For low-energy states
 

I've been using OmniFocus for months now, but there is one thing that I still don't know how to deal with in OF.

David Allen recommends "keeping an inventory of things that need to be done that require very little mental or creative horsepower."

I'd like to somehow have a perspective that I could effortlessly switch to at those low-energy times.

I've tried just switching to a perspective for actions just marked '5m', but having low-energy doesn't always mean that I just want to do quick tasks.

Also tried using @tired, but that too didn't work, I might still be @work or @home.

I'd love to find some way of doing this, especially because when I have no energy I have a tough time deciding what to do.

Thanks,
Leanda

I would have two @tired - as a subcontext of @work and @home. That way you can be @home@tired, or @work@tired.

Are you using flags for anything else? If not, you could flag your low energy actions.

Another option might be to add the word "tired" to the end of the note. Then you could search on "tired" and show those actions. (Searches can be saved in perspectives.)

Once upon a time (last May?), Omni was talking about adding arbitrary meta-data to OF. With that, you could have a meta-data field for energy level and filter on the value in that field. I'm sure arbitrary meta-data is a post 1.0 feature, but I'm looking forward to experimenting with it eventually. Other uses would be recording contacts related to an action or storing data to be used by 3rd party scripts. For example, imagine setting up actions that automatically fire off an email when completed. OmniOutliner has this kind of meta-data, both as visible columns and as hidden meta-data for use by scripts. Kinkless made significant use of this hidden meta-data.

Thanks for your ideas.

cyleigh – I hadn't thought about sub contexts, but really I'm trying to stay away from having it inside a context and would prefer a perspective. I'll have a play with that idea though. One of the problems for me is that I work from home and the work/home boundaries can be very blurred.

Curt – Unfortunately I'm using flags to pull out important actions, has to be done today tasks. Adding a descriptive word to the end of a note could also work, if I can remember to do it when I enter the task or during a review.

Thanks again for the ideas.

Leanda

Assuming manageable task lists, the recommended approach is just to scan the appropriate task list(s) for likely candidates (recall that GTD is actually designed to work low-tech).

That said, others have also observed that this dimension of the GTD methodology might benefit from a high tech solution in OF. Hopefully this is a feature that will make it into a future version of OF.

You could also try putting a special bit of text (such as "easy") in the name of the action or in the action's note. Then you could use the search field to find these low-energy tasks. And I believe the search field is now saved with a perspective.