Hi
One thing I love is the folder hierarchy, where I can show/hide all my areas of responsibility with great ease.
What is harder is to show/hide projects within folders in the same way. Nesting projects seems to mean you only see the top one in the sidebar and have to click into it to see its structure, thereby losing the big picture. Not nesting means you get a long unwieldy list of projects.
Is there a way to see nested projects? Or am i supposed to do this via perspectives (which takes the effort of setting up)?
Help either with managing OF2 or managing my own lack of focus (legendary) would be very welcome.
Luna
PS And of course there is no way to add tasks to folders as areas of responsibility, right? Except by first creating a project, even if only a dummy āsingle tasksā one. Must admit I find that a bit frustrating - but I guess it is just the way things are.
If you have anything selected in the sidebar, you can use View ā Expand All to open all of the folders. Does that make it make it more convenient?
A project inside another project is referred to as an action group, and those only live in the main outline view, not the sidebar.
Thanks very much to both responders. I must admit I would like a way of seeing a project hierarchy in the side bar, but at least it is good to confirm that this is not presently possible.
Youāre running up against the limit of OF, but that limit was (probably) set for a reason. While nesting is great, it can become excessive. And with that excess comes confusion.
Sure, if youāre a project manager working on a complex project, youāll need lots of layers because you have lots of dependencies. But thatās not OmniFocusāthatās a project management system.
Are you sure you couldnāt flatten your structure a bit, allowing you to see the big picture more easily without getting lost in the weeds?
For example, in my Work folder (top level) I have a folder for named Web Site. In there, I could have projects for redesigning the site, revising the content, and the blog. Within the blog I could have a project for redesigning the blog and another project with a list of articles, each one of which is its own project.
While that is perfectly logical and makes my organizational brain happy, itās insane. Too complex, and Iām burying important things (writing new articles for the blog).
So, instead, in the top-level Work folder I have a web site folder with two projects: redesign (which includes the blog) and revising content.
And in the top level folder I also have two projects, one for each upcoming article for the blog. Once an article is done, the project disappears (and a new one may take its place).
I donāt know if this would work for you, but I urge you to try it for a while. Iām sure it will feel weird, but consider: is your perceived lack of focus really the problem? Maybe youāre like me and using obsessive organizing to procrastinate, allowing yourself to avoid doing the scary work?
Or maybe youāre feeling overwhelmed by the quantity of work and are trying to calm yourself by giving it a deep structure? That never worked for me, btw. The only thing that helped me was to give OF enough structure so I could turn off entire āto doā listsāget them out of my face so I could only see what was achievable at the moment. (Putting projects On Hold is great for this, as is using Focus mode.)
OK, enough philosophy! Maybe OF just doesnāt give you the structure your brain needs. Thatās fine; you just might need a different tool (like OmniOutliner).
Thanks Margaret I appreciate your advice - and your taking the time to write it.
I know what you mean about spending more time categorising your projects than completing them.
And it is true that I often have trouble deciding if my frustrations with OF comes from its limitations or from my not using it as intended.
My system wasnāt quite as you suggested - I was trying to use folders for high level goals e.g. STAY FIT (to help me stay on track with the real aim of my to-do list) and then put projects inside. I just find that listing all the projects as a flat list gets unwieldy quickly (esp when following the advice to turn all big tasks into projects).
I guess the idea is to use the DEFER and other options to hide projects not currently being acted on. I am currently trying that - but must admit I find it a bit unnerving to have important things out of view. I guess I have to set up and use more perspectives (a time-consuming process in itself).
(Maybe I should add I am a self-employed person with lots of goals and projects but very few external drivers - meetings, outside tasks, etc) to give structure and due dates. So I want a task organiser that really helps me plan my work then keep on track with working my plan. Sometimes I feel OF is more geared towards executives and team workers. But I am still learning and maybe will end up loving it as much as others appear to.)
Thanks again for your time and care in replying to my earlier msg.
Helen
I, too, am a freelancer. Unlike many project management tools Iāve tried, I donāt feel OmniFocus is geared toward people who work with/in teams. It doesnāt have all the fancy bits that allow sharing and commenting, though it can help you track things that are waiting upon others. (Which is actually quite helpful as a freelancer, as Iām often waiting for clients to send me stuff and make decisions.) But thatās really neither here nor there!
My OF is not āflatā. But I donāt put many projects within projectsāprojects that belong together are in a folder. That keeps the metaphors straight; a folder is for grouping similar objects. If I have one-off items that also belong in that folder, then a project of single-action items also resides in the folder. My āCreativeā folder works like this. I have seven sequential projects in there, including three that are currently āon holdā. And I have one single-action list called, boringly āCreative listā.
This gives me enough structure so I can see all seven projects at a glance and which ones are active and which ones are not. I find that I am happiest when I have a limited number of projects to work on; 4 seems to be a good number. But I like to be able to add tasks as I think of them to the projects Iām not currently working on, so āon holdā works well for that.
I also donāt put too many projects within projects. Sometimes I need the extra structureāmostly when Iām working on a type of thing thatās new to me but is a small enough project that it doesnāt need itās own top-level standing. Or, perhaps itās a project that I plan to do in very small steps; then it can be nice to write down all the steps so they can be individually scheduled.
I do not write out all the steps for every project. I used to do this, thinking I was being a good little planner. But in reality, it was just a way to waste time. Iām experienced enough to know how to do my job, so I frequently just put down the end state. For example, āfinish first draftā. I donāt have a multi-step project: āgather notes, brainstorm, write, revise, etc.ā.
But for totally new projects, I need to do some planning. And I donāt think OF is good for this (mostly because you cannot see relationships or multiple dependencies, and thereās no good visualization of time). I tend to use paper/pencil, or make a text outline, or do a mind map (depending on the nature of the work). These notes form the game plan, and as the work develops, the actual tasks get added to OF. Iāve tried to find a tool that will work with OF for this, but, alas, there donāt seem to be any. Or, theyāre OF replacements and heavily laden with team-based features that just get in the way. Many times Iāve wished that OmniOutliner could be linked to OF so I could plan the complex projects there and have stuff automatically dumped into OF.
I agree about deferring projectsāit does seem a bit scary. But if you canāt work on it right now, even if itās important, no good can come of having it pushed in front of your face every time you look at your list. In fact, just the opposite! I think itās stress-inducing to be constantly reminded of āimportant!ā projects that, for whatever reason, cannot be acted upon.
And deferring things is very important to those of us who mostly set their own schedules. (Or, I should say, itās very important to me!) If Iāve got a bunch of boring but necessary tasks that absolutely must be done by tomorrow, but I also know there is a big, important project that has looser dates, it does me no good to be constantly reminded of the big, important project. If I can hide the big, important project, Iām forced to face the reality that I must do those required tasks before tomorrow. And if I trust the ādeferā system (and trust is the key), then OF provides a simple way to ensure that the big, important project pops back up on my radar the day after tomorrow.
I think the key thing with deferring is learning to trust the system. If you donāt trust that OF will put it back in front of your face, and if you arenāt doing regular reviews of ALL your projects, then you will constantly be wondering what youāre missing.
Thereās a big learning curve with OmniFocus. In fact, every 8 months or so, I find myself re-reading parts of the manual or other guides. Itās just too much to take in all at once, and there are so many tweaks to oneās organizing style that can be made. Some of those tweaks really allow you to get more out of OF. But I think itās impossible to do them all at once.
