I think the organization of the tasks, flags, tags, makes my Today perspective
unimaginable. I think reorganizing and cleaning up my system will make it better.
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I started feeling this way not too long ago, I was in the middle of moving and my “today” perspective wasn’t reflective of what I really needed to do and I was starting to feel stressed and scrambled (I imagine the move was also to blame…) Here’s a couple of tips that may help:
Have some sort of “emergency” or “top priority” system. For me, this is the flags. The only things that get flagged are the things I’m going to do THAT DAY. For you, this could be a perspective that only shows a special tag like “!!!”
The other thing is I have a small handful of tags that I use to organize priorities, nearly everything gets tagged with one of these (basically the only things that don’t are groceries) My tags, in order of most to least important are:
Work - Hard Obligations - Personal Projects - Soft Obligations - Proactive - Small Things
When planning out my day, I try to get something done from each category (that way something from small things doesn’t become a hard obligation)
In addition to liberal use of saying “no” and deleting/dropping tasks, I’m also pretty frequent with my use of “deferring” - if it’s not something I’m going to be doing within the next couple of weeks, I defer it so it doesn’t distract me from the things that I am going to be doing.
Hopefully one of these is helpful! Just my 2¢, best of luck with the bankruptcy! I’m enjoying reading the other responses and getting some ideas!
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On top of @DrJJWMac’s tips. Use the Review process religiously at least once a week, then everything will pass your view sooner or later (dependent on how often you set your projects to be reviewed.
This is reason that I’ve never made any other system stick. The Review feature in OF is priceless.
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If you stagger the review dates on projects, you are likely forced to review something nearly every day. I try to take this approach:
- yearly reviews --> projects that are on deferral for yearly activity (e.g. taxes)
- 3 - 4 wk reviews --> projects that get put on hold
- weekly reviews --> all @Admin-> projects (same day every week), most active projects without flagged tasks, projects with Waiting On actions as the next step
- 3 day reviews --> most projects with flagged tasks
- 1 day reviews --> firestorms
As I am out walking the dog in the early morning, I take the time to review for next steps in my OF workflow while my dog reviews diligently for even the smallest of food scraps on the ground. 🐶
–
JJW
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Thanks @Andre.Sena and @Jan_H for sugggestions. I had a play, and while good, it doesn’t quite allow me to order (I could of course, invent a tag system for daily priority). I think like @claybwagner, I need to go back to basics and refresh my gtd, and, given @draft8’s comments, remind myself of the need to say no, even to my own enthusiasms. And read Kini. thanks everyone for such a great pack of suggestions and for the original post @claybwagner, Ngā mihi
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It’s really important to note that if you primarily use an iPad (as the OP has stated), action groups are a truly terrible idea. In fact, using folders for projects becomes unwieldy as well with the current iPad OF implementation. There’s no way to navigate using keyboard shortcuts and the navigation by touch is sufficiently slow that I just threw up my hands and went with a flat list of several dozen projects, which I filter using tags and perspectives. Of course, now my list of perspectives is long and unwieldy and requires a lot of manual management, so…
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My review process is similar to @DrJJWMac’s, but I also liberally use the “Next Review” field. E.g., with my taxes, I generally set a weekly review, but I defer the project to Jan. 15 and the review to Jan. 22. That way, it’s not on my list of available tasks until I start getting the documents I need. During tax season I’m reviewing weekly, but once I’ve filed, I set the deferral and next review dates on the new project similarly.
More generally, as part of every project review, I ask myself two questions:
- When will I next need to review this?
- After that, how often should I review it?
Based on the answers to those questions, I adjust both the next review date and the review frequency. It’s part of my regular review routine.
If I can’t work on a project, I’ll also adjust the deferral date, but if it’s simply that it’s on the back burner, I will leave it available even if the next review is 6 months in the future, in case I reach a point where I want to work on it.
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Projects that will not reoccur on a regular basis that I am actively working on are in a folder called Active Projects. I also have folders for projects that either occur once a year but must start in a specific season or that happen weekly and monthly. These are in folders labeled
Recurring Projects Weekly
Recurring Projects Monthly
Recurring Projects Jan-Mar
Recurring Projects Apr-Jun
Recurring Projects Jul-Sep
Recurring Projects Oct-Dec
I do not use sub projects and I do not use subfolders. I do not separate work or personal because it’s all one life. It’s all in one flat system. I also do not use Omnifocus to hold any of my not active currently or not recurring projects. Those live in another system entirely because it clutters up the review if I have lots of on-hold project that I may never do. Omnifocus is only for what I am currently working on and my checklists of projects that I know will repeat with no changes on a regular basis.
I reset my onmifocus system with current active projects at my reviews. Weekly for ongoing and quarterly to reset for the next quarter and realign with my one year goals.
I have 2 single action lists for true single item actions but neither of the things you mention are single actions. Both would be projects for me.
For example Pay electric bill has the following steps:
- Log on to DMEA site and download current electric bills. Notes have the actual web site and the location where I store the username and password
- Verify autopay is on (we’ve had problem with auto pay not working fairly often and there is no grace period with our electric coop for late payments)
- save bill into folder Utilities-DMEA (this is now being done by Hazel)
- Verify that the file is readable
See the goal is to not have to think about those rote actions at all. I can crunch tthem when my brain is fried and I have a few minutes. It’s also a backup for what I do in case I am injured, dead or otherwise unable to do that stuff. Someone will have to pick it up and do it and I want to make it as easy as possible for them.
For tags I have a lot of them. Contrary to popular belief I still think context is critical. Sure, I could do email on my phone, but I’m not efficient when doing it there because I often need more tools like other files that are not on my phone, so If I tried to process my email on my phone a lot of messages would stay there until I got back to my main computer and I’d have to redo them. So to stave off any temptation to perform that work in a place where I am not efficient I’ve set all my email to Pop and ONLY do it on my main machine.
Location is very important for me as a context. If I am in the West Pasture I sure don’t want to see things that need to be done in the Red Barn so they are separate contexts.
Applications are also a critical way to separate tasks. I work far better by doing all my LibreOffice work at one time no matter what project it’s for. So I have tags for major applications I use. I can project switch faster and more eaily than I can application switch. OTOH when I am programming I have my IDE up (Py Charm or Android Studio) and I also usually have several reference apps and my iPad with specifications and other stuff all at once. But I’m not really using those other apps they are support materials for the coding or debugging tasks.
I also like to see how my projects and actions relate to my areas of focus so I’ve added a set of tags that are for each AOF. That way I can see if I am overweighting some area and need to think about it.
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