OmniOutliner
App Description
Incubating Your Ideas with OmniOutliner
OmniOutliner can be beneficial if you have a great idea but lack clarity on specific outcomes that you want to achieve and actions that will take you there. You can use OmniOutliner to capture and structure your ideas. As you go through this planning process, you’ll likely find that your desired outcomes will naturally emerge. Drawing on this clarity, OmniFocus projects and actions can be created to bring your great idea to fruition.
Project Support
OmniFocus is well suited to managing projects and actions but isn’t usually the best place to house project support information. This is where OmniOutliner comes in. OmniOutliner documents can store helpful details as you move projects toward fruition.
For example, if you were preparing to lead a course, an OmniOutliner document may contain details of what you’re sharing and how much time you’ll spend on each section. An OmniFocus project along the lines of “Prepare to Lead Course” would prompt you to take whatever actions are needed to prepare to lead the course. This might include reviewing and updating your course outline, writing a course summary, and opening the course for registration.
Taking Note
OmniOutliner is also a popular app for taking notes. As you take notes, you can use OmniOutliner’s outlining prowess to logically group related items together. When you review these notes in the future, you might enhance the information you captured—for example, adding checkboxes to keep track of what you’ve reviewed.
Life Before OmniFocus
Before OmniFocus existed, some people used OmniOutliner as their personal task manager. Of particular note is Kinkless GTD (kGTD), an approach developed by Ethan Schoonover for using OmniOutliner as a task manager. This popularity helped inspire the creation of OmniFocus.