Looking to get a little help with perspectives. I am returning to OmniFocus as a long time GTD’er. What are everyone’s best advice and personal practice with respect to perspectives? Do you limit them or have a lot? On one hand I am afraid of overdoing it and having a lot and the mental awareness to get to the right perspective at all times. On the other hand too few and there are too many next actions on it.
Right now I have the following setup:
Work Perspective: Shows everything in my Business folder and my Blended Folder (this has my startup and shutdown routines as well as productivity which is personal and business for me)
Personal Perspective: Same as above but all of my personal folder and blended folder
Mobile: Has my calls tag, web surfing tag, iPhone tag.
Errands: Showing all of my errands to run for when I am on the go
A perspective for anything tagged with my wife’s name
A tags focus showing all of my next actions grouped by tags
A next actions perspective showing all of my next actions grouped by projects
5 minutes or less: Any activity requiring 5 minutes or less for those quick hits in between meetings etc.
Waiting for: for my waiting for list
Someday/Maybe: For my someday/maybe list
Any thoughts on what I might be missing or what could be simplified? I debated on a different home perspective for tagged items at home but that is typically captured on my personal list
All this links back to Tags I have setup, but I have several different types of Perspectives
Do - Shallow Work - Admin type tasks where interruptions don’t matter
Do - Deep Work - Work where I need to concentrate and minimise interruptions
Do - Due and Flagged
Time on my calendar where I’m not in meetings is largely based around Deep Work and Shallow work Due and Flagged is just to ensure I don’t miss something time critical
Work Plan - Next work (Actions in active projects)
Work Plan - Stalled Projects (projects with no actions left)
Work Plan - Projects on Hold
Work Plan - Waiting (Projects or actions which are tagged as waiting)
Work Plan - Active Projects
Work Plan - Someday
All of these are used when I’m planning what to work on in the next week
Thanks! I like the stalled projects one. I rely on my weekly review to catch those but I think it is an interesting idea to have a perspective setup for it.
I have created about 20 perspectives, but I mainly work out of a Work Today perspective which is sorted by project. It contains things ‘Due Soon’, Flagged, assigned a Today flag or assigned to my day of the week flag if I planned for a specific day to do the task during my weekly planning. I have a perspective for Lunch Time Tasks that are 5 min personal tasks so I can see if I need to make some calls or quick things (I work from home). I have a ‘Compliance Hour’ perspective that is based on a tag that is for tasks that all have to be done in a particular system across many projects so I can group them all together and do them in a batch each week when they become available.
Thanks Heather, I like that lunch perspective you have. I block my personal urgent tasks into the business ones in my perspective but having a separate view and taking 20 minutes mid day to knock some of those out is a pretty good idea.
