mac

The Psychology of OmniFocus

Ryan Norbauer wrote an interesting article on what he calls, “The Psychology of OmniFocus: How to Wrap your Head Around the Finest (and Most Perplexing) GTD App on the Market.”  We know many of you are OmniFocus fans out there (we are too) and I thought this was an interesting read.  I particularly liked:

“If you’re just borrowing ideas from GTD here and there, like the idea of grouping your to-do lists by context, you’re missing almost everything GTD has to offer, which is a terrible shame.”

This article is worth a read on tapping into the full power of GTD + OmniFocus.  Read more

The gift of MacBooks + OmniFocus + GTD for an entire school system

GTD enthusiast Kerry Gallivan has been working with a wonderful project in Maine that is bringing MacBooks,  OmniFocus & GTD to nearly 60,000 students and educators.  It’s an amazing story and congratulations to all involved in making this happen.  Truly a remarkable achievement which will greatly benefit the students, teachers, their families and communities.

kerryAs a GTD evangelist myself, last March I was fortunate to attend the GTD Summit in San Francisco. This was a first-ever event hosted by David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, and his company, David Allen Company. It was a networking event which brought together all of the best and brightest GTD practicers from literally around the world. It was at the GTD Summit that I met Ken Case – the President of the Omni Group.  Being a Technology Director at a school district in Maine and a GTD evangelist, I encouraged him to consider donating OmniFocus to the MLTI program as a first step in exposing the educational community within Maine to the benefits of the GTD system.  Read more–>

GTD & OmniFocus

I recently interviewed Ken Case, CEO for OmniGroup, about the ever popular OmniFocus for Mac.  You’ll hear about the history of OmniGroup, what their company culture is like today, what OmniFocus does for a GTD’er, and more.  Here’s an excerpt:  

Ken Case: The big thing that we tried to do as we were designing the application is really think about the parts of the GTD workflow that we could address, and automate those, and then maybe not try to touch the parts that didn’t make as much sense. For example, we don’t do calendaring; we leave that to whatever calendaring system you already have. I use the calendar app that’s built-in to the iPhone, but you can use a paper calendar or whatever works for you for that part of the system. We do focus on the GTD collecting and processing–capturing stuff out of your head and getting it into your inbox. We tried to make that really easy with a keystroke…

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Grab a list of all of the OmniFocus speed keys.

Hacking Mail and iCal for GTD

Yes, we know it makes for a great debate, but GTD really is for men or women, PC or Mac, paper or digital.  It’s an approach that gets overlayed onto the tools that work for you.  Since so many GTD’ers are on a Mac, and we’re always looking to feature a wide-range of GTD’er styles, Meghan Wilker was chosen as one of David Allen’s upcoming “In Conversation” interviews for GTD Connect members.   It will be posted on GTD Connect this summer.  We’re also excited that Meghan will soon be a regular contributor to GTD Times.

She recently did a great write up on her experience of GTD on a Mac:

My System

When I started implementing GTD about four years ago, I was working on a company PC. I configured Outlook (as outlined in the GTD and Outlook whitepaper) and everything hummed right along. Three years ago, I left that job and transitioned to a Mac. Suddenly, I was adrift without a system and I ended up falling into a trap that I think a lot of GTD practitioners (and geeks) fall into: I started over-analyzing my needs and evaluating software to the point that my system stopped working very well. I tried Backpack, Remember the Milk, OmniFocus and a score of others.  Finally, I decided the best approach would be to figure out a way to bend the applications I already use all day, every day to my will.   Read more>>>

By the way, David’s In Conversation series on Connect has featured some of the biggest GTD fans out there, including… [Read more →]

A look inside someone’s GTD setup

You’ll find as many different ways to setup a GTD “ecosystem” as there are people practicing GTD.  In case this is useful, we want to share this letter we received from Chip in New York City, who wrote to us about his hybrid paper + Mac GTD system, and what’s working well for him.

I’ve been using the trifold wallet for a couple of weeks now, and as a capture tool it can’t be beat. I have an iPhone and use the application Things on my Mac

[Read more →]

GTD & OmniFocus

By far, one of the most popular implementations of GTD on a Mac, is with OmniFocus. It does an elegant job of GTD project and action management on the Mac and iPhone.  There’s a great write up from the “Mac Samurai”about his journey with GTD & OmniFocus. We thought you might find this useful.

(Yes, we know many of you like “Things” by Cultured Code too!)