OmniFocus Priorities Approaches

OmniFocus
1

Hello All, Looking for any input regarding what others are doing with respect to managing priorities.

I’m trying to incorporate a prioritization system into my OmniFocus workflows. Historically I’ve used a typical 5 scale (MIP, top, high, medium, low). I seem to most frequently use the top 3 and the rest on rare occasion. I like the idea of using a “priority matrix” where I indicate the impact (high, medium, low) and the urgency (high, medium, low). Although this is a bit more labor intensive (i.e. having to add an impact and an urgency instead of just a generic priority) I like the idea of thinking about the impact and urgency distinctly and having priorities present themselves as a result. In a sea of responsibilities, I hope that this can help ensure that I’m spending my time on the most important things. Understanding that impact and urgency are largely subjective and dependent on perspectives, etc., defining and refining these will be an ongoing process. Here’s how I’m trying to implement it…

priority
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Tags
I start by using tags which I have organized in the hierarchy below. For each item that I want to prioritize (task, action group, project) I give one impact tag (high, medium or low) and one urgency tag (high, medium, or low).

  • priority matrix
    • impact
      • high
      • medium
      • low
    • urgency
      • high
      • medium
      • low

Perspectives
I create perspectives for each (P1, P2, P3, P4, P5) as follows

P1 Perspective

  • All of the following
    • Availability Remaining
    • Any of the following
      • Tagged with all of
        • impact high
        • urgency high

P2 Perspective

  • All of the following
    • Availability Remaining
    • Any of the following
      • Tagged with all of
        • impact high
        • urgency medium
      • Tagged with all of
        • impact medium
        • urgency high

P3 Perspective

  • All of the following
    • Availability Remaining
    • Any of the following
      • Tagged with all of
        • impact high
        • urgency low
      • Tagged with all of
        • impact medium
        • urgency medium
      • Tagged with all of
        • impact low
        • urgency high

P4 Perspective

  • All of the following
    • Availability Remaining
    • Any of the following
      • Tagged with all of
        • impact medium
        • urgency low
      • Tagged with all of
        • impact low
        • urgency medium

P5 Perspective

  • All of the following
    • Availability Remaining
    • Any of the following
      • Tagged with all of
        • impact low
        • urgency low
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Would it be possible to eliminate medium? Either something is urgent or not. Or something is high priority or not.

In the same idea, either you are pregnant or not pregnant. There is no maybe.

Would simplifying and rethinking your workflow make it easier to manage?

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Urgent is “Due soon” and important is “Flagged”.

In my experience, if you feel you need more than that, you don’t have a prioritization problem, you have a complexity problem. You have too much stuff in OF so feel you need app support to slice-and-dice through 100’s of things you can’t possibly organize yourself. Remember: time spent in OmniFocus is time not spent getting important stuff done.

Importances change and urgencies change even faster. Just imagine the time and mental energy it would cost to keep those two things updated across 100’s of things every day. Time and energy you don’t have.

Simplicity wins.

Ideally, you’d spend 5 minutes in the morning on your to do list for the day, flagging things that are important, unflagging all others, then focus on flagged and due soon only.

Essentially, your 3x3 Eisenhower matrix is just another version of the 5/25 Rule:

  1. List your top 25 goals (things to do)
  2. Flag the top 5 (important and urgent, although mostly important)
  3. Do not do the other 20 (delete them or put them in a DO NOT DO list as a reminder although that creates more stuff to manage so better delete them)

Not doing stuff is your #1 productivity hack and deleting things in OF is #2.

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4

Like you, I had already tried to implement this type of classification using appropriate tags in Omnifocus. I then noticed that with this method I was wasting more time classifying, planning and estimating tasks… than completing tasks 🤪.
For example, if I have to prepare my tax return, I enter the due date of the task and the planned time of completion (e.g. as a “Next Week” or “July” day) in the task. I don’t need “Impact” or “Urgency”. One look at the task “Prepare tax return” is enough for me to know immediately that I will get into trouble with the tax office if I don’t submit it on time. I don’t need an “Urgent” tag for planning my tasks, nor an “Impact” tag. I can see at a glance what is urgent.
I only mark my tasks using a kind of ABCDE method (A things I must do, B things I should do, C are nice-to-do, D I should delegate to someone else, E I should eliminate). These tags are used exclusively for daily planning and each has a nice emoji. For me, these tags are more for structuring time, for which I drag the Omnifocus tasks into iCal. Then it is easier for me to plan in iCal.

Don’t make your planning too complicated. Really do tasks.

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I went that road some years ago and dismissed it soon.

I agree with the previous comments that this is too complex and has a lot of maintenance work. You either do one thing now or you postpone it, no matter which tags it has assigned. ‘Now’ or ‘not now’

One at a time.

Omnifocus will not tell you what you should do next, no matter how sophisticated your priority system is.

I prefer the approach where the system tells you what you have available and you decide what to do next. You need tags to get this list of options as clear as possible but I guess the built in tags and due dates etc. are enough to manage your day.

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6

This feels overly complicated. If something is urgent, it usually has a deadline. Due date works perfectly fine for that.

For things that are not urgent, you may have different priorities. I use three levels.

Things that are most important, but don’t have a hard deadline I tag with “Today”. These show up in my forecast view below the tasks that have a due date of today.

The next level are things I want to flag as important. I use the flag feature. I have several perspectives relevant to contexts/tags that let me see stuff to do by due date OR flagged. Due date is at the top and flagged below it.

All other tasks are my bottom priority. They don’t have a flag, due date, nor the “Today” tag. I really only see them when I look at a perspective or a tag for things I can do relevant to that group.

When I do my project reviews, I may add or adjust due dates, flag some tasks, or even add the Today tag. This lets me adjust priorities as needed, but without a massively over-complicated gradations.

In the OP’s matrix, there are 9 levels. How do I decide if something is level 7 or level 6?. It seems like a ton of time would be spent deciding urgency and impact for each task and then adjusting them. I’ve seen similar situations with Jira tasks using the same P1, P2, P3… mechanism. It just leads to a ton of debates on nomenclature.

KISS. Urgent tasks have a due date. The specific date defines the urgency and doesn’t ever need to be reevaluated to some arbitrary grouping like high, medium or low. If it’s 3 months from now, I’ll work on the things due this week instead. When that task is due next week, it will be more urgent than other tasks due next month. Everything else isn’t urgent and while you may flag or tag something as “important or today”, those are what you do after you’ve cleared everything actually due based on the energy you have available and the context you are in.

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The Original Poster (OP) was trying to use tags to label his high, medium, low items. Perhaps taking ideas from the above threads, it might be easier to just create perspectives.

I’ve tried using labels but have also found it cumbersome and too fragile. The OP has probably come to realize this and had to ask this question in the first post.

Here’s what I do using custom perspectives, due dates,defer dates, and flags instead of tags.

Assign due dates to tasks that are truly due. I usually like to set the OmniFocus task due date to 1 to 2 days before the actual deadline. This date is the task I want to finish it by. I personally love having 1-2 buffer days to finish a task.

Create a custom perspective called “Urgent”. This shows all Due soon tasks that are available. I can group it by projects, due date, or whatever is needed. I can sort the tasks by due date in this perspective but you can choose your own sorting method.

In my case, I have “Due Soon” to 5 days in the app settings. Any tasks that has a due date of 5 days will start to show as yellow in any OmniFocus perspective. I just have to scan for any yellow tasks to start working on it at least 5 days before the due date. If a task shows up as red (overdue), I’m late and the urgency level goes to high.

I’ll usually work from this perspective to handle any urgent tasks first. These could be labelled as not urgent by me but probably more urgent to my supervisor.

Then I can use the flag to indicate any tasks that are important. All flagged tasks will have that little orange triangle to indicate “important” status. I can visit the Flagged perspective or create a custom perspective that will show flagged tasks that are available. I’ll call this perspective “Important”. These are not urgent tasks unless it shows up as a yellow or red task. I’ll work on these tasks after I can clear out tasks in the “Urgent” perspective.

Tasks that are low in urgency will have a defer date that is set in the future and is unavailable to any perspective that only shows available tasks.

I also have a tag that is set to “on hold” called “Paused”. I assign these to any tasks that are paused indefinitely until I decide to remove the "Paused’ tag.

Anything that is unavailable (deferred to a future date) or has the “Paused” tag are not very important at the moment.

During my weekly review, I go to my Projects perspective and look at each project to check each project.I can remove any “Paused” tag or change the defer dates of any tasks as needed to elevate anything for “low importance” by flagging or finally assigning a due date.

Using a combination of flags, due dates, and defer dates feels easier for me to work with. Then combining those tags with the above custom perspectives lets me figure things out. As the due date gets closer, a task change from black text to yellow (high urgency, work on this now) to red (break the glass, finish this now!). This is all automatically handled by OmniFocus.

I can easily flag a task to make it important but not urgent. A flagged tasks become urgent and important when the Due Soon date arrives or has passed.

Let OmniFocus do the work of urgency and importance.

Doing a weekly review or visiting the Review perspective on a daily basis will allow me to check on any urgent tasks as well as elevate tasks to important with flagging.

If I really wanted to combine my flagged tasks and due tasks, I can go to the view settings of the Forecast and check on the setting for “Today includes: Flagged Items”. With this setting on, I can view all flagged tasks as well as any overdue or due soon tasks in one perspective.

I’d be careful to only flag a small number of tasks as important. Then I’ll work on any tasks that are overdue first. And then go to work on any due soon tasks next. Then work on my flagged important tasks.

This allowed me to stop using tags to indicate urgency and importance. It takes a little while to get used to this but it sure is easier.

The secret ingredient is using the review. It can be either a weekly review or the review perspective. Delete any tasks that are cluttering up OmniFocus. It may have sounded like a great idea when it was captured but realistically I will not by doing it. Or I can remove a flag to drop a task from important to not important.

HTH

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I use a similar approach: A task having a due date means it is (or will be) urgent. Being flagged means it’s important.

It’s all about consequence, a task should only be due/flagged if not doing it would have consequences.

I have this “Radar” perspective that shows me all my urgent/important tasks for the next 3 months, with things I can do now at the top.

I find this useful because it reduces the fog of unimportant random stuff but also sees anything that’s on hold or paused in case it needs attention or resuming.

I find it a good discipline to ensure that this view doesn’t have too much in it.

If there’s more than a screenful in the next week then I have too much detail captured and I can’t see the wood for the trees.

For example have “Pack for trip” as a task rather than every item in my packing list showing up.

I might be planning to do some chores on Sunday, so I’d have a single “Do Chores” task flagged and deferred until Sunday that maybe has a link to my Chores tag.

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Thank you ALL for the awesome guidance and for saving me an exorbitant amount of time going down my original rabbit hole! I’m literally taking notes on everything said and incorporating it into my workflows. I’ll come back with what I land on. Step 1 is going to be getting rid of all of my “priority matrix” tags…

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I use the Eisenhower 4 box grid on one axis is whether something is urgent, the other is whether something is important.

Urgent and Important - [Do] now
Important - [Defer] and Book time into calendar to do it
Urgent - [Delegate] to someone else to do.
None - [Drop]

I try and spend most of my time in the Important box working on things I defered as they arrived.

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