Real life use cases/workflows?
 

Having read the guide, the GTD white paper, and having a general idea of how this works, I was wondering - are there any step-by-step workflows out there so I can see how people actually use this?

For instance, something like

Beginning of day
- Open up OmniFocus. Go to forecast and check the tasks for the day.
- Assign any inbox items to projects.
- Go to projects and perform cleanup (reodering tasks/dates, putting projects on hold, etc).
- Go back to forecast and check to see that the task load is reasonable, if not move tasks to a future date or put on hold.

Getting things done
- Go to context mode and focus on the current context OR go to projects and focus on the project/folder you are currently working on. (my take is that people are primarily either project or context focused? with the exception of fairly advanced users)
- Check off items as day progresses.
- For new issues related to the current context, add them as items directly to context. Same with projects. Again, being more a project or context centric person perhaps dictates how you carry forward.
- A few times throughout the day, go back to forecast to check how day is progressing. Adjust as necessary.

End of day
- Review anything in review queue.

I bounce around all the tools constantly through the day; it kinda sounds like you're looking for an iPad-only workflow, but in case it helps...

Day starts with a little bit of organization - check my usual projects for any tasks that need extra attention, organize them, then start work.

Most work at my desk is tracked/marked completed on the Mac. The Mac is all about organizing stuff with a hardware keyboard and mouse, using the search tools to locate things buried in my database that need tweaking, and for perspective creation.

iPad is still open on my desk in forecast view pretty much all day, as I decide to shuffle tasks around in my week as needed. Date-based organization there is really nice for staving off task overload.

iPhone goes around with me everywhere for quick entry and marking stuff off quickly; iPad sometimes comes to a meeting, but iPhone is always there.

At the end of the day, iPad comes out in review mode so I can think a little more about projects and update them with fewer distractions.

I'm not sure that was what you were looking for, but hopefully it helps at least a little. :-)

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the response.

Unfortunately in my case, my iPad will have to be the main driver here. While my home is entirely Apple-centric, my day job is a dev using Microsoft products :( I can also purchase the iPhone product, but I'd prefer to master the iPad first and see if it would be helpful after that.

That's interesting, my first inclination was to leave the app in forecast mode, as it follows what I've been doing for the past couple years (mostly flat lists of daily tasks on a notepad). Then I thought it was really for quick review, as a flat list of tasks - at least if there's say 10+ of them - is somewhat counter-GTD'ish?

Interesting -- if Forecast becomes a heavy player, then more calendar integration will led to a head-on challenge to Pocket Informant HD. You can't really limit yourself to a week once you start distributing/rescheduling tasks...

[QUOTE=braver;82663]Interesting -- if Forecast becomes a heavy player, then more calendar integration will led to a head-on challenge to Pocket Informant HD. You can't really limit yourself to a week once you start distributing/rescheduling tasks...[/QUOTE]

This is indeed an interesting point!
Personally, I use Forecast a lot because my tasks are mostly planned to be done 'in a weeek's time' (I make my own planning and usually this means have a list of things that I want to do that week). However, when you're delegating, the Forecast view is perhaps too limited and a full-blown calendar integration might be more useful.
To me, Forecast is a good mode to see your own tasks, while the context view (and mostly; the perspectives view) seems to be more suitable for bigger overviews, in which the absolute time-frame is less important.
(however, Im not really delegating yet, so perhaps Im seeing this wrong) :)
Also, I like to not clutter my calendar with tasks because it takes the focus away from what my calendar tells me: my appointments.

What do other people think, is full-blown calendar integration something that people use in their daily GTD/OF-routine?

I'm not sure how other apps do it, but I can see a particular problem with using Forecast exclusively (at least to view/check off actions).

What if say the current project you're working on on Monday is due on Friday. It's a bunch of non-sequential actions. All of these are flagged for Friday yet you'll be working on them all week. You could go ahead and assign them to be due on individual days, but there really is no reason to. According to your Forecast... your whole week is clear until Friday.

I'm actually in this exact scenario right now - swatting a bunch of bugs for a feature I finished up last week. This will likely go on for another couple weeks.

Prior to OF, pen and paper, I just 'knew' I wanted to be done with the current list of bugs by a certain date. Every morning I would review the list in the bug tracker and pick a handful to complete for that day, jotting down the numbers on my notepad. And that was it. But with OF, if there's a list of bugs available, I'll put them all in at once. And at least how I did it today, won't bother to assign dates directly, just have a due date in a '<This Feature> Bugs' project.

My "forecast all day long" habit is because it's sitting on my desk in front of a big screen that's also running OmniFocus. I use that as a very nice secondary/utility view.

If I was Mac-less, the workflow would be very different - I'm certain I'd spend more time bouncing around between the different views. It's probably pretty early for folks to have well-developed iPad-only workflows, as they've only had it for a couple of days...

That said, making the iPad app strong enough was one of our goals - while we expect there are a lot of folks with Macs who will use it with that edition, we figured there were a lot of folks who either don't have one or can't use one at work.

If iPad- (or iPad & iPhone-) -only folks do find there are things they struggle with, we'd be very interested in hearing about it.

[QUOTE=brandall10;82673]What if say the current project you're working on on Monday is due on Friday. It's a bunch of non-sequential actions. All of these are flagged for Friday yet you'll be working on them all week. You could go ahead and assign them to be due on individual days, but there really is no reason to. According to your Forecast... your whole week is clear until Friday.[/QUOTE]

Not a bad point. If it would be useful to show items on all the days between their start and due dates, we can certainly consider that! Interested parties should email the [EMAIL="omnifocus-ipad@omnigroup.com"]support ninjas[/EMAIL] and let them know they'd like to see that added.

[QUOTE=Brian;82679]
If iPad- (or iPad & iPhone-) -only folks do find there are things they struggle with, we'd be very interested in hearing about it.[/QUOTE]
Those Mac-only folks can just go pound sand, right? :)

[QUOTE=Brian;82680]Not a bad point. If it would be useful to show items on all the days between their start and due dates, we can certainly consider that! Interested parties should email the [EMAIL="omnifocus-ipad@omnigroup.com"]support ninjas[/EMAIL] and let them know they'd like to see that added.[/QUOTE]

This kind of surprised me a bit too. I never thought much of it until I was showing OF on the iPad to my significant other. I have a few projects running this week with a deadline for Friday. Other daily tasks were simple little things.

So, I was showing her OF Forecast view and she gasped and pointed to Friday "Why the hell have you got 20 things to do on Friday and only 5 other things over Mon-Thurs?" she said. "Can't you spread those tasks out a bit?". I had to then explain that the 20 counter on Friday is the [B][I]DUE[/I][/B] date for tasks that I'm currently working on right now.. They are not all on Friday.. For Friday etc.

It did make me consider why these tasks don't show up on the Mon-Thurs columns! I suppose by doing it this way.. it keeps the forecast view nice and clean! I reckon it could be risky just using Forecast view like this. I have always tended to use the [B]Due views[/B] and also "Current location" view on iPhone. I like to see everything that needs to be done right now.. at this location.