Tickler?
 

How do others handle tickler-type items w/ OmniFocus?

Not often, but occasionally I get an item I can't do anything with just yet but want to be reminded of it at a later point. I don't use iCal, so that's out.

Thanks,
-Bill

This can be done in different ways.

1. Review system. If you want to reminded about something in 3 months from now you set the "next review date" to the desired date. Then after 3 months it will appear during reviews. This only works as long as you do regular reviews.

2. Pushing due dates around. If you set the start and end date to the same future date, the item will popup and turn red when that date arrives. Unfortunately you cannot set the project on hold because even if something is red and due today, if it is on-hold you won't see it. So you have to keep these projects active and fiddle with the filters instead.

OF was meant to be used with method no 1 which I recommend. Method no 2 forces you to push due dates around and is not true GTD because you might set hard dates for stuff that is not "hard". Some people use it anyway because they like the fact that these items kind of popup in your face a bit more.

[QUOTE=colicoid;37038]This can be done in different ways.

1. Review system. If you want to reminded about something in 3 months from now you set the "next review date" to the desired date. Then after 3 months it will appear during reviews. This only works as long as you do regular reviews.
[/QUOTE]

OF recommends this solution, but the program unfortunately doesn't support it very well. You can only set a review date on a per-project basis, so if you have a bunch of "Waiting For" items that you stash in a single-action project, they all come up for review at the same time. Completely useless, IMHO. I'm afraid that due-dates are the only way to handle individual ticklers right now.

I've asked in other threads that OF support something on the granularity of due dates, but separate from them so we aren't forced to muddy the due-date list.

[QUOTE=colicoid;37038]This can be done in different ways.

1. Review system....

2. Pushing due dates around....[/QUOTE]

And 3. Using start dates. I find that's the most effective approach. I set a start date for when I want to be tickled, and view actions by Available in context view. The action you want tickled (or actions in a project you want tickled) don't appear until the start date arrives.

I find the review system works fine. I have a weekly review perspective: planning mode, remaining projects visible, grouped and sorted by review date, remaining actions visible. Every week I open this perspective and do a review of projects whose review is due today or overdue.

I'd echo brianogilvie's suggestion: when I want to be reminded of something in three months (and not be distracted by it until then), I set its start date to "+3m" so it will pop back up on my available list three months from now.

Or...
 

I take a slightly different approach - I've created a folder called Tickler with 12 projects each named after a month. The review date for each of these projects is set to the first working day of that month, with a 1 year period to next review. Any actions or other things that I want to be reminded of at some point in the future I just drop in the month (project) where I want it. When reviewing the month I can then move things that I really do want to deal with into the relevant projects or folders, or turn them into projects in their own right. This works for me because it feels different to the way I handle stuff that I am focussed on now - that distinction feels kind of important to me.

Brian and Ken: this is the method I use as well, but my problem is that I sync to iCal (I know the OP said he doesn't use it), and my tickler items show up as current tasks on my Palm :-( How can I fix this?

[QUOTE=Ambar;37062]Brian and Ken: this is the method I use as well, but my problem is that I sync to iCal (I know the OP said he doesn't use it), and my tickler items show up as current tasks on my Palm :-( How can I fix this?[/QUOTE]

Deferred actions are considered blocked (by their start date), so if you don't want them to show up in iCal you should make sure the "Add blocked actions to calendars" checkbox is unchecked in iCal Sync preferences.