Substrate

I’ve begun to understand that I’m essentially a collection of “selves” that change subtly throughout the day, and I’ve learned to manage these “selves” as different workers—or like a great football coach who knows how to get each player to play to his full potential. OmniPlan makes it very easy to create task dependencies and realistically budget for weekends, holidays, and other planned time off. There is nothing better than taking time off and knowing your work is still on schedule when you get back. For longer projects, it’s also very motivating on a daily basis to see how staying on a preset schedule today translates to time savings weeks in the future. It also helps avoid the natural tendency to waste time until a fast approaching deadline forces urgency.

OmniFocus can only tell me what I’ve told it to tell me. I just have to look and listen. And I look because I trust myself.

“I began to wonder… how might I organize my to do list so that it makes me feel the way I do when I look at my pantry? How might it become a place that gives me a sense possibility, where I want to create—to work. I’ve been playing with this idea for a couple months and have come to some preliminary conclusions.”

“@purpleyay @not_unambitious I know someone who tracks contacting friends in OmniFocus – which sounds almost callous at first blush, but really strike me as a deep expression of caring”

“and faintly like I'm cosplaying as a different, more well-adjusted version of myself.” “I am growing a beard now. This is terrible news for everyone involved.” “I am worried (albeit only faintly) that if OmniFocus doesn't work, it will less be a failure of the software (which seems very nice) and more a failure of that underlying assumption: that you cannot, in fact, sit down and think for a long time and emerge with a roadmap for the best possible 2019, a glorious lattice of checklists and todos.”