I heart OmniFocus

Something happened to me a few years ago. I’m not exactly sure where I got started on it or what caused it but I became very interested in the topics of productivity and organization. I think it had something to do with having a zillion and six things to do at work and a paralyzing fear of forgetting to do one them.

Since then I’ve been in a constant battle to find the best system by which to keep organized and productive. I’ve talked about this stuff a number of times here before. I even considered writing an application of my own to help me keep it together.

Now a huge influence in all of this has been Merlin Mann. For those that haven’t seen it his Inbox Zero presentation was spot on to an email method that I already swore by, empty out that inbox. Get a drink, watch the video and then starting deleting like its going out of style:

But it was when I first heard him mention OmniFocus on one of the Macbreak Weekly podcasts that I knew that I had found what I was looking for. My requirements, they’re so modest:

0. It had to subscribe to the GTD system or something darn close to it
1. It had to be a native Mac application, bonus points for Cocoa
2. It had to be ridiculously stupidly easy to use

You’d be amazed at how hard it was find something to fit those criteria. Well, ok, maybe you wouldn’t. Chances are you never even thought about it before just this moment. Chances are even better you’ve already moved on mentally.

Anyhow, OmniFocus is from the same guys that do the awesome OmniGraffle so I signed up for the “Pre-release Alpha ‘This isn’t a beta’ it may just eat you computer and your family release.” That was a few weeks ago and I haven’t looked back. Everything that I was doing with BBEdit and some simple text files has been moved to OmniFocus. I have it running constantly and whenever I feel the attention starting to wander (like say, when I want to know how a water tower works) I immediately jump over there and choose the next action for anything.

I mean, seriously, doing any next action you have listed is better than wondering about water towers.

For you Mac folks out there go sign up for the sneak peak. Seriously. Do it now. Why haven’t you left yet? Then buy it when the folks at the Omni Group ship it, it’s worth it.