It's time for this week's Productivity Tips column. While I use OmniFocus for just about everything, there are times when I prefer other task managers to handle certain things. Many productivity gurus advise against using more than one tool to list tasks, but I don't like putting short-term list items into OmniFocus.
More to the point, I use specialized list tools for specialized tasks -- groceries, kid chores and the like. While you can put all of that into OmniFocus and see it only when you want to, there's something to be said for specialized tools which are tuned to a specific purpose, and may offer features not found in a more general-purpose product like OmniFocus.
You can always use one task manager to rule them all, of course, but there are limitations. OmniFocus, for example, isn't where I store my recipes. If I want to create a grocery list in Sous Chef, it's a relatively easy affair. Better yet, I can plan a week's worth of meals and then make a grocery list easily from those menus. To do this in OmniFocus (or other general-purpose task managers like Remember the Milk), I have to do a lot of copy and paste work -- which sort of defeats the purpose of using these magnificent technology products, doesn't it?
If I need a short list for a short period of time, I use a "punch list," which requires no contexts or setup. Sometimes an app with a narrow focus has so many great features that I can't help but use it. I've also found geofenced reminders in OmniFocus to be less useful than I'd like, but that's another story. Here are a few ideas for when to use specific task managers, and some of the ones I use.
Punch Lists
A punch list -- the term comes from the construction industry -- is the stuff you need to do in sequence, right now or by a specific deadline. It's often used for the "fixes" that accumulate towards the end of a project, with only a few loose ends or tweaks to finish off. For quick turnaround projects, it may be all you need.
As I tend to use OmniFocus for bigger/long-term projects, I do also sometimes use it for these punch lists, but only when a series of steps will take me longer than an hour or so to complete. If I'm making a quick list to prep for my kids coming over to stay for a weekend, I use a short-term list tool (I don't always have to do the same things each time they come over).
Apps: For general, short term lists I love Clear. If I have 3 or 4 things to do in a given hour, and I'm just coming up with that list on the fly, I'm likely to use Clear to quickly set those up and knock them down. Quick, short-term lists are great with Clear, which also syncs with my Mac. Wunderlist is a great solution as well, and so is Remember The Milk if you need to collaborate. There's also iOS/OS X Reminders, but I have wired most of my reminders to go to OmniFocus because I want to capture once and process later.
When it comes to making lists that need to be in cold storage for a while (like Christmas wish lists), or lists of info which I need but not on a regular basis, I use Evernote. Evernote makes it easy to find lists I've made earlier, and add to those from anywhere.
Kids or pets
As a divorced dad, I have to keep up with a lot of info on my kids. From wish lists (often generated while we are at a store -- the old "daddy I want this!" cry) to favorite foods to blood types and other medical info, my puny brain can't keep it all. We've also started a chore chart, and I wanted to use something a bit friendlier than OmniFocus.
If you have pets, there are a number of things to track and keep on top of, from vet visits to dietary needs and more. Luckily, there are a few apps for that.
Apps: If you have pets, check out PetMinder, which will track all sorts of things about your pet including vet appointments and allergies.
If you have those other household inhabitants known as "human children" I have been loving iAllowance for their chores. iAllowance allows me to use Dave Ramsey's system for saving, spending and giving, and handles all the math and checklists for me. I can even sync with my iOS devices, so I put the iPad on a table and as kids finish items they come and mark them off.
Travel
Do you really want all those shops, restaurants and tourist sites in your task manager along with all your work stuff? Aren't you supposed to be on vacation? Just like how I use Firefox for work stuff (well, and Chrome) and Safari and Opera for personal browsing, I like to keep my vacation info and work info very separate.
A great example of a punch list, too, is your typical packing list. Again, you could keep a list of potential packing items in your task manager, but that could add hundreds of items that you may only need once in a while. I find packing lists are an easy win when testing list apps, not to mention there are some great special-purpose apps for this.
Apps: Travel apps could be an entire month's worth of posts, so all I'll say here is that if you frequently travel for leisure you'll want to look into the "to do" aspects of Foursquare and Yelp. By creating accounts and using the app's bookmarking features as your wish list of stuff to do, you can quickly get directions and reviews in the app, saving you time.
If you want a packing list, PackingPro is one of the best, and Stow features a clever Q&A method for using templates. If you're collaborating on a list with your partner or spouse, Avocado's one-to-one messaging includes a flexible list feature as well -- good for those last-minute pretrip items.
Food
There are some outstanding apps for wine and beer out there. To replicate those databases elsewhere would be onerous at best. So if you're a fan of touring wine country and want a list of wines to check out, you're more likely to use one of these special purpose apps here.
Everyday cooking and food shopping are greatly enhanced when using one of the dozens of great cooking apps available. I am still in the process of finding my favorite, but most of them offer features out of the box that would be a pain to replicate in a general "to do" app.
Apps: When it comes to food, I use Sous Chef or Groceries. If I haven't planned my meals, Groceries has a nice interface and makes it super easy to add items (even those not in its database). Sous Chef is my go-to for meal planning and recipe-keeping.
Fitness
Along with food, there are some great fitness apps out there with lists of exercises or tools to track your weight, food, etc.
Apps: I don't actually use a lot of fitness apps, but I have used 30/30 to create a workout routine and it's great. 30/30 can also be used for daily routines, and I love the interface and experience. I used Lift for a while, and if you're trying to get into a habit of doing something, it's quite good.
My only problem with Lift was that the entire interface was completely dependent on a network connection. Given AT&T's coverage where I live (and in many cities where the networks are clogged), I found that the simple act of loading the basic interface would sometimes fail -- which isn't very encouraging. That said, there are lots of options here for goal-setting apps, and they are all essentially list tools.
DIY
There are a number of awesome apps available to help you plan construction projects or minor repairs at your house. Like a food app, these take a project and break it into a parts list -- again something which you'd have to copy over to another tool.
Along with DIY home projects, anything involving crafting, knitting, sewing, etc. will result in a specialized list. Do you need that list of yarn for that one project forever archived in your task manager? Probably not.
Apps: DIY is another huge topic, but as an example of specialized apps, I like to point to My Measures and Woodcraft. My Measures will create a list of dimensions for a room and its fixtures. Woodcraft will create a list of wood you need for a given project. Both are quite excellent, and getting that data into another app is onerous and not that useful. I'm sure there are similar apps for sewing and other crafty stuff.
Daily Routines, Location-Based Reminders
While OmniFocus is pretty good at most things, I have resisted using it for daily repeating actions. For one thing, I keep running into a repeating item that starts multiplying itself over time (no, I don't need to balance my checkbook 4 times a day!). Also, there are tools out there which are more aimed at motivation (like the goal-setting apps mentioned in the fitness section) vs. plowing through a set of tasks. If you are self-motivated a one-size-fits-all approach might work for you. If not, check out some recommendations below.
Lastly, OmniFocus does have a pretty good location system but I found it a bit onerous to use (espeically on the desktop) and annoying in daily use. No, I don't need to be reminded to fix something every single time I pull into my driveway. But I do need to be reminded to put out the trash when I arrive home on Wednesday mornings. For this, I use Siri and it's the easiest method I've found so far. "Remind me when I get home to..." just sounds like the future, doesn't it?
Apps: For daily routine stuff I do wind up using my squishy brain for a lot -- but I also have a variable schedule. If I have a set of routines for a day, I hop into 30/30, where I have a list. I also use Due to remind me about repeating items. Due is very insistent, but makes it easy to move an item to another day, plus it sync with my Mac.
ConclusionI do not use a separate app for inboxing items. I do believe that this is important, because the more complexity in your task management, the less likely you're going to get things done. I still use OmniFocus+Siri to capture stuff. In rare cases I use Clear to make a quick list, but that list is very quickly sorted and knocked out, eliminating the need for messing around in OmniFocus for those tasks.
Similarly, if you find yourself needing one-off or specialized lists, consider looking at a specialized tool. While OmniFocus and other power tools can be bent to your will, sometimes an app offers features you would have to spend a lot of time replicating elsewhere. And that's what this is all about, really: Getting things done and saving you time. Isn't that what technology should be doing?
Shout out your favorite special-purpose apps in the comments below and we here at TUAW will try to review any we haven't looked at before.
Productivity Tips: Using specialized lists for specific use cases originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 May 2013 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
In February, I provided instructions for using AppleScript to send completed task reports from OmniFocus to Evernote. The script was quite well-received by readers, and I've had numerous requests for enhancements. This post provides an updated version of the script, which includes a number of additions. The script now supports full project paths and additional task details including the context, estimated time, start date, modification date, completion date and notes. This additional content is optional, and you can adjust the script to not display it if you wish.
I've mentioned before that OmniFocus is my task manager of choice. Each morning, I pull up a list of scheduled tasks for the day, and focus on getting them done. In OmniFocus, I've set up Perspectives (saved window states) for both Due tasks and Completed tasks. What I really want, however, is something that will pull out recently completed tasks and summarize them in Evernote, my note management app of choice. This way, I can maintain a historical log of my progress, and pull out summaries of completed tasks to send to clients. Since this type of integration isn't built into OmniFocus or Evernote, I wrote an AppleScript to do it.
Adding pages of content to a binder is easy, with several pathways to get at your stuff. From the desktop, you can clip images or web pages right to the service; in fact, web pages can be "live" within a binder so that they'll always show the current version of the page. Cloud services like Box and Dropbox are accessible from the iPad app, so any of your files there in readable formats (PDF, images, movies, Office files and more) can be downloaded and converted to binder pages. You can take photos or video with the iPad camera, or access your existing photo library on the device. Most helpfully, there's a small desktop agent that you can install on your Mac or PC; it opens up your entire hard drive for remote access, so you can grab files at will as long as your machine is online. (One hopes Moxtra will add an extra security PIN or other challenge for users who have this access turned on -- yes, it's read-only, but it's still a lot of exposure if your iPad is stolen or compromised.)
I'm a big fan of Evernote. I use it for archiving ideas, writing articles / blog posts and lots more. I often insert screenshots and other large images into my notes. Screenshots can be pretty big, and I usually don't want giant images filling up my notes. I keep wishing Evernote offered a way to resize embedded images, so I could insert thumbnails. At the moment, it doesn't. So, I decided to write my own app to resize embedded images. Here's how you can do the same...
If you're fan of Evernote on your desktop and mobile devices, but prefer the browsing experience of the third-party Dolphin app for iOS, today is your lucky day. In a new update to the popular browser, Dolphin is adding Evernote Web Clipper integration, allowing you to capture and annotate practically any chunk of web content with a single tap. Users will be able to save web pages directly to Evernote from Dolphin, making it the first mobile browser to offer such compatibility.
Evernote today released a major update to its Evernote Food app, adding iPad support and several new features including an interface redesign with recipe tabs and a new cookbook.
We've all been there before. You've prepared a Keynote presentation on the Internet phenomenon of cat videos for your local Mac user group. You've finished editing your slides. You've added presenter notes. Next, you want to extract the notes from your slides and bring them into Evernote so you can look them over and maybe use them as the basis for your forthcoming newsletter article.
AppleScript Editor documents can be saved as Scripts or Applications. Save your document as a Script.
Enabling the Script Menu
Next, you need a quick and easy way to trigger the script. You can use the handy system-wide script menu. If it's not enabled on your Mac already, here's how you can turn it on.
1. Choose AppleScript Editor > Preferences...
2. Ensure that the Show Script menu in the menu bar checkbox is selected. Once enabled, you should see a script icon appear in your menu bar.
The script menu is turned on in AppleScript Editor's preferences window.
Installing the Script
Next, you're ready to add your newly created script into the script menu. This way, you can quickly trigger it whenever you're in Keynote with an opened presentation.
1. Go into Keynote.
2. From the script icon in your menu bar, select Open Scripts Folder > Open Keynote Scripts Folder.
The script menu provides quick and easy navigation to your scripts folder.
3. Copy the Send Keynote Presenter Notes to Evernote.scpt file from your Desktop into the ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Keynote folder that opens.
The Keynote Scripts folder is created automatically if it doesn't already exist.
Running the Script
Now that your script is installed, it's ready to run whenever you need it.
1. Open a Keynote presentation containing presenter notes.
The presenter notes area is located beneath your slides. If this area isn't visible, choose View > Show Presenter Notes.
2. From the script menu, choose Send Keynote Presenter Notes to Evernote.
Application scripts are contextual and automatically appear in the script menu when the target app is frontmost.
3. When prompted, specify whether you would like to extract slide content, in addition to the presenter notes.
The AppleScript can extract presenter notes and/or slide content. The choice is yours.
The script extracts the slide titles, presenter notes, and, if necessary, the slide content from your opened Keynote presentation. Next, the script reformats the extracted content as HTML, brings Evernote to the front, and creates a new note.
An Evernote note containing extracted Keynote notes.
Your notes are now ready for review in Evernote on your Mac. Assuming you've got Evernote's iOS app too, your notes are also synced to your iPhone and/or iPad. As you ride the train to work and excitedly begin working on your newsletter article, feel free to share your knowledge of cat videos with the person next to you. Happy scripting!
Fans of Plasq's Skitch screenshot utility for the Mac were intrigued when Evernote acquired the product at the end of 2011 (a pairing first suggested way back in 2008). They were charged with anticipation when the 2.0 version came out this September. And many were furiously, storm-the-barricades incensed when it turned out that the revised app had shaved away many of the key workflow features users depended on.