Comments on: Rediscovering Outlines As a Productivity Tool

By: Words on a page » Blog Archive » A few links for the end of the week - A blog about writing, in its various forms

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:33:55 +0000

[...] How one person rediscovered outlines as a productivity tool [...]

By: RedStripe

RedStripe — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:36:31 +0000

I came to this post via the link from James Fallow’s blog entry on outliners. Reading this post and comments, I now realize what I’ve been looking for in a list app for my iPhone is very similar in function and visual layout to these outliners discussed here. Can anyone recommend a good mobile app they’ve used for this purpose. I just want something simple, fast, efficient, and flexible that can create checklists with sublists/subitems. That perfect app for your mobile device to dump your thoughts in a semi-organized fashion and be able to copy/move/edit/refine/restructure/expand as needed. I’ve tried OmniFocus, Things, and just about all the List and GTD apps that are out there and find most of them too cumbersome with their emphasis on GTD integration. The only one I have really liked is Lists (free version with ads or $.99 without) by Mobilityware because it’s simple, clean, and most importantly let’s you create sublists. The only other List app I’ve seen that has sublists or nested lists is List Monger, which I have yet to try. I would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks!

By: Rediscovering Outlines As a Productivity Tool | Productivity Hacks

Rediscovering Outlines As a Productivity Tool | Productivity Hacks — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:24:14 +0000

[...] more: Rediscovering Outlines As a Productivity Tool. [...]

By: My teachers were right, outlines help, but maybe not how I was taught — A View from the Isle

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:37:47 +0000

[...] structure information. Now I consider them an important part of my project planning arsenal.[From Rediscovering Outlines As a Productivity Tool ]I can’t really blame my teachers though, the technology that let me absorb and grok outlines [...]

By: Paul Jacobson

Paul Jacobson — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 19:41:47 +0000

I’m with you on that. I also have Circus Ponies’Notebook which is a more developed notebook app and better for a lot of my work than OmniOutliner but I find myself returning to OmniOutliner again and again for its simple design and powerful features.

OmniFocus is by far my best productivity app and I have days when I wish I could really simplify my workflows and do everything in Omni-apps.

By: Link Post 124 « Rayet’s Blog

Link Post 124 « Rayet’s Blog — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:19:51 +0000

[...] Rediscovering Outlines As a Productivity Tool – Outlines sound like a great way to organize your thoughts on paper. [...]

By: Owen Marcus

Owen Marcus — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:18:35 +0000

I use FreeMind as my free mindmaping program then convert it to an outline in Word. It is a lot easier to have a mindmap to dump ideas into over a week of letting my thoughts congeal then written copy. As mentioned above, I can easily move around my thoughts and create branches to fill them out.

I don’t always use everything, but it I have an organized list to choose the best from.

By: Moleskiners

Moleskiners — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:29:13 +0000

[...] Excerpts from: Rediscovering Outlines As a Productivity Tool [...]

By: Vishu Ramanathan

Vishu Ramanathan — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:55:30 +0000

Great point about how tools like Word that are not designed to be outliners tend to have cumbersome outline views.

If you don’t have a free version of Omni Outliner, check out http://thinklinkr.com. It’s web-based so you don’t have to install anything, but it still feels great in your hands.

I also came back to outlines as a consultant. They are a great way to organize and exchange information with clients. That’s why collaborating online on an outline is much more interesting and effective than collaborating online on a document.

By: Jim Willis

Jim Willis — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 13:52:15 +0000

Good post. I’m a cloud guy myself, and I extensively use http://checkvist.com for my outlining.

By: Michael Deutch

Michael Deutch — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 02:07:08 +0000

Hobie – great to see you here! I’ve read that book :) Great work!

By: Michael Deutch

Michael Deutch — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 02:05:55 +0000

Buzz,

You can also use MindManager’s Outline mode to see and work with your mind map as an interactive outline.

Best,
Michael

By: Hobie Swan

Hobie Swan — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:53:08 +0000

I wrote a book using mind mapping and it really blew me away. Maps (and, I suppose, many other kinds of outliners) worked so well because, while I didn’t really make the connection as I was doing it, they were chunking my text. I was just sending out branches, then addint notes to each branch as a way to capture my ideas. But then I realized that I shift the branches around, export to Word, and see which flowed better. I still had to do a lot of writing to knit it all together. But it gave me a freedom I hadn’t experienced before. So I’m all for outlines–especially when you can build them out like this and make them sort of super outlines.

By: CoCreatr

CoCreatr — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 04:15:34 +0000

Thank you, Will. That annual planning and review is an idea worth stealing, er, re-using. Mind mapping and the Omni Outliner help info both gave me new perspectives on productive uses of outlines.

Outlining became really powerful to me when I found how to use the pages tree view in Atlassian’s Confluence wiki. So easy I do not like to use Word any more. In a collaboration setting, wiki pages and text are well re-usable and much more suited than attachments to get consensus based results and continual improvement.

Wish you a great 2010 and many check marks on your outlines.

By: David

David — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 02:19:06 +0000

If I ever have to write something more than a page or so I usually start with Word’s outline mode since the items then become your headings and have the correct size depending on their tab level.

By: Zviki

Zviki — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:00:29 +0000

OmniOutliner is an indispensable tool for me. There are certain kind of people that just think in bullets. Concise. Organized. To the point.

You should try OmniFocus, which is a bit like the Outliner, but geared towards task management and GTD.