The only certainties in life are death and taxes. For me, there’s also “changing task management systems.” In a previous post not that long ago, I said I had switched to using GoodTask with Reminders as the backend for my relatively simple personal task management. Yeah. That lasted a few weeks.

So right now I’m playing with OmniFocus. I used OmniFocus on and off for years, since I got my first Mac back in 2011. It’s based on the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology at its core. Before, it was a pretty strict adherence to it. With OmniFocus 3 they loosened it up a bit, but it’s still pretty structured towards GTD. But I was growing a little irritated with the GoodTask/Reminders combo. GoodTask is good software, but my main issue revolves around the interface, where it’s pretty crowded, even after clearing things up and configuring it a bit.

Another thing was around the way subtasks, or checklists, work. Apple does not allow access to Reminders subtasks through its reminders API. So third party apps generally come up with their own system using the notes on the record. This is confusing, and frankly, a pain. If I’m in Reminders, I can’t complete the subtasks that were created via GoodTask and vice versa. While I don’t have many tasks that have subtasks/checklists, there are some, and it was annoying to not have a consistent experience, depending on the app I was in at the time, for what is the exact same record. Apple could fix this in an upcoming version, but who knows if they will.

So I thought about going back to Things 3 again. It was pretty much aligned with my workflow in regards to dates and how they aren’t necessarily critical due dates. But the lack of end to end encryption bothered me. Now, I know of no breaches of security or privacy that may have happened with Things data; they state that they limit access to the data to employees that really, really need it to do some customer request, and I have no reason to doubt that access is secured against breaches or unauthorized access. But it was just something that tickled the back of my brain. Reminders isn’t really end to end encrypted either, but at least I pay a monthly fee for my iCloud data and somehow that seems to make me less likely to think that my data could be shared with others. Plus Apple is always touting privacy as an inherent right. I felt less anxious about Apple having my data than I did a company with no recurring revenue plan. Might be naive on my part, but there it is.

So, I pulled up OmniFocus again. And I looked at the structure I created years ago, with lots of “projects” and various tags. I was definitely into hyper-organized lists then. But I got rid of it all. I don’t need to track work related items with it, and I don’t want to, either. This is my personal system, dammit. And all the personal “projects” were not necessary by any means. So I pared it all down to a few “projects” and a few tags. I may even pare down the projects more and make use of more tags for it. My Projects generally fall into 4 categories right now. Personal, Chores, Recurring, and Daily Routine. I could combine a lot of these and just add tags, and it wouldn’t really change my workflow. And if I do have a real project come up with real, sequential tasks, I can easily add one.

Personal is for miscellaneous items that don’t recur on a set schedule. Things like the utility bills that don’t follow a set schedule, one off tasks like cleaning the grill after winter and deciding on subscriptions of apps I’m testing (like OmniFocus), and just about anything else. It’s basically a catch all when the task doesn’t fit into one of the other projects or isn’t enough to warrant a new project.

Chores is for keeping track of when I need to do all my chores. Mowing the lawn, picking up the backyard, vacuuming, etc. Some of these I do every week. Some chores are done less often. It’s handy to keep track of when I last did them so I can make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Recurring is for those items that do happen on a set timeframe. Cable and phone bills, mortgage payment, replacing the batteries in the smoke detectors, and the like. Not really “chores” but things that come up regularly and I might forget since they aren’t every week.

Daily Routine are those things I do every day. These have alarms/notifications because I frequently get distracted by shiny objects on the web or in a book. I need the gentle reminder to take the dogs out for their last outs, refill the coffee maker, go to bed, etc. It helps me keep on schedule. Seems silly on the face of it, but it really does help. Do these really belong in a task management system? Probably not. I could use something else like Due, but there’s something about keeping everything in one place.

Next up was setting up the todos with recurrence patterns and whether or not they have definitive due dates. OmniFocus also has a concept of Defer Dates, or Start Dates as they’re called in other apps, which you set when a task cannot be done before a certain day (and time). This is handy because I don’t want to see “mow the lawn” on my list of available tasks right after I actually mow the lawn. I don’t want to see that task come up for a number of days. Start Dates allows me to focus only on that which needs to be done right now.

I revamped my tags as well. I currently have “next,” “today,” and “someday.” Gone are the location based “contexts” and other unnecessary junk. Next is a way of tagging a recurring task so it shows up in my forecast view. Today is what I would assign to some random “whenever I have time” task so I can have it show up today. I can have a backlog of random todos that don’t have any real due dates but I should do at some point whenever I have time or motivation. Tagging as “today” is a way of deciding I’m going to do this today. Someday are just tasks that I may want to do in the future based on events; they’re not a certainty, and I don’t want to think about them all the time. Example would be for replacing the water heater. I have no need to do it now, but in the future I will need to do a few things like decide on capacity, price out the appliance, schedule install, etc. I review the someday items every week to determine if they need to be moved to an actionable state.

Once I got my todos put into their proper places and the structure set up, it was time to create some custom perspectives. Perspectives in OmniFocus are ways of seeing only tasks that you want to see. I have a perspective for “Today” which includes any task that is available for me to do right now, including those that are tagged as “today.” For tasks that don’t have a due date and only have a defer date on or before today, they will show up the next day without any “you didn’t get this done” shaming that comes along with overdue tasks. This view does include my daily routine todos. I then created a Focus perspective which is the same thing but filtering out daily routine items. It’s what I generally use for planning the day. And then some other perspectives for coming soon, etc.

So, we’ll give this a spin for a couple weeks and see how it goes. Before, OmniFocus was really just too structured to make it efficient. But a lot of that was my own doing, adhering to a structure I created 10 years ago when I was going through that hyper-organized phase. Now, I just need a list of things to do and the ability to filter out those items I do not. Is OmniFocus still overkill for me? Probably. But I’ve distilled it down quit a bit, cleaned up stuff that just shouldn’t be in a task management system, and created some views for me to get what I want/need for any given situation. And it’s end to end encrypted and plays well with Drafts, my main capture workflow. I’m sure I’ll find or remember things that annoy me, but it’s a matter of degree as to how much I’m annoyed compared to other task management systems. I doubt I’ll ever find the “perfect” solution; it’s what works best out of what’s available.

And dog: