Time committments by month
 

I have just started reusing Omnifocus and wondered if someone could tell me if this is possible.

I'm not interested in time estimates of short tasks, but it would be useful to give estimates for longer tasks, say more than half a day, and then give the month you hope to start/complete the task.

Then to get a view by Month that would show and calculate total major commitments for that month, or even just show the tasks and let you add up the hours yourself.

It would then be relatively easy if someone asks you do activity x that needs 5 days work and is required by 1st of December, to flick through this view and see how many days work you are already committed to in each month between now and 1st of December.

I used to do something similar on paper many years ago, and found it an effective approach to avoid promising work that I was in fact far too busy to realistically get done in time for a deadline.

An answer may well come to me as I explore Omnifocus, but I would still be grateful if someone could shortcut me to a solution, or tell me it can't be done.

Many thanks,

Graham

OmniFocus is more of a task management/GTD application than it is a wider-scale planning application.

I think OmniPlan may be a better fit for what you're looking to do.

[QUOTE=CatOne;101086]OmniFocus is more of a task management/GTD application than it is a wider-scale planning application.

I think OmniPlan may be a better fit for what you're looking to do.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, but omniplanner looks like a project management tool, I'm just looking for simple way of filtering future tasks to give me rough idea of how busy I am likely to be in any particular month.

I have actually tried project management software in the past for this, as I was already using it for managing projects, but it isn't actually much use. It is far too complicated and time consuming for personl task management.

Graham

The forecast view (which is currently iOS only) is the closest you'd have to this. But, really, throwing arbitrary dates on things to gauge how "busy" a particular month will be, months out, is not a strength of OmniFocus. Frankly, it's better for a calendar than for a task manager.

It's pretty easy to use OmniPlan to do this, though it certainly isn't the cheapest tool one could imagine for the job. If you wanted to devote roughly half your time to big tasks, you would set up an empty project plan, create a single resource (you), set the project hours to be the normal amount of time you work, and your individual resource hours to be the amount of time you want to devote to big tasks. This can vary on a day-by-day basis with no trouble.

Then, when you get big tasks on your plate, you just add a row with the task name, the number of hours of effort you expect it to take you, and if necessary, any start/finish constraints or dependencies. Level the plan, bring up the utilization view, and you can see at a glance where you have available time in your upcoming schedule. You can easily see what you would have to defer or cancel to make something fit in a given time frame.

My little example here shows me working only in the afternoons, except for the week of Sept. 5 where I work full-time, and taking the 15th and 16th off. Gray areas are non-working hours. The red blobs indicate overcommitment, so I would have to split the "proposed lengthy task" or shuffle some of the others around.

Gantt chart:
[URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/28/screenshot20110828at910.png/][IMG]http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/6674/screenshot20110828at910.png[/IMG][/URL]

Utilization diagram:
[URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/829/screenshot20110828at906.png/][IMG]http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/7027/screenshot20110828at906.png[/IMG][/URL]

[QUOTE=CatOne;101118]The forecast view (which is currently iOS only) is the closest you'd have to this. But, really, throwing arbitrary dates on things to gauge how "busy" a particular month will be, months out, is not a strength of OmniFocus. Frankly, it's better for a calendar than for a task manager.[/QUOTE]

OK, thanks again, I was hoping for a simple view (perspective) that filtered any tasks with duration over 4 hours, with start dates within a specific month, but I guess this cannot be done.

Thanks for saving me the time trying.

Graham

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;101120]It's pretty easy to use OmniPlan to do[/QUOTE]

Thanks for this, but as I said, I am familiar with Project Planing software, and it's really an overkill for what I am looking for. I am getting the feeling that a perspective filtered on month and task duration cannot be done.

So at least it has saved me time trying to work out how to do it.

Graham

RobTrew's Where in OF can do such a search, but the result will just be a set of projects containing those actions, with the matching actions selected. That probably won't be very convenient for assessing the schedule, because there will potentially be a lot of other stuff in the view. You also have to

Such a search query might look like this:

tasks where ((completed is false)) and (estimated minutes > <num>) and ((start date ≥ <dte1>) and (start date ≤ <dte2>))

and the script a) allows you to keep a library of such queries and b) prompts you for those placeholders (num, dte1, dte2).

Hmm, more work for a less accurate result, sounds great! :-)

Well, I can almost do it with a persective.

In the due date or start date, when setting up a task I can simply write in November or October or whatever to dump a task into future month. I also put the number of days estimated in the time estimate column

As I don't use the estimated time for anything else , I can filter the perspective view using the more than 1 hour option. This restricts the view to these major tasks.

And then sort by start date with no grouping.

Although not ideal, this pulls all the major tasks for any month together and I can scan down the Estimated time to add up the nuber of days work allocated for any particular month.

I would have liked it to be have been grouped with a label by month and to have had Omnifocus add up the time allocation per month for me, but as it is, it would seem to work well enough.

I can now look at this perspective, get an idea of major tasks within a month and easily move a task to different month if I realise a month is overloaded, or avoid adding any more work for that month.

So although not ideal, I am fairly pleased with this.

Thanks for everyones help.

Graham

[QUOTE=myotis;101088]Thanks, but omniplanner looks like a project management tool, I'm just looking for simple way of filtering future tasks to give me rough idea of how busy I am likely to be in any particular month.

I have actually tried project management software in the past for this, as I was already using it for managing projects, but it isn't actually much use. It is far too complicated and time consuming for personl task management.[/QUOTE]

I have to agree.

As I understand it, in GTD contexts represents resources, and OmniFocus is an excellent tool for identifying what tasks you can perform when you have access to that resource.

However, in real life resources are constrained: there are only so many waking hours in a day and equipment is rationed etc. Project management tools like OmniPlanner/MS Project claim to be good at this (I have doubts), but mortals use things called calendars.

The missing piece of the puzzle for me is a simple and intuitive way to know:

A) How many tasks I can complete (based on my task duration estimates) I can achieve with a particular level of access to a resource. And/or:
B) How much access it will take me to complete a set of tasks.

If there were a way to relate a context to a set of calendar entries representing times when that context was pertinent e.g I'm at the office from 8-6 or I have the truck on Wednesday - then I could see how a tool could tell me when a project might be complete, or that I have a problem.

I know Omni are working on integrating OmniFocus and OmniPlanner in some way and I'm very curious to see how that turns out.

However, I have a big problem with traditional project planning tools (agile vs waterfall etc). As you rightly point out - they're heinously complex, totally over the top as a personal productivity tool and in my experience often produce useless plans unless used by very gifted managers.

The dogmatic position that calendars are evil is unhelpful. Even if it's true, everyone around me forces me to commit my activities to them and share plans via them.

I personally would love a way to unify these worlds - but preferably one that doesn't have me wiring up gantt charts or fiddling with resource utilisation percentages.

I understand calendars without going on a training course.

Psidnell

I agree that todos and calendars should be combined. In the Windows world there are programs like Timematters, Achieve Planner, and a plug in for outlook that allow you to assign times to tasks or blocks of tasks, add appointments or other time constraints. The programs then semi-automatically juggle tasks to fit the available time blocks, deadlines and the times a task will take.

I used TimeMatters for years, and it works extremely well, but it requires too much on going management to get it to work properly doesn't have any mechanism to sync calendars except through Outlook,and of course is windows only.

How my paper system worked, which I was trying to emulate with OmniOutliner was based on planning a maximum of 13 days a month. I just did this as list with tuning total. The list included task longer than half a day, plus appointments, which were also almost always more than half a day.

Then depending on deadlines, I would juggle tasks between months, as new tasks were added. Moving tasks into a different month once any month had 13 days of time committed.

At the beginning of each month, I took these large chunks of work for that month only and assigned them to specific days and times. These major Tasks now became appointments with myself when I wasn't available for meetings, answering email etc.

All the minor and the must be done this month/week/day work was then managed as a normal todo list but fitted into times outside the timetables major task chunks. Which, although devised 20 years ago, was managed almost exactly as a GTD todo list, with contexts etc.

For example, I had a telephone chunk of time timetabled for an hour every afternoon, and built up a telephone calls to make list, which I worked through during that hour.

It all worked extremely well, but being paper based it involved much scoring out and rewriting. I am still looking for a computer based tool. Nothing I have tried works, all are either too simple or too complex.

Graham

I use OmniOutliner (iPad) a great deal for initial planning since I can quickly enter a great many tasks, add time estimates for each and get a nice total estimate for the whole task hierarchy - something that OmniFocus strangely doesn't do.

Once I'm happy with that I then have to paste the OmniOutliner tasks to OmniFocus (on the desktop, when I get home) to assign them to contexts and get on with them.

I'd obviously much rather use OmniFocus (iPad) the whole way for this, save myself the transfer step and be able to keep tweaking the estimates and have the project duration update itself.

No doubt there are AppleScripts that would help with this but not on the iPad, which is what I do most of my planning on at work.

[QUOTE=psidnell;101418]I use OmniOutliner (iPad)...

I'd obviously much rather use OmniFocus (iPad) the whole way for this, save myself the transfer step and be able to keep tweaking the estimates and have the project duration update itself.
[/QUOTE]

I do something similar, in that I normally try and break large tasks into half-day chunks and then those become tasks in my ToDo list. I don't have a license for Omnioutliner, but am considering it for other reasons.

Also like you, I rather like using the iPad for these sorts of things now, as its normally physiically more accessible than a computer.

Graham

[QUOTE=psidnell;101410]The dogmatic position that calendars are evil is unhelpful. Even if it's true, everyone around me forces me to commit my activities to them and share plans via them.[/QUOTE]

I understand your frustration, but I don't think anyone has asserted that calendars are evil. :-)

I [I]can[/I] see how the brevity of the initial responses could give you that impression, but I'm positive that wasn't the posters' intentions. I guarantee their thinking was that it was better to point you at a solution that existed today than it was to just say "can't do that, maybe someday". In this case, that solution involved a different product.

There is a lot of overlap between the things that OmniFocus tracks and the things that a calendar track, but the overlap isn't complete. Paraphrasing [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?p=54443&postcount=49"]this post[/URL], tracking a meeting from 3-4 PM tomorrow in OmniFocus probably isn't ideal. Tracking "I need to do my taxes between January 1st and April 15th" on your calendar also isn't ideal.

As you can see from that post, we've been thinking about what to do here for a while, and we'll continue to do so. Requests along these lines are pretty common, but they're also pretty idiosyncratic - folks' preferred methods don't line up exactly.

That makes finding the ideal solution harder, but Forecast view is one effort we're making to help folks manage this and be more productive. It's currently iOS-only, but it'll be coming to the Mac. (I don't know when it'll be ready, but it is coming.)

[QUOTE=Brian;101460]I understand your frustration, but I don't think anyone has asserted that calendars are evil. :-)
[/QUOTE]

... Then I will. :-)

Apologies, I didn't mean to suggest that was the posters view, but a "representative distillation" of comments I'd seen from GTD purists across several forums on several sites around this topic.

The thread link you posted is pretty comprehensive on calendar integration (I hadn't spotted that one- thanks).

But the other strand of this thread was on task estimation and summing effort on a project. OmniFocus (desktop) does the former but not the latter - hence our use of OmniOutliner.

Is this simply an absent feature that people don't seem to want or is it deliberately not present? Summing of times on a project makes sense, but I'm not sure what ought to happen for a context or perspective...

[QUOTE=psidnell;101470]
But the other strand of this thread was on task estimation and summing effort on a project. OmniFocus (desktop) does the former but not the latter - hence our use of OmniOutliner.

Is this simply an absent feature that people don't seem to want or is it deliberately not present? Summing of times on a project makes sense, but I'm not sure what ought to happen for a context or perspective...[/QUOTE]

See this thread for an Applescript that does it:
[url]http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=9983[/url]

I still maintain that using OmniPlan as I suggested is no more difficult or time-consuming (you're hardly using any of the features) and can easily do what Graham described of his paper system — it sounds like what I did in my example.

[QUOTE=Brian;101460]I understand your frustration, but I don't think anyone has asserted that calendars are evil. :-)
[/QUOTE]

While evil is to stong a word, there is a strong ethos in GTD that part of the task management problem has been people using Calendars to manage tasks.

As you see from my later posts, when we drifted from my original question, I think that at some stage soft landscape tasks should become hard landscape "events" or they never get done.

But I wasn't looking for calendar integration, and Omnifocus almost does what I want.

All that is missing is a mechanism to automatically display the total time commitments within each month. Then being able to drag tasks between months to better balance the task commitments with the time available.

As suggested in the thread you pointed to, which I hadn't found during a search either, I will post this suggestion to [email]omnifocus@omnigroup.com[/email] .

However, I know from years of looking for this feature that avoiding over committing seems to be something that few seem concerned about.

Maybe its my back ground in consultancy where your staff manage their own time/projects and only come to you when they don't know what to do because they suddenly realise they have so much work on that they cannot possibly meet their deadlines, that makes me so interested.

Graham

[QUOTE=psidnell;101470]But the other strand of this thread was on task estimation and summing effort on a project. OmniFocus (desktop) does the former but not the latter - hence our use of OmniOutliner.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, I don't think it was (not from my side anyway) it was summing "all" tasks more than 4 hours long due in any one month.

I agree that estimating effort on a project is also useful/important, but I see that as project management and something different from personal task management.

Graham

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;101472]See this thread for an Applescript that does it:
[url]http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=9983[/url]

I still maintain that using OmniPlan as I suggested is no more difficult or time-consuming (you're hardly using any of the features) and can easily do what Graham described of his paper system — it sounds like what I did in my example.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, I'll take a look at that script - but unfortunately I'm iPad bound most of the time.

I've currently got an evaluation license for OmniPlan, and it's certainly far far nicer than MS Project (as of a few years back when I gave up on it), and as you say - for one person most of the more complex features can be avoided.

As you might have noticed, I have no love for project planners conceptually, but if/when the promised integration between OP and OF arrives I can see that it could be a very powerful (if expensive) combination and I do intend to revisit it then.

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;101472]I still maintain that using OmniPlan as I suggested is no more difficult or time-consuming (you're hardly using any of the features) and can easily do what Graham described of his paper system — it sounds like what I did in my example.[/QUOTE]

I think we may just have to accept its too difficult and time consuming for "me". As I said I have used project planning software in the past. The key thing is that whatever else happens the tasks have to end up in my Todo list (in this case Omnifocus).

I have used MSProject and integration with Outlook, and I have used the JCVGantt Pro addin with MindManager that also integrated with Outlook. Once I started using these tools for project management, I immediately saw their potential for personal time management, but...

In both cases it required too much effort and time, up front, and to maintain, when all I need is a rough idea of whether June is going to be a busy month or slack month. The return on the time invested just wasn't worth it for me.

As I said, the Month perspective that I have now created almost does what I want and it only involves hitting a hot key.

Graham

[QUOTE=Brian;101460]... Paraphrasing [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?p=54443&postcount=49"]this post[/URL] ...[/QUOTE]

I just read that whole thread, I think it must be visible from space.

I'd love to see what Omnifocus would look like if you implemented every suggestion in that thread.

Actually, no - I wouldn't.

[QUOTE=psidnell;101470]Is this simply an absent feature that people don't seem to want or is it deliberately not present?[/QUOTE]

Requests for the feature have been filed against both the iPhone and iPad apps and they're towards the top of the most-requested lists. We're paying attention to that as we plan our future work, but I don't have any specific info on when work on the feature might happen.

And lest anyone get the wrong idea: the reason they're towards the top is because previous releases of those apps have knocked the other things that were above them off the list. :-)

[QUOTE=Brian;101530]Requests for the feature have been filed against both the iPhone and iPad apps and they're towards the top of the most-requested lists. We're paying attention to that as we plan our future work, but I don't have any specific info on when work on the feature might happen.

And lest anyone get the wrong idea: the reason they're towards the top is because previous releases of those apps have knocked the other things that were above them off the list. :-)[/QUOTE]

Now let's just get that darned split view out of the task view, and make it just a nice, scrolling page so task notes aren't a 7th class citizen. I'd give that one 10E43 votes if I could... I think I've given it 3 or 4 different support emails with screen shots already :-)

[QUOTE=myotis;101138]Well, I can almost do it with a perspective.

In the due date or start date, when setting up a task I can simply write in November or October or whatever to dump a task into future month. I also put the number of days estimated in the time estimate column
As I don't use the estimated time for anything else , I can filter the perspective view using the more than 1 hour option. This restricts the view to these major tasks. And then sort by start date with no grouping. Although not ideal, this pulls all the major tasks for any month together and I can scan down the Estimated time to add up the nuber of days work allocated for any particular month.
[/QUOTE]

Thanks for sharing. I'm in a busy spot right now, and was looking for the same sort of thing you were looking for. The closest I found was "Timeli" for iPad, which is not bad, but there's no connection between it and OF. Your hack keeps the data in OF and is easy to start/stop using. Thanks again!

[QUOTE=mcogilvie;101587]Thanks for sharing. I'm in a busy spot right now, and was looking for the same sort of thing you were looking for. The closest I found was "Timeli" for iPad, which is not bad, but there's no connection between it and OF. Your hack keeps the data in OF and is easy to start/stop using. Thanks again![/QUOTE]

There is also "Begin" on the iPad and the dev suggested to me that calendar integration was something he'd like to do (sadly missing from timeli too).

The nicest tool I've seen for calendar timelines is "Caliander" for the Mac (in the app store). It syncs with iCal so when all the OF variants support the Forecast view it'll interact at that level. I contacted that dev about an iPad version and he claimed he was working on one, but with no firm release planned.

The OF iPhone Forecast view is actually great (better than the iPad one at the moment) and desktop OF is due to get it "soon" from what I hear.

[QUOTE=psidnell;101589]
The OF iPhone Forecast view is actually great (better than the iPad one at the moment) .[/QUOTE]
Why do you think it is better than the iPad one?

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;101592]Why do you think it is better than the iPad one?[/QUOTE]

The iPad one shows a section of your days calendar with events as coloured bars, and by touching a section of it a window pops up providing the titles of any events under your finger.

The iPhone one has a similar timeline view but the day segments have also have reticles. What I really like is that the events have visible titles without the need for interaction, it's instantly clear what events you have on that day.

The above description is probably quite incomprehensible - there will be a short delay while I try and devise a way to attach screen shots from my iPad.

<Girl from Ipanema plays softly in the background>

Solution - go downstairs and turn the mac on.

... a picture paints a thousand words ...

The iPhone Forecast view was released after the iPad one and I personally think it's a considerable improvement.

I guess we agree on the differences, but award the points to the opposite competitor :-)

I like having the bar showing the "collapsed" but always visible, because I've often got more than a screen's worth of actions in the forecast view. I can always see the overview of the calendar (and because everything is sorted chronologically, it isn't a big deal that the bar potentially covers up an action or two at the bottom of the list that could otherwise have been shown, as I probably should do the stuff above it first).

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;101613]I guess we agree on the differences, but award the points to the opposite competitor :-)[/QUOTE]

[url]http://xkcd.com/386/[/url]

Clearly I need to put some more strong coffee on!

Well, in this case, neither of us is wrong, of course. For your needs, the iPhone version is better, and for mine, the iPad version is. I think we can agree that both are superior to what the Mac app offers for such functionality at the moment!

That is one of my favorite XKCD strips of all time :-)

[QUOTE=mcogilvie;101587]Thanks for sharing. I'm in a busy spot right now, and was looking for the same sort of thing you were looking for. The closest I found was "Timeli" for iPad, which is not bad, but there's no connection between it and OF. Your hack keeps the data in OF and is easy to start/stop using. Thanks again![/QUOTE]

Glad it was of some use. And thanks for the pointer to Timeli. Like you, I am trying to keep everything in one place.

Graham