If you’re just starting to get into GTD, it’s probably because you have a big list of things to do, and not enough time to do them all. Once you read the book and all the blog posts about GTD you’ll need to figure out what your “trusted system” will be, so when you have to make the critical decision about what you’ll work on next, you’ll have everything you need all in one place. For some, a piece of paper will be just fine. For others you’ll need to find some software to help you keep things organized. I’m in that second group, and have tried several different online and software systems.

In my last post, I was talking about how I was making the switch from Nozbe to something else to manage my ToDos, but I wasn’t exactly sure what the something else would be. Well, I’ve figured it out, and the winner is OmniFocus, from The Omni Group Here’s how OmniFocus won me over, and made me happy to hand over some hard-earned cash as a result.

PS: In anticipation of the new FTC guidelines, which I’m personally quite happy about, I was NOT paid for this review, and was NOT given an evaluation copy of any of the software I will discuss below.

PPS: Thanks to Susan Herman for suggesting OmniFocus. I had checked out their site and had almost written it off based on the lack of information and screenshots, but your suggestion made me give it another chance.

What was I looking for?

• An Easy Way to Brain Dump
• Flexible Context Hierarchies
• Flexible Project Hierarchies
• An Easy to use iPhone Application

An Easy Way to Brain Dump

OmniFocus accomplishes this in a very simple, yet powerful way–with an inbox. Go to your inbox, hit return, type a new ToDo, and repeat until your brain is empty. OmniFocus keeps things in your inbox until they have a project or a context, and preferably both.

One thing that took some getting used to was the “Clean-Up” button. When you create a ToDo and add it to a project or context, it doesn’t automatically disappear from the inbox view–you have to press “Clean-Up” for that to happen. Why? Two reasons I can think of.

1. You might make a mistake, and then you’d have to go to the other view to reclaim your ToDo and put it in the right place.
2. Sometimes ToDos are really projects, and keeping things in your inbox is a great way to review the list to make those decisions after your brain is empty. If ToDo started automatically filing themselves as you go, I know I’d end up spending more time thinking about them rather than just entering them.

Flexible Context Hierarchies

Plan by project, do by context is one of the most important GTD concepts. When you’re planning, you’re typically thinking about a project, and what you need to do to move that project forward. On the other hand, when you’re doing, it’s usually because you’re someplace and have some time to work. Thinking about that someplace as a context is critical to implementing GTD. For example, if you have a few minutes and you happen to be near a phone, you could look through every project to see if there are any ToDos that you can check off by making a phone call. If you’ve previously identified a context for each ToDo, you already know which ToDos require a phone call, and you can easily filter your list to show all the items in the context “phone,” and start dialing.

OmniFocus uses a hierarchical model for contexts. You can have as many as you like, and you can group them into folders and sub-folders. Having looked at other systems like “Things, Remember the Milk and Nozbe,” I originally thought this might be a problem. They all have contexts that function more like tags, where each item can be tagged to be in as many contexts as you want. For example, you can use some tags to indicate physical contexts (like home, office or grocery store), other tags to indicate priority, and still others to estimate duration (1 hour, 1 day, etc.). However, with great power, comes great responsibility, and in my testing, I found that I felt obligated to create so many contexts that they were hard to keep straight. Context tags are great, but I found myself spending more time trying to categorize each ToDo in 20 different ways than actually doing them–a sure sign of procrastination. So, while the tag model of contexts are admittedly more powerful than the single, hierarchical context list that OmniFocus uses, I’ll stick with the hierarchical model–it’s just more practical.

Flexible Context Hierarchies

One thing from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that has stuck with me–even as I adopt the GTD methodology–is the concept of roles. For me, it’s really helpful to try to keep things like “manager, project lead, team member, spouse (close enough), and me (“Sharpen the Saw” for you die-hard Covey fans)” as separate aspects of my life. If I didn’t do this, I think it’d be hard to think about the kind of ______ I want to be, and the projects I would need to do to get there.

This is something that you don’t have to give up with OmniFocus, because it supports nested project lists. Projects can be in folders, and you can have as many folders and sub-folders as you want, so regardless of how many different compartments your life has, you can create a project list that will work for you.

An Easy to use iPhone Application

The iPhone app companion to OmniFocus is very nice. Of course, it synchronizes all your data (you have several sync technology options), and it uses the iPhone real estate very effectively. Several other apps I tried are really only good for viewing your ToDos, but I find the OmniFocus app good for adding new ToDos, and even projects as well. However, there’s one feature that’s just, well…cool.

My favorite feature is the ability to assign GPS coordinates to a context. OmniFocus knows when I’m home, at the office, the grocery store, the hardware store, my karate class and quite a few other places as well. Using the GPS features, I can not only pull up my grocery list when I’m at the store, but I can also use the app to find what ToDos I “could” get done now, because I happen to be near the place where I have to do them. Cool. Nerdy, but cool.

If you’re still reading this, thank you.

While it’s not perfect, I really like the thoughtfulness that was obviously put into creating the OmniFocus system. If you’re an OmniFocus user, I’m curious to hear how you use it. If you use something else that you think is better, I’m all ears.

Let me know what you think

I’ve been using Nozbe to manage my ToDo’s for about a year. It’s a good system, web-based, has an iPhone app that synchronizes pretty seamlessly, and has some powerful importing capabilities. It works, but for some reason I don’t love it. My subscription runs out in December, and I’m going to switch.

For background:

• I try my best to implement GTD.
• I lead an eight person marketing team in a company of about 50 people.
• The marketing team uses Basecamp for large, multi-person projects.
• I have been using Nozbe for personal projects and work projects that don’t involve others.
• I use a PC at work, and until last week a PC at home. Now I use a Mac at home.

Nozbe is exclusively web-based. There’s nothing more convenient and cross-platform than keeping everything up in the cloud. You don’t have to worry about synchronizing data among computers. And, you can access your data from any machine–including ones that aren’t yours. That’s good. The downsides are that it’s slower than a desktop application and the development of some really powerful features is hampered by the web interface. Suggestion: Take a lesson from Evernote, and let me have the choice to use the cloud or the desktop.

Nozbe has a free iPhone app. The Nozbe iPhone app is very good, and it’s free. Thank you for not asking users to pay for an iPhone app on top of paying for the basic service.

The “+ New Action” button isn’t always visible. I find that when I’m adding lots of actions, moving actions between projects, and assigning contexts, the button disappears and I have to reload the page to get it back. In any ToDo program, the most important feature is to be able to add new action items anytime. Suggestion: Create a Facebook-like toolbar at the top or bottom of the page with key commands on it. You’ve got it on your iPhone app. Do the same thing on the site itself.

Nozbe supports multiple contexts. Nozbe contexts work like tags, and are pretty effective. The catch is that the number of projects and contexts you can use depends on the plan you purchase, and to really implement GTD, I find that I need to tag my stuff in lots of different ways. The limits aren’t too bad, because I can always purchase a bigger plan.

What’s most frustrating about contexts, however is editing them. Let’s say I have an action assigned to three contexts, and I want to delete two of them. I have to open the action for editing, delete one context, confirm my choice, then I have to open the action for editing again, delete the other context and confirm my choice again. My personal style is to be fairly liberal with tags as I enter items, and to clean them up once a week-during my weekly review. The way this works makes that process pretty frustrating. Suggestion: Let me delete and edit all the contexts and click save changes only once.

Nozbe has a powerful, flexible importing mechanism that is difficult to remember. Nozbe has developed a very powerful system for importing tasks from many different sources. You can upload a file, send an email, and even tweet your new action items and projects to Nozbe. The problem is that it requires that remember a fairly complex syntax to do all this. It’s powerful, but I can never remember all the rules. Suggestion: Send me back a confirmation when I add items letting me what you did with them, so I can fix it if I made a mistake. If I have to go to website to make sure I did it right, the importing feature looses it’s utility.

On the off chance that Michael (the Nozbe guy) reads this, I hope you find these comments and suggestions constructive.

Right now, I’m searching for a new system, and have been checking out

• Things
• Omnifocus (Remember the Milk

What do you use to keep yourself organized?