OmniFocus to Things
I made my first blog in 2013 on LiveJournal. Nothing really happened after that, apart from the time my friend introduced me to tumblr. So it’s now 2021, and I’m taking my first steps to having a blog on my own domain. Pretty exciting stuff.
After approximately an year and half using OmniFocus as my todo manager, I’m switching back to Things temporarily. While OmniFocus is a lot more powerful and its outlining ability allows for good organisation of hierarchical information, I’ve been frustrated by its iOS interface. There’s too much tapping to navigate everywhere. It’s come to the point where I don’t like using OmniFocus to check tasks or add new ones while I’m on the move. I want to use my task manager as more of a 2nd brain, and the friction and inertia embedded in the interface is making me rely more on memory rather than delegating that cognitive load.
I’ve used Things for the last couple of days and I’ve been enjoying it. Though Things has a lot more simplicity, the user interface is well thought out and makes it easy to navigate and create projects and tasks. One thing I realised was that each task can act as an atomic note, so I’ve been enjoying adding Zettelkasten-like notes to different areas of focus. I’ve been experimenting this style with lecture notes and annotations for several books that I’m reading.
I plan on returning to OmniFocus but I think I need some time to reflect on my workflow before returning back to it. I’ve previously used Kourosh Dini’s “Creating Flow” workflow with OmniFocus but I’ve found that you need to be very diligent because a lot of the “flow” relies on manual task creation. However, I subconsciouly resist this workflow because my nerdy brain thinks that I’d rather automate that process, but I never end up doing it. Hence, that part of the workflow never develops.