Omnifocus for iPhone/iPod Touch
| 25/9/2008 | Posted by Pete under General |
Omnifocus for iPhone
I have recently started using Omnifocus on my iPod Touch in order better manage my tasks. What follows is a short review of the application – what it does well, where it could be improved and my general impressions of it.
Firstly, from the Omnifocus site itself to give you an idea of what the application does, and what it is designed for.
“OmniFocus for the iPhone brings task management to your fingertips. Keep track of actions by project, place, person, or date. Bring up a shopping list, agenda items to discuss at work, tasks for home, and any other lists you need.
Using your location, OmniFocus can create a custom list of actions to complete nearby. Buying groceries? OmniFocus can show you the closest grocery store and create an instant shopping list.
Capture tasks anywhere, anytime with OmniFocus: you can enter text, take a picture, or even make a quick voice recording.
Synchronize OmniFocus with your Mac using the OS X version available separately from omnigroup.com/omnifocus.”
In short it is a task manager that allows you to group your tasks into projects and by where you need to be to complete them. It is also location aware (sadly not on the iPod touch, unless you count the wifi imitation GPS, which is pretty rubbish).
The first thing you will notice about the app when you load it up for the first time is that it takes a while to load. Don’t worry too much about this, as it will more than make up for it later. You will see the following front screen.
This shows at a glance what tasks you have that are overdue, which are due soon, and the tasks you have flagged. It is also the kicking off point for creating new tasks (via the fourth button at the bottom) and for looking through your tasks by context and project.
I found that creating your own individual contexts and projects was very easy and intuitive. Simply use the Plus button at the bottom right when you are in the correct place that you want to create the project or context. Both projects and contexts can be nested to any depth, although you might want to avoid nesting them too deep in case they are hard to find later.
Due dates and start dates can be set for each task with tasks due soon appearing in orange, and overdue tasks in red. As the application loosely follows the GTD methodology, there is also the inbox, which stores tasks that have not been allocated to a project or context. This makes it very easy to enter a bunch of tasks and organise them later.
Where the product really comes into its own is when you personalise the contexts and add your own projects to it. This allows you to group the tasks and see just the items you want to at that particular point. However, and this is something you may notice if you have used other task managers on a PC, there is no search functionality. In this case the application can just about get away without it, as the organisational features of the app more than make up for it. It would still be a really “nice to have” feature that could perhaps be included in an update.
How well does it manage tasks?
I would have to say that it is extremely useful and, although it has a few shortcomings, the overall basis and feature set is sound.
Have I become more productive by using it?
The answer is “I’m not sure”, although I suspect that is more down to me than the app.
Let me know what your thoughts are on this application, if you have used it, or whether you think you would use it.
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