Hey all! Brand new to OmniFocus - got pointed this way a few weeks back as a way to finally wrangle my task and project lists that were split between a bunch of apps or a written list. Loving it so far, and I have a custom perspective set up that’s really helped me keep track of everything that’s going down.
At this point, I really only have one major gripe, and that’s the “Due & Flagged” initial order setting. If it worked as advertised, it’d be flawless - instead, it prioritizes flagged items first. I realize that this is probably the intended preference, and the setting name either sounds better or is alphabetized.
While this is Still Fine™ the way it is, I’d love to have my perspective organized by items that are Due, then Flagged, and then everything else.
And what it looks like for me today (my ideal would have “Replace RO Water Filters” first, the 5 flagged items next, followed by everything else as they are):
In a perfect world, I’d love for there to be a system-wide option that lets users choose whether they want Due or Flagged to take top priority, and/or a separate order setting “Due, then Flagged” (or similar).
Or… am I just being dense here, and this is something already solved?
Consider switching the Structure to Organized and setting “Group actions by” to “Due” and “Sort actions by” to “Due & Flagged”. This way, all your due/overdue actions will have their own group(s) and be clearly differentiated from Flagged actions. You can even collapse actions that aren’t due so you can focus on time-sensitive actions.
p.s. I’ve included some sample custom perspectives on my Learn OmniFocus site. If you’re on a Mac, you can install them by clicking the Download Perspective and opening the downloaded file. As noted in the description, a few perspectives (e.g., Today) require customization to match your system.
I don’t hate this, and it’ll probably end up working for me once I get over my gripes. I just really liked having everything as one unified list, and now this breaks things into (currently) 3 lists; overdue, things for tomorrow, and everything else w/ flagged at the top.
And in fairness, this organizes my widget in the exact way I want it to be, which is the thing I’m going to be looking at 99% of the time, so I’ll def make this work.
Im with ya. And welcome to OF! It’s probably the steepest part of the learning curve: Understanding how flagged, due, deferred, on hold etc each take precedence, and how to get the limited options in perspectives to show you what you want.
When due/flagged arent the right tools for the job, I sometimes resort to using “Duration” as priority. I can assign tasks any number (like 1-5), and sort by it. That lets me save “due/flagged” for more critical “keep this at top of list”.
