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-   -   Is there a way to view only PROJECTS? (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=24512)

bazzbeat 2012-06-10 01:50 PM

Is there a way to view only PROJECTS?
 
Hello,

I am using OmniFocus to implement a hybrid of GTD and Tony Robbins' Time Of Your Life (TOYL). TOYL teaches that it is better to focus on outcomes, rather than all of the to-do's that could be associated with those outcomes.

I use OF's projects to hold my outcomes and the tasks hold all the to-do's for that outcome. For example, a simple outcome of mine is to 'improve my cardiovascular capacity'. The associated to-dos are 'biking', 'hiking', 'running', 'jump rope', etc. TOYL is flexible in that you could choose any of those specific to-dos to achieve the outcome and not be tied down to a to-do list. For instance, my first choice could be to go hiking, but if time and weather don't permit, I could go biking in my neighborhood, but if it gets too dark, I could go running on my treadmill or jump some rope in the back yard. Focusing on the outcome and not the to-do allows you to achieve outcomes and not feel bad because of incomplete to-dos glaring at you in red.

This is a super-simple example, but when you apply this to all the areas of your life and business you become more resourceful and understand that there is more than one way to get the job done.

Because of this philosophy, I am much more interested in easily being able to see which Projects (outcomes) are available, but not their associated tasks. (A TOYL top-down approach as opposed to GTD's bottom-up approach.)

I have a very complicated life. I run several businesses and have a big family. Each week I have roughly 200-300 action items that I chunk into 25-35 outcomes as opposed to making myself crazy trying to complete all of the action items.

Does anyone have a way to set up a Perspective to quickly view available Projects without their action items, or is there a keyboard shortcut to close all of the disclosure triangles so I can just see a list of Projects.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BazzBeat

whpalmer4 2012-06-10 02:47 PM

If you've clicked in the outline panel (not the sidebar), View->Collapse All (command-control-0) will close all of the disclosure triangles for you (and View->Expand All (command-control-9) will do the reverse).

I'm a little unclear on how this is going to help you, though, as it seems to me you're always going to see all of your outcomes as available. For example, with your Improve cardiovascular fitness outcome, after you go biking, that project will still be there in view. Is there some part of the scheme that you didn't describe? I guess you could set it up as a repeating project, starting again a day after completion, and you just do one of the activities, then mark the project complete, but that seems a bit clumsy. It sounds a bit like you want something OmniFocus doesn't provide: a group of actions which, when any one of them is completed, reschedules all of the actions with their next group start time. I guess another way of doing it would be if you had all of your outcomes as parallel projects or single action lists, and could sort the list of those projects in reverse order of which one had most recently had an action completed, so the outcomes where you already did something today would fall to the bottom of the list, and the outcomes still needing attention would rise to the top. Unfortunately, OmniFocus doesn't provide that, either, except possibly via some heavy-duty Applescript work.

bazzbeat 2012-06-10 03:58 PM

whpalmer4,

Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my thread!

The process you describe is basically what I do now. I have my Projects set up, and I mark them as complete when I complete some or all of the action items that give me the outcome. For the repeating ones, I manage it as you describe as well. I know it seems a bit clumsy, but OmniFocus is the only task management software out there that even lets me come close to managing my life in this way.

I have a Perspective set up that allows me to the see my available (active) Projects sorted by due date, which is cool except that I had to manually go in there and close each of the 30 disclosure triangles so I can quickly and easily scan my outcomes for the week in the main window. I'd be extremely happy if there was a way close all of these disclosure triangles in one fell swoop. You showed me how. You made my day.

By no means am I lazy, so I do not mind taking a few extra clumsy steps to make OF work for the way I think :) If OF implemented those solutions that you just proposed it definitely would make my day/week/month/year!

You gave me a great idea. I currently use single action lists to house related information, descriptions of ideas, etc that I need to have at my fingertips to remind me of the purpose or direction of a particular project or folder. I put them on hold so they do not show up under available projects.

I just might start using single action lists to house my outcomes, and use projects to house real projects. In my mind, projects are results that will take more than one 'outcome' to achieve. Totally an unintended outcome my initial post, but thanks for this 'duh' moment for me as well.

Cheers,

BazzBeat

RPMIntergration 2012-11-05 06:57 AM

Hi Bazzbeat,
How is it going for integrating RPM? I have been a long time fan of the RPM software and I have finally switched to OF so I can take advantage of the cloud. I have been through TOYL several times however I am struggling to get it set up in OF. Can you provide some screen shots on how you set yours up?

immersion 2013-02-23 01:31 PM

I'm really curious about seeing how you set it up in Omnifocus. I'm rather new to the system, and I'm also running several businesses like you do.

Would you care to share a screenshot of how it looks like? I'd love to get a visual overview to implement in my own system.


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