Dynamic filter duration

OmniFocus
#1

Hi everyone,

I have custom perspectives set up for all of my Next Actions, all of my Computer Work (organized by Project), 5 minutes or less, and I have 3 priority levels to help me narrow down my list.

Sometimes I only have 15 minutes but I want to stay in work mode in between meetings. Is there a way to get the duration as a dynamic filter like tags are in the perspectives? This way I can go into a perspective and have the option to dynamically filter based on time? Otherwise I need to create more perspectives and that becomes messy. Requires so many of them.

#2

If memory serves this isn’t possible. Maybe there’s an Applescript way of doing it?

I’m pretty sure an earlier version of OF had on-the-fly filters, I vaguely remember being able to choose your context and other things from a drop-down at the top of the page. I would love that again.

That said, most people probably don’t need that many perspectives unless your job lets you predict how long NAs will take to almost the nearest minute. For me, I would probably only need 4 perspectives.

  • Under 15 minutes
  • 15 to 30 minutes
  • 30 - 60 minutes
  • 60 minutes+

Given that you can then filter by Tag on the fly, and also can sort them by duration, I think that would work in my case. But obviously, your job may differ and you need more increments, in which case even perspectives may not do it for you. Dynamic filtering via search would 100% be better.

#3

Thanks for the response. So those perspectives would work for me. However, I do like having different perspectives for priorities. So I have a P1, P2, and P3 perspective for work plus a couple for personal. I start in P1, work through that, move on to P2, etc. P3 is either when I get to it clearing out P1 and P2 or I have no energy in the tank as those tend to be easier things to handle.

So while creating the 4 time perspectives is easy, I lose the ability to prioritize. But might be what I have to live with.

#4

How do you mark something as being P1, P2 or P3? Is that with another tag?

#5

No, I have my Areas of Focus setup (as I am a GTD person) and I use custom perspectives to grab certain areas of focus. So for me Clients and People (my internal team) are P1 and the P1 perspective shows those items.

P2 is Business Finance and Long Term Strategy

P3 is everything else.

#6

I was more asking how you identified items for your perspectives eg do you use folders?

Was thinking about if nested tags would work eg P1: Computer, P2: Computer, which would let you filter your priorities and your contexts at once.

#7

Yes I use folders. Each Area of Focus gets its own folder.

Under the Business Folder I have Finance, HR, Clients, People, etc. Each one of them is there own.

#8

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