Get Focused Fast

Ever feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of items on your to-do list? What you need is OmniFocus, a comprehensive app that’s been thoughtfully refined over the years to help you get on track—and stay there.

The genius of OmniFocus is how it allows you to zero in on what needs to get done right now, while keeping all other tasks out of mind.

A feature called Perspectives, for example, lets you see just the tasks you can accomplish at work, at home, or on the phone. And you can narrow down that view even further if you want: The Flagged perspective bubbles up tasks that need your immediate attention, while the Forecast perspective shows your to-do items and calendar events in one place so you can more effectively plan your entire day.

One of our favorite Pro features is aptly called Focus mode. It allows you to quickly hide items that aren't immediately actionable, freeing you to (you guessed it) focus on the tasks that you can tackle right now. (Enable it by typing Shift-Command-F.)

The app syncs your data among multiple Macs as well as your iPhone and iPad (through a separate app) through the company’s free cloud service. No matter where you go or what device you’re working on, all of your items will be with you.

To be sure, this powerful and highly customizable app does have a steep learning curve. But the time you invest in setting up OmniFocus just right today will pay off big time over the long term.