In this second part of the OmniFocus Ninja Tricks screencasts, David covers the details of how to process tasks in OmniFocus. It is 50 minutes so strap in and hold on.
The screencast is in AppleTV format and looks great on your Mac, iPad, and AppleTV. Enjoy.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (145.7MB)
You made my day!
Great stuff! Thanks for the screencast.
Some questions/comments:
Your “today” perspective groups by project, and shows project (but not context) as a column in the view…
So do you not use context in your processing? If not, why bother entering it?
This occurred to me also. In both these perspectives demonstrated the context for the tasks is not shown. So if I want to work on a project and do all my email related tasks for that project there is nothing to show me what they are.
Would you not remove the project column as the tasks are already grouped by project and replace it with a context column? Then sort actions by context so you have all the email task for a particular project group together?
Many thanks David for a great podcast. I’ve been attempting to use GTD and Omnifocus for some time and you’ve really helped me to get to grips with it.
Well done David – implementation is everything! Thank you.
Hi,
I would like to give some feed back from your Dropbox podcast. I am not a very advance user of dropbox and only use it for my personal use. It seems to me that there is some misunderstanding on the use of the public folder. From listening to what was said in the podcast, we get the impression that the use of the public folder link sharing is insecure and leaves your dropbox public folder open to prying eyes for ever to everyone… really? The link we share with others is specific to the file we share and if you copy in text edit two different links from the public folder, they will not be the same and only have access to the one file we decide to share… or am I missing something?
It is like giving a key to a room to someone and include a key to a specific folder in a filing cabinet. Only if you want to share this with many others will it be available to these. And once the said person or persons have the file you can always delete that folder after a predetermined time. I see no security problem in this. The dropbox public folder is never compromised by this and all the many other files kept there are safe from prying eyes.
Thank you for all your hard work in sharing your ideas via the podcast. I hope this will not be taken as a negative criticism but as a conversation input to a very interesting subject,
Kind regards,
Pierre Belance
Hey Gang…
I’ve been using almost the exact same perspective as your ‘Available Context’ for about 12 months, and it really took OF to the next level for me.
Loving the video so far…
What David is doing is really fantastic. Just one little hint for people just getting to Omnifocus: David likes to give similar names to his broad categories in both projects and contexts (especially “home”, “mac”, also his clients in projects and maybe “husband” are cases of this stategy). Being experienced in OF it may be a good way, or it may be a way one cannot avoid, to organize input. But when a person learns OF he/she should get clear the difference between projects and contexts. Every project consists of one or more actions for which one needs a physical object or entity (a context). So it would be better for the start to name “home” in context “house” and “mac” in project “geek work” (or something similar). Especially when using the iphone and the mac version of OF where context and projects are displayed in reversed order when coming to the entry penal you must have a clear concept of the difference, because one needs both contexts and projects, to get the full advantage out of OF.
A second point: David says nothing about “halted” projects. I would like to hear at least a sentence about it.
At last: Gosh, sometimes I think you forgot to plan sleeping. I just finished your screencast and the next expisode about Goodreader is already out. You guys do that in spare time? It’s unbelievable to me.
David,
Excellent overview of OF for OF noobs like me..
I just purchased OF this last week after trying out various other programs.
After watching part 1 and 2 of your podcasts, I’m feeling like I made the right choice.
Now, onto part 3….
Thanks!
Mark
David,
Unbelievable podcast. You’ve done a fantastic job of explaining how you use OmniFocus and I needed it DESPERATELY because I just didn’t “get” OmniFocus until now. I will say you can’t make out the URL you called out of the part showing the shortcuts for OF, but that’s just a suggestion.
I have to say I’m incredibly impressed with the time you took for this series so far and I’m proud to call you my friend. Keep up the great work.
Finis
I agree with Finis, I couldn’t see the URL and some other details of the video as it is so small….
Unlike other videos, I couldn’t figure out a way to enlarge it, which would hopefully solve this problem….
Looking forward to part 3 soon…
Mark
This is a really great screencast. I watched to see if I could get ideas to use with Things, but this screencast was almost enough for me to purchase OmniFocus. If it wasn’t for the cost of getting the Desktop, iPhone, and iPad versions (and I’m a poor grad student), I’d probably buy based upon this screencast.
Could you add the URLs you reference in the screencast to the show notes here?
I am absolutely loving these OmniFocus podcasts. Between this and the “Creating Flow with OmniFocus” book (http://usingomnifocus.com/buy-ebook) I feel like I’m very close to a really high powered GTD system.
One thing that you emphasize, David, is to use the Start Date to clear things from view that are not temporally relevant or available. But when I did my mind sweep, most of my tasks did not have Start Dates. The net result is that my Miscellaneous (single step tasks) have many tens of items and there are tens of projects task that are Available. This is overwealming in the Today perspective that you create.
How do you really deal with tasks to make the Today perspective manageable? Do you give start dates to everything?
Thank you very much,
David
@DavidMcCormick If you give start dates to everything, then under the Today perspective created they only show up when the start date rolls around.
In short… Yes, assign start dates to everything.
Sequential Projects
Hi! I’d like to have some feedback to my workflow of handling sequential projects. Sample sequential Project “Plan Summer Vacations”:
- call bob when he has holidays
- write mail to boss about holidays
- call bob to decide final time
- grab a couple of beers with bob and plan vacation
- search web about destination
- book hotel
What you should notice is that there are tasks at the end that
probably won’t get done for quite some time. In the meantime there
will be a lot of tasks added due to the discussions I have with Bob about what has to be done prior to the vacation which is
simply not known at the moment. Now the problem is that when I add
these new tasks as they come up, they are added at the end and therefor
are not available.
I find myself checking projects a lot, because
I’m not sure if they are sequential and I have to move actions and
make sure everything is in place. Any suggestions on how to improve
this process? Maybe some applescirpts?
Cheers, Simon
Thank you for explaining perspectives, that is a bread and butter of OmniFocus for me
Thanks so much it help me a lot!!
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Thanks so much! Just finished watching part 2 of the series. Great job explaining OmniFocus and it’s uses. Sent this to info@omnifocus.com to let them know these podcasts were instrumental in my decision to purchase the product:
‘Just wanted to let you know that I read many of the awesome reviews for OmniFocus which led me to try it out. But my decision to purchase came after watching David’s OmniFocus Ninja Tricks podcasts.
Sue’
Going to watch part 3 now.
Hi,
I’m writing this on Aug 13th – and I’m using OF for Mac version 1.10.3 (plus latest iPhone app version).
I’m finding that when I try to create my own ‘Available Context” + ‘Today’ Perspectives, the options in most of the ‘View’ drop-down categories are not the same as in the podcast. In fact, they are not working for me, in that many future tasks show up (yes I’ve converted most to ‘start date’ only), when what I’m trying t achieve is only today’s!
Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Many thanks,
Giorni
Great screencast!
Do you not use Waiting for contexts?
I just started using omnifocus and I had a hard time finding a good folder and context structure. Perspectives were another thing that I didn’t really get how to set up.
I started with part one and enjoyed it a lot. I stopped watching the second part however when I saw that it was one hour long. I thought I could get through this a lot faster and started reading some tutorials. A few hours later, I still didn’t find a good set up. After watching your video, everything is clear to me now. Thank you for looking into every major aspect of omnifocus.
You could consider making a few shorter videos instead of one really long one.
Many thanks,
Julian