Another Tool Debate... FacileThings vs OmniFocus vs Nirvana

ivanjay205

Registered
I have posted about this before and I am always reading a lot about it but figured I would open a fresh topic as my world has changed a bit.... I wanted to get some thoughts on the various tools (of course welcome to other suggestions as well).

I was a long time FacileThings user. It is as close to pure GTD as it comes and I enjoy that. I really enjoy the horizons built into the app. However, it is very slow and rigid in its development and the mobile app is incredibly behind in technology. I find the interface very slow to get to what I want. And the tools to capture are not great. It supports email but I LOVE the long press capture that some apps have etc.

I tried Things. And the lack of a "Waiting for" list was a deal breaker for me. As an executive I delegate A LOT and I need to manage and track that. So Things didnt work out.

I tried Nirvana. I am fairly certain I like it. The lack of development always concerns me as I just get bored (my own weakness) vs living in a tool and enjoying it. I dont love that it doesnt have a built in GTD review system and checklists seem a bit more challenging but overall works well. I always get concerned about a slow moving app like that will disappear one day from support.... I like the support of areas although I wish there could be an overall filter on business vs personal. I also am struggling with how "Agenda's" work in Nirvana. I work with the same people a lot so I need that functionality.

I recently switched to Omnifocus as I am a new Mac user. I do really enjoy it, it has A LOT of power to it and I find it very customizable. But I am finding it gets very complicated. To the point where I am actually concerned some of my perspectives do not cover all of my tasks. I also find the interface and display in tasks a lot complicated and cumbersome. I do LOVE the flexibility of views, I LOVE the review system, and I enjoy the mobile experience. I am having sync issues on my iPad but I am sure I can work through that. I do have a home computer that is a PC so when I jump on that I find the web version to be really lacking. But it works to check things off. I typically have a lot of projects so I find this does a good job of organizing that.


What are in general thoughts in 2022? Any feedback or direction anyone can provide or thoughts on any of the above? I feel like I am on a lifelong search for the perfect app that probably will never exist. The interface of Nirvana on top of FacileThings would probably be it but that doesnt exist.

Thanks in advance! Always enjoy this debate!
 

FocusGuy

Registered
I recently switched to Omnifocus as I am a new Mac user. I do really enjoy it, it has A LOT of power to it and I find it very customizable. But I am finding it gets very complicated. To the point where I am actually concerned some of my perspectives do not cover all of my tasks. I also find the interface and display in tasks a lot complicated and cumbersome. I do LOVE the flexibility of views, I LOVE the review system, and I enjoy the mobile experience. I am having sync issues on my iPad but I am sure I can work through that. I do have a home computer that is a PC so when I jump on that I find the web version to be really lacking. But it works to check things off. I typically have a lot of projects so I find this does a good job of organizing that.
For years I made some mistakes eg switching from one software to another. Finally I stick to Omnifocus. It is not the best I like. It is the one I trust.
I also advocate to start with nothing but minimalism. What I would do would be...
- Starting with a list of project (if less than 30) no area, if over than this, area may be nice.
- Minimum of contexts (think practical when and where do I need this)
- Put every tasks is OF (crucial)
- Have a reference system you can use evernote for example. I also use apple note, both for different support material but I admit apple note now is better for me...

No software can be an alternative. Sometime a good taskpaper file, or .txt fil is suffisant and you dont need any software, or A few sheet of papers,

OF is great for people who want to build a long term safe GTD system and it needs time to know what you want.
It is great and easy. It can be exactly like you want it to be but it doesn't make GTD.

David Allen invented an incredible system. Personally as a business maker it saved me.
The core keys of GTD are (for me) a good clarification putting things at the right place and reviewing

My setting : project and context
Capture d’écran 2022-06-03 à 09.14.37.pngCapture d’écran 2022-06-03 à 09.07.28.png
 

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ivanjay205

Registered
I advocate starting by using an absolute minimum of OmniFocus's features, adding feature use very slowly.
But that is no fun lol

I would say that I didnt go from 0-100 very quickly but I quickly did start to rethink organizing within the system as I built it and I think it is in a good place now. There is just A LOT to it. Which is exciting as I love new toys and that is one of my weaknesses but there is a lot there
 

ivanjay205

Registered
For years I made some mistakes eg switching from one software to another. Finally I stick to Omnifocus. It is not the best I like. It is the one I trust.
I also advocate to start with nothing but minimalism. What I would do would be...
- Starting with a list of project (if less than 30) no area, if over than this, area may be nice.
- Minimum of contexts (think practical when and where do I need this)
- Put every tasks is OF (crucial)
- Have a reference system you can use evernote for example. I also use apple note, both for different support material but I admit apple note now is better for me...

No software can be an alternative. Sometime a good taskpaper file, or .txt fil is suffisant and you dont need any software, or A few sheet of papers,

OF is great for people who want to build a long term safe GTD system and it needs time to know what you want.
It is great and easy. It can be exactly like you want it to be but it doesn't make GTD.

David Allen invented an incredible system. Personally as a business maker it saved me.
The core keys of GTD are (for me) a good clarification putting things at the right place and reviewing

My setting : project and context
View attachment 1295View attachment 1294
I do have quite a lot of projects. And I do have areas of focus although I am wondering if they are a great idea or not. It is starting to create a lot of nesting in my projects.

I currently have:

Personal
Home
People
Finance
Business
People
One folder for each person
Finance
HR
Clients
Business Development
Projects
Internal Operations
Long Term Strategy
IT


So maybe that is part of the problem, maybe too many folders but that is what I have to date. And under each folder I have a Single Actions List attached to it.
 

FocusGuy

Registered
I do have quite a lot of projects. And I do have areas of focus although I am wondering if they are a great idea or not. It is starting to create a lot of nesting in my projects.

I currently have:

Personal
Home
People
Finance
Business
People
One folder for each person
Finance
HR
Clients
Business Development
Projects
Internal Operations
Long Term Strategy
IT


So maybe that is part of the problem, maybe too many folders but that is what I have to date. And under each folder I have a Single Actions List attached to it.
Yes may be. It is a complicated part of GTD. On one hand if you create too much nesting it helps to see precisely where your are going. On another hand it is difficult reviewing. As I said previously I noticed that one of the most important thing is reviewing. When you do your weekly review or review you have to make choices. Has David Allen said once "you can do anything but not everything"
Little by little you will see that your system will upload a lot of things. It is crucial to select stuff, update and decide. David himself as I red somewhere (hope it still right) has very little nesting. He prefers seeing all at a glance. For myself, I work a lot by areas and I need to focus on them. Sometime I will time block everything about business, other it is finance.... It is my way of doing stuff. Then I focus on on project at a time doing stuff and updating stuff. I may work 10/15 mn on one before switching but I did the most important. Seeg my next action list on OF helps me a lot to for choosing stuff
 

FocusGuy

Registered
I do have quite a lot of projects. And I do have areas of focus although I am wondering if they are a great idea or not. It is starting to create a lot of nesting in my projects.

I currently have:

Personal x
Home
People. Ø
Finance
Business

People x
One folder for each person x
Finance Ø
HR
Clients x
Business Development x > Goes into reference material
Projects
Internal Operations x
Long Term Strategy x
IT


So maybe that is part of the problem, maybe too many folders but that is what I have to date. And under each folder I have a Single Actions List attached to it.
would be like this in my OF
COMPANY
-
Internal Operations
- Long Term Strategy

BUSINESS

FINANCE

HOME

Personal

REFERENCE
People
One folder for each person
Clients

each project goes into one of the main areas. No more than 5 actionable areas if possible
 

mcogilvie

Registered
For sure, no silver bullet is available or even on the horizon. In principle, Omnifocus should be great, but the complicated and ugly interface repels me and causes anxiety. The beta of OF 4 is better than OF 3 in some ways, but no better in lots of ways. I’m using Things more or less according to the official Davidco setup guide. Things was not intended to be used this way, but it’s ok. I will say that many of the articles on the net about how to use Things in the intended way appear to be from people whose lives have many fewer projects, area of focus, et cetera than I do.

I do see signs that that not all the software vendors in the productivity app space are going to survive the current economic conditions, so it’s probably best to not get too attached.
 

FocusGuy

Registered
For sure, no silver bullet is available or even on the horizon. In principle, Omnifocus should be great, but the complicated and ugly interface repels me and causes anxiety. The beta of OF 4 is better than OF 3 in some ways, but no better in lots of ways. I’m using Things more or less according to the official Davidco setup guide. Things was not intended to be used this way, but it’s ok. I will say that many of the articles on the net about how to use Things in the intended way appear to be from people whose lives have many fewer projects, area of focus, et cetera than I do.

I do see signs that that not all the software vendors in the productivity app space are going to survive the current economic conditions, so it’s probably best to not get too attached.
About Things and Omnifocus I won" worry much than that. There are so many user than there will be a long time I guess before they vanish. I agree OF is ugly. I agree things is beautiful. What I love with Gtd is that we can use almost any thing even google apps to make it work.
About Things, I worked for years with it.The only trouble is about tags. I dont find them easy and there is no subfolders. Also no custom perspective so it is this or nothing. To do ist does the same than OF but it is more complicated. Anyway when I shall be fed up of all these software I would probably use taskpaper (or even workflowy) or may simple text, word, apple, page, google doc, excel, numbers, google sheet file. It would also work !
 

MichaelB212

Registered
Hi there,

I hear you on the lack of a real Waiting For feature in Things. Drives me nuts but I still find Things to be the only task manager that I can commit to. So much so that although I have a work-issued PC, I use my iPad and iPhone in tandem with it (and lean heavily on Mail to Things from Outlook) and manage my projects and actions that way. I find the simple structure of Areas -> Projects -> Actions to be really easy to work within and the start date feature invaluable.
A GTD coach once told me that at a certain point you just have to declare your system good enough for now. Here’s a view of the setup that has been working for me for quite a while. The top layer are my static Areas, the second layer shows a few Areas expanded to reveal its active projects (for visual brevity, I title the project with just a few words and then describe the desired outcome in the project’s note field), and the tags I use for contexts. Really clean, simple and works for me.

03FA12E5-EFA0-420C-8CCA-E34751B6071E.png
 

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Oogiem

Registered
What are in general thoughts in 2022? Any feedback or direction anyone can provide or thoughts on any of the above?
There is no perfect app, start slow, don't use features until you need them, the process matters much less than the tool.
I do have quite a lot of projects. And I do have areas of focus although I am wondering if they are a great idea or not. It is starting to create a lot of nesting in my projects.
I used to assign projects to single areas of focus and had lots of nested folders but I found that it made it a lot harder to manage both in the editing and updating and in the doing. I also have a lot of projects, my current system has 172 active projects, and 19 on hold projects. Since my last weekly review I've completed 12. I have only 9 folders and 2 single action lists. It's a lot easier to maintain a simpe structure and focus on actually doing the work.

Screen Shot 2022-06-06 at 6.36.23 AM.png
 
Hi there,

I hear you on the lack of a real Waiting For feature in Things. Drives me nuts but I still find Things to be the only task manager that I can commit to. So much so that although I have a work-issued PC, I use my iPad and iPhone in tandem with it (and lean heavily on Mail to Things from Outlook) and manage my projects and actions that way. I find the simple structure of Areas -> Projects -> Actions to be really easy to work within and the start date feature invaluable.
A GTD coach once told me that at a certain point you just have to declare your system good enough for now. Here’s a view of the setup that has been working for me for quite a while. The top layer are my static Areas, the second layer shows a few Areas expanded to reveal its active projects (for visual brevity, I title the project with just a few words and then describe the desired outcome in the project’s note field), and the tags I use for contexts. Really clean, simple and works for me.

View attachment 1296

Very nice, @MikeyBus Really like the clean look and straight-up GTD system. Proof that it need not be complicated!!
 
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