proposal to boil the ocean

[Faisal N Jawdat]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Brent Simmons <brent at ranchero.com> wrote:
> This app should replace Mail, I think -- but most people I talk to use apps like OmniFocus, Things, The Hit List, and similar for to-dos. I would *not* ever want to even try to replace those.

If I could get a way to take things from mail into one of those (this
week it's OF, but i've used all of them), I'd be a happy camper.
Basically Mail and the task manager wind up forming two different
to-do lists because I always have new things coming in to mail out of
which many turn into a later thing I must get done.

> Me, I like to keep my inbox at 0 as much as possible. I'll turn an email into a to-do list item via a stupid set of steps:

Likewise -- for one thing it would make my life easier if I could mark
messages for followup and then have those work with my usual to-do
workflow. At that point I don't even need to keep the to-do state in
Mail -- I just need it kicked over to OmniFocus.

There are "kinda" ways this works now, e.g. OmniFocus has a service,
but they're cumbersome. Could I have a system-wide AppleEvent that
says "make my to-do client of choice treat this as a to-do"? Then I
don't need integration with
OmniFocus/Things/TaskPaper/HitList/Entourage/Notepad, I just need to
nag the vendors till they handle that event.

> I think we can agree -- correct me if I'm wrong -- that we don't want to replace people's entire workflows. The app should make those workflows easier and better. In other words, desperately trying *not* to be Chandler. ;) Small-as-possible footprint, with optional integration with other apps. (Integration ideally supplied by the creators of those other apps.)

Very.

-faisal