I do not know if you subscribe to the Get Things Done (GTD) philosophy or not. My personal point of view is that some people make the system more important than the actual doing of the tasks, and it can lead to procrastination. It doesn’t help to have a system if you spend more time curating the system than you do getting actual work done. With that being said, I say do what works for you. I certainly have over the years, using notecards, a handy little moleskin, writing a text document. I have tried lots and lots of programs on my computer in an attempt to keep myself organized as well. TaskMate, ToDoist, Today (which is actually really cool), the Hit List, etc. So my history is long and varied with these types of things.
I have begun a new semester at school, and so my life has become very busy once again. I do full time school on top of my full time job, and the now I am a daddy at the same time! So, I am very busy, and if I don’t think about something, it can fall through the cracks so quickly, it is frankly ridiculous. I had been lackadaisically tracking a few tasks in TaskMate on my work laptop, but this wasn’t going to cut it. I needed to do some comprehensive task and project management. Since I have used a GTD system before, I knew that I needed one place, always accessible to store my tasks. I liked that. I always have my iPad with me, so I began to look into some of the task management suites available. Some, like Next Thing were to simple. Taska worked, but I could never get it to sync to Toodledo correctly: the iPhone version could never pull my tasks. It also seemed a little complex when doing a simple brain dump scenario, a common use case for me. I disliked the kitsch of ToDo, so that one was out. Finally I narrowed the list to 2 candidates, Things and OmniFocus. Now I need to figure out which one to buy.
Things is a great program. I have used it before on the iPad, and I loved the ability to dump tasks, and tag them. Contexts is also wonderful. I can also tell that they have put lots of thought into the interface. It tries to be as unobtrusive as possible, and yet still manages to provide deep functionality. This is the secret of really good, thoughtful design. It was also fast, and fully functional, the hallmarks of good coding. In short, I really like this one. The price tag is $20 for the iPad app. However, an ecosystem does exist, the companion iPhone app is $10 and a desktop client is available for $50. Of course I could simply use the iPad app as a standalone. Attractive thought, because I would not have to worry about syncing, which is the true bane of anyone seeking to keep all the lists current. The desktop client seems very attractive and thoughtful, just as the iPad app does.
The other option is OmniFocus. This requires a rather large layout on the get go; it is $40. I have not used it before, but it seems very clean and functional, with lots of added functionality like maps of contexts and special features that would be unavailable to to-do lists on other platforms. Also in favor of OmniFocus is this, a long time ago I shelled out for OmniFocus for OSX ($80), as well as OmniFocus for iPhone ($20). I already have an ecosystem in place. That is actually pretty handy. The desktop client is starting to show its age, but I hear that they are working on OmniFocus 2 soon, they stopped working on it to turn out the iPad application. Of course, that means to stay current I will have to shell out for a new desktop client in the near future. It is not problem that it feels a little stale though, because for the most part I would be managing tasks on my iPad, using my iPhone for universal capture, and then using my desktop client to keep it all synced together and current. Not bad, not bad.
So these are my two options. I could be relatively cheap now and only shell out for Things, but I then run the risk of wanting to buy into the ecosystem later for much more dinero. Alternatively, I could drop the dough on OmniFocus now, and enjoy the advanced features (which I will probably rarely use, honestly) and the existing ecosystem (which I will use all the time). Of course, I might end up spending some extra cash (ha!) down the line on that too, if the new desktop version comes out. It is something of a quandary. I am sure that I will figure something out soon, I really need something like this, the sooner the better. While I mull it over, what are your thoughts?
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pleb posted this
