Daily Schedule?
 

I've found myself in a situation where every day I have to make a daily schedule, comprised of:
[LIST][*]hard appointments[*]time-specific actions (like "call before lunch")[*]date-specific actions and contexts ( as in "spend some time on it today")[/LIST]
I have been reduced to using OF mostly in Project Mode, building an outline for the parts on the day.

Is there a better, more efficient way to do this? (BTW, start/stop dates aren't going to help. Things can suddenly change in a moment, so I need to be able to reallocate my time rapidly. Drag/drop in the Project Mode works. Typing new start/end dates would not.)

Thanks in advance for suggestions.

My approach breaks down like this:

Hard appointments go on my calendar; I don't make every meeting I go to into an OmniFocus action.

Time-specific actions with a hard deadline go in OmniFocus with a due date/time attached. If I wanted to get something done before lunch, I'd probably enter "today, 12p" for example, so I get an alert on my phone if I haven't checked it off by then.

Items that I want to work on today and aren't naturally on my Due Soon list get added to the Flagged list. Once my must-do stuff on the DS list is taken care of, I work on the Flagged list and try to get as much done as I can.

Rereading my post, I think I was a bit too brief. My calendar tells me where I need to be at what times; OmniFocus holds a big stack of stuff I can do in between those commitments.

Within OmniFocus, I try to build in flexibility by dividing my stuff up into "I gotta do this" and "I wanna do this" lists. Former items get due times for today, latter items just get flagged, and I try not to cram unrealistic quantities of stuff onto the "gotta do" list.

[QUOTE=Brian;90100]Rereading my post, I think I was a bit too brief. My calendar tells me where I need to be at what times; OmniFocus holds a big stack of stuff I can do in between those commitments.
[/quote]
This is really GTD w/OmniFocus in a nutshell, isn't it!
[quote]
Within OmniFocus, I try to build in flexibility by dividing my stuff up into "I gotta do this" and "I wanna do this" lists. Former items get due times for today, latter items just get flagged, and I try not to cram unrealistic quantities of stuff onto the "gotta do" list.[/QUOTE]
For clarification, you don't actually make separate lists, do you? The lists are just side effects of flagging or dating the actions, I presume. The "list" of stuff "I gotta do" is just a view of the set of tasks with a due date of today, and similarly the "list" of stuff "I wanna do" is just whatever happens to be flagged and available.

Have you ever had a day where both lists were completely drained? I'm wondering what that is like, but so far it has just been a theoretical concept for me :-)

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;90103]For clarification, you don't actually make separate lists, do you? The lists are just side effects of flagging or dating the actions, I presume. The "list" of stuff "I gotta do" is just a view of the set of tasks with a due date of today, and similarly the "list" of stuff "I wanna do" is just whatever happens to be flagged and available.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, bad post construction there. They show up in separate screens in the iPhone app, which is what I was thinking of there, but I also managed to leave out the Overdue list. So it's really three lists. GO ME!

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;90103]Have you ever had a day where both lists were completely drained? I'm wondering what that is like, but so far it has just been a theoretical concept for me :-)[/QUOTE]

I find my progress towards checking *everything* off looks a lot like [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes#Achilles_and_the_tortoise"]this[/URL]. ;-)

For the original poster: have you considered using just omnioutliner? It might be quicker and easier to use if you don't really use contexts or grouping.

I'm not sure I can imagine exactly what you've been doing to make an outline of a day in OF. Do you put parts of projects into kind of a "Project Today" outline?

OF vs OO
 

[QUOTE=Lucas;90106]For the original poster: have you considered using just omnioutliner? [/QUOTE]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I use Capture a lot as well as Grouping.

[QUOTE=Brian;90099]If I wanted to get something done before lunch, I'd probably enter "today, 12p" for example, so I get an alert on my phone if I haven't checked it off by then.[/QUOTE]

That doesn't work for me because I need a method that allows me to rapidly reschedule the day when something changes. Having to adjust each due date/time by hand is way too time-consuming.

[QUOTE=popcornflix;90158]That doesn't work for me because I need a method that allows me to rapidly reschedule the day when something changes. Having to adjust each due date/time by hand is way too time-consuming.[/QUOTE]

You don't have to adjust each one individually by hand. Select all of them you want to reschedule, bring up the inspector, put in the new date/time.

[QUOTE=popcornflix;90157]Thanks for the suggestion, but I use Capture a lot as well as Grouping.[/QUOTE]

OmniOutliner does have a clipping service. It might be a good option for you, depending on how you use grouping. Just a suggestion.