How to deal with energy level & priority
 

I'm pleased with OmniFocus. It seems to work well, esp. for a 1.0 release, which is what I'm using. But I notice that a couple of things seem to be missing.

In GTD, we have the 4-criterial model for choosing actions in the moment:

1) Context
2) Time Available
3) Energy Level
4) Priority

OmniFocus has taken care of 1 & 2 well (setting aside the debate over multiple contexts). But to cover 3 & 4, there's only one additional tag we can set for a particular action: the FLAG state—and that's only a boolean indicator, so for those who like to arrange in high, medium, or low, they're out of luck. When I'm in a low energy state, I, for one, will not mentally process each of my next actions to see which ones are low energy... it's just too much mental energy.

So I have 2 questions:

1) Is Omni planning on implementing Energy Level and Priority tags into a future release?

2) In the mean time, what are some ideas for shoehorning these last two criteria into my OmniFocus GTD system?

I'd love to see Energy Level, at least as a binary. I'm less keen about Priority, but if it could be turned off (and adding it didn't introduce a lot of new bugs!), I'd be OK. After a lot of reflection I've come to conclude that my priorities shift too much for a priority tag to be really useful. But Energy Level--that would be nice, precisely for the reason you mention!

[QUOTE=abh19;33850]
2) In the mean time, what are some ideas for shoehorning these last two criteria into my OmniFocus GTD system?[/QUOTE]

Could you use pseudo-tags and search? add a "&le" somewhere in the action name for low-energy actions, then search for "&le" to filter out everything else?

Another vote for energy level and expanded priorities
 

I also would like an energy level capability, as well as expanded priorities.

Thanks,

Bill

Personally, I have no use for a Priority setting, and I'd probably only make limited use of an Energy Level setting.

But as long as they could be turned on/off as needed (like the Estimate, Start Date, and Due Date columns), I'd have no objection to them being added. Who knows, maybe I'd even learn to like them and use them regularly. :)

i would second the suggestion of abh19 too.

I like the idea of them being " optional " also .. there's some days I'd defintely pay attention to energy level and some days I wouldn't .. but I'd probably assign a value just so it's there when I need it .

I think you guys are taking the GTD thing down to a little too much detail. OmniFocus can't understand your energy or priority on any given moment of the day and until the build the "brain plugin" it just won't work.

I would suggest using your brain, a very effective scanner and data processor, to read through the contextual lists, and assign immediate priority based on your energy level.

That is, after all, the way I read DA to have laid it out.

BZ

[QUOTE=BwanaZulia;33892]I would suggest using your brain, a very effective scanner and data processor, to read through the contextual lists, and assign immediate priority based on your energy level.

That is, after all, the way I read DA to have laid it out.[/QUOTE]

Ha ha, that's actually exactly what I was thinking when I wrote my earlier post, but decided to try to avoid confrontation and soften my position. But since BZ is taking a firmer approach, I'll back him up.

BZ's interpretation of DA is the same thing I got from the book. The idea being that priority and energy level are nebulous, relative things and often don't work well as concrete meta data. That's been my personal experience as well. In fact, it was this focus on flexibility, along with relying on intuition to make choices, that got me hooked on GTD to begin with.

I would definitely agree with both of your opinions , I think that's exactly what David meant , BUT I for one struggle with always operating " intuitely " and sometimes get stuck ... to me it would be helpful to occasionally have the option to block from my view everything I know requires a lot of focus and not have to sort through all my " available " items all the time ..

[QUOTE=BwanaZulia;33892]OmniFocus can't understand your energy or priority on any given moment of the day[/QUOTE]

I don't think OF would need to understand my priority at any moment of the day. All it needs is a space where I can put in how much energy a particular action requires, and this I can know beforehand (eg, "Craft a response to my CEO's email" = high energy, while "reset my account password" = low energy.) Then, at any given moment, I can ask OF to show me those actions that I have labelled high energy or low energy.

I think this is not a bad idea and it can be fairly easily implemented -- just another flag-type field that takes an integer rather than a boolean.

[QUOTE=BwanaZulia;33892]I think you guys are taking the GTD thing down to a little too much detail. OmniFocus can't understand your energy or priority on any given moment of the day and until the build the "brain plugin" it just won't work.

I would suggest using your brain, a very effective scanner and data processor, to read through the contextual lists, and assign immediate priority based on your energy level.
BZ[/QUOTE]

I agree that priorities for next actions or projects can change. But next actions don't normally change their energy level requirements, if it is truly a next action. "Take out the garbage" requires the same amount of mental energy every time I do it. DA says to have a list of low energy tasks available, and in the current OF implementation, there is no such list built in.

I quote: "I recommend that you always keep an inventory of things that need to be done that require very little mental or creative horsepower." (GTD, p.194)

OF doesn't have to read your mental state to produce this list. When you are planning your project's next action(s), you'd simply specify that it's a low energy action (like you do with the "duration" field, only it'd probably be a checkbox or something). Then when you're low on energy, you simply select the Low Energy Perspective (context mode, active projects, filter by next actions, and sort or filter by energy level). So, OF doesn't have to read your mind at all; you record the information when you define your next action.

I believe that having to mentally assess the energy levels and priority for each action every time you scan your next actions list is not "thinking each thought once", and is inefficient, and it gets more inefficient the longer your next actions list gets. It's not a question of whether your mind can DO IT or not... it's a matter of whether that energy spent on re-analyzings of your next actions list can be spent in a more productive way.

For now, I'm going to try and put a tag at the end of my low energy actions, something like "%%", and create a perspective that searches for that tag.

[QUOTE=Toadling;33894]The idea being that priority and energy level are nebulous, relative things and often don't work well as concrete meta data. That's been my personal experience as well.[/QUOTE]

Interesting--I agree that priority is nebulous. But categorizing the energy level a task requires (especially if it's a binary choice) seems less nebulous to me. "Purge outdated files" is clearly low-energy to me, whereas "Review article manuscript" is high-energy. I'd undoubtedly have edge categories. Maybe the category should be not so much energy level as "requires brain: yes or no."

The other principal in GTD is that capture should be easy and inviting. Sure, OG could include priority, energy level, tags, time of day, happiness factor and all the rest, but when you are adding in your tasks, that is a lot to figure out.

DA makes it pretty clear that energy and priority and not capturable items, but more internal gauges of which of items in your contextual view you should do.

OmniFocus should remain powerful, but easy. Simple, but sticking to the main concepts of GTD.

BZ

[QUOTE=BwanaZulia;33976]The other principal in GTD is that capture should be easy and inviting. Sure, OG could include priority, energy level, tags, time of day, happiness factor and all the rest, but when you are adding in your tasks, that is a lot to figure out.

DA makes it pretty clear that energy and priority and not capturable items, but more internal gauges of which of items in your contextual view you should do.

OmniFocus should remain powerful, but easy. Simple, but sticking to the main concepts of GTD.

BZ[/QUOTE]

BZ,
You are right, a person's current state is not able to be captured, but the requirements of a task are, and that's the issue I'm talking about.

Also, designation of "low energy" tasks does not have to be done at capture time. It can be done during project planning or review.

As I might have mentioned earlier, DA says "I recommend that you always keep an inventory of things that need to be done that require very little mental or creative horsepower" (GTD, p. 194 in my copy). It seems to me that the application of this principle in OmniFocus would be the ability to pull up a next actions list in context mode which displays only actions requiring little mental energy. I think this is what David Allen had in mind when he made the above recommendation. If not, I welcome your ideas....

I'm certainly not saying that every action must be designated with energy level requirements, as that would add steps to the capturing process, and for the most part would be unnecessary. I only need to designate low energy tasks so I can isolate these in an actions list. Everything that is not on that low actions list is an action that requires a moderate degree of alertness or greater. Now, some might want to specify high energy as well as low energy, but I haven't gotten to that point yet.

Since I'm not using the flag for anything else, my current solution is to flag low energy tasks. I have a list of a dozen or so next actions in a "Low Energy" perspective that displays them and only them in context mode.

So, for the people who aren't using the flag for anything else, there's the solution. If they are using the flag for priority, then it looks like manually adding a text symbol tag to the action is the solution. By the way, flag states and search text are both preserved in a perspective.

The flag is preferable because it can be added to multiple entries at once, and it can be done very quickly (and can be put in the toolbar for easy access).

If you have your contexts setup right, it really shouldn't be necessary to set a Duration value to determine you next available action. But I do exactly that as I use a custom perspective to filter for tasks fitting my available time.

I set Duration religiously as custom time available perspectives allow me to defer further refinements to my use of contexts - refinements that I doubt would yield any significant productivity improvement.

Energy and creativity are even more "out there" from the core of a properly implemented GTD system (and priority even further out there still). I question the return on capturing and estimating "required" energy levels for tasks. I think that energy (and creativity) level requirements are more malleable than priority even. I will estimate that a task requires little energy/creativity when I'm in a highly productive mode, but my estimate of the same task will be completely different when I'm beat down at the end of the day.

Even if Omni adds another flag field to OF, some would argue that we are really "only" talking about adding another field; and they will go on to point out that there are multiple enegry levels so the field should be a two character alphanumeric since they can disntinguish between that many energy levels. Sorry for the hyperbole, but you get the point.

Then the creativity crowd would ask why they are being discriminated against. Where is their field?

Then we are back to the Franklin-Covey crowd demanding two fields for setting priority.

Where does it end? I don't know. I am fairly certain that there is a finite number of fields beyond which the interface bogs down.

Oh! And my point about the subjective nature of energy/creativity levels? The same point can be made about Duration as well. Available energy and creativity levels can drastically alter task duration in some instances.

Therefore, I am very aware that it is hypocritical of me to suggest that Duration (which is dear to me) is any more worthy of inclusion in OF than is energy level. It is very easy, perhaps too easy, for me to say: "No. Now that I have a field that I need, we shouldn't add any more fields since that would needlessly complicate matters."

[QUOTE=abh19;34062]
You are right, a person's current state is not able to be captured, but the requirements of a task are, and that's the issue I'm talking about.

Also, designation of "low energy" tasks does not have to be done at capture time. It can be done during project planning or review.

As I might have mentioned earlier, DA says "I recommend that you always keep an inventory of things that need to be done that require very little mental or creative horsepower" (GTD, p. 194 in my copy). It seems to me that the application of this principle in OmniFocus would be the ability to pull up a next actions list in context mode which displays only actions requiring little mental energy. I think this is what David Allen had in mind when he made the above recommendation. If not, I welcome your ideas....

[/QUOTE]

For the kind of contexts that I can or can't do when I don't have a lot of attention, I split them into normal and low-energy variants.

[QUOTE=BwanaZulia;33892]I think you guys are taking the GTD thing down to a little too much detail. OmniFocus can't understand your energy or priority on any given moment of the day and until the build the "brain plugin" it just won't work.
BZ[/QUOTE]

OmniFocus also can't understand what context I'm in or how much time I have. Maybe those features shouldn't be in there either.

imho priorities should be intuitive once "stuff" has been correctly channeled through gtd. Looking for low energy or low priority tasks to much would undermine the bottom up principle, no? I know what you're looking for but for me it would mean that i haven't been able to achive the "mind like water" state. I think that once gtd works it shouldn't be daunting to look at to do lists or fearing "higher effort" actions on a huge list. Perhaps the level on energy at that state is so low that nothing should be "done". there is a filtering option that you look for in another gtd app (Things) - but i have to say it didn't work for me with that filtering - i realised that i messed up the gtd method along the way...

Just to recap my position. Priority and energy are just too in flux to capture in a program and are better suited to your current state and mind.

Priority: If you tried to capture priority on every task, project, context it would become a very complex system. If you changed the priority of one task or priority, how would that effect the other projects and tasks. If your lists are small (under 20) priority can be determined in seconds by a quick glance, much faster than capturing, plus the priority of any of those tasks could change in a second.

Energy: Energy is another amorphious thing. On Friday afternoon you might think that sending that email to your boss is a high energy task because you have low energy, but on Monday morning when you actually talked to your boss via phone or have the answer from someone else, that task is now a quick reply and low energy. In fact, if you were looking at the Low Energy list in the morning before coffee, it woudn't be there.

Again, I am not saying that energy and priority aren't important, they are, but the actual capture and manipulation of those fields is way too time consuming to make them useful for a good GTD system.

BZ

Priority Perspective
 

To assign priority to Projects you can use the Focus feature in OF combined with Perspectives. Simply select the projects you consider to be priorities by holding down the Command key and then click Focus. I do this to save a new perspective called "Priority Projects". You could potentially have several Priority Project perspectives.
I also use flags separately to concentrate on what I want to get done today. I have created a perspective, which strips out all the other info in the OF window like the toolbar, sidebar and view. It's great for ploughing through my list of priority actions for the day.

[QUOTE=sirvivian;41756]To assign priority to Projects you can use the Focus feature in OF combined with Perspectives. Simply select the projects you consider to be priorities by holding down the Command key and then click Focus. I do this to save a new perspective called "Priority Projects". You could potentially have several Priority Project perspectives..[/QUOTE]

Do you have a way to make this dynamic? IOW if you need to add a new priority or remove an existing one, do you need to rebuild a new focuslist from the library each time?

My current PIM is MORI, which allows me to create custom fields, and I have a simple one which allows me to set priorities from 1-9 and sort accordingly. this is extremely dynamic. Can I set up OF in a similar way?

peter

(getting suckered into this...)

Again, priority and energy level are just not concrete enough to capture. What might be a hard task today when you write it down (EX: Start big report @ Computer - HIGH ENERGY) might be easy to do after a day or two of thinking about it.

Same thing with priority. A priority for any task can change day to day, minute to minute. You have no idea what the future state of the project or task will be when you right it down.

BZ

[QUOTE=peterlemer;41893]
My current PIM is MORI, which allows me to create custom fields, and I have a simple one which allows me to set priorities from 1-9 and sort accordingly. this is extremely dynamic. Can I set up OF in a similar way?[/QUOTE]

A future version of OF will include custom meta-data fields that will let you do exactly that. In the interim, some people use the estimated time column as a meta-data column.

Command-Focus doesn't seem to work on single actions. This isn't the best way for me to assign priorities. Is there a workaround?

peter

Peter, I didn't make if very clear in my original post. You command-click to select multiple projects. Then, when you've chosen the projects you want to be in your Priority Perspective, you separately click "Focus" in the toolbar. If you don't have Focus in the toolbar, you can easily add it by ctrl-clicking on the toolbar and choosing "customize toobar"

BZ - I make a distinction between priority and energy level.
I'm very much an 'african time'* person - and I like to look ahead and see priorities lined up, like holes on a silly golf course.
I'm not very good with setting dates - I'm self- employed and work from home, and often find that I float into different projects as others make demands, or as I feel like it.

sirvivian - thanks for persisting :-)

How can I use your method on single-actions?

peter

Peter, as far as I know using the "Focus" option only lets you focus on individual projects or folders. So you can't choose individual tasks to include in your "priority" perspective. Alternatively, I would suggest making use of flags. And as Curt said, soon you will be able to add whatever meta data you like in a separate column.

I completely disagree that priority is too nebulous to record. While it may be the 4th factor in the GTD decision process, once you are in a context, know your time available, and know you energy level - you need to decide which of those 100 tasks that fit the current criterea to do! I might have a high energy right now and am at my computer ready to work, and have a list of 100 30 minutes tasks. How can you possibly do that without recording some sort of priority?

If priorities change over time, then reprioritize! Prioritizing is an essential part of managing your life and time. Perhaps your list is small enough that you can glance at the whole thing and pick out the top priority ones, but mine is not.

Incidentally, I just found a solution that pretty much solves this problem for me. I can tell you, priorties make a HUGE difference in the usability of OmniFocus. Look at the solution (and my longer rant) here:

[url]http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=11529[/url]

Is it too nebulous to say that getting that lump checked is a high priority item? That won't change.

Mow the lawn - medium priority. That won't change.

Read that self help book - low priority. That won't change.

If for some reason my friend tells me I just HAVE to read that self help book, I can raise the priority if I want to. But that's a decision that pretty clearly belongs in my GTD process. The whole point is to get concepts like priority all out there, on paper or in a database. Simply keeping that in your head, and having to think when you glance over that item "geez, didn't Jenny tell me to read that" defeats the whole purpose of GTD.

[QUOTE=mitchm;56319]Is it too nebulous to say that getting that lump checked is a high priority item? That won't change.
[/quote]
Agree.
[quote]
Mow the lawn - medium priority. That won't change.
[/quote]
Disagree. The longer it goes, the harder it is to cut. Many tasks are the same way -- beyond a certain point, the difficulty/cost goes up rapidly.
[quote]
Read that self help book - low priority. That won't change.
[/quote]
Again, not necessarily so. For the first two weeks of the checkout period from the library, it might be, but when it needs to go back tomorrow, it better get a boost!
[quote]
If for some reason my friend tells me I just HAVE to read that self help book, I can raise the priority if I want to. But that's a decision that pretty clearly belongs in my GTD process. The whole point is to get concepts like priority all out there, on paper or in a database. Simply keeping that in your head, and having to think when you glance over that item "geez, didn't Jenny tell me to read that" defeats the whole purpose of GTD.[/QUOTE]
I haven't read the latest David Allen book yet, but in my many readings of "Getting Things Done" I have yet to notice the presence of language telling one to make priority rankings (and update them frequently)...but if you find it to be a valuable addition to your workflow, do it!

It's perhaps non-obvious, but the order of projects in Planning Mode is effectively a way of setting priorities. In Context Mode, after sorting and grouping is applied, items appear in their order from Planning Mode. I've taken to rearranging my projects during Weekly Reviews to reflect their relative priority over the next week. This is easy to do because I try to keep a limited number (around 30) active projects and the relative priorities of those projects don't change a lot. The typical adjustment is for a long-term project to move up through the project listing over time.

I also use folders to group projects by life roles. This can get in the way of using project order for setting priority. I haven't done anything to work around that problem yet, but it hasn't bothered me much in practice.

[QUOTE=mitchm;56318]I completely disagree that priority is too nebulous to record. While it may be the 4th factor in the GTD decision process, once you are in a context, know your time available, and know you energy level - you need to decide which of those 100 tasks that fit the current criterea to do! I might have a high energy right now and am at my computer ready to work, and have a list of 100 30 minutes tasks. How can you possibly do that without recording some sort of priority?

If priorities change over time, then reprioritize! Prioritizing is an essential part of managing your life and time. Perhaps your list is small enough that you can glance at the whole thing and pick out the top priority ones, but mine is not.[/QUOTE]

It's not necessarily a question of how long or how short one's list of tasks is, but I can see that there may be a challenge in how you have defined your projects and/or the actions in your projects, or your review process in general. I'm sure that many of us may have 100 actions in various projects, or even 100 projects in one form or another (active/inactive/someday-maybe), but when looking at a context during the day, do you actually have 100 active projects/single action lists, each with a next and available action of 30 minutes?

If I did, then I'd re-evaluate my Weekly Review and Daily Review process as well as the structure of my projects and actions. I may have 100 hours of tasks that I want to move forward in some form this week, but there is no way I want to have 50 hours of actions available to me in a single context during a single day. Even if an A-B-C priority system worked for me (and it doesn't), having all those choices available wound ensure that I would never take action on the lower ranked tasks. When I work a meaningful Weekly and Daily review process, I am able to prioritize on the fly because I have already applied a filtering process during the review.

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;56324]Disagree. The longer it goes, the harder it is to cut. Many tasks are the same way -- beyond a certain point, the difficulty/cost goes up rapidly.

Again, not necessarily so. For the first two weeks of the checkout period from the library, it might be, but when it needs to go back tomorrow, it better get a boost![/QUOTE]

What I would really like to see is a priority system that scales by time. Life Balance has a great implementation of this, where you set a due date for an item, and a lead time. When you are more than three lead-times past the due date, the item does not appear on your To Do list. At two lead-times out, it is about half of its normal priority. And once you get to one lead-time out, its priority is set to maximum. That way, you can set a high priority for something like returning a library book, and its position on your To Do list will change over time as you get closer to the due date. It really is an elegant system, and I wish that OmniFocus had something similar.

[QUOTE=BwanaZulia;34596]Priority: If you tried to capture priority on every task, project, context it would become a very complex system. If you changed the priority of one task or priority, how would that effect the other projects and tasks. If your lists are small (under 20) priority can be determined in seconds by a quick glance, much faster than capturing, plus the priority of any of those tasks could change in a second.[/QUOTE]

And how many of us have small lists of items? Under twenty? Show of hands? Clearly, having a priority is important for those of us who have large lists of tasks, so we can narrow it down to the top 20 or so that we want to look at right now. And again, priority does not need to be a complex system. You lower the priority of one project or task, and it goes down on the list. What is difficult to understand about that? Make the priorities relative to parent projects or folders, and you have a detailed priority system with very little work involved to maintain it. And for people who don’t care about priority, you could just ignore the new system and everything would be the same as it is now. I still don’t understand why you are so opposed to this.

What I don't understand is why this is [I]still[/I] being debated. The Omni Group has stated multiple times that user-defined metadata columns have been planned all along. You could use them for priorities, tags, people, or whatever you want. So why do we keep rehashing this topic?

-Dennis

[QUOTE=Toadling;57651]So why do we keep rehashing this topic?[/QUOTE]

Personally, I am bringing up the topic because I would like something more than just a metadata field (unless that field lets you do calculations based on the value of other fields). I would love a priority field that scales based on the due date, or the priority of parent tasks. I could do the math myself; if you could put calculations in custom fields…ooh, I’m getting excited just thinking about it!

I believe (if I can solve it) that I will have an applescript work around for personal metadata soon. I'm using it for this very exact reason (the four important issues when choosing a task)... and I have a small standalone app (applescript) that helps you filter based on your work criteria (using the filter pane in Omnifocus). I'll post back here if I have success (so far I've been breaking the metadata that's already in notes with my scripts, so that's the stopping point currently).

The important bit for me with metadata is that it's applescriptable, and extensible in such a manner that we can leverage it for smarter task selections. Just like OmniFocus' namesake- focusing, we need a way for the computer to help us focus onto tasks that are doable in our current context of (priority/energy/time/etc.). While OmniFocus does a fab job of this for most purposes, if our lists get too long, we really need a bit more help. [ultimately long lists that are hard to parse for daily work = bane of GTD, but that's for another website / and discussion all together] So, I see metadata as one method to help us whittle down our large number of tasks.

[Perhaps we need a semi-smart AI to say: "You haven't looked at these projects in XXX days/months, put them on hold? lower priority? etc."]

Anyways, this little reply isn't too important, just wanted to let you know I know how you feel, and I may have a solution if I can get the scripts to work finally.

Cheers!
-Allen

@Allen Looking forward to your scripts!
 

Hi Allen,
Great news about the scripts you're working on.
I have long worked on ways to whittle down my long lists to make them more manageable.
I think a lot of it comes down to which actions I've made available.
But I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
Paul.

Update on custom metadata feature?
 

[QUOTE=curt.clifton;41910]A future version of OF will include custom meta-data fields that will let you do exactly that. In the interim, some people use the estimated time column as a meta-data column.[/QUOTE]

It's been over a year since this posting. Anyone aware of a planned release timeline for the custom metadata fields feature?

I would love to be able to make use of a priority field, myself, for the purpose of filtering the dozens of (mostly single-action) tasks I have in several of my contexts. Designating certain tasks as "low energy" would also be useful, as David Allen suggests (doing a few "low energy" tasks often gives me the energy to tackle bigger ones).

While I agree that priority is often a relative thing, I still find it useful to demarcate certain (usually single-action) tasks as high or medium priority (or preferably more arbitrary values like numbers, etc). I'm using flagging to designate "high priority" items now, but it's just not granular enough - I'm still seeing *way* too many items.

As for that priority changing over time, I don't think the software needs to worry about that, because as FranklinCovey teaches, there's a difference between Priority (how important it is to do something) and Urgency (how quickly you need to do something). Urgency is already taken care of by the "due date" column, which you can use for sorting/filtering, and OF does nice color highlighting for "due soon/overdue" items, so priority never needs to change based on urgency. Now, having your priorities change based on the priorities of other/new tasks... well, I suppose that can't be avoided. Projects do allow their tasks to be ordered, which is usually how I prioritize things, but it would be nice to have "buckets" to reduce the work involved in having/maintaining a specific order.

Having assignable "tags" would be another good solution to both the "low energy" and "priority" attributes, although my hunch is that custom meta-data fields might prove more useful & easier to maintain. I certainly *don't* want to litter the interface with tags as Things has done, but being able to add a couple extra "custom" columns & decide which ones to show/hide -- that would be great.

[QUOTE=eurothespian;66553]It's been over a year since this posting. Anyone aware of a planned release timeline for the custom metadata fields feature?[/QUOTE]

The last I heard, the metadata column feature was slated for OmniFocus 2.0. Of course, plans and priorities change, so who knows? :-)

-Dennis

[QUOTE=eurothespian;66553]
While I agree that priority is often a relative thing, I still find it useful to demarcate certain (usually single-action) tasks as high or medium priority (or preferably more arbitrary values like numbers, etc). I'm using flagging to designate "high priority" items now, but it's just not granular enough - I'm still seeing *way* too many items.
[/QUOTE]


I'm sure that it's suggested somewhere earlier in this thread, but do you use the duration field? I often usurp it for this purpose.

I think omnifocus don't implement GTD right with energy. Software like Things seems to do it. I apreciate omnifocus and i would like to have this funcionality soon, but if Omni is considering to offer a basic funcionality like this through a paid upgraid (2.0) , it could be the moment to reconsider better choices

There are two ways to deal with 'energy'

1. Decide [I]in advance[/I] how much energy something will take, mark it up, and then decide what to do [I]later[/I] based on your [I]previous[/I] energy level.

2. Look at a list of stuff, and see which ones you have enough energy to do [I]at that precise moment[/I].

Many people on these boards will argue that you only know how much energy you have [I]right now[/I] and that you are not able to see into the future :)

HOWEVER

I would like to see the 'duration' in OF to be a bit more specific when I search, so I can only see things which I've marked to take 5 mins, 10 mins, without seeing anything else. It's actually pretty easy to guess how long something will take. Easier than imagining how much energy you'd have left in 3.5 days anyway :)

Thanks to a tip from Malisa, I've begun using the "duration" field to capture priority for individual tasks, and I really like it! My most important tasks are marked between 1-5 minutes. Slightly less important tasks are marked as 15-30 mins. Anything marked as 1 hour or more is more important than most of my tasks, but not critical. Then I use filtering to quickly view only the most important tasks, which gives me a very clear picture of the things I would like to accomplish at any given time. This really lets me focus, while still keeping *all* my tasks quickly at hand.

Before now, I was using the duration field "properly", but I've found it *much* more useful to decide my task priorities ahead of time & decide what to do next based on those priorities, than to decide what to do based on how much time I have at any given moment. I could spend all day doing stuff that only takes 5 minutes, and I might never get the most important things done! Would be nice to be able to store/use both bits of info (OG folks: custom attributes coming anytime soon?), but if I have to choose, priority wins, hands down.

Thanks for the tip, Malisa!

[QUOTE=BevvyB;67180]There are two ways to deal with 'energy'

1. Decide [I]in advance[/I] how much energy something will take, mark it up, and then decide what to do [I]later[/I] based on your [I]previous[/I] energy level.

2. Look at a list of stuff, and see which ones you have enough energy to do [I]at that precise moment[/I].

Many people on these boards will argue that you only know how much energy you have [I]right now[/I] and that you are not able to see into the future :)[/QUOTE]

In my mind, the energy level a task "requires" has little to do with how much energy you *have* at any given moment, now or in the future. Fixing my car requires a lot of energy, at least for me. Sorting baseball cards (something I haven't done since puberty), requires very little. Yes, you can get very fine-grained about this when you add a ton of tasks, but I feel like that's missing the point.

When I'm feeling really lazy & don't want to do much, I often try to think of stuff I could do while the TV is on. Things that don't require a lot of thought/attention: do laundry, pay the bills, send Dad a birthday card, send a quick e-mail to a friend, etc. Would be great to have a list of such things made up ahead of time & retrievable at a moment's notice, because if I'm really feeling that lazy, I'm not going to want to scan through a bunch of tasks that require a lot of energy in order to find one that doesn't.

[QUOTE=BevvyB;67180]
HOWEVER

I would like to see the 'duration' in OF to be a bit more specific when I search, so I can only see things which I've marked to take 5 mins, 10 mins, without seeing anything else. It's actually pretty easy to guess how long something will take. Easier than imagining how much energy you'd have left in 3.5 days anyway :)[/QUOTE]

I'm not sure I understand... OF does have this. You can sort and/or filter by duration (aka "estimated time"), and you'll only see things that are marked with your chosen duration (or less). I guess if you want to see things that take exactly an hour, you're probably not interested in seeing the stuff that takes 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes (which could be a huge list). If that's the case, I agree with you. Would be nice to be able to modify the filter to be able to *only* see things that take "exactly" an hour vs an hour or less (both are useful in different scenarios). In my own case, if I can't filter my tasks down to a single page/screen, I often feel a bit overwhelmed & find it hard to focus/choose a task.

As a workaround, you could filter by 1 hour, then do a reverse-sort on duration, so all your 1 hour tasks show up at the top of your list. Not as great as having the "other" tasks disappear from your view (and thus, your mind), but still pretty good. Then just save a perspective to capture this view, so you can later pull it up quickly with a single click/keystroke. (I *love* perspectives!!!)

Yes, I want ONLY, not 'as well as things that take less time than that' :)

Regarding energy, I hear you. However, it's a bit of both and the system needs to be flexible enough to allow us to work with energy the way we want. Sorting through some of my clothes is low energy, but would take me about five hours, making it high energy.

There is energy you have now, and energy things take, and there is a difference in the energy some things takes depending on the state of mind you're in! Walking the dog after I've just been to the shops uses less energy [I]relatively speaking[/I] than after I've just got up and haven't had my first coffee yet.

Regardless of all that, whatever OF does about energy it should be flexible.

I would like to see energy required field. This would allow more powerful perspectives e.g. 'show me sub 5 min tasks that require low energy while I'm at work' for that one last check-off for the day before wrapping up.

[QUOTE=rhysbwaller;102622]I would like to see energy required field. This would allow more powerful perspectives e.g. 'show me sub 5 min tasks that require low energy while I'm at work' for that one last check-off for the day before wrapping up.[/QUOTE]

I think I understand where you are coming from there but I wonder if that would not lead to problems comparable to those that emerge if you do not use the due date restrictively. If I take myself as an example, I am a lawyer doing corporate/business. Often I do phone calls, meet people or dictate a document. How would I determine "low", "medium" and "high" energy? What if I have to work a lot for a week and don't get more than four hours of sleep? Does that mean I am on low energy the next days? Does that in turn mean the "medium" energy stuff falls through the cracks? That might turn out badly since usually those things that you should ideally do when in the state of what I guess you call "high" energy are the most important ones. So if I am tired due to long working hours, the important stuff stays undone?

And: how do I plan ahead for that? Is dictating a letter a medium or high energy task, given that I don't have to move but have to concentrate on every word I use? I think that might become a bit problmatic in day to day use...