Use of Perspectives
 

Hi. Once I go to a "perspective" and reviews what I want to do next, how can I go back to the previous view I had? Do I have to manually change things? The only other way I saw was to use the "Perspective Menu" and select "All Items." However, using the menus seems too cumbersome. Is there a shorter way?

Thanks.
Leila

a little more info
 

I wonder if I'm thinking of "perspectives" correctly? I had been thinking of perspectives as a way to attack the list of to-do items more effectively. Then I just read a blog of a person who said that his "default project view" is his planning perspective. (He happens to sort things in the planning mode by their project review date to make sure he reviews projects when he should.)

Anyway, I thought his idea would be very useful for me. However, I'm not sure how to make sorting by "review date" the default way to be in planning mode (or project mode).

Have I overlooked the obvious?

I guess I don't quite get if there is a "regular view" and then we have to manually switch to "perspectives" -or- do we make the perspective our default views and switch to different perspectives.

Thanks so much!
Leila

I don't think you're misinterpreting the perspectives... they are designed to help you focus on just the bit that you want to be working on at any particular time. However, when you're planning it's often useful to see everything all at once.

I've found that, for me, it's best to set your perspectives up so that they always open in a new window, then when you're done with them you just hit Command-W to close the window. I keep my base window unfiltered, then open perspectives on top of it as needed. If all else fails, Command-W until all the windows are gone, then Command-N to get back to square one.

Many power users do substantially all of their work in one perspective or more perspectives. It's just a way of saving a set of window display characteristics for easy recall later, including view bar settings, search text, columns, window size, and sidebar selection.

If you want your usual planning view to be sorted by review date, set up a window that does just that, save it as a perspective, name it Planning View or something suitable and install it in the toolbar as a button. Whenever you want to do some planning, click that button and your window is tailored to suit that task (or a fresh one made to order, depending on the setting of the "always open in new window" button when you saved the perspective). And don't be afraid to make disposable perspectives, either!