OmniFocus’s iPhone interface
In an era of high expectations for all educators, having a handle on productivity is becoming increasingly critical. Balancing home and work responsibilities, managing emails, delegating tasks, planning projects, and not forgetting minutiae is immensely challenging.
Mostly out of necessity, I became a student of productivity. The job of Principal is not necessarily more difficult than other positions in our field but it is very scattered in terms of projects and to-dos. Years ago I looked toward technology as a way to cope with the ever increasing demands of the job. One of the linchpins of my workflow became OmniFocus (OF), a productivity management program – sort of a to-do list on steroids, and years ago I became a beta tester. OF is the leader in the field, one of the most expensive solutions, and it is only on the Mac platform and not web based. Thus, it has its limitations. However, after trying Things, Wunderlist, ToodleDo, Nozbe, and Remember the Milk, I settled on OF and I now use it on my MacBook Air, iPhone and iPad. In looking at my productivity tools over the last five years (and my blog post from 2-15-09), OF is only one of two apps that survived in my “Top 10”.
In a future post, I will explain why OF is the best program for school administrators. In the meantime, one of the Internet’s primary proponents of OF is the two man productivity team at Asian Efficiency who expound on why they feel OF is the best program in its genre. My advice is to give one of the above mentioned programs a try and see your productivity increase or invest your money in OF. Also, check out my slides from last year’s presentation at IntegratED in Portland, Oregon on Productivity for School Leaders.
As I was getting in the productivity weeds with a fellow OF user, we were surprised that the CEO of the Omni Group, Ken Case responded to our discussion as it got a tad critical:
You see, @felixc and I were whining a bit about the lack of a web interface and the time it is taking for OF2 to come out. To be sure, we are fanboys of OF, but one has to be careful.. the CEO may be lurking.
Give your laptop, smartphone, and/or tablet a chance to make you more productive. Love to hear how it goes.
