I VERY often need to create new projects from my inbox when I am clarifying. That being said, I find it really cumbersome to do the inbox as I used nested folders for my areas of focus. Sometimes I get that wrong or I find it jumps the project in the wrong place. So I have to go to projects screen, create the project in the right area, and go back to inbox to clarify.
Anyone find a smoother way of doing this? I wish there was a popup dialogue or something to create a new project so I can pick the nesting and settings from the inbox without leaving the screen
I agree that would be nice. Also, to select an existing project there is a pop up list that truncates the hierarchy path so it fits in a single line in the iphone. I would like that the whole project nested hierarchy was visible by breaking the info in two lines rather than truncating it in the middle as it is now.
What I do for this to avoid the disruption of the mental flow of adding to the inbox is to create a task to act as the placeholder for the new project. I use a predetermined emoji in the task title to make it easily identifiable as a project placeholder.
When I am done entering tasks into the inbox, I go through and convert those placeholder tasks to projects (Edit > Convert to Project). This converts the placeholder task to a project and places it in the root of the projects list (Projects perspective). The step after that is to drag the new projects to their appropriate folder (based on areas of responsibility), one after another until all new project are placed.
If I think of the tasks for the new project when I am creating the placeholder task, I make a list of the seeding tasks in the Comments field. After there placeholder task has been converted to a project, it’s a simple matter of copying the list and pasting all the seeding tasks into the project. OmniFocus automagically converts the pasted multi-line text into individual tasks within that project.
The whole idea here is to not break your rhythm during the discovery process, so all you do is create tasks, one after the other until all are out of your brain and into your trusted system. Then apply the same batch processing method to converting the placeholder tasks into projects, one after another. Then the same for placing the new projects into their places. It’s all about the rhythm and flow.
I have not been grouping them in the inbox, but that’s a great idea. It’d make what I said even more efficient.
All I did was append the title of the placeholder task with the 🏗 emoji. That helps me visually pick out the placeholder tasks that need to be converted.
Ah got it, I am thinking (but have not tried) if you group them once you convert to a project it will keep them as nested tasks (wishful thinking anyway)
If I’m aware of each step (say, in a sequential project), I’ll write down the project goal and then indent the subtasks right away. In the inbox this looks like a task group. I then convert the top task (project goal) to a project and move it to the appropriate folder. Saves the step of having to chase down a concerted project and assigning child tasks in the Projects perspective.
