Nontrivial Exercises

OmniFocus Announces GTD App - Please Keep It Simple

No sooner do I write about getting back to basics with Getting Things Done and Kinkless GTD, then the Omni Group announces that they are developing a GTD app called OmniFocus. For those not familiar with the Omni products, they are all extremely well done: high functionality, smooth and effective user interface and extraordinary though put into how it will actually work.

They now have several different applications, and some are fairly expensive. The one I’d really like to have is OmniGraffle, which is something like Visio, but easy and intuitive to use and makes prettier drawings. It’s out of my budget, though.

The guys at Omni have involved two of the principal proponents and innovators in the area of simple GTD methodologies and GTD on a Mac - Ethan Schoonover, the creator of the Kinkless GTD framework, and Merlin Mann of 43Folders, who is quite adept at understanding and communicating the essence of a productivity system (and also now the “King of Spackle“). Ethan writes about his involvement with Omni in his latest blog post, and I think all Kinkless fans are excited that Omni has asked for his input.

I am both excited and a bit apprehensive. Having seen what Omni can do by using OmniOutliner myself, and seeing OmniGraffle at work on a friend’s Mac, I know that they will create something innovative, simple, highly functional and “comfortable”.

I’m apprehensive because I don’t want to lose the simplicity and lightweight-ness of the Kinkless-OmniOutliner system that is in place today. I hope that by turning this into an official application, Omni doesn’t try to add so many features that the user has too many opportunities to play around with the system rather than focusing on doing the work.

I think the tinkering that comes so naturally for many of us actually hurts us if gone unchecked. I love to play around with something until I get it just right, and I don’t know what just right is until I try a lot of combinations and then do some fine-tuning and then think about it and then do some more adjustments. The beauty of the Kinkless system today is that you can’t really tweak too many things about how it works - you just focus on getting your tasks defined and in the right context and the right project and sub-project(s), then away you go to do your work.

My plea to you, Omni, is to ensure that you keep OmniFocus as simple as possible as you add in all the features you are planning. I’m sure Merlin and Ethan have given you similar input, but remember how many of us are so easily distracted.

I’m really looking forward to see what is next.