#Omnifocus priorities software#

And I can re-organize them as situations change. I have all my areas of life in ONE place, but they are organized in ways that are meaningful to me. This saves me from to-do lists on random scraps of paper spread around my house and wallet, or from just jotting stuff down in the Notes app on my phone. Sometimes I treat projects like actual time-bound initiatives, other times I just use them as convenient groupings. Projects in OmniFocus allow you to break down lists of tasks in any way you like. Tasks and sub-tasks are broken down in projects, so the relationships between them are easily identifiable. OmniFocus meets this challenge of organization with its projects and tags features. I don’t stew in the stupor of procrastination which is so common to the unorganized worker. If I have my tasks well organized, when it comes time to do them, the path is already paved for me. I need a reliable way to capture everything I want to be doing so I can organize those things in a way that makes sense to me. Our lives are complex, we have so many domains for which we are responsible-work, home, family, church, etc.

The other thing OmniFocus helps me to do is to always be organizing. I don’t need memory hacks-I have a computer. As long as it goes into the system, I literally cannot forget. I don’t have to rely on my faulty memory anymore. Since I’ve made a habit of checking OmniFocus every day, as long as I put the task into my inbox, the system takes care of the rest. macOS and iOS apps keep constantly in sync with one another. This is mission control for my productivity. Then, I use the OmniFocus forecast view to see all my upcoming tasks laid over my calendar.

Each morning I process my inbox items to make sure they are categorized properly, have the right due dates attached to them, and add any sub-tasks which are necessary to keep me moving. When someone asks me to do something, I immediately put it into my OmniFocus inbox, either using my computer or iPhone (OmniFocus has a great Siri integration). I am using the dark color scheme which fits in great with Mojave’s new dark mode setting. With OmniFocus, you have indispensable features like due dates, alerts, deferrals, tags, projects, and nested projects. The GTD methodology is systems independent (you could do it with a tiny notepad and tiny pen), but OmniFocus fulfills the basic requirements of GTD and even exceeds them. The short version is this: When you think of something that needs to get done, record an actionable task in your “Inbox.” Then, at regularly scheduled intervals, process your inbox, breaking tasks down into actionable steps. OmniFocus is based on David Allen’s Get Things Done (GTD) method of productivity. Forgetfulness can easily be fixed if you use the right system for managing your tasks. No need to kick yourself over it, though. Have you ever had someone ask you to do something, you agree, then you immediately forget about it only to have them come back to you weeks later annoyed at your unreliability?īut you’ve got to stop blaming it on being a “forgetful person.” You need to own up to the fact that your system for remembering is just plain flawed. I use OmniFocus because it helps me in my mission to be more productive-to be a better steward of my time-by helping me to never be forgetting, always be organizing, and to forever be reassessing my priorities. Most of the things I’ll talk about in this article can be done with any decent task manager app. OmniFocus is similar to other task management programs like Todoist, Wunderlist, or Things. I have been using OmniFocus for the past five years and it is one of my secrets to productivity. I wrote recently about the 10 Best iPhone Apps for Christians, but there was one very important app I forgot to include in that list.

To-do list apps are everywhere, but I prefer ones with a little more power under the hood.

#Omnifocus priorities software#

While I actually still use this method once in a while, I’ve switched over to a software solution that saves me a lot of headaches and can store a lot more information than my tiny notepad and tiny pen. That’s how I made sure I got everything done that I needed to do. I would draw a little box to tick and a to-do item next to it.Īnother little box and another to-do item. I would jot down thoughts and people’s contact information, but mostly I used it to make checklists. When I was involved in campus ministry, I used to carry around a notebook and a collapsible pen in my back pocket.