change that :D

Until my workflow gets more complex, I can’t ignore the pure gorgeousness of using Things3. But I absolutely see where the unique features of OF come into their own when more tasks and projects come along.

Hopefully both companies will push each other on and develop new features, whilst still keeping their unique charm.

#27

Yeah I wouldn’t tell you to buy OF 3 if you already invested into things 3 unless you were gonna use the pro features and wanted pic attachments. I still might go back to things 3 myself. But that depends if I can figure out a way to hide future tasks which I can in OF 3, and I have a lot of tasks that can’t be started until a certain date. I know the GTD method says if anything is set to do in the future I think you put it on a calendar or something so I’ll have to look more into that.

#28

I’m one of those people who bounced back and forth between OF and Things for years, although about two years ago I kind of abandoned both for reasons not worth exploring here.

Recently, I had reason to return to task and project management and had to decide between the two. OF was the last one I had used before, but this was also slightly after the release of Things 3. I had been struggling with OF 2 because as much as I loved the app, it felt like it was causing me to overthink things—I was drilling down too much into individual details of projects rather than focusing on what would be a “reasonable” task. I don’t need to put “look up phone number of restaurant” or “look up Yelp reviews”; I just need “pick a restaurant for dinner on Friday” to organize me. Things 3 manages to make it easier for me to get that into the “books.”

However, the recent development cycle is actually somewhat concerning to me about OF relative to Things. Right now, everything in Things is being released simultaneously: updates to the iOS package show up at the same time as the desktop app. I’m concerned that there’s a three-month gap between the iOS and desktop OF 3 versions. That’s a lot of lag time to wait. I would have preferred if everything had come out simultaneously in a month or two rather than staggered releases where you have to wait for two different platforms to get the same features. Things 3 has also greatly accelerated its development cycle, with 6 minor point releases since last June.

But I’ve also found that both applications miss out on some features that would make my life a lot easier. The biggest of these is a template folder for projects that repeat a lot. I have a consistent workflow to follow every time, but I usually have several such tasks in different states of completion. Neither Things nor OF lets me store those as templates I can copy and reuse, and I don’t want to “duplicate” them because things can vary a bit and it’s not a simple duplicate.

So neither completely gets me where I want, but Things 3 fits where I am in my life for now. Maybe it’ll shift back later on but I’m OK for now.

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