The idea of using 2 different applications that necessitates doubling significant information seems…less than ideal? lol
That’s fair - and i’ve clearly come to a place where I must either make peace with OF4 or use a supporting, or possibly even a different app entirely. I’d hoped in posting this, I might see some consensus on what functionality would ideally come next as well, some thoughts and work arounds for the issues I’m wrestling with - and have gotten a bit of both I suppose so will take that to heart and figure out what works best for me. Thanks for your input and have a lovely day.
You offer an inverted premise as though it is self-evident gospel to settle a decision. Using two (or in my case three) different applications absolutely does not necessitate doubling significant information. The approach I take is a natural consequence that arises from recognizing that managing projects requires a different set of tools compared to managing tasks (and compared to managing my choices on when to do what is in front of me). I have all liberty to decide what information is handled by each tool and can deftly avoid duplications.
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JJW
If I’m just worried about what to do tomorrow, I use an index card. At the end of the day, I look at my forecast showing due items, flagged items, or any tasks tagged with the Forecast tag. I write down the 3 tasks I want to do tomorrow. I’ll number them 1 to 3 in the order I want to do them. Then I tape that index card next to my monitor.
These 3 tasks are staring at me all day tomorrow. I don’t visit OmniFocus and hide the app. This avoids me looking at other tasks that are more pleasant or easy but not necessarily the most important to work on.
There’s something about having that index card taped to my monitor. At lunch time and at the end of the day, I return to OmniFocus to mark those as complete. When I cross off those 3 tasks on my index card, I give myself permission to open OmniFocus and choose 1-2 more tasks to work on.
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Belated response, since I’ve been traveling: I use folders for what David Allen calls “areas of responsibility.” My reasons for that involve top-down organization, in a rough-and-ready fashion, but also pragmatic: by having a folder for, e.g., my personal and household responsibilities, I can use the Focus feature in OF to limit my perspectives to that folder. It can be immensely useful. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that despite the name “OmniFocus,” many users are unaware of how powerful the Focus feature can be.
I like this - but wish there was a way to push those 3 tasks to a widget on my phone or manage / see them digitally. The simpler my workflows and life is the better lol. Great idea thank you!
Perspectives and Tags are everything indeed…thank you kindly for getting back!
I think OF is great for task management, and grouping and sorting them and making them appear or dissapear, Focusing on a group etc.
Also good for routines, procedures and. Checklists that are ‘known’ and repeatable and do not need to change constantly as the tasks progress.
For ‘real’ complex projects, with a large degree of uncertainty or complexity, mixing parallel and sequential actions and with possibly subprojects and continuous change as the projects evolve, not to mention ‘agile’ projects, I agree OF is not well suited for these.
The problem for me accepting these limitations at the beginning was that OF has chosen the name ‘Project’, as a key central object and a requirement to nest any action, so I thought I could really manage ‘real’ projects.
SAL ‘projects’ is a good (though extreme) example of what OF identifies as a project, but any project manager ( as myself) would not call it a Project.
So when I went down the road to manage even simple personal projects I encountered the limitations and needs to do workarounds to do the simplest project management tasks and with time I have learned to appreciate the many advantages OF gives me to manage common tasks and routines, checklists making sure I get them our of my mind and sure that they won’t fall through the cracks.
I agree that complex projects belong elsewhere.
One could argue that to manage just tasks you don’t need such complexity and flexibility, but that is each user’s choice.
The main functionality I miss is to be able to get reports from the past to check and improve or a function to unload it to excel. I did ask several times for this but it doesn’t look it’s considered as far as I know. I think it coukd be just allowing perspectives to focus on past and future dates as a selection criteria xor perspectives, but I suppose it’s essier said than done.
With OmniFocus 4.2 (Pro), you can build custom perspectives which filter based on dates within ranges, using criteria which is evaluated relative to the current date such as “completed between last year and this year” or “completed within the past 3 months”, or based on predetermined date ranges such as “completed between 2023-01-01 and 2024-01-01”.
Is that what you’re looking for?
(It’s also always been possible to export the OmniFocus database to CSV to import into a spreadsheet, but then you had to do your own filtering within the spreadsheet.)
Yes! That’s exactly what I was looking for !
Where can I learn about CSV export?
Thanks a lot
You can learn more about exporting to CSV (and other options) in the Exporting from OmniFocus section of the OmniFocus manual.
Hope this helps!
I was able to build a complete dashboard on mine own performance with OmniFocus 4, using widget functionality with support of iOS Shortcuts and Charty.
I have made a post about this for inspiration with free downloadable shortcuts, you can view here: Dashboarding – how well are you doing? – Bert Kruisdijk
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I recognise in this threat a lot of my own “issues/ challenges” of my journey with OmniFocus.
I also started using OmniFocus some 13 years ago with implementing the GTD methodology. (V1.0). It supported my career development enormously. I even build David Allen’s GTD Killer app design with OmniFocus. However “getting stuff done” was not enough anymore.
I started in delving in the concept of value driven productivity (“getting the right stuff done”) and due to the great functionality of OmniFocus, I was able to keep OmniFocus as my central app. (V2.0)
Over the past year, I’ve been on an exciting path of evolution, refining my “management” system to embrace a role-based approach that extends to both my professional and personal spheres (V3.0). The productivity field guide of MacSparky was a great inspiration to go even further. So from “getting things done” → “getting the right stuff done” → “towards creating the best possible version of myself”. Again I was able to adapt OmniFocus setup to a role based setup, using Folders not anymore as Area of Responsibility but for all my Roles.
I have updated and explained all posts (amongst others my current OmniFocus setup) and (free) Shortcut and Omni Automation scripts, downloads for the role-based system here: https://bertkruisdijk.com/
Working at customers in Microsoft Office 365 environments with MS Teams I can even use OmniFocus as central source of managing all MS Teams and channels with MS Planner, fully automated. Which solved for me the “collaboration” issue which OmniFocus not offers (yet?). I have written a blogpost here.
What I have learned over the years is that I needed to have a clear vision on how my “management system” should work and the Apple eco environment, the great OmniFocus community (I have gotten a lot of inspiration and guidence), including OmniFocus 4, Drafts 5, iOS Shortcuts and DevonThink can be tailored to enable that vision, not GTD alone but whatever you aspire it to be. But it is a nerdy journey 😀.
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I switched from OF2 to Things because Omnifocus seemed too complex, and switched back to OF4 because Things was too limiting for me. As people say, Things is a great app, but…
The benefit for me was greater clarity about what I needed and how to get it. Reading other responses, @wilsonng’s post of 25 March is closest to my own current approach (or vice versa), even though mine is a bit different. I picked up an extra idea from there though, thanks.
I try to re-validate, hope to simplify, my own approach before changing anything in Omnifocus.
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