I’ve taken a different method. I use OmniFocus to act as my Second Brain to store all the projects and tasks. That gets everything out of my head.
At the end of the week, I check a Due custom perspective showing all remaining due tasks.
I put my OmniFocus window on the left side of my screen and Fantastical on the right side of my screen using a Keyboard Maestro macro to automate this step. Fantastical is set to weekly view.
I drag an OmniFocus task to a day in the Fantastical window. I’ll drop that task on the day it is due. I look for any due tasks (pay a bill, turn in a project to a customer, promised someone that I would do a task by next week Wednesday) and drag-and-drop that task into the All Day section of Fantastical or into a time slot. That means I will schedule time to perform a due task at that time. If a task is due on Wednesday, I like to leave a buffer and try to complete it on Tuesday.
That allows me to schedule all the due tasks into my calendar. I reserve time to do a task at a particular time. I honor that time block the same way I honor a doctor’s appointment. If a task isn’t scheduled then it probably won’t get done.
Many of my tasks will sit in OmniFocus forever until I actually schedule time for it.
At the end of today, I’ll look at a custom perspective showing all available tasks for me to work on. They sit nice and pretty in OmniFocus waiting for me to pick one to work on. But that doesn’t motivate me.
At 4:30 pm (30 minutes away from the end of my work day at 5 pm), I’ll look through that custom perspective of available tasks and choose 1-3 tasks. I set Fantastical to the Day view and go to tomorrow’s schedule. I’ll drag and drop them into a time block in tomorrow’s schedule.
Personally, I drop one task in the morning and one task in the afternoon. The third task is dropped into the all day section. This creates an all-day event for me. if I finish the first and second task, I’ll drag the all-day event from the All-day section into a time block for me to work on.
Choosing 1-3 tasks the day before reduces decision fatigue. I don’t have to hem and haw trying to figure out what I want to do. I already picked the 3 tasks the day before.
I only pick 1-3 tasks because I know Life will throw things at me
- a walk-in customer comes in with an order or request
- my wife unexpectedly calls to tell me her car won’t start and she’s at Location X.
- my kid forgets to tell me that soccer practice was cancelled and I need to pick her up to take her home.
I make room for the things that Daily Life will throw at me by only choosing 1-3 tasks to finish in OmniFocus.
In the end, OmniFocus is my restaurant menu. I look at the menu and order a main dish, an appetizer, and maybe a dessert. I put the OmniFocus menu away and I start working on the things that are already on my calendar schedule - due tasks that I had picked the week before and tasks that I choose yesterday.
It’s the small tasks that I need to complete first to complete a project.
Another thing I do at the end of the week is to review my projects. I put almost every project on hold except for 1-3 projects I am focused on. These 1-3 projects are set to Active status. I have a custom perspective that shows any projects that are active. Then it shows remaining tasks for each project.
If I can pick at least 1 task from each project, I make incremental progress. I might choose 2 tasks from Project #1, 1 task from Project #2, and nothing from Project #3. Or 1 task from Project #1, nothing from Project #2, and 2 tasks from Project #3.
I can schedule tasks at the end of today and plop them into tomorrow’s schedule.
I ignore projects that have an “On Hold” status. At the end of the week, I can choose whether to keep working on the currently active projects or I can set one project to “On Hold” and make another project Active to take its place.
Sometimes my boss will hand me a project and I’ll have to voluntarily put a currently active project to “On Hold” to deal with the boss’ request. When I finish the boss’ request, I can bring that “On Hold” project back to active status.
In summary, I limit myself to 3 projects to go with any core work that my job description includes. At the end of the week, I schedule all due tasks into next week’s schedule and choose to activate or pause my multiple projects. At the end of the day, I’ll choose 1-3 tasks from the active projects to fit in between any appointments, meetings, and due tasks.
Use OmniFocus as your memory bank to hold all your projects and tasks Use the calendar to dictate when I should work on a task. During the day, I only look at Fantastical to see what I already chose to work on. If my day turns upside down, I can move a time block to later in the day or just move it into tomorrow’s schedule.
