I just recently switched from Todoist to OmniFocus, and I really appreciate all the advice here.
I’ve pretty much nailed down the workflow I want to use, but I’m having a bit of trouble figuring out a good way to do Daily and Weekly reviews. After reading some different things, I settled on setting up a single action list called Daily Review, and then setting up a task group for each day of the week, so I can have slightly different reviews on each day (for example, using the Friday review to set up personal/home tasks for the weekend). I set that task group to repeat on the appropriate day of the week, which seems to work fine.
However, I noticed that in the Forecast perspective, all the tasks scheduled in my daily review are showing up as due or deferred every day, which turns that view, which I otherwise like a lot, into an unusable mess. I have a lot of items in my review, as I use it as a daily checklist of sorts for a variety of things (e.g. log all hours worked in my billing system), in addition to just reviewing tasks. Likewise, by doing this as a task group, the ‘completed’ perspective gets filled with junk and becomes unreadable. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to focus the Forecast perspective, which I’ve used to keep this stuff out of the other perspectives I use.
Any ideas? Ive thought of the following, but wanted to see what others are doing before changing things…
Just put in a single task called ‘Daily Review -Monday’ and link to a note in Evernote, or a simple list in another app to see the actual steps.
Rather than using a repeating group, create a template in an on-hold project, and copy it every day when I’m ready to start my review. This way, I can work down the list, but it won’t clutter up the Forecast view. I can apply a focus to keep these tasks from showing up in the completed view.
Rather than using a repeating group, make each daily review an on-hold project and set the review interval for one week. This will keep it out of other views, but will have it pop up in the review perspective on the right day. I could work down the list without actually checking the tasks as done , which is a bit annoying but could work.
I’m hopeful that OF3 will provide ‘smart folder/playlist’ functionality that will allow us to create custom perspectives to replace the built-in Forecast. If so, you can exclude that folder or project.
It sounds like you are trying to recreate the native review functionality or the equivalent, & as a result are mixing together tasks you want to get done on a date/time with reviewing projects.
Just set a weekly interval for each project you want to review & the next review to the upcoming Monday or whatever. Then you can use the native review feature each day and it will show the projects you want to review on that that (plus any backlog of course).
Hi dfay, thanks for the response. I don’t think that’s what I’m doing, as almost none of the tasks in my daily review involve reviewing projects in OmniFocus. I have my projects set to review on Friday, and have a line in my weekly review to remind me to look at them. Here’s what’s generally in my Daily Review, with a couple of differences on certain days.
Process all email mailboxes.
Review today’s calendar and process any meeting notes
Look at tomorrow’s calendar and set up any prep tasks
Process any voicemails or texts
Update my billing system with all hours worked
Add any new items to OmniFocus inbox
Process OmniFocus inbox
Look at Forecast perspective and adjust any dates as needed
Look at Waiting For perspective and follow up as needed
Look at Client Work perspective and flag any urgent items
Look at Flagged perspective. Determine what I will work on tomorrow, and unflag or defer others.
Identify #1 priority for tomorrow and block time on my calendar to complete it.
Create timeblocks on my calendar to get other work done.
Of those, only #10 involves reviewing projects, and with that, I’m really just scanning the list for any items that may have become urgent since my last weekly review. The rest involve clearing my various inboxes and getting new tasks into OmniFocus, or focusing my daily work based on changing priorities and available time.
I really like having this as a recurring task group that repeats every day, as it’s easy to just quickly run down the list, do these things, and check them off as I go. That way, if I get interrupted halfway through, I remember where I was and can easily pick up where I left off. That’s what I’d lose (I think) if I set these up as a project to be reviewed 1x/week on the appropriate day. I could use that view to bring up the list and visually work it, but wouldn’t be able to check things off as they wouldn’t be recurring.
The real issue I have is with #8, as all of these tasks currently show up in every day’s forecast (I have the task group set to repeat weekly, deferred until 4pm that day, and due at 5pm that day), and even though I set it up as a sequential project, all the tasks appear in the forecast.
To be honest I rarely use the forecast perspective, I just have a dedicated today perspective which shows me what I have on my plate that day filtered and arranged how I want.
That allows me to filter by context and/or project plus it keeps sequential task lists hidden just showing the first, which allows me to work through lists like yours in a logical way,
I have also stated assigning contexts of “first thing” “morning” “afternoon” and “evening” among others. I have always struggled with meaningful contexts, (bring on tags OF3). I tend to do admin in the morning and code work in the afternoon so this tends to work quite well, so far anyway.
This is similar to my own approach. My “today” perspective uses flags to filter my current projects, and I defer and flag/unflag as needed to bring tasks onto my radar or push it off of my radar for the time being. The use of defer dates to push out tasks allows me to select the tasks I want to focus on today and allows me push out the others so that they will re-appear tomorrow, or next week, or at 2:00pm, etc.
I suspect multiple texts may change this slightly, but . . . maybe not. Flags just might be the best “tag” for “pay attention to me” tasks.
That’s what I’m doing, except I have created one sequential project for each day repeating weekly, instead of just using one project that repeats every day. How do you keep the tasks in your list from cluttering up your Forecast perspective?
I’m not sure that’s a bad thing as you need to do the tasks and account for the time.
However, because I use one project that repeats on work days only, there is only one project that is ever visible, as I complete the project on a Monday, a new one is created for Tuesday.
I also have a separate non repeating project for daily adhoc tasks. This contains repeating tasks for work which only repeat weekly or fortnightly, on certain days.
These coupled with monthly closedown (28th of each month) and monthly setup (1st of each month) repeating projects cover most of my repeating task requirements.
Your problem is a fundamental misuse of due date as it is defined within OF. You are not alone. It is a common mistake.
Within OF, due date is handled as a deadline that has been set when you can answer yes to most if not all of these types of questions:
Does something external require the results from this list of tasks?
Does something external require it by the due date?
Will someone or something be irreversibly damaged when the list is not completed by the due date?
Truth be told, when you want to avoid the clutter in Forecast view by items in this “I want to do it by” list, you’d do better to flag the list rather than set a due date. Forecast shows what is due, and due date is a hard, drop-dead, deadline. That is just how OF works.
Encompass the list in a recurring action group. Put the action group in a project. Better still, encompass sets of the tasks into different recurring action groups in one @DailyAdmin project. I could for example identify action groups as Email, OmniFocus, and Calendar within your list.
