So I figured out a way to “star” projects that I am focusing on today. The Problem with OmniFocus today is that if you flag the project, all of the siblings are flagged - a Big problem. So now what I do on the iOS app is press and hold and then mark the project review. And I review over the course of the day.
But what do you know, the Mac app does not have a right click Review option. I think parity in the apps is a good thing. Don’t you? Can you please add this?
Thanks!
Omni-the apps that I hate to love… :-) But I am a supporter!
That does not mark the project as needs review. I want to highlight the projects that I am focusing on today in the morning. It is always more than one. And after I complete the due task, I want to see what is next that I can start on.
I star single actions that i want to work on. But if I want to focus and work on a single project, I create a perspective for it and then “star” it in the perspectives window to make it show up in my perspectives tab.
In my workflow, I have three Big Rock projects I want to work on. My Big Rock perspective settings:
Make sure that you set the “Focus” at the bottom of the window to whichever project you want to work on.
Star the three Big Rock perspectives, Then you can see the Three Big Rock tabs in your perspective sidebar.
You can also add it to your toolbar for quick and easy access.
I always keep my three Big Rock perspectives. When I am finished with a Big Rock, I go back to the perspectives editor and change the perspective name and focus to another project.
To mark a project as ‘review today’ in OmniFocus 2 for Mac, select the project in Projects, then use the Inspector to change the Next Review date to today’s date. In fact, on the Mac, you should be able to select multiple projects and edit them as a batch. I hope this helps!
Yes, I know how to mark it as reviewed. That is not the point. I would my topic title is “more robust right click” as in this should be a right click function.
The above workflow is my initial setup to create a “Big Rock” perspective. It focuses on just one project. The setup process takes a bit of work. But afterwards, it is just a matter of changing the perspective name and the focus.
When I am done with the project, I return back to the perspective editor. Then i change perspective’s name and the focus by selecting a different project or folder. That’s all I need to do whenever I want to change projects. It becomes easy over time.
I alway have at least one Big Rock perspective in my perspectives tab. It’s always there to remind me to do something every day in that perspective. I can just change the name and the focus easily.
Look, all I am saying is that the iOS app has a feature where you press on the project and it gives you an option to mark it to need a review. It shows up in the review folder. I find that useful and I believe that the two platforms should have parity,
But this is probably a waste of time because there are probably 1,000 other items on the OmniFocus list before this, maybe big rocks, but certainly a pebble in someone’s shoes.
Thanks.
Kourosh Dini has some good strategies for dealing with this in Creating Flow with OmniFocus. Highly recommend the book as I think it speaks to some of these needs more elegantly and comprehensively than a forum post ever could. That said, the specific tactic I picked up from him that seems most appropriate for this use case is:
Create a placeholder task in a project, something like “Focus {{project name}}”. Apply a flag so it appears in your main dashboard perspective. (If you use defer/due dates to manage your workflow you could do this instead)
Bonus: make it a repeating task so you can have the satisfaction of checking it off when you’ve worked on that project for a while, even if you’ll need to return to it later
Now your dashboard perspective will include one master task that represents the whole project.
When it’s time to work on it, focus on that project and work away. There are different ways to do this but I use this script-based method on my Mac, or tap into the task’s project on iOS.
I also do this but to me, this is just a work around for the software’s functionality which flags all tasks in a project when you flag the parent. If it did not work that way, then you would only need to flag the parent and would do not have to make a placeholder tag. Can you make a feature request for “flagging parent tasks does not flag all children tasks” functionality?
By the way - what I do now is drag the project to the review button in the side panel which marks it for review. We just need the right click functionality added, like the iOS app which has it.
GS6 - I can definitely see the value of not ghost-flagging all the tasks in a project, although Kourosh’s placeholder method is a better fit for my needs because the flagged reminder task will automatically reappear when I tell it to (usually the following day). Manually flagging a project would require
Unflagging it after I no longer want to work on it in a given day, and then
Remembering to re-flag it when I next want to see it
A very valid use case - just different from mine, where I usually want to work on a specific project every day until it’s done.
