Leaving OmniFocus

I think that sometimes I forget the forest for the trees. I can get bogged down on the little things, and lose track of the big picture. And when you're swept up in the details, maybe you're making things harder than they need to be.

I ditched OmniFocus last month. It wasn't something that I did lightly. For almost a decade, my OmniFocus was my guide. Before I ever thought of an autism diagnosis, I realized that I have a lot of problems with executive function. OmniFocus saw me through going to college, being a manager, becoming a parent. I don't think that it's hyperbole to say that OmniFocus got me where I am today.

But over time, my setup got unwieldy. I had a whole system of flags and custom perspectives. It all worked, but it was really complicated. Ironically, "Write a blog post about your OmniFocus setup" was an action that never got completed in my OmniFocus. I didn't even know where to start.

I also got bogged down in making scaffolding for actions, needlessly creating projects and complication. I was spending a lot of time trying to automate things that really didn't need to be automated. I was spending a lot of time working on my todo list instead of doing things.

I always wanted something more calendar based, too. I would find myself piling on tasks in the morning without taking into account how much time I actually had to get things done. I would end up overwhelmed, and then start a whole cycle of negative emotions about how I wasn't getting things done.

I also wanted to use stock apps as much as possible. I had tried to use Reminders in the past, but found it wanting, mostly because it wasn't OmniFocus. I had convinced myself that I needed the features built into OmniFocus, like defer dates, and really I kind of did, because those concepts were baked into my mental idea of what tasks and task managers were like.

So last month, I stopped using OmniFocus and started using Reminders and Calendar. I didn't have a plan or a system in mind. I just went cold turkey, as if I was starting fresh, so far, it's working. My first step was to write down everything I could think of that I needed to do right away. I used OmniFocus as a reference, but I tried to create new actions instead of merely copying things over.

I use the base Reminders list as an inbox, a parking lot of ideas that I go through routinely and figure out what to do with. I created new lists for the basic spheres of my life: Personal; Work; Chores; Child Care; etc. For the most part, I tried to mimic the calendars I already had in place. Then I moved actions from the base list to their new home lists.

Then it's a matter of figuring out when things will get done. A lot of actions repeat, daily, weekly, etc. but some are one-offs. The thing I had to wrap my head around was what a date attached to a reminder meant. In OmniFocus, every action could have two dates, a defer date and a due date. But Reminders just has one date. What is it? Is it when the action is due? Is it when I should do it?

I decided to go with, When do I want to be reminded of this? I can use a specific time if I want the reminder to send a notification at a specific time, or I can just use a general all-day date for things that should be done on a certain day but not necessarily at a specific time. Changing my mental view of the date of an action to this mode has been incredibly liberating. I now line up what days I want to do tasks on, and then on those days can go in and organize things by time.

So far, everything has been working really well. The only real stumbling block has been projects. Reminders has subtasks, but they’re weird. They’re a little off. They feel like a feature that was added without being fully tested or thought through.

Or, maybe I’m again wanting the app to be something that it isn’t. Maybe I want them to behave the way actions do within OmniFocus, because that’s what I’m used to. Either way, I don’t really trust them yet.

So what I’ve done is create small projects back in OmniFocus, and then link to them within Reminders. For example, each morning I have a reminder called Morning Review, which links to a recurring project in OmniFocus that steps me through checking my email, my different inboxes, processing things, and making a plan for the day. I could put all those actions individually in Reminders, but then they’d be cluttering up the list, and also adding to the anxiety of how much stuff there is to do.

It feels a little cludgy, but it works. It’s awkward, like bumping into your ex at work. Let’s just all be professionals here.