I’d like to know fro which view you work. Do you work out of the contexts view, do you go into projects, forecasts? Once you’re all set up and you’ve got things in order, where (from what view) do you get your work done?
My workflow is pretty simple. I’m a teacher, so my day-to-day work is outside of OmniFocus. However I have projects and tasks for events, planning and reports. In addition to work, I keep all my life stuff in there, too, like household chores, gardening, routines and shopping (recurring groceries, especially).
The first thing I do in the morning is open the Forecast perspective. I’m strict with my start dates, setting them either in review or once they show up and I realise I can’t get to it.
Most things I preflag so that once they’re available, they’ll show up in my Today/Dashboard/Active perspective (it shows available, due soon or flagged actions). If something is in my Forecast, unflagged, that I need to do today, I flag it. This Today perspective shows up in my phone and Mac’s Today view.
I keep another perspective that I check regularly that shows all available tasks, in case I’ve unflagged something and am not sure when I will do it.
It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to work with OmniFocus, but this is doing okay. I still feel some friction with the flagging, as it seems redundant, and it’s too easy to get distracted and forget things without having an alert (but I don’t want unnecessary due dates and angry red circles). Then sometimes I feel punished for deferring items given the amount of effort (taps) it takes just to defer something to tomorrow on my phone (but this is turning into another thread…)
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I think if your search for the forums for “Today” workflows, you will find a lot of interesting workflows.
A Google search for “OmniFocus workflows” also offers free examples.
Other detailed OmniFocus 2 workflows are available as products from Asian Efficiency, MacSparky, Kourosh Dini, Tim Stringer, Joe Buhlig, and others are available at a cost but are well worth the investments. Google for their names and you’ll see a wide variety.
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Thanks! I actually have and while they have been somewhat helpful, I’m looking for a fresh perspective. I find that as I learn Omnifocus, it is very powerful, but I’m still unclear on where to start. This post was helpful in terms of figuring that out.
Thanks. This was helpful. I’m a case manager with 20-30 active kids at a time and they all are at different stages of a process that must be completed within 45 days. I also have to make notes on every action every step of the way. I’ve just started using Omnifocus and since each step for each case is as important as another, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed choosing. I think for the rest of the week I’m going to hang out in contexts (and do one setting at a time) and see what that gets me. This may help because my work related contexts are database (anything I need to put until the database for any child), call/text, write/upload, etc. hope that works.
