Hi, I’m a OF2 noobie, and I’ve scouted around for related questions… but I’m still not ‘clear’ on this.
I’ve set up both Morning/Evening Rituals, (Single Action) but on the weekend I didn’t do many of them!!! So I suddenly had a sea of red… ‘overdue tasks’…
I tried dragging and dropping them into ‘tomorrow’ in the Forecast view, but it didn’t seem to work. I’ve read about making a ‘dropped’ context?.. But, I don’t quite understand which is the ‘best’ way to deal with tasks, that I don’t complete?..
I’ve ended up erasing both my Morning/Evening ‘Single Action’ lists, and trying to start again… again… this is probably my 3rd attempt. Each time, I discover a ‘new’ problem I didn’t know about before.
Is there a best way to deal with tasks I don’t complete?
You are in a common trap. The escape is to realize that Due means must. Morning rituals do not meet this criteria. Imagine you are in your office and the fire alarm goes off. You must leave, but you also want to take your favorite trophy with you. It happens to weigh 40 kg (not something you can just pick up and put in your pocket). The task - leave building - is due (now). The task - take trophy - is not due at all.
I suggest that you read some of the positings about differences between Due and Flagged. You would be better to Flag your list rather than make it Due. Set defer and repeat dates in a proper ways, and you will solve a big part of your problem up front.
ok, thanks. Due & Flagged… got it. I’ll hunt around for these topics as you suggest.
If I could offer perhaps a ‘lame’ defence… I followed instructions from ‘OmniFocus Premium Posts’ by Asian Efficiency. There’s some good info in there, but there’s a lot they don’t tell you also. Certainly, you’ve done a better job at explaining due and flagged to me than they did.
Also you can just mark them as done, especially if they are daily tasks, because they will appear again tomorrow!
Also be realistic how many of them do you need as tasks in OF, I tried this and realised many things are better as calendar items or not on any system as they would happen or not and it wasn’t the end of the world.
I’m very much agree with @DrJJWMac and @Macmanuk about what’s actually due and not cluttering up OF. I’ll add that I find creating start dates are a way to put things off (Merlin Mann), and creating artificial due dates means I wait to do something until the last minute. YMMV.
All that said, I think this might be what you are looking to do:
Setup your ritual task, without any due date
Change repeat from Don’t Repeat to Repeat Every 1 Week
Click M-F
Click Done
That will “complete” the task for today and set a new one with a due date tomorrow at the same time you just clicked it. Since I’m typing this on a Thursday, that means due Friday. Complete it again as a test and you’ll see the next time it will be due jumps to Monday.
Here are a couple of articles on the due date topic that you might find useful (Disclaimer: these were a just quick google and skim):
