Every other night, it’s my responsibility to clean out the cat litter boxes. I do it right before bed. I’ve got a repeating task, deferred to 18:00 and due at 23:55 repeating every 2 days.
Here’s the snag: I’m a night owl and sometimes, I go to sleep after midnight. When that happens, I go do the litter boxes, and when I check off the task, it schedules it 2 days from “technically today” (the new date after midnight) but I want it to schedule it from “functionally today” (the day it was when I woke up today).
Here’s a precise example:
Task deferred to November 1st at 18:00 and due on November 1st at 23:55.
I stay up late on November 1st.
It is now 01:30 on November 2nd, but I haven’t slept yet so to me it’s still November 1st.
I do the litter boxes and check them off at 01:45 on November 2nd.
OmniFocus sees this and schedules the next repetition for November 4th. I would instead prefer it to schedule for November 3rd because functionally I completed the task on November 1st.
Consider changing the “Repeat from this item’s” setting to “Assigned Dates.” This will ensure that new actions are created on a two-day cycle regardless of when you complete the action.
I considered that, but sometimes I fall off the todo list wagon, and this makes it more annoying when I come back to a huge list of tasks and I have to go in and manually update all the defer/due dates. It would work if it were just one recurring task that I have this problem with, but it’s basically my entire chore list.
EDIT: Also props for making a very personalized screenshot 😊
I considered that, but sometimes I fall off the todo list wagon…
I recommend interacting with OmniFocus daily. This includes reviewing your “inventory of commitments” (to quote David Allen) and making any necessary changes to your system based on what’s happening in your life/work. The Review feature is helpful for doing this systematically.
Even better, use Forecast and/or custom perspective(s) to look into the future and make adjustments to tasks proactively (e.g. adjust the defer date for cleaning the cat litter if you know you’re going to be out of town for the next week).
Also, consider putting defer dates but not due dates on your chores and reserving due dates for things where there’s a significant consequence to not doing something by a specific day/time (e.g. being charged overdue fees for missing a bill payment). You can use a flag if something is especially important but not due.
Also props for making a very personalized screenshot 😊
So what I’m hearing is that there’s no clear way to adjust what the start and end of my day is, so I should use “Assigned Dates” repeat methods for daily chores.
However, “Assigned Dates” makes it feel more like I’m babysitting OmniFocus instead of OmniFocus helping me get things done, especially in the scenarios where I fall off the wagon. And the advice here is just, to paraphrase, be better.
I gotta be honest, not the advice I was hoping to receive.
I think I’ll explore using “Assigned Dates” but also writing a “Reset” script that helps me get on the wagon again should I fall off.
If you have a group of actions performed together, you could put them in a project, single action list or action group and adjust the defer date for the container as needed.
You might also consider installing the Task Date Controls plug-in and assigning keyboard shortcuts to frequently used commands. For example, if I press ⇧⌘D, one day is added to the defer date for the selected task(s).
If you haven’t already, I encourage you to submit this feedback to Omni by choosing Contact Omni from the Help menu (Mac) or Settings (iPhone & iPad).
Thanks for all the suggestions Tim 😊 I’ll be exploring some combination of these things in the coming days, and I will absolutely file this with the Omni Group
This is the secret sauce to keeping on track of one’s system. I have a Due reminder set to an hour before I leave my office to remind me to start doing an end-of-day shutdown to update OmniFocus and my calendar app.
If I don’t do this, I sense friction because I don’t trust my task list. It falls into decay and I’m not happy. I felt your discouragement when I thought OmniFocus should know what originally intended.
But once I developed the habit of checking in at the end of the day, I feel much better about OmniFocus.
Many of my self improvements happen because of habits. That’s how the daily check in provides consistent results and fewer lapses in my OmniFocus setup
Any task manager’s job is to be a trusted repository to keep our projects and tasks. It’s up to us to get things done and mark it as complete.
This is really good advice. Your trusted system should be a tool you are working inside of. I use 4 levels of prioritization for tasks in OF.
First is nothing is added to the task. These are really the lowest priority items. I want to track them, but they might be an “eventually” type of task.
Second are tasks which are flagged. These are things that are more important than my “eventually” ones, but aren’t the highest priority.
My highest priority tasks have a due date. This is really only for things that NEED to happen by a specific time/date. It isn’t for things that you’d LIKE to do by a certain time/date.
One level below due dates are tasks which I add a “Today” tag to. These are things that I should see on my radar when they become available but don’t necessarily have a must do date. They are higher priority than tasks that are flagged. In the Forecast view, it shows tasks which are due OR have the Today task. I have a number of tasks like the OP for house/pet maintenance. I typically work out of my Forecast view, so I clear all the due tasks & then hit the ones with the Today tag, like “Clip the dog’s nails”. Many of my Today tasks are repeating with a defer change. I might clip the dog’s nails every 2 weeks, so the defer date is set to repeat every 2 weeks after completion. Once that is up, the task will now show in my Forecast view, so it’s clear I should do it.
Forecast view is a real asset if used regularly. Once I’ve cleared out the forecast view, I can then look at my flagged tasks or items by tag relevant to my current context to get through some lower priority items.
Another method I’ve used is to just schedule a task that needs to be done at a certain time in my calendar app instead of putting in my task manager.
Tasks that can be done at any time will go into OmniFocus. Tasks that needs to be done at a specific time goes on my calendar.
I don’t take any pleasure in checking off "brush my teeth in the morning or at night.
I can schedule a time block at 18:00 to clean the cat litter every 2 days. I set alarms at 18:00, 19:00, etc., until 23:55 to remind me. If it’s gotta be done every 2 days, the calendar is the better place to put this action.
I have the Due app and I can create a nagging reminder every 2 days. It will nag me every 30 minutes from 18:00 to 0:00. When I finally finish the task, I swipe left to complete the Due task.
The calendar or Due app is probably the better app for this scenario.
