my life organized - for mac

[indigodreaming]

Does anyone know if there is a mac version for this software - which incidentally looks fantastic and exactly what i need?

if not can anyone recommend another software program life this for mac?

thanks muchly

 

[mcogilvie]

Life Balance

Does anyone know if there is a mac version for this software - which incidentally looks fantastic and exactly what i need?

if not can anyone recommend another software program life this for mac?

thanks muchly

My Life Organized started out as a knock-off of Life Balance, a product of Llamagraphics. I believe MLO now has a somewhat different feature set, but conceptually they are similar. Life Balance is available for Mac, PC, and Palm, with an iPhone version in development. I have no direct experience with MLO, but Life Balance is a very solid, well-supported product. LB can be used for GTD in many ways. Another popular outliner-type program for macs is omnifocus from omnigroup. It is also feature-rich, but does not implement the kind of prioritization LB and MLO have.

 

[John_Lewis]

I second the recommendation of OmniFocus for the Mac. (OmniGroup also produce a variety of other very good applications.) It is the application which I am using for managing project and action lists.

Previously, I have used MyLifeOrganized, which I also like, on a PC and Vitalist, which has the usual advantages and disadvantages of being online.

MyLifeOrganized does have sophisticated and configurable algorithms for prioritization, however I doubt that most people need as much as that. OmniFocus has a simple flagging system which can be used for "binary" prioritization which, conversely, might be less than many would like.

One of the things that I like about OmniFocus is that it implements an aspect of the GTD model which seems fairly important. Rather than thinking of "someday/maybe" as being in the same dimensions as contexts or as areas of focus, I think that "active" versus "someday/maybe" is orthogonal to both. OmniFocus has an "on hold" status for a project and can be used for this purpose.

It also has a feature for managing reviews, which I am not yet using fully, but which seems really powerful. Although the GTD approach does not advocate using time-based deadlines to drive tasks, it does advocate a time-based approach to reviewing: weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. at different levels. OmniFocus allows a date for next review to be attached to a project and to be used to group and sort projects based on the next review date. It also allows a review period to be specified which provides for repetitive reviews.

OmniFocus also has a variety of other features which I do not use much, including some integration with applications such as Mail and iCal.

I hope that this helps.

John

 

[be-bob]

I too second the recommendation of OmniFocus. I'm using the Mac Version since sometimes last year (preview) and trust it since february (version 1.0). The new version (available as sneakypeak) brings a synchronization feature that I really needed. I got the software on my iMac at home, my MacBook on the road (or in the office) and since July, 11th as well on my iPhone. And all the three synchronize pretty good.

Since OmniFocus is available as iPhone app too, I can do a lot more of the collection step directly in OmniFocus without being at my desk.

In my opinion, the process of GTD is fully supported in OmniFocus. With a little tweaking of the tool (because of tweaking the process), it suits me just perfect... and some of my friends and co-workers as well.

Regards
Boris

 

[moosie]

another vote for OF

With Omni Focus on my MBP and iPhone, a dedicated GMail account specifially for the iPhone, iCal and Net News Wire, I am more productive than I've ever been. Omni Focus is worth every penny I've spent. It's built for GTD, but I've kind of customized the way I GTD and I find the software really flexible. PM me if you want more information.

>..<

 

[Todd V]

re: GTD Offerings on the Mac

As Lifehacker contributor, Gina Trapani, says "Personal productivity is inherently personal." In all likelihood, this is why there has been such a proliferation of new offerings for getting things done on the mac: Individuals who need something tailored just for them start writing software for themselves and then start making it available to the masses.

This is what happened to me when I started writing Ready-Set-Do!—a unique, file-system approach for GTD on the mac. It's also what resulted in Omnifocus which originally started with Ethan Schoonover who customized OmniOutliner pro with some scripts to help him get things done (known as kGTD). And it is what has subsequently led others on the same path, such as ThinkingRock out of Australia, Things (which focuses more on 'tagging'), and Midnight Inbox (which auto-collects).

Everyone has their own, unique needs for implementing GTD. And since each digital implementation of GTD has different emphases, it's best to look for those with features that most match up with the demands of your own workflow. For a list of 100+ more GTD program options, see this list.

 

[GTDWorks]

I, too, am finding Omnifocus to be a great match for my GTD practices. I've been carrying a heavy load since January and OF has allowed me to manage it all in a clean, powerful application. I heartily recommend it to all our mac users!

 

[GGG]

I use both LB and OF and like both very much

Life Balance was a GTD-type program even before GTD was first publicized (i.e. the publication of the book in 2001), in that it connects tasks and projects in an outliner with a task list by place (= next action by context). Its original focus was the handheld market, and when the Palm OS was dominant it was (and is) the best such program for synchronizing the data on the handheld version with the data on the desktop, and in particular it has long been supportive of the Mac OS, unlike many other Palm developers. I still love and use my Palm device daily, and having Life Balance synch so well is a major reason why. Still, for the Mac OS alone, Omnifocus has many more features and is much better at sorting and zooming in on projects and tasks, as well as identifying ones "on Hold", "Stalled," (= active but no designated next action) etc.

What Life Balance does that OF does not is to sort tasks (within a context) by a combination of urgency and importance, which is easy to adjust and which makes it easy to see what the most important tasks are that need to be done, not by comparing tasks to other tasks directly, but because the projects that they belong to are designated as most important. In other words, Life Balance makes it easy to quickly choose what the best thing for you to do is; and that is at the heart of the GTD "Do" stage. OF is also good, but it requires more sorting and scanning to get to the same decision.

Life Balance is also known for a feature that I don't use much, but for which it is named -- you can track which areas of your life are getting too much or too little activity and then use the software to nudge you to a more balanced life. This is a unique feature (among several) that MLO copied (possibly illegally) and which is absent elsewhere in the GTD software world.

They cost about the same, I think,so try both and see which suits you better. For me, I like to use LB for all my projects and next actions (because I'm not in front of my Mac all day long), but to do major planning and organizing of large projects, I prefer to use OmniFocus.

George

 

[kewms]

If I used an electronic system, OmniFocus is the one I would use.

I tried it out while I was flirting with an electronic system a few months ago. I ended up going back to paper, but was very impressed with OF's interface and GTD-friendliness.

Katherine

 

[Oogiem]

I'm testing LifeBalance now. The big factor for me is that I can synch with my Palm based Treo, something OmniFocus cannot do at all. So far it's a bit of a learning curve from standard Palm apps but seems like it will work well. I'll post more once I've given it a good try of a month or so.

OmniFocus does synch with iPhones if you have one.

 

[GTDWorks]

And OF syncs with iCal and Blackberry, too.

 

[magnus]

OF and Entourage Mail

i tried to use OF and was unable to figure out how to integrate it with entourage mail.

as a convert from the windows/outlook world, i found the process confusing ... is there a simple way to take an email and create an action item in OF?

i've reverted back to Fusion / Outlook for now ...

 

[mcogilvie]

i tried to use OF and was unable to figure out how to integrate it with entourage mail.

as a convert from the windows/outlook world, i found the process confusing ... is there a simple way to take an email and create an action item in OF?

OF has a generic clipping service you could presumably use with Entourage, but has a very nice service that will take mail from Mail.app into the OF inbox. There are also mail rules you can use. If you are bound and determined to use Entourage, I suppose you could forward relevant email to a gmail account that Mail.app reads and acts on, but that seems very roundabout. In any case, Read The Fine Manual.