Showing "Available" tasks in Forecast

OmniFocus
#1

Currently, only items with a due date show up in Forecast. I’d like a way to also see available tasks that don’t have a due date.

Personally, I think it would work well to have Forecast look like:

  • Past Due
  • Today/Calendar
  • Available (optional)
  • Tomorrow/Calendar
  • Etc.

I personally think this would be a good thing to have. These Available tasks are ones that don’t necessarily need to be done by a specific date, but they still need to be seen. In this manner, they’re lower priority than “Today” tasks (thus they show up below it). However, putting them too low (or not showing them at all) makes it more likely they’ll be ignored. I think putting it after Today is a good balance.

There would need to be an option for whether or not to show this, and possibly a way to limit the number shown. People use OmniFocus differently, and while for me these “Available” tasks are the minority, others may have hundreds, so giving a little bit of well thought out flexibility seems like the right way to go here. In the View menu for Forecast, a “Show available items with no due date” seems like it would fit perfectly alongside “Show deferred items”.

#2

The forecast perspective deals with time: calendar and time-sensitive actions. Adding next actions, even optionally, would be a pretty extreme case of shoehorning in a feature.

I’m not sure I can see how having these actions (particularly if it’s an abbreviated list as you also suggested) is better than seeing them in your contexts/next actions list. That is, unless, your goal is to scheduling defer or due dates by drag actions to the forecast calendar sidebar.

#3

I wouldn’t say it’s really a “time-sensitive” view, more of an “overview.” The Forecast view is the view I keep visible most of the time to see what needs to be done next., and that includes “any time” tasks.

I do also use the sidebar calendar for informational purposes, and not having that while setting due dates is a bit of an annoyance.