First, @dmoyle108, honestly, thank you for mentioning your ADD. We share a diagnosis and I think that there’s too much stigma about such things. Impossible to change stigmas if we aren’t open to talking about them.
There’s a lot of good ideas already in this thread and Omnifocus is incredibly flexible (sometimes too flexible). If you are willing to stick with it and do some experimentation I’m sure it can work for you. It sounds to me like you’ve got a good idea of what you are going for and the beginnings of how to go about it, but can maybe place some things in different parts of OmniFocus.
Word of caution: I don’t think my setup is complex but it can be granular and sometimes (often) idiosyncratic. It’s evolved a whole lot over time – I just looked and I’ve been working with omnifocus since 2008 (and I never used a defer date until this year) – and It works incredibly well for me, but I’m pretty antithetical to (for example) @Nick and @flight16 streamlining recommendations. I try to streamline my workflow and my tools are exactly as complex as needed to support them workflow.
So here’s a good bit about my setup:
Projects
I use topics like you do, but as folders with projects in them. Almost all projects are single-action (we can talk about when I use sequential or parallel if you’d like). I use the project active/on-hold status setting a lot but equivalent to your current/blocked/next/someday contexts are in project titles.
Quick note: I use some personal specific syntax much like @DrJJWMac suggested, I’m going to type it but not review it unless someone wants me to.
My business (I call it professional) projects folder looks like this:
#professional
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#pro.active – (a sub folder)
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#pro.one-off – for all one and done tasks that aren’t client-project specific. Random examples might be: fix junk mail script, clean notebook, research calculators.
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#pro.recurring – need to be done regularly, not client stuff. Clean downloads folder or whatever.
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- any projects needed for larger, specific things (like projects for specific clients) get created here.
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#pro.hold – a project that for things that can’t be done right now for whatever reason. The status of the project is set to “On Hold”.
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#pro_someday/maybe – pretty much what it sounds like. also set to “On Hold”.
Almost all of my project folders will have a similar setup, my household projects folder looks like this:
#personal
- #personal.one-off
- #personal.recurring
- #personal.hold
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#personal_someday/maybe
I have some others (e.g, #journal, #financial) but I don’t bother with the active subfolder since personal tasks are almost always one-offs and I almost never add new projects here.
Most folders look similar. There’s an #edu folder for school. It’s got a .one-off and projects for specific classes. Doesn’t need a_someday/maybe.#photograpy has .one-off, a .wants project (for gear I’m considering) and then projects for specific photoshoots.
I don’t know how you use your Bucket (maybe like my .one-offs) but I’ve got a special #lists folder, worth talking about. It has “projects” for reading lists, movies and so on. Here are a few:
- .cook
- .hike
- .learn
- .nice-to-haves
- .read
- .shop
- .watch
- .watch w/ mom
Most lists stay set to the On-Hold status (.shop and my .christmas list are currently active).
I also have a special folder called #life, for planing and goals:
- _now
- _weekly
- _monthly
- _annualy
- _future.planning
Contexts:
My contexts are specific requirements to get something done, nothing to do with state of a task.
If I can’t do something without being in a certain place – say I read about a restaurant I want to try… and it’s in a different city. That city will be a context.
Can’t finish something until my kid brother gets back to me? He’s a context.
Need to buy milk, but I’m at the book store? Bookstore and grocery store are both contexts (and OmniFocus on my phone knows that grocery store means a nearby Publix OR “Fresh Market” OR “grocery store” and that bookstore means “Barnes and Noble”). LOVE that nearby button when I’ve got time to kill.
Contexts were set up ages ago and get reviewed once in a while but except for adding clients they almost never change. Here is a (small) sampling of my hierarchy,
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#general
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- #geographies
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- #tools
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- #people
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Finally, as with my special project folders there are 2 important special context sets worth mentioning: #headspace and _chronologies.
#headspace are sort of like moos. They mostly go along with the #lists but do show up elsewhere. Here’s a random sampling:
- _anywhere
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.code programs and scripts I want to get to, a good example of something that will show up in multiple projects
- .create
- _edu
- .learn
- -_low-energy
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_personal I have 0 issue with a context and project with the same name
- _professional
- .relax
- .sketch
- .research
Here’s how I use headspace(s):
I want to do some reading. Check the .read list, and there’s a mess of books, articles, web pages, etc. I’ve got time, but I don’t feel like reading a research paper, so I’m headed for my .relax context. Or maybe I’m just tired, so I’ll see what’s marked _low-energy across all my lists.
Then my other special set of contexts, closest I’ve got to “state based”, is #chronologies:
- _future
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_monthly another context/project name overlap
- _someday
- _whenever
- _weekend
#chronologies contexts mainly get used in the #life projects but do show up scattered in other projects as well. (If they didn’t they probably wouldn’t exist as contexts at all.)
Some Quick Other Thoughts
Look in to custom perspectives which are all sorts of handy. For example: I have a _home_office.plan perspective that shows some projects from both #professional and #personal. I’ll look at that, flag 3 or 4 tasks to work on and then go over to the _home_office.execute perspective which will show just the flagged items from just those projects by context.
I’ve personally never found a need for multiple contexts or tags, but it’s a recurring feature request which I understand is being worked on. The last details I came across were here: Feature request: Today list .
You might experiment with what I was playing with in that thread: adding whatever tags in the notes field of a task and then using the search feature and/or text filtering in a custom perspective (you’ll want the tags to use a special character or something to search on).
Sorry this got long, but hopefully there’s something you or others can use.
Keep my posted (no pun intended) and feel free to ask any questions and I’ll get to them as I can.