I can’t work out how to use OmniFocus to manage buying birthday gifts. I’ve seen this thread but it seems to be from before Planned dates were a thing and they’re what are confusing me a bit.
I’m leaning towards trying to ‘force’ an action to repeat with a defer/planned/due pattern that stays exactly the same even if I adjust the planned date of one instance of that task (which is likely), but that doesn’t seem to work; I think I might be just trying to solve it with what little I know of how OmniFocus works as I’m still new to the app, rather than doing it the ‘proper’ way.
Here’s an example of what I mean. Alice’s birthday is 20th February. I want to buy her gift at least five days in advance to allow for posting etc. Ten days is better, so I’m not rushing. But I don’t need to think about her birthday more than fifteen days ahead.
So that sounds like an action deferred until 5th Feb, planned for 10th Feb, due on 15th Feb. And I repeat based on Due date since that’s, um, probably the right one…? And I think this needs to be every 12 months rather than every year so I can pick the “Only on” as 15th?
My intention is to never ever adjust that deadline date (I’ll happily let it slip into “Past” on the Forecast as an urgent nudge that Alice won’t get her gift unless I get my act together ASAP). So deadline changes seem to be out of the scope of my question. I might adjust the defer date - if it’s the 7th Feb but I don’t want to think about her gift just yet, I might defer to the 9th. And that seems to work in my testing - once I complete her re-deferred task the next repeat is 5th/10th/15th.
But it doesn’t seem to work if I adjust the planned date. Let’s say it gets to the 10th, the action to buy her gift pops up in today’s Forecast, and I’m flooded with other stuff for the next couple of days. My (bad?) habitual response is to just throw it a couple of days later in the forecast, ie adjust the Planned date to 13th. But now when I complete it. her birthday task for next year is 5th/13th/20th. The Planned date has ‘crept’ to a later date.
To make it a bit (lot?) more complicated, it’s not really one action. I need to start shortlisting ideas, asking friends etc; then I need to decide on and buy something on the shortlist; once it arrives I need to wrap it and write a card; after that I need to package it for delivery; and finally I need to go out and post it. I know OmniFocus is good at handling of tasks which are dependent on each other, but that seems like a whole other layer of possible drifting repeat dates.
So I kind of have two questions:
Can I repeat actions such that their deferred/planned/due dates never change?
What’s the “OmniFocus approach” to managing the whole process of choosing / buying / sending birthday gifts? Am I looking at this completely the wrong way?
An OmniFocus way, I think, is to just set the defer and due date and repeat regularly annually based on the due date. Then, each year it becomes available, you move the planned date as suits you that year.
That makes sense to me because each year the birth date never moves and you will always want that lead time, but the gift and day of week you can take care of it will change, so you’ll want to change the planned date. Or maybe you want want any planned date one year.
For me, really, it’d be nice to have an option to clear any planned date that might exist when setting the next repetition. I don’t think there’s a way to force the planned date back to its original state on the next repetition, though.
Thanks - I think I’m not ‘fitting’ the “OmniFocus Way” because I’m relying on Planned dates to prompt me into action, which I know have not existed until very recently (which is one reason I never settled into OmniFocus when I tried it before). The idea of having just a Defer date as a tickler to make me notice it is unsettling as I worry I’ll have a great bucket of stuff in Projects that’s Available and unless I check through all of it every day I might not notice that “get a gift for Alice” has become Available. I have a strong feeling I’m not really using Defer the way that OmniFocus is designed.
All that said, I had a revelation after posting (often the way, I guess I was accidentally rubber ducking) - I have a strong suspicion that if I set the repeat based on Planned date, instead of Due date, that this will work in the way I want; I’ve already ‘promised’ myself I won’t change the Due date, and the way I use Defer dates means I can also ‘promise’ not to change those for birthdays (ie once the action becomes Available it should be up for consideration every day until it’s done, regardless of how busy I am).
So I think I’ve answered my own question; I create a “Buy Alice’s gift” action deferred until 5th Feb, planned for 10th Feb, due on 15th Feb, to repeat based on Planned date which is “Only On 10th”. And then:
If I spot it in Projects / Available and complete it on the 7th I’ll have changed no dates and it keeps the 5/10/15 dates
If I don’t spot it by the 10th it appears in today’s Forecast to nudge me into action
If I’m busy on the 10th/11th so reschedule to the 12th, it’ll appear in today’s Forecast on the 12th to nudge me again; if I complete it then, because the repeat is “Only on 10th based on Planned date” it gets new dates of 5th/10th/15th Feb next year
If I’m overwhelmed with stuff and keep changing the Planned date until it gets to the 17th, it will keep hanging around in Forecast / Past because I haven’t changed the Due date, pressuring/guilting me into getting it done as a priority, and will also appear on the 17th in Forecast / today to nudge me. And if I complete it on the 17th it will repeat next year with Planned set back to the 10th because of the “Only On…” setting.
I think I’ve got that right, if I understand the way dates work properly. If so, I’ve answered my own question!
Gosh. I would set the defer date to Feb 5, the due date to Feb 15, and flag the task. On Feb 5, the task becomes available and drops immediately into the Flagged perspective. Meaning that task is important. Eventually, it falls into my perspective of (Flagged + Due Soon). Meaning that task is now both important and urgent. The task scheduling repeats perfectly every year based on due date.
Trying to over-think how to set a “plan” date on this task as well as whether to defer it this year by a few days or next year schedule it earlier by a few days would drive me bonkers.
So, in the next cycle, Alice gets two gifts. One physical that you buy on time or before, and one to discover that you are less anxious after dropping the previous year’s convolutions on scheduling simply to buy her gift in the first place.
Heh. I like the double gift thought almost as much as just using flags. I hadn’t even considered those at all.
What you’re describing sounds like it needs a Pro version for custom perspectives, yes? Though I suspect I’ve already sold myself on upgrading to that based purely on how much effort I put into the question in the first place…
If the regular version allows you to distinguish between flagged and due soon, you could simply look manually at the due soon list for every task that is also flagged.
Eventually, custom perspectives can avoid have to work through a significant number of what would otherwise be convolutions in logic.
Here’s what I do for birthdays, has been working well for me…
I have a project called “Events” that holds all the items.
For each I create a recurring task that repeat annually on the planned date that is a month before the actual date (birthdate in this case)
So I have a task like
Fred Flinstone Birthday 11/1
this has a planned date of 10/1
When the task pops up in my Forecast, I’ll create a new task of whatever I need to do and close out the recurring task. So I might make something like
