Relation between area's of focus, goals and projects in OmniFocus?
 

I'm trying to better understand the relationship between area's of focus, goals and projects, and how to use them in Omnifocus.

Do you place your goals in OmniFocus or in a seperate file?
Do you name folders with your goals?
Do you name your folders after your area's of focus?
How do you name your projects?

Regards,

Jhn

Well, there aren't any hard and fast rules; different folks use OmniFocus in different ways. For example, I don't track high-level goals in OmniFocus; just projects. Nothing really standing in the way of doing it, but I feel like I'm pretty clear with the big-picture stuff I want to do. It's the medium and short term stuff I struggle with. :-)

In any case, I use folders as Areas of Focus. Inside those folders, I have projects that I'm working on. Personally, my project names tend to be verb- or activity- focused: "Fix Website", "Maintain Health", and so forth. (At least one customer finds it helpful to give them past-tense names like "Website is fixed", IIRC.)

I know other folks on the boards do track their big-picture goals in OmniFocus; I'll let them chime in with tips and tricks on that part...

1. I place a past-tense goal as the comment of each of my OF projects. (If you're talking about higher-level goals than that, they don't appear in my OF system.) I look at them during my weekly review. Ex.: "I planted a vegetable garden."

2/3. I name folders after my areas of focus. Ex.: "Homeowner"

4. I name projects with 1-3 word names that work as easy shorthand for Quick Entry. Keeping the names short helps me keep the tree pane of OF narrow without cutting off parts of them. Ex.: "vegetable garden"

@Brian

Thanks for your reply.

In the sense of GTD wouldn't "maintain health" be more an area of focus because there is no end to it? (Well ok, eventually there is) ;)

Jhn

[QUOTE=jhncbrwn;62785]In the sense of GTD wouldn't "maintain health" be more an area of focus because there is no end to it? (Well ok, eventually there is) ;)[/QUOTE]

Yep, one of the David Allen coaches told me exactly that in a conversation earlier this year, but for me, accepting this small degree of heresy in my workflow just works better. :-)

I use single-action lists for such perpetual projects because they don't have a well-defined outcome (at least not one I'm hoping to reach!) and I find that the tasks in such projects tend to be more independent of each other and thus less in need of sequencing. You can stuff an action group into a single-action list (even make it repeat, if needed) if you have some block of actions that do need sequencing.

In addition to OF, I have a life mind map, and a text document list of affirmations. I haven't yet developed a strict distinction between my mind map and OF, but they sort of feel like two animals, and their uses are pretty organic to me (although at least one of DA's mind maps is segmented into the horizons of focus).

I have pulled a lot out of my affirmations list, and a bit from my mind map, and put it into OF in a folder "GTD reference", organized by horizons of focus:

GTD 50,000', Purpose and core values SAL
GTD 40,000', Vision, 3-5 year goals SAL
GTD 30,000', Goals and objectives, 1-2 year goals SAL
GTD 20,000', Areas of focus and responsibility SAL

In each of those SALs, I use actions for individual entries, sometimes using groups to categorize.

10,000' and runway are my projects and actions. The fact that I'm putting non-actionable reference into OF doesn't cause me any grief.

Bob

I would also like to hear oppinions about other people that are using OF to track their goals.
Currently i have folders for 20.000, 30.000, etc. feet and inside i make "projects" as goals.

I have a special folder, with sub-folders of each level of horizon in MacJournal.

Originally I would write accordingly at each level in Mac's Pages 09 but there was no structure.

Now in OF I have a reoccurring project reminding me to visit 10k FT every week, 20K every 2 weeks, so forth...

...and i'll open up MacJournal and update each level whenever I need to.

Works great. I even have a Daily Actions folder in MacJournal that I open up every morning and write down any thoughts I may have, and jot down everything I want to accomplish that day, while looking at my available actions perspective.

Works well... my only current issue is I know MacJournal can sync with Blogger but haven't figured out how to do so yet.

Thanks for your posts. They are really very cool, very wonderful

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