Understanding how you use Forecasting

I’m considering buying OmniFocus, and I see a lot of value in the Forecasting part of the app because my schedule varies daily, but I still have plenty of individual tasks to focus on. The combination of being able to see my daily schedule and what is due that day seems valuable, BUT it doesn’t look like they interact from what I can tell. Is there no way to say you don’t have enough time today for what is due vs. what is scheduled? Or a way to “schedule” a task in your amongst your daily meetings?

Am I missing the point of Forecasting?

I see Forecast as a tool for daily review. It won’t give you an intraday view of your calendar and tasks woven together.

I still think it’s handy to get a view of what’s coming up, due tasks and appointments.

Here is the online manual that discusses Forecasting.

https://support.omnigroup.com/documentation/omnifocus/mac/2.4/en/forecast/#forecast

But we will all use it a little differently. There are some folks on the forum who are voting in feature requests to make Forecast more fully featured. I’ve seen some users who want to live in the Forecast perspective. I don’t know if I could do this. I think they like the idea of having the calendar visible and try to turn it into a Today perspective.

For me, it shows mostly tasks with a date - deferred or due. This gives me a forecast of what my day or upcoming days might look like. I want to get as many due items done as soon as possible. I can see past due items and due items coming up in the next few days.

This is just one of many perspectives that I will look at. Just think of it as a different lens to view your task list.

I don’t live in the forecast perspective.

For scheduling, I don’t like to schedule tasks into a time slot. I’ll typically create a 30-minute time block/appointment on my calendar and declare that slot as “do stuff now”. Hopefully I can get a 60-minute time block or 90 minute time block to work on larger projects. I might declare 9 am - 10:30 am as “work on Big Presentation for Employee Evaluation Conference”. I don’t assign or schedule events here. I’ll just work on the tasks for this particular project.

In my Forecast perspective, I’ll see 9 am - 10:30 am as blocked off for the Big Rock project. I use OmniFocus as a bucket list full of things to do. I’ll go to OmniFocus and pick the first 3-5 tasks that I want to get done. I’ll get all that done and try to choose 3-5 more tasks if there is still time remaining. I try to work in chunks. I might get all of them or I might get just some of them done. Scheduling individual tasks becomes a fruitless endeavor. If I fall behind, everything else that is scheduled gets pushed off and creates a chain reaction much like a train wreck happening right before my eyes.