Comments on: GTD on your Mac Part 1: Things and The Hit List

By: samu

samu — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:03:08 +0000

“With regards to the ‘Areas of responsibility’, I believe that maps to the GTD concept of a context …”

I disagree (see above).

Areas are exclusive; a task or project can belong to only one, while it could have several contexts. Moreover, a Project and all its tasks will belong to the same Area, while these tasks would more than likely have different contexts. Areas are like folders for tasks and projects; contexts are like tags.

By: Will

Will — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:18:32 +0000

Great review! I’ve currently got both of these installed on my system, and leaning towards THL based on the keyboard driven navigation and task entry.

One thing I think you didn’t mention was they both have iCal integration.

The iPhone app for THL appears to be underway; they’ve been making promises and releasing screenshots so it is definitely progressing.

With regards to the ‘Areas of responsibility’, I believe that maps to the GTD concept of a context, which THL provides (include @Home in the task description and it is added to the ‘Home’ context – hit command-4 to see them all in the left hand menu)

By: Matthew L

Matthew L — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:27:04 +0000

my personal favourite is Things. I does EVERYTHING so well! Then sync with the ipod, both have angel-beautiful interfaces, huge feature sets, easy to use and powerful.

By: Natasha

Natasha — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:23:15 +0000

Thanks @Shishir! I already have OF & was looking a good Things vs. OmniFocus review, because I need to get loads done and I don’t think I can add the learning curve for OF to the mix just now.

Will give THL a whirl till evening, since it’s in Beta anywayz..

By: Pepa

Pepa — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:42:41 +0000

Both great apps. You can display to-dos from both of them directly on your desktop using GeekTool. See my tutorials: http://www.josefrichter.com/blog/dynamic-gtd-wallpaper-with-things-to-dos/ and http://www.josefrichter.com/blog/one-more-wallpaper-with-the-hit-list-to-dos/

Enjoy!

By: Shishir

Shishir — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:15:54 +0000

This is probably the 10th Things Vs THL review that I have read, but I still think that reviewers tend to miss pointing out all the big plusses, minuses of the apps.

For me:

Things:
+ Nice and clean UI
+ Tags are well implemented
- Not grouping of tasks / projects => Using it for more than a few projects is clumsy.
- Keyboard navigation is not well supported.
- Not very intuitive at the deeper levels. Eg. you can schedule repeating tasks in projects.
- Syncing is clumsy at best.

THL:
+ Clean UI
+ Fully navigable using keyboard
+ Very flexible in terms of nested tasks, tags, contexts, folders etc.
- No iphone app.
- Cant complete projects (what’s this about?)

OF:
+ Very rich feature set.
+ Extremely customizable – from looks to views.
+ Sync very well implemented.
+ Great iphone app.
+ Best in terms of being able to get items in – clipping service, mail etc.
+ Most complete and polished
- UI a bit dated.
- No tags / multiple contexts per task.
- Higher learning curve

After bouncing off all these apps, I am sticking to OF and it seems to be paying off.