February 2012
20 posts
2 tags
Getting better at using keyboard shortcuts →
Working with keyboard shortcuts is undoubtedly the most efficient way to get work done fast. While some keyboard shortcuts stick quite easily - mostly because they are common across applications - others are more difficult to remember.
The post by Macdrifter provides help by offering an easy way to pop-up a cheat sheet that reminds you of certain shortcuts until they stick. Whether you start...
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WatchGTD - visualised
Patrick Rhone of Minimal Mac fame mentioned a GTD application called Day Map by Wetstone Apps on Twitter and I had to take a look at. There are some aspects that are really interesting, particular the visual user experience delivered.
However, it didn’t take me too long to see a few limitations and flaws in the concept and if you watch the video tour you may spot those...
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'Creating Flow with OmniFocus' audiobook by... →
Kourosh Dini has turned his popular ebook ‘Creating Flow with OmniFocus’ into an audiobook, which is now available for purchase on his website.
I can only recommend Kourosh’s book and you should buy and read it. He covers many aspects of OmniFocus and gets you setup right. The book I am working on will be different and not focussing too much on how to get started.
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The problem with daily todo lists
Every morning I sit down to plan my day. I first look at my calendar to see how many meetings and conference calls fill my day and how much time is left to do other work.
Many consider conference calls, meetings and at times even email as disruptions of their actual work. I came to understand that these things are part of my work as well. I try to manage them and balance them with the creative...
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Linking to Mail.app mailboxes from OmniFocus →
The notes field in OmniFocus is got for more than just text. My daily routine article had some suggestions about how to link in applications, folders or documents to OmniFocus tasks or projects.
Christopher Mackay’s post covers a very specific use of the note field.
With some Finder magic, as explained by Christopher, you can access individual mailboxes of Mail.app and link to them...
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Chrome URL to OmniFocus task →
Nice little hack from Aaron Hockley
Next time you’re on a web page in Chrome and want to create a related OmniFocus task, just invoke the OmniURL item from Alfred (you could also set a hotkey). A new item will be created in your OmniFocus inbox with the page’s title as the item text and the URL in the notes field.
While leveraging Alfred, the solution is based on this AppleScript hosted on...
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Better repeat options in new OmniFocus for Mac... →
Something many OmniFocus users have been waiting for.
Repeat every weekday.
Or repeat every weekend day.
Or every Tuesday and Thursday
Or …?
If you set up a “repeat every” action and choose a week-based interval, you can now pick which days of the week it should happen on.
More options to come in a future release and subsequently feature parity in...
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A Brief History of the To-Do List and the... →
But the list, it turns out, might also be the origin of both our highest happiness and our dreariest dissatisfaction.
Yep. Great write-up and apparently an interesting book, which goes a bit deeper than “6 reasons why your todo list doesn’t work” posts.
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Getting down to work on my OmniFocus eBook
I have posted late last year that I want to publish an ebook about OmniFocus for Mac in 2012. Throughout the last months I pondered what approach I will take to make the book as useful as possible to as many as possible readers.
Real-life examples and use cases
After querying my dear Twitter followers it became clear that people are mostly curious how others use OmniFocus to get work done. Of...
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The happy secret of better work
Yet again an amazing TED talk. While I went numb on the endless stream of life hacking tips and ‘how to be happier’-guides long time ago, this isn’t resembling any of the typical, slightly esoteric waffling.
Not only does Shawn Anchor deliver a very entertaining and energised talk, he actually knows what he is talking about. I truly believe you can rewire your brain to...
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Use Case: How I use OmniFocus to organise my life →
In his post from October 2010 Tyler Hall provides some insights into how he uses OmniFocus on a daily basis to “get shit done”. While the post obviously is a few days old, it remains inspiring how people put OmniFocus to work in the context of their individual lives, jobs and hats they wear.
I have recently decided that my planned OmniFocus ebook will centre around real-life use...
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Adding actions to OmniFocus from Terminal →
A while ago the great Brett Terpstra, well known for his Markdown tools, has released a Command Line Interface (CLI) tool for adding tasks to OmniFocus. It’s not straight forward to setup as you need to install a few Ruby gems first. If the last sentence sounds like from a different planet, this tool isn’t exactly for you. If you know Ruby, gems and Scripting Bridges, you may actually...
un-b-titelt asked: Hi, great post on the "Daily Review" a while ago. I'd really like to try the "Verify that next actions exist for all projects"-Script You mentioned, but the page where You found it is no linger online. Do You have it (the script) in handy, perhaps?
bellaccione asked: How do I script the OF database? is there a published object model, or do i have to reverse engineer this myself?
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WatchMore on TextExpander and OmniFocus
David Sparks, a man of many trades and fellow blogger, picked up on my recent screencast about combining TextExpander and OmniFocus, and posted one himself. He definitely has some time-saving snippets for OmniFocus on the Mac, which he also made available for download in his original post.
In his post he also covers the use of iOS text shortcuts for similar...
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Export a list of active OmniFocus projects to a... →
Not really sure why I didn’t post about it here, but Justin Lancy of Veritrope scripting fame has picked up on a tweet of mine asking for help exporting a list of all active projects in OmniFocus. His script takes it as far as an alphabetically sorted text file you can save to any location you chose. While I originally wanted an export to OmniOutliner, I believe this solution is more...