I think for folks who have relatively structured position descriptions described by the function the Areas is helpful to see in what function you are spending your time. Because of the Areas and the lack of emphasis on Context I will be switching to Things. I have been trying to work with OmniFocus but the context technique really should not be so in your face. Hopefully it works well for other folks.

Regarding Things not handling hundreds of tasks well, I would argue that if you have that many tasks it’s time to find a new time management technique.

And lets face it, with hundreds of tasks any program can be overwhelmed.

- Projects and how to delete them: By selecting “Projects” in the sidebar you will get a list of all active projects grouped by area. You’ll also see a visual indication of the progress of each project. Optionally you can display/hide the inactive projects as well. To delete projects, select them and press the delete key. Of course, you can also drag the selected projects to the trash.

- Of course, we will have contextual (right click) menus everywhere. It’s a refinement we just didn’t get around to implementing yet.

- It is actually very easy to “batch tag” items. Every tag automatically gets a keyboard shortcut. These can be easily changed using the Tags Window. Lets assume the work tag has the shortcut “w” (the default). If you want to add this tag to one or multiple todos, just select the desired todos and press the W key. If the selected todos already have a given tag, using the corresponding shortcut removes the tag. Users who prefer drag and drop can also open the Tags Window and drag a selection of todos to the tag they want to add.

- The differentiation of projects and areas is not yet complete. Expect improvements in future releases.

- We will add a “File” function that can be invoked by right clicking on todos. Most likely we will also provide this function through a gear button embedded in todos. But you can already use the “Todos > Move To” menu commands. There are also keyboard shortcuts to mark items “Today, Next, Someday, or Postponed”.

- Since Things doesn’t get in an unclean state when working with it I am not sure what a “clean up” feature could do? All I can think of at the moment is related to processing the inbox. It might be interesting to let users mark inbox items without actually moving them. This would allow to reexamine one’s choices before finishing up. A “Process” button could then move the marked items accordingly.

- Using different colors for for due and overdue items is an interesting suggestion. We might implement this along with our – shhhhh – super secret due date filter bar.

brab: That was a great post by Cultured Code – a fascinating inside look at their thought process. I don’t believe there is any way to save a view, but that would be very handy. OmniFocus’ ‘Perspectives’ is a really good idea. I’ll add this to my suggestion list and submit it to their wiki, although I’m sure they are already intimately familiar with every feature of OmniFocus! We definitely should compare notes in a year or so.

Yeah, I guess I gave away my verdict a little prematurely … but in the wrap-up, I’ll stress the strengths of each app (and the type of person who might like one over the other) over my personal choice.

Thanks to you both for stopping by to read the post.

I’m eagerly waiting for the wrap-up, even though it’s clear which one you’ve chosen Maybe we should compare notes in one year or so, as I’ve decided on OmniFocus…