Things vs. OmniFocus
OmniFocus and Things are both great GTD/PIM/Productivity applications. I’m using them both just too see which one I end up using more and then I’ll stick with the winner. I would simply choose one, but they both have their limitations. Omnifocus is a little too structured while Things is a little too loose and, even worse, manual. Nothing is ever perfect, but a couple small changes to either and my life would be so much easier.
OmniFocus being too structured appears to be the result of strict adherence to the GTD scheme. As a seeming result it doesn’t offer things like deep projects (projects with sub projects that have their own sub projects…ad nauseam…). It does have folders (aka groups), but that’s a completely different concept and requires manual organization. That’s a big deal, manual operations take half of the value out of a task management applications. It does, however, allow for hierarchal contexts. This is a good thing overall, but even there it would be nice to have a little more depth. A cross between relational organization and hierarchal organization would be super powerful. Then again, nothing that I’m aware of offers that right now, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
Things has projects, areas, hierarchal tags, and people. All good things and allowing finer control over tasks than OmniFocus. But it doesn’t allow for anything but tags to be entered (associated) during task entry. Odd. What this means is that project and area associations must be manually created after the task is created via a wizard like menu system. This is the definition of kludgy and is Things biggest limitation. Why? Because entering new tasks needs to be very fast and shouldn’t required that I do anything else to organize them beyond that initial entry. Unless of course I want to change something because I didn’t do something.
Finally, they’re both only available for the Mac. I think Macs are great (more specifically OS X). But I do have Windows machines both at work and home. Why, oh why, must I use a Mac to have good task management software? At a minimum a nice Ajax enabled web client is in order.
…at least they both have iPhone apps.
Despite my criticisms I do like both of these programs and think they’re better than anything available for Windows (Outlook doesn’t even come close).
Thank you for the comparison of the features of the two applications. I am an iPhone user and a previous OmniFocus user so once an App was announce for it I got back into using it. I’ve been trying Things but it’s very different from OmniFocus. Maybe using the Mac software will give me a better feel for it.
There actually were plans for a Ruby on Rails based web application for OmniFocus but I think that got put on hold for the iPhone application. Someone has put together a UI for it at RubyForge: http://rubyforge.org/projects/omnifocus-ui/
Lauren
Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I’ve been using Things since early beta. I think that its interface is simple and looks very good. And if you’re not a strict GTD user it’s perfect choice.
But since I started to follow GTD more I had to switch to OmniFocus. The reason is that Things lack sequential projects. Without them all contexts are useless. And working strict GTD style is simply impossible. You can’t filter only next actions for given context (tag). And 90% of my projects are sequential so until Thing would implement this feature i’ll stick with OF.
And I have to say that OF is a great app. You’ve got to get used to interface and workflow but then working with it very easy and intuitive.
traveler
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I’d be interested to hear what you are currently using since this is an old post. Like you, I wanted a platform independent application. For that reason I used Nozbe for about a year before switching to OmniFocus.
For the record, and it may have been improved since your last use of OF, you can nest projects. The only thing lacking is project information on the sub projects. They are under the control of their parent, which may not be what you’re looking for.
I believe you could make the connection in OF folders to areas in Things, and for People in OF, I use contexts. The only important feature lacking in OF, of those you’ve noted, is tags. But with its powerful search capability, that really hasn’t been a problem for me. Global search would be an improvement that developers have indicated will be included in the next (1.7) update.
If you want to read about my early experiences with GTD you can view them at http://johnkendrick.wordpress.com/how-to-gtd/
John B. Kendrick
Saturday, May 16, 2009 at 7:14 am