In more ways than ever before, OmniFocus provides the tools to make the app your own. This improved user friendliness is achieved thanks to a new level of flexibility that can, upon tweaking your ideal setup, obscure the app’s complexity in everyday use. OmniFocus 3, released today for iOS (and later coming to the Mac), adds even more power and options to the app’s existing toolset, yet rather than growing more complex in the process, it’s surprisingly become more approachable. On this complexity spectrum, OmniFocus has historically been the poster child for the weightier end: if you have a lot of complicated projects that need a high degree of structure, there’s no better place to start than OmniFocus however, for lighter needs, I’ve always found its myriad of options too overwhelming to recommend. Some aim to remain simple and user-friendly, while others try to put every tool at your disposal, endearing themselves to power users while scaring off prospective customers who need a bit less. Task management is a tough problem to solve, because every option out there is optimized for specific use cases, resulting in different complexity levels. Realistically though, you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that the “perfect task manager” doesn’t exist, and likely never will. You may have chosen an app and settled in with it, but some of its design choices don’t quite fit with your way of working, so you’re always keen to try the latest and greatest app that comes along. My car maintenance project (which is just a task in things), in Omni I have to set “change tires” to a different repeat time frame than oil change, while in things, I just mark an x if it wasn’t done, and just have the single repeating task.If you’re anything like me, you probably remain perpetually dissatisfied with your task management setup. Oh another big one for me - in things you can actually mark an “x” on a task, while in Omni all you can do is leave a note (which requires more taps to get to, than in things). I think those weigh more than location based reminders too. Other than that, the due flag and better control for repeats, push me more for things. Different, but not too far off in practice. Instead of doing sequentially projects in Omni, I would do a check list in things. In things all this just goes to “today,” but I just filter by tags to get essentially the same thing.īoth support URL schemes, so stuff like linking a task to another project can essentially be done in both (like “study book” task that links to a project with all the chapters). If I have a perspective for school, work, and personal - I can click each perspective to individually see what I have to do, in OmniFocus. In my experience, in practice they’re very much the same. Flagging would get unwieldy fast, at least to me. I recommend using a perspective that shows anything available and regularly check in on that perspective. 'take out the trash from bathroom', but not 'take trash to curb' as I can't do the curb task without having first done the restroom task. In my 'Available' project, it shows me things available, e.g. I don't take the trash out to the curb without taking the trash out from the restrooms. Project 'Take out trash' is sequential in nature. I have some tasks that may have a due date, but aren't available due to being part of a project that is sequential.

On important items, I have multiple reminders for the item (e.g.I have an 'Available' perspective that I check in on regularly (daily, really), this shows things that were deferred, and/or have a due date that is available.Great question! For me, I do a few things: Defer it for 11 months, get the necessary paperwork / checks in place at 11.5 months, renew at 11.75 months, etc.ĭefer and due dates are very powerful. You don't want to see that the task is available all 12 months of the year when you can only really act on the task for 2 weeks out of the year. I order the filter, receive the filter, then wait for the reset light to come on, replace the filter, and reset the status.Īnother example would be renewing your car registration. I check the project to see what is first on the list.

When this project comes up as available to work on. I then check my 'available' tasks every day to see what I can work on every day.

set a due date for 6 months from last completion.

set a defer date for 5 months from last completion.

I can't act on this until ~5 months after the last time I replaced it, but it needs to be done every 6 months (or when the reset light comes on).

Due: when a task needs to be completed on/by or there are consequencesĪs a potentially silly example, let's take the project of replacing the water filter in my refrigerator.

Defer: when something is available to be acted upon.

As many others have said in the comments here, I echo the sentiment that Defer dates and Due dates are for different things:

Omnifocus 3 reset review date