personal preference: smaller or larger outlines
 

Do you prefer to have several smaller outlines that are perhaps linked to a larger outline or do you prefer to have one, large, comprehensive outline. To be concrete, I'm a teacher trying to decide if it would be better to have:

1) an outline for the entire year
2) an outline for each unit
3) an outline for each day

In the past, I have tried to keep an outline for the entire year, but there are so many levels: (week, day, activity, sub activity, etc) that it gets a little unwieldy at times. However, it has the advantage of being fully searchable.

I'm curious to see how you would approach this in my situation, but I'm interested in hearing how people organize their outlines. I understand it all comes down to a personal preference, but it would be interesting to hear some approaches.

Thanks,
Steve

[QUOTE=steve;84529]1) an outline for the entire year
2) an outline for each unit
3) an outline for each day

In the past, I have tried to keep an outline for the entire year, but there are so many levels: (week, day, activity, sub activity, etc) that it gets a little unwieldy at times. However, it has the advantage of being fully searchable.[/QUOTE]

It may be that the architecture of OmniFocus (a searchable database which stores large number of outlines as 'folders' and 'projects' and 'action groups') works better for this purpose than the document-centred architecture of OmniOutliner. (On the other hand, OO is rather faster and has a lighter feel which suits rapid outlining well).

FWIW I use a combination of OF and OO for the training and university teaching components of my work - an OF 'project' for work related to each module or training engagement, which is linked to a course log (session plans + course diary) in an .oo3 file.

The .oo3 files are automatically gathered, together with the course-related PDFs etc, in a DevonThink database, which means that you can easily search across them to find files containing particular strings.

([URL="http://web.mac.com/robinfrancistrew/Site/OmniFocus_%26_DEVONthink.html"]These scripts[/URL] may give some idea of how OF, OO3 and Devonthink can work together)

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Rob,
Thanks to your scripts, I have been using Devonthink as an adjunct to OmniFocus. My current set-up is leaning toward keeping everything organized within Devonthink with daily lesson plans kept in individual outlines. It feels far less clumsy than one giant outline. Although I use OmniFocus for all of my actions, I hadn't thought of using it in the way you suggest. I'll have to give that some thought. Thanks for your abundant posts and scripting expertise!

Steve

Steve,

I used to use a single OO outline for an entire course. Lately, I use OF for tracking my prep work, OO for quickly capturing/organizing ideas, and a homegrown domain specific language for the actual course outline. The DSL file is edited in plain text, so my Mac-less colleagues can collaborate when we team teach. The other reason for the DSL is that I can generate HTML course schedules from it. (Unfortunately the DSL isn't in any condition to share currently, and is customized to our academic calendar.)