I cannot entirely recall what turned me on to Omnifocus. My job involves managing several large projects and many, many, tasks. I originally tried Things 3 for sh*ts and giggles, but didn’t really get the concept of a productivity app/program. Things 3 did not have a good support system, half the time I had no idea what I was doing. Then I discovered GTD and my world changed, naturally like most, Omnifocus was recommended as a great GTD companion. So I transferred all of my info from Things 3 to Omnifocus 3 for IOS and Omnifocus 2 for Mac OS. I spent a considerable amount of time searching the web and studying ways to tailor Omnifocus efficiently and to suit my needs. Things were going so-so until about two weeks ago when I completely fell off the Omnifocus train.
I have had a lot of life changing events in the last five months from the birth of my son, to assuming more responsibility at work. Recently, I transitioned my role from a doer to an assigner/manager. Basically, I make sure my team gets the work, projects, a lot of work in the trenches. My role now is to focus on the politics with my clients and manage the more delicate aspects of my industry.
With all that said, managing my Omnifocus workflow fell by the waist side. Granted I was still reviewing the app, but looking more at reoccurring tasks, not really inputting new ones or projects. Instead, I am relying on my brain (I know, terrible) to remember everything.
My question to the community is how can I get back into the band? I want to use Omnifocus again, I want to now be responsible for remembering everything and instead dump it off in the inbox. Any pointers you can offer will help me tremendously. I should also mention that I have been dabbling in the Pomodoro method a tad bit and would like to continue partnering this methodically with GTD and Omnfocus of course.
Appreciate the help, and I appreciate you reading through my post.
Thanks for reply and information, it is really helpful and shows me that other people have the same feeling from time to time.
I have spent more time with OF and I am understanding the purpose a little better. The problem I still run into is finding the time to review my database and task lists, just trying to clean things up and make the system more fluid for me. I have learned that some things do not require being listed, for example: cleaning baby bottles daily and taking medicine.
One thing I have been really focusing on, is organizing my work, personal, and home tasks and perspectives. I am attempting to setup a perspective that will segregate weekend tasks (e.g. water plants, clean house, etc…) but I am having a difficult time trying to organize my tags. I would call it, “The Weekender” Any assistance?
Here’s an ever-growing list of tags from @timstringer that you can review.
Tags become more powerful when combine with custom perspectives.
You can add as many tags as you need. Over time, you’ll start to eliminate the tags that you don’t use or combine some together.
Use tags with custom perspectives to create some commonly viewed lists such as:
@Office - a custom perspective that shows all office related tasks @Errands - a custom perspective that shows errands as well as Leaving the House or Leaving the Office. @Mac - look at all computer related tasks. Combine with other tags such as Urgent or Volunteer work.
You will find your own commonly used perspectives. I’ve added many custom perspectives that I’ve found through various blog sites or this forum. I eventually eliminated the ones I rarely use and stuck to the most commonly visited custom perspectives.
You can find some interesting task management strategies on a recent podcast here:
Many of us have fallen off and gotten back on the bandwagon multiple times. You’ll eventually identify various routines and checklists that you need to keep up with. Then you’ll find a way to keep track of those Big Rock projects (your own or as assigned to you by someone else).
Thanks for the great suggestions. I spent some time this evening focusing on OF and my organizational patterns. Ended up cleaning up some useless tasks, ones that I really do not need to be reminded to do anymore and focused on creating perspectives that I can refer specifically to at work, home and personal errands. Never realized that organization oneself is really a time consuming and at times frustrating task. Understanding that I cannot accomplish everything is very hard to swallow, when years ago this was possible. Granted I have no where near the amount of responsibility that I have now to my company and family.
