I’m a fairly long-time OmniFocus user trying to use it differently than I have in the past.
Traditionally, I have used it to track mainly one-time to-do items and projects with some occasional use of recurring tasks here and there.
After reading the Checklist Manifesto, I’m interesting in using it to track more of my daily and weekly recurring tasks but struggling to find the right way to do that.
For daily checklists like “To Do After Waking Up”, I create a single-action project and I set the actions with the “Defer Another 1 day” recurrence, and that works well.
But for my weekly checklists like “To Do On Saturday”, I’ve hit a snag.
Here’s what I’d like to do:
Configure actions such that they are available starting Saturday at midnight and when I complete them, they repeat and are deferred until the following Saturday
This works well if I complete the actions on Saturday
However, if I don’t get to some of them until, say, Sunday or Monday, with the “Defer Another 1 Week” setting, they don’t become available again until the next Sunday or Monday–but I’d like them to pop up again on the next Saturday
How do I do this? Note that I do not want any of these items to be “due” as I have many of these recurring checklist items and I hate to clutter up my “due” items with these and obscure those items that reflect external commitments, etc.
I’m very new to Omnifocus, but I think if you use the ‘Repeat Every’ setting (without setting a due date) then you will achieve what you are aiming for. (I could be wrong–best to double check!)
While “Defer another 1 week” will create a new instance of the task 1 week after you complete the original task, “Repeat every 1 week, on Saturday” will always create a new instance on Saturdays.
My advice as a workaround might be to use @ediventurin’s approach, but, because you don’t want to clutter your “due” list (totally get this), make these tasks live in a unique “checklist” context, which can then be excluded from your Due perspective, or sorted so that that context’s stuff is at the bottom/out of the way.
Just a thought, but of course requires that you’re using the Pro version to control your perspectives.
@bgalbs have you tried to use ‘Repeat every 1 week, Saturday’? Important: set your start date even when trying the task 1st time. It will always create a new instance on the Next saturday.
Use Templates and a Template Script for various projects. There are a few template scripts available I like the one in the link below because of some of the advance features, like setting dates in variable format (like due +4 days, etc).
Then just create a template for a weekly basis, and off you go, click on a template and then it creates the tasks for you.
@ediventurin, brilliant! It works! The UI gets all funky and shows a due date in the “Repeat” area, but despite showing it, the action itself doesn’t have a due date. Thanks so much.
@deturbulence, thanks for the context suggestion, will try that too, see how I like it.
