Custom perspective with all Due, Deferred and Flagged?

[wilsonng]

I have a custom perspective that shows my Big Rocks. All of my special projects are set to On Hold. Then I select a handful of projects from each folder to Active. Each folder represents an Area of Responsibility (Work Projects, Home Renovation projects, Personal Development projects, etc.). Every week, I select just 1-3 projects as Active. Everything else remains set to On Hold. If I finish a project and mark it as complete, I can go to my Projects perspective and select another project and change its status to Active. During the weekly review, I can elect to put some active projects back to On Hold and swap it out for another project.

I also have seasonal projects that I know will start on a certain day. I have my "Submit and pay my taxes on/before April 15th) with a defer date of February 1 and repeating annually.

When February 1st rolls around, it automatically shows in my Big Rocks perspective as discussed here:

Effective Remote Work

I can manage my individual tasks with context perspectives. But I sometimes like to work from a project-based perspective. That’s what my Big Rocks perspective is for.

[heyscottyj]

I think a common thread in all of this is the embracing of the fact that OmniFocus, its capabilities, and the perspectives people use differ according to which stage of workflow they are in (in GTD terms):

• Capture
• Clarify
• Orgainze
• Review
• Do

In other words, one can’t use the same perspective/views/options for each of these, as they demand different ways of looking at content. OF is as much a place to store and inventory tasks as it is a ways to help determine which tasks to work on next.

(And no, I’m not saying everyone must buy Pro - there are still lots of ways of looking at one’s inventory in Standard)

ScottyJ

[jon123]

I like what I see with the Big/Small rocks paradigm and have started to implement it based on the post you linked to. It’s not related to this, but I also really like the use of Emoji!

I keep hitting some stumbling points though while re-organizing things/considering how my daily process will work. I had posted something similar in a separate topic (before using the rocks paradigm) but let me see how you approach this.

Filing taxes is a good example project since it’s likely to require many steps, some of which could be interrupted.

Let’s say you have the “File Taxes [due April 15]” (sub)project in your Admin Routines>Office Routine SAL. It is set to be sequential, repeat annually, deferred until Feb 15th, due April 15th. Within the project you have a few tasks, something like this:

• Download Brokerage Forms
• Download Bank Forms
• Download 1099-K Forms
• Ensure all transactions for previous year are reconciled
• Download accounting reports
• Send all documents to accountant

Now you’re working in the “adMin” perspective on February 15th, and up comes the first task. You take care of the first to tasks and you get to task 3 and find that one of the merchant processors doesn’t have the 1099-K forms ready yet.

Do you then put the project on hold until the next review? Change the defer date on the tasks/projects?

Both of these have a problem:
If you change the defer date on a task, the next time the project repeats the dates will be wrong.
To change the project to On Hold or change it’s Defer date, you have to first locate the project, defer/hold it, then switch back to the previous perspective. [This isn’t a huge deal, but it doesn’t feel natural and could likely cause friction/mishandling which can lead to future problems.]

Another question I had is this: I was setting up in my “Business Routines” a project named “Manage Advertising [2 weeks]”. There are various steps to this project though as there are different platforms, but the work all really falls under the same “Project”, so I started naming the tasks “Adwords”, “Facebook”, “Bing”, etc. The problem is, when these show up in the Admin perspective, they don’t have their parent project, so all that appears is “Adwords”. Do you typically give more specific names to each task to avoid this issue? It seems redundant, but I don’t see a better way.

And lastly (for now). It seems that many of the Routines could be projects. Do you prefer them in SALs instead of Folders to prevent them from being listed as separate projects in Perspectives, or some other reason?

[jon123]

In other words, one can’t use the same perspective/views/options for each of these, as they demand different ways of looking at content.

Definitely. I’m starting to appreciate that a bit more now (as discussed in my last post).
I swear I had a good system going about 2 years ago, but then I ended up falling out of things and my entire OF file ended up as mess of reminders, single actions and project outlines that I had no intentions of starting soon. I was was entirely ignoring the use of the “On Hold” status which was a big mistake as well.

If I think of something that seems like a good idea, I have to get it out of my head - or else I’ll keep thinking about it and worry that I’m going to forget about it (if this happens while I’m falling asleep, I might as well just get up and write it down or sleep does not come). My problem is I would tend to try to put it within a current project/category, and I’d leave it there as an Active project, or worse I’d set some arbitrary defer or due date.

Right now I’m starting to map out my project management principles in Evernote so that once I have a system, it’s documented and I can refine it as time goes on. Let’s hope.

[heyscottyj]

Right now I’m starting to map out my project management principles in Evernote so that once I have a system, it’s documented and I can refine it as time goes on. Let’s hope.

That’s a really neat idea. I used a similar approach to determine and define what contexts I have, as well as the order I put them in. Really, it’s like writing requirements or user stories about how the system needs to work. Your post has inspired me to do this again to validate or adjust my setup. Thank you!

In all of this, I think the key questions really are:

When I want to be doing my work, what are the lists of things I really need to see, and how do I inventory and organize my system to suit that?

Good luck!

ScottyJ

[jon123]

I used a similar approach to determine and define what contexts I have, as well as the order I put them in. Really, it’s like writing requirements or user stories about how the system needs to work.

I had started out my notes on figuring out my Contexts as well, before deciding to dive in and try to document each of my perspectives, project management style, etc. This way, if I do happen to fall off the wagon again, I can take a quick read and remember why exactly I set things up the way I did. I also find it helpful as a reference when building a new habit.

I’m using @wilsonng’s examples of Big/Small rocks. So I have to build some habits based on it, for example:

• Only set projects to active if I’m working on them this week
• Weekly: Check forecast and review
• Daily: Split time between “Admin” and “Big Rocks” perspectives as needed.

I am really liking the feel of the split between the big/small rocks perspectives. When in the Big Rocks perspective, those other smaller/one-off tasks aren’t cluttering my view, and stealing the attention, of a big goal.

I still have not nailed down my Contexts though. So far, I’ve decided to just not use them as I get my OF projects properly organized and back to operational. I have kept around some location based contexts like Warehouse, Grocery Store, General Store though.

I’m leaning towards attention/effort contexts - but haven’t decided yet because those seem sort of redundant if you set the “Estimated Time” for a task/project.
I am at my computer probably 8-12 hours a day. I work for myself, from home on online based businesses. So most of the contexts like Mac, Internet, Office, etc don’t really make a lot of sense to me (since 90%+ of my tasks will have the same context). The instances where I don’t have my Mac/Internet are incredibly rare (if internet goes down, I switch to a cell connection. If power goes down I switch to laptop).

[heyscottyj]

The instances where I don’t have my Mac/Internet are incredibly rare

Totally - I think tools-based contexts are pretty antiquated in a world where there is ubiquitous internet and phones can do a significant % of what computers can.

This thread might also provide some inspiration for your thoughts here, too.

ScottyJ

[wilsonng]

@jon123

et’s say you have the “File Taxes [due April 15]” (sub)project in your Admin Routines>Office Routine SAL.

My Admin SALs contains single one-off actions. I might put something that has two steps. But if something requires three or more steps, I’d rather create a project and have the project set to defer and repeat. Here’s my taxes project:

This project is not available right now (December 12) and won’t show up in my Big Rocks perspective. When January 30 comes, it will pop up in my Big Rocks perspective. I’d like to have it finished a few days before the actual due date to give myself some breathing room. I do expect to finish it much earlier, typically February 20. I’m not a fan of stressing myself out as April 15th comes closer.

My seasonal projects such as the taxes will typically appear in my Big Rocks perspective. My Admin perspective will show one-off single tasks that are maintenance in nature. My taxes project could be defined as a Admin/maintenance project but it’s a big enough project (more than 2 tasks) that I can elevate it to Big Rock level. I need to focus a lot on getting this done. It’s not just a couple of single one-off tasks here and there. It would definitely get lost in my Admin perspective.

In my Big Rocks perspective, I have the view settings to show all remaining actions. I would like to work on the very next action but sometimes I might need to skip ahead. If I set the view to show all remaining actions, I can just skip ahead as needed.

I’ll show an example of what I have. This is a project I use to declutter the sales floor and prepare it for next week’s sales promotion.

In a context perspective showing available actions, I might only see the task at the top “Clear out + reprice porcelain dishes case (1 box of each size)”.

IN this Big Rock setting, I can decide to ignore the very first task and look down the list to work on another task. There will be times to work on the next available task and then there will be other times then I can go ahead and do something else that is further down the list.

@jon123

Now you’re working in the “adMin” perspective

Hehe… Don’t worry about capitalizing it as “adMin”. I capitalize the letter that will be my hot-key. I use Control-M to go to my adMin perspective. I use Control-B to go to my Big rock perspective. I also use Control-E to visit my pEople perspective (alternatively it can be considered my Waiting For perspective or Agenda perspective. The only perspectives I can’t edit titles are the built-in OmniFocus perspective such as Projects, Flagged, Contexts.

As always, I’m always looking for a better way to improve this workflow. If you stumble upon something, please post it here and we can all learn from you.

HTH.

[wilsonng]

I am really liking the feel of the split between the big/small rocks perspectives. When in the Big Rocks perspective, those other smaller/one-off tasks aren’t cluttering my view, and stealing the attention, of a big goal.

Thanks! Yes, I also hated seeing my smaller/one-off tasks cluttering up my view. I needed the Big rocks perspective when I want to do deep work on focus on one project. When I need to work on admin work, I’ll switch over to the admin/maintenance perspective.

I still have not nailed down my Contexts though. So far, I’ve decided to just not use them

Yes, don’t use contexts if you don’t have a need for them. In OmniFocus 3, tags will be replacing the single context metaphor and might be more helpful for many of us. But we have to wait for OF3 to come out eventually. The Omnigroup blog mentioned Q1 2018 as the tentative start for the Public Beta Test Flight.

[wilsonng]

Do you then put the project on hold until the next review? Change the defer date on the tasks/projects?

Both of these have a problem:

If you change the defer date on a task, the next time the project repeats the dates will be wrong.

To change the project to On Hold or change it’s Defer date, you have to first locate the project, defer/hold it, then switch back to the previous perspective. [This isn’t a huge deal, but it doesn’t feel natural and could likely cause friction/mishandling which can lead to future problems.]

I have my “File Taxes [due April 15]” as a stand-alone project that repeats every year in February. The defer date is set to February 1, 2018, the status is “Active”, and the project is set to be completed when completing last action. Right now, the project is hidden from Big Rocks. When February 1, 2018 comes, this project will immediately show up in my Big Rocks perspective. That’s when I start working on it. When I complete this project, the project will set the project status to completed and a new project is created. I don’t have to fiddle with anything because this is a scheduled seasonal project.

Seasonal projects (aka scheduled projects) will have “complete when completing last last action” checked on. It’ll have a defer date and a due date.

All of my other voluntary projects that can start at a time of my choosing will be set to “On Hold” project status. When I do my weekly review, I’ll go to the Projects perspective and go to each folder representing an Area of Responsibility (Home, Office, Personal, Family, Church, etc.). I’ll do a quick glance to see if I need to set a currently “Active” project to “On Hold”. Then I look at my “On Hold” projects if I want to start another project. I might get stuck in a currently Active project and will want to start another project. Or another On Hold project needs to start because of situational changes (my sister and brother-in-law coming in next week and I’ll need to start up a project to prepare the guest rooms). When I complete an Active project, I’ll look at the Projects perspective and see if there are any projects I can bring out of On Hold status and start working on it.

HTH

[jon123]

This project is not available right now (December 12) and won’t show up in my Big Rocks perspective. When January 30 comes, it will pop up in my Big Rocks perspective.

Ah hah… I was thinking of the “Routine” projects very literally - that all repeating tasks and projects go in Admin Routines and that the converse, was also true - that Repeating Projects should not be in a project folder (for the Big Rocks perspective). You mentioned this again in the last post as well (“Scheduled/Seasonal Projects”). Now I’m thinking of them first as a Project, then as Repeating instead of the reverse, that helps a lot.

This also has the benefit of allowing deferment of the Admin Actions tasks all at once (if necessary) without risk of messing up a repeating project’s task’s defer/due dates.

IN this Big Rock setting, I can decide to ignore the very first task and look down the list to work on another task.

This is something else I was questioning today - but as you’ve described it it does make sense. My only worry here is with larger projects it can clutter the Big Rocks perspective a bit. I could use the hide/reveal arrow on them if needed, or maybe in this case I should be splitting in to more granular projects.

OmniFocus 3, tags will be replacing the single context metaphor and might be more helpful for many of us

I’m excited for OF3 - tags and improved defer/repeat intervals.

I’m finally liking how I have things organized, and the system is no longer so fragile which is a huge win. Thanks again for all the help with this.

[wilsonng]

In my Big Rocks perspective, I set the perspective focus only on projects folders. I exclude all the Admin (Maintenance) folders. Then I click on the project sidebar to choose one project to show in the main outline pane.

That’s why I kept all the Routine projects inside the Admin folder. I didn’t want to mix routine/maintenace stuff with Special Projects.

This is something else I was questioning today - but as you’ve described it it does make sense. My only worry here is with larger projects it can clutter the Big Rocks perspective a bit. I could use the hide/reveal arrow on them if needed, or maybe in this case I should be splitting in to more granular projects.

Yeah, sometimes I might have to look further down the list and it might trigger something that I didn’t catch previously. When I am in a Big Rock project, It’s great to plan ahead but sometimes an event happens during the middle of a project and I’ll need to add/delete new tasks. It helps to show remaining tasks and gives me a chance to look ahead and work on something else when the first available task is busy. An example is that I have a task called “Encode video file.” I have to wait for the video file to finish encoding in a few hours but I can go on to the next task and work on that while I’m waiting. Or an emergency happens and I have to add more tasks to overcome an event that I didn’t foresee. We’ve all been there. There’s always some kind of monkey wrench thrown in and we have to take a detour to overcome a minor/major obstacle.

I have more about breaking Big Rocks into smaller rocks that I’ve been working on lately. I’ll have to post it up later. Work awaits… ;-)

[jon123]

In my Big Rocks perspective, I set the perspective focus only on projects folders. I exclude all the Admin (Maintenance) folders. Then I click on the project sidebar to choose one project to show in the main outline pane.

That’s why I kept all the Routine projects inside the Admin folder. I didn’t want to mix routine/maintenace stuff with Special Projects.

I believe I’ve got a handle on this now. I do the same, with the Focus set on the folders for the BR perspective. I added a folder within my “Business Projects” folder named “Repeating” where I can store projects (which require multiple tasks) like my yearly File Taxes, Quarterly Sale Taxes, and my Weekly “Pay the bills”.

I have more about breaking Big Rocks into smaller rocks that I’ve been working on lately. I’ll have to post it up later. Work awaits… ;-)

Great, where do you normally post? I’ll keep an eye out!

[wilsonng]

Thanks. The OmniFocus forums offered me a way to participate here. But sometimes I worry that posts will get lost in here. I also wanted to write about something else besides OmniFocus. I found the Productivity Guild podcast from @joebuhlig which led me to their forums.

I’m not related in any way to the Productivity Guild or Omnigroup other than as a forum participant.

I use the Omnigroup forums and the Productivity Guild forums as a way to share some of my discoveries while using OmniFocus and productivity workflows in general. OmniFocus is a powerful tool that can be used in a variety of ways. I"ve bought a couple of the OmniFocus workflow products and Google’d for other OmniFocus workflows. I just wanted to share some things that worked for me, what failed for me, and trying to solve different dilemmas that I’ve encountered. Our life situation changes over the years and I’ve learned to create new custom perspectives/contexts/projects and also learned when to delete them according to the needs of my life.

It is easier to post in the Productivity Guild because I can collect different thoughts and ask new questions. These posts would get lost in the OmniFocus forums or it might directly relevant to OmniFocus.

My posts are here if you wanted to see. I’d encourage everyone to participate in the Omnigroup forums and other forums you have an interest in. The more we share, the better we all get.