Denis Defreyne

Weeknotes 2026 W41: Focus

October 5​–​11, 2026
 

Quick bits

  • I finally closed my German bank account. Paying €4.9 per month for an account I no longer use isn’t worth it. Why it costs more to have an unused account than an active account is beyond me.

  • I turned a street corner and saw a few NHS ambulance vehicles with people standing around. Accidentally overheard: “Because the death was unexpected, there will be an investigation.” A murder mystery… on my doorstep?!

  • I saw a white horse outside a pub named The White Horse.1

This week’s projects

Focus

Things 3 has served me well. It is the first task-management app that really clicked for me. I’m thankful for that, and I have zero regrets purchasing it.

But Things 3 was showing its limits. I’ve been using it for more and more, and it wasn’t quite working for me any longer. So I tried out OmniFocus, and ended up liking it enough to purchase the Pro edition.

My to-do system contains literally everything that I want to or have to do at some point. This approach works really well for me: I practically never miss a deadline and practically never forget to do something important. It’s minimal-stress bliss.

That started being tricky to pull off with Things 3. Here are three things that I love about OmniFocus that I couldn’t do before:

  • Distinguish between defer, planned, and due dates. The defer date is the earliest possible date (e.g. I can’t do my UK taxes before April 1st, 2027); the due date is the latest possible date (e.g. if I don’t submit my homework by Friday I’ll get crucial points deducted), and the planned date is when I intend to work on it. Having three distinct dates certainly makes OmniFocus more complicated than the average to-do app, but it works so well for me.

  • I can tell it to show me (with a custom “perspective,” in OmniFocus terminology) only the bare minimum I need to achieve today. Some days just are like that, you know? If something has a due date of today, or it’s tagged with “bare minimum” and planned for today, it’ll show up in that list.

  • I can create an arbitrary hierarchy of lists. I’m not limited to Things 3’s predefined area-and-project hierarchy.

For the curious: I’ve got all sorts of to-dos in my system. Here are some examples:

  • Replace water filter: My water jug is supposed to tell me that it’s time to replace the filter, but that reminder somehow never functioned properly. Into the task system it goes!

  • Prepare meetup talk: This one has a deadline.

  • File German taxes: Best not to forget. Even though it’s not mandatory in my case, I’d be able to get a good amount of money back. It’s not something I need to think about now, so it’s deferred until coming year.

  • Inflate bike tires: It used to be, I’d find out my bike tires needed air as I had already set off. And then I’d come home afterwards and think to myself: I really should take care of that before my next bike ride. And then not do it, ending up with the same problem the day after. Tacking it ahead of time is so worth it.

  • Celebrate Nanoc’s birthday: Got to celebrate the milestones!

  • Take laundry out: I stick this in my to-do list once I get the laundry machine going. I will forget that the machine needs to be emptied otherwise.

  • Buy Listerine: My grocery shopping list goes on there as well, naturally.

I hope this doesn’t come across as if I’m excited about to-do apps. I genuinely am not. I want a system that gets out of my way and disappears into the background. And with OmniFocus, I’m a step closer to that ideal. We’ll see how it works in the long run. Restez branchés.

Entertainment

  • I’ve completed Nighthawks.3 While I certainly enjoyed it (wouldn’t have finished it otherwise), I think the game aims high and doesn’t quite achieve what it promises. There are multiple endings, but the choices made during the game don’t seem to matter much. The origin choices (which bloodline, which master do you have) also rarely come into play.

  1. Outside a pub named The King’s Head, I —  ↩︎

  2. Uta Hagen, Respect for Acting: Expanded Version (John Wiley & Sons, 2023). ↩︎

  3. Nighthawks (The Curiosity Engine / Wadjet Eye, 2026). ↩︎

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