But today I want to go to a happy place and bring up a trend I’ve seen at 3 or 4 airports over the summer. Samsung is sponsoring ‘utility posts’ at many airline gates, with about six outlets in a small space.

This is brilliant. I get a chance to sit in an actual chair rather than against a wall. And Samsung gets a great place to advertise, as well as the good will of someone whose cell phone battery is about to die.

Now if they could double the amount of these posts, and give free wifi at all airports…

I first heard of OmniFocus from Merlin Mann on the MacBreak Weekly podcast.  Mr. Mann was/is collaborating with the OmniGroup, and, as I am a big fan of his productivity writing over on 43folders.com, I was intrigued.  Mr. Mann is a believer in focused attention and freeing yourself from distractions.  I’ve found OmniFocus helps me immensely with that.  So let’s jump in.

I am not a proponent of having to watch videos in order to use a product; I’ve always felt if a video is necessary, perhaps the products is a wee bit too difficult.  But I spent some time on the OmniGroup’s web site and decided to invest the 10 minutes and watch the video. In this case, it was worth it ten times over.  So my first piece of advice is: Watch the tutorial, you’ll pick up rather quickly whether OmniFocus is for you.  I could tell that they philosophy for managing tasks was akin to mine and therefore was going to work well.  So for me, the video was a set of getting started shortcuts. 
.
OmniFocus has two views or perspectives on how to look at your tasks.  You can look at them grouped by the projects they belong in, or by context.   What is context?  Context is all about where you are or what you are doing.  What this view allows me to do is create a task that can only be done at home and mark it as such.  Or create my list of things I need to buy and list the context as errands.  I didn’t think I would use this, but I find I use it all the time (along with the incredible iphone app which I won’t even discuss here today.  It is fantastic.)

The majority of my usage is on the project side.  The beauty of OmniFocus here is that it can be as simple or as complex as you like.  Want to use this tool like gootodo and just enter a line item description and move on?  Have at it, you can type a task description, hit enter, and you are at the next line item ready to enter your next task.  Want to have folders like work and personal, put projects inside those folders, set up tasks with start and due dates?  Knock yourself out, you can get VERY sophisticated here with the tool yet it is still easy to use.     

For example, one of my greatest faults in getting things done flares up whenever I have an event (phone call, meeting, errand) coming up in an hour or less.  I struggle determining what to do when I ‘only’ have 45 minutes before I have to stop work.  With OmniFocus however, using the duration field in the task, I have created a view for tasks that will take less than 30 minutes.  This forces me to work on something since I can see pretty clearly that I have the time.  OmniFocus has nailed the functionality of views and filters and the ‘out of the box’ views and ease of making new ones are the lynchpins for me.  I don’t waste my day in the tool working on my list instead of working on my work, but when I start and end my day, the views are critical to me.

Lastly, I made a big deal in gootodo about forwarding emails to gootodo.   OmniFocus gives me two ways to accomplish this task and more.  The first way is through a keyboard shortcut I can grab an email, snippet of text on the web, or anywhere on my desktop, and turn it into a task.  The second way is, on my Mac, OmniFocus allows me to create a mail rule.  I forward a mail item back to myself and the mail item goes into OmniFocus. 

I have read some people’s criticisms of OmniFocus stating that the up-front investment is too high, e.g. too much time to get set up and understand the tool.  I would argue that if you invest the time in watching the video, the additional time to get up and going may be 15 minutes to get the feel for it.  But the payoff is rather large and worth it. 

Decide what is right for you, then find tools focused on getting tasks out of your head, then getting you on your way.  

The first application is gootodo.com.  This is a web-based application that costs $3 a month and is drop-dead simple to use.  Like other applications I love (30boxes and tripit) the main interface for gootodo is your email. 2

Once I  have created my account on gootodo and indicated which emails are to be included in my account, I am good to go.  Let’s say I get a document that I need to review from a client, but I know that I am not going to have time to look at it until next Wednesday, I simply forward the email to wednesday@gootodo .com and it sends the email to my gootodo account.  But the beauty comes from the fact that if I go to the gootodo site tomorrow (Monday) that task will not show on Monday’s list.  When Wednesday rolls around, lo and behold there it is waiting for me.  And if I don’t have time for it on Wednesday, it rolls to Thursday.  

The email forwarding is the best part of this.  They have built a lot of intelligence into what gootodo will accept, so I can put a day of week like above, or a specific date like dec14@gootodo .com.  Another great example is following up with people.  Let’s say I send an email to a prospect introducing myself and tell them that I will follow up on a proposal I sent them in a week.  I will blind copy 7d@gootodo .com and in seven days the email I sent to the prospect will appear on my task list and I will then remember to follow up with that person.

The creators of gootodo have continued to improve the web interface as well, but with usability improvement not feature-creep, which is great since the fundamental key to the service is ease of use.  Creating a task you have a date and a description.  You can also easily arrange the order of your list on the web site. 

If you are a proponent of inbox zero, give gootodo a try.  And if you’re not sure, the makers of gootodo have a book called "Bit Literacy" that I urge you to read first.  It’s a great read and has helped me better manage my digital life.

1 {It took me 10 minutes to write that sentence.  I started with to do list, then to-do list, then ‘to do list’, you get the idea.  I think of TODO as one word but cannot get my mind around a standard for usage.  I looked back at past writings and emails and think I’ve used every conceivable configuration and Strunk & White have not seen fit to write a chapter on the proper way to use to do.  It ranks up there with log in (login) and set up (setup, set-up) for mental anguish.  So I punted and wrote ‘task’ instead.  Problem solved.}

2 {Let me  discuss my goals for a task list app so that you can still jump off this blog early. The number one criteria I have for a task list app is to reduce anxiety and keep things out of my head.  You know the kind of anxiety I’m talking about, the kind where at fpm you are trying to tell your mind "remember when I am at my desk tomorrow that I need to call Tom, remember when I am at my desk tomorrow… "  I want the app to be so easy that any time I even think of a task I won’t hesitate to put it in the app.   I want one place to have my tasks, and email is not that place.  While I am not a GTD (getting things done) hard core disciple, I am a kool-aid drinking apostle of inbox zero.  My inbox is not where I keep my tasks, it is too anxiety inducing for me to have follow-ups, unread messages, sent messages for which I am awaiting a reply, and something I don’t have to respond to for 3 weeks all sitting in my inbox.  Nevertheless, I fully acknowledge that a decent chunk of my task creation comes form something that I get from others in my inbox.}

Next Post – Omnifocus

I’ll put the caveats down once up front and not speak of them again: this is what works for me and why I like/dislike the various features, your mileage may vary.  If I erred, let me know and I’ll update. 

Updates

IM uses xmpp updates, which is technical talk for "immediate posts just like instant messaging."  This is the primary reason to use this type of tool (which could be any IM service that uses xmpp, pidgin, ichat, gtalk for example.)  The downside for me is that it doesn’t always work.  I turn my updates ‘on’ and nothing happens.  Some time later I  wander back to my laptop and voila, I’m getting updates; there has been no discernible pattern to this, so I’m stuck.

Both Twhirl and Twitterrific use the Twitter API, so they must abide by the update rules, i.e. every 3 minutes or within the boundaries of 20 posts per hour that the API allows.  For people who follow hundreds or thousands, this can be problematic, but I am still following below 150 people so this aspect of the API doesn’t bother me, yet.  What I cannot stand is the constant display of old DM’s and replies to me.  I’ve deleted all DM’s on Twitter, yet I still get DM’s from 6 days ago.  So every time I power up I have to pay attention to see if there are no DM or Replies to me.  Because both apps give me the same DM’s and replies I assume it’s the API, but that’s the breaks.

Both IM  (I use ichat on my Mac) and Twitterrific support using Growl for updates, which is my preference for all my apps’ displays. Twhirl does not, and only displays updates in a window in the lower right corner.  This may seem minor, but in trying to be productive yet still see these items as they come in, I want them to come in the same place that Growl puts all my other updates (in the upper right of my monitor.)

Running Iconfactory’s ipulse, I checked all three for memory usage, and while they spike for updates, none of them were hogs: Twhirl was in my top 5 but negligible, Twitterrific didn’t crack the top ten.

IM gets 2 points here, would have been more if it worked every time; Twitterrific gets 1 point for Growl support.

Think Inside the box

IM takes a hit here for me.  When scrolling through tweets, my eyes look to the picture of the tweeter, not the name, and IM doesn’t display this.  There is also little differentiation for replies or DM’s in IM.  There are no shortcuts to reply, DM, filters, really any interactivity within IM beyond a simple tweet back.  And here, there is a small box which does not tell you how many characters you have left in your tweet.  (This of course makes sense, as the IM client is not designed specifically for Twitter.)

I give Twhirl the lead in this category over Twitterrific.  Twhirl has color options, I chose the light beige which makes it VERY easy for me to read.  Twitterrific has the black which I find more difficult to scan; although I do like that when I click on a tweet it is highlighted, unlike in Twhirl.  I’m not big on loads of icons normally, but I find Twhirl’s icons for interacting with the app easier to remember and digest.  If you are a keyboard shortcut person, Twitterrific uses those instead, just look in the toolbar under Edit or Window. 

Twhirl gives me the option of viewing various drop-downs, my timeline, list of people I’m following, twitter search via Tweetscan, followers, and several others (see picture.) And I can also choose whether certain clicks will keep me in Twhirl or take me to the Twitter web site. 

I asked this question on Twitter and another response that I hadn’t thought of (since I don’t use it) in support of IM is tracking.  For many people this may be THE reason to use IM, since your tweets and your tracks will be in the same flow. (Note for tips on using IM with Twitter, see Sol Young’s posts on this.)

Twhirl gets 5 points here, Twitterrific 2, IM gets 1 for the tracking.

Tweeting

Twhirl gets the win here with a box big enough to see your whole tweet, has twitpic, and a built-in URL shortener.  And I just discovered during this post that the filter box is a nifty little search box.  No contest on this one for me.  I cannot use Twitterrific for updating because I can’t see my entire post.  And while CMD-D on my Mac is easy enough to remember, the rest of the keyboard shortcuts in Twitterrific are negated because I can’t remember them (see Whitney’s post on keyboard shortcuts.) 

Twhirl gets 3 points here, Twitterrific gets 1 for showing how many characters are left, IM gets zip.

In the end Twhirl wins with 8 points, Twitterrific comes in 2nd with 4 points, and IM comes in third with 3 points.

My bet is some people leave Twitter IM up for instant tweets and have another app open, or even the twitter website open, for posting.  Sometimes I will open Twitterrific and minimize just to have the tweets come in via growl, and then turn off window notification in Twhirl.

I look forward to seeing what Twhirl does with Seesmic, and am interested to see if any desktop twitter app combines the instant updates of xmpp (like IM) with the features found in the desktop app that leverage the API.

I’d love for you to comment on what you use and why you use it.

]]> http://kevinfarner.com/2008/04/16/twitterrific-v-twhirl-v-im/feed/ 5