Great to meet you all! I am a new OF user transitioning from Things3 and there are a couple of mechanics I am still a bit unclear on and was wondering if anyone could help out :)
Firstly, is there any way to get things deferred to the past to show up in the past view in Forecast? and if not is there any plan to add this?
Secondly, if I defer something and then forget to do it today, will it still show up in my today view below? but it wont show up in my forecast today right?
Finally, I am trying to set up a workflow where I have:
PastDefer:
Tasks that I did not get round to yesterday or the day before etc. and I want to be aware that I forgot to do them so I can do them today.
This is how I am currently doing it and I then collapse “Available today”
Today
These are tasks due today or deferred to today and is essentially a list of tasks I want to get done today.
Is there any better way I could be doing this?
Sorry for the long and confusing questions but these are essentially my main questions after a few days on OF :D
OF and Things structure the information about your tasks differently. OF gives you much more control over when a task is ‘available’ than Things’ distinction between Someday and Anytime.
Defer dates in OF are not the same as start dates in Things: on its own a defer date controls when a task becomes available.
Hopefully you have OF 3 Pro. I suggest you look at the ‘Today tag’ feature in the Forecast view settings. You choose one of your tags, eg. ‘Today’, and the available tasks which have it will appear in today’s section of Forecast. If you set a defer date on a task and assign the ‘Today’ tag, it will pop up in the Forecast view on that date and stay there, similar to the Today view in Things. I think this solves the first few questions in your post. You could build your own perspective(s) that include tasks which have your ‘Today’ tag (eg. a ‘do next’ perspective = ‘Available’ & (‘tagged: Today’ or ‘Due soon’) ).
Yeah, there isn’t, and it’s strikes me as unlikely they’ll add it. I don’t think the intention of OF is to assign that sort of meaning to a past defer date. My recommendation is generally to treat tasks with no defer date and tasks that have a defer date in the past as equivalent.
That said, MultiDim’s Forecast Tag suggestion is a good way to mimic the way Things’ Today view works. And it looks like the two perspectives you made would work the way you expect.
Fully agree — once a task is available (ie. there is nothing preventing you from doing it, such as a defer date you chose or a previous task in a sequence), it stays available. Use a ‘Today’ tag and additional tags if necessary to establish a priority between available tasks.
Thanks guys, so essentially once a task has been deferred in the past, it will show up in my today view because it is now available but it’s more difficult to get it to show up in the past defer.
The only way I’ve managed to emulate it is the following, by collapsing some sections, it weirdly does the job:
Correct, that’s the way to look at actions that were deferred to the past, with a perspective sorted/grouped by defer date.
Tip: you can remove the ‘Is not a project or group’ filter. Action groups are actions too and can have their own defer dates, and ‘Available’ takes care of showing action groups only once their child actions have been completed/dropped. Experiment also with ‘Remaining’.
Ah I see, I actually wanted action groups to show up but what I don’t want is projects showing up in my today view, I guess since I don’t directly defer any of my projects I could do without it?
They won’t with ‘Available’ (until you have completed everything inside the project, and even then you could set the project to complete automatically).
Ah ok I see, I think maybe my issue is that I have some projects that have no tasks in them because they are just projects I haven’t fleshed out yet, I guess before I take away that is project thing I need to make sure there are actions in every project. Or is there a way to show action groups but not projects?
That’s right, you’d normally have something to do inside a project. Once you have no remaining actions, then the project itself is the final action to complete.
No, you can’t distinguish between projects and action groups in the rules. I and others would appreciate having an additional ‘Is a project’ rule for this purpose.
