Comments on: ~Which Search is the Best Search

By: John Kendrick

John Kendrick — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:18:48 +0000

Rafael – I definitely agree with you on entering tasks via the iPhone. I carry a journal with me during the day and it is much simpler to draw a box in my journal for anything that needs to be put into OF. Then, when I’m back at my desk, I use my Macbook to enter everything I’ve recorded during the day that I need to enter as a task. I use the iPhone as you do, as a reference for what is already in OF, though I also will use idle time to check off what has been completed. I just wish they had included the date field in the iPhone app so I could enter the date it was completed if not today. Thanks again for reading and for your useful comments. John

By: Rafael Bugajewski

Rafael Bugajewski — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:20:26 +0000

That’s the problem I have. There are workarounds like “sync everyday in the morning (or in the evening)”, but I don’t want to rely on them. While I agree that this workflow works, it’s rather a hack around the painfully slow syncing in OF on the iPhone (I never had any issues with the Mac version). I’m already really bad at organizing myself and everything that could get in the way – like the syncing – is a reason for me to not use a certain system. While OF for Mac saved me tons of time and I would easily spend twice the price, I think that the current OF for iPhone version isn’t worth it. Entering tasks on the iPhone is OK, but it’s still too slow compared to a sheet of paper or a real keyboard. The syncing is too slow to be usable. I process my inbox everyday in the morning and it’s not much more work to enter a couple of tasks I’ve written somewhere by hand. The only great thing about the iPhone application is that you have your tasks with you—wherever you are.

Currently I have “only” 50 projects and 259 actions (stored in 97 zip files), but a tyipcal iPhone sync takes about 2-5 minutes.

By: John Kendrick

John Kendrick — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:30:22 +0000

Rafael – I agree that keeping a lot of projects can slow OmniFocus on the iPhone, though in my experience there are actions you can take to “have your cake and eat it too”. I sync to MobileMe and have provided a listing of my current OF document stats below, with the total projects and total tasks bolded. Because some reading this may ask, I have a total of 141 zip files totaling 5mb making up the database. I use OF with three clients, an iMac at home, a MacBook at work, and my iPhone wherever I happen to be. I can honestly say that it is possible for me to open the document on any of these clients within seconds, even the iPhone. Sync times with all clients are equally quick, though the iPhone can take a couple minutes in extreme cases. This is a great improvement that seems to have been brought on by the recent upgrades, before then loading the document took a very long time.

Now, there is a trick that I use to get this quick response time from my clients. Each night before bed, I sync each client separately (don’t start more than one at a time), usually iMac, then MacBook, and then I wait until turning in and open OF on the iPhone and click the sync button. The iPhone usually takes up to ten minutes to sync, but it doesn’t matter because I’m asleep. The next day, every thing works like a charm. At some point I will undoubtedly need to archive my projects, but I believe I can conveniently keep at least two years of history available, which is enough for me. When that time comes, I’ll most likely copy the document using a different name and store the copy on my MacBook. That way when I need to get to the historical file, I can just open that file in OF instead of the active file (currently you would have to change the name of both the active and copy). Saving copies by years may be the track I take, but I’ve not yet reached my threshold, perhaps I’ll be there by January. Thanks for your comments and for reading, John

Active Folders: 3
Dropped Folders: 0
Total Folders: 3
Active Projects: 48
On Hold Projects: 28
Completed Projects: 84
Dropped Projects: 13
Total Projects: 173
Active Single-Action Lists: 27
On Hold Single-Action Lists: 1
Completed Single-Action Lists: 0
Dropped Single-Action Lists: 0
Total Single-Action Lists: 28
Total Actions: 4828

By: Rafael Bugajewski

Rafael Bugajewski — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:08:42 +0000

Pretty nice follow-up of the last article.

While I agree that it’s nice to have a project reference inside your GTD system, I also want to mention that you somehow “abuse” OmniFocus.

The more (completed) projects you have, the slower will your OF database sync with your iPhone. I think this process is already very slow, so I try to do everything to improve it. The archive feature is a nice one, because it reduces the overall size of your database, but also moves your completed projects and tasks into a seperate file out of your main OF database. I do this step every couple of months, but this also means that I “lose” older reference material.