How do you organize Projects?
 

Greetings,

I've been using OF and iOF for several months now and have not come close to tapping the real potential of these apps.

I know that part of getting better at this regards jumping into Perspectives in a big way (I don't currently use them at all) and getting more diligent about Contexts.

Beyond this however, I am VERY curious about how others organize their projects - how and how much they nest them - and whether this even matters except for weekly reviews.

Thanks in advance for sharing...


~Kidtreo

I have four main project folders: work, personal, support, and shopping. Support is for stuff like backing up computers or doing my accounting -- not really billable hours but stuff necessary for work to move forward.

Within the work folder are folders for each client, and within each client are the projects for that client.

My personal folder contains projects like "health & fitness," car maintenance, personal junk, home maintenance.

Under support, I have a project called "flashcards." Each task contains a nugget of information I am trying to memorize, such as Mac keystrokes or how many kumquats it takes to grow a pear. These are set up to flash in my "tickler" context and repeat once a week.

Among my support folders is one called "daily maintenance," which includes things like backup my iCal, synchronize my Blackberry, back up the laptop, and do Omnifocus reviews. I have a monthly maintenance project, too -- for paying bills, catching up on filing, reviewing my "someday/maybe" folders, cleaning out my "waiting for" hard copy folder, and reviewing my list of "on hold" projects.

One of the best tricks I've learned about OF is that you don't need to worry about designing a permanent hierarchy that will last forever. Just start with what seems useful and let it evolve.

[QUOTE=Jody Severson;51665]
One of the best tricks I've learned about OF is that you don't need to worry about designing a permanent hierarchy that will last forever. Just start with what seems useful and let it evolve.[/QUOTE]

Amen! And best of all, OF doesn't lock you in with any of your choices. You can try out a new idea with a subset of your projects and switch them to the old way of doing things if it doesn't pan out.

I pretty much have projects in folders under the area of my life they pertain to -- work, personal, home, etc. I do this to see if I have a "balance" of projects going. I also have folders for "someday/maybe" that I am constantly evolving. I have many mini-projects there. I add tasks as I think of them and they usually end up evolving into a real project or getting deleted in my weekly reviews as I realize I just really don't want to undertake those projects. I find my folders are constantly evolving and changing, as my focus switches. I try not to go more than two folders deep though. Others may find more "precise" organizing to be beneficial.

I agree with the previous posters to let your system evolve. It's also great reading about ways people organize on the forum here. I've successfully *borrowed* some ideas and also tried out others, which quickly got discarded as they just don't work for me.

I've got two top folders. Home and Work.

Within those folders I have
Home
-Projects
-Maintenance
-Single Actions

I recently added the Projects folder so I can select it and group my projects by due date. My maintenance projects are usually repeating actions and the projects don't have due dates. Same for my Single Action projects.

This allows me to make sure all my active projects have a due date.

Projects that are Someday/Maybe, I place on hold and review those during my weekly review.

Most of my single action projects are copies of contexts:
computer
email
calls
errands
internet

I really like the idea of making single action projects that copy contexts : ) does away with the need for Miscellaneous ..

so many times I struggle trying to relate every action to a project .. that's an easy way to keep them grouped too .
Thanks !

Thank you...more clarification please :)
 

Thank you all >very< much.

@Jody
I have rebuilt my Projects in Planning View in a similar fashion to your example. I am curious however as to why you have a separate folder for "Shopping"? Why can't these projects or actions go into Work or Personal or Support for that matter?

This has brought me to my next question: "What is the true purpose or best use of folders in OF?"

@Anon
"I pretty much have projects in folders under the area of my life they pertain to -- work, personal, home, etc"

What etc? And what is nested within them and how do you choose to organize them?

@SpiralOcean
You seem to use Folders specifically to allow certain OF functionality in addition to organizational purposes. As well, you seem to not use single Actions but make them all Projects to prevent them from showing up in Miscellaneous per ext555 correct?

To attempt to at least partially answer my own question - do I take it Folders are meant to be useful in >Planning< Mode - while Contexts and Perspectives are best for "Getting Things Done" mode?

Gratitude!

~Kidtreo

I can't speak for spiral ocean but I think he's still using single actions, he's just placing them in " single action groups " named after the context they're in ...that's what I'm trying now .. in my case " pick up aleve " which really isn't related to any project, is put into a action group called " errands" whose default context is errands .

I'd advise you not to try everything you read on the forums, some people's work styles are way different than yours and their set up might not work for you. Personally I only try things that " ring true " with me , when I read them , a little light goes off and says " that would work better for me " .

[QUOTE=ext555;51744]I can't speak for spiral ocean but I think he's still using single actions, he's just placing them in " single action groups " named after the context they're in ...that's what I'm trying now .. in my case " pick up aleve " which really isn't related to any project, is put into a action group called " errands" whose default context is errands .[/QUOTE]

That's exactly what I'm doing ext555. Glad it gave you something different to try.

Re: hierarchy depth ... I made mine shallower a couple months ago. I used to have numerous “misc” projects, for instance, one for every major category of projects. I trimmed it down to a couple, and life is saner.

A tip for minimizing hierarchy headaches ...

Create a “whatever” project and a “whatever” context, because sometimes you [I]just don’t care[/I] what project or context something is, but you want it out of the inbox. This is different than misc. This is [I]I don’t give a crap how it’s classified[/I], because it’s too transient, too trivial, because figuring it out triples the processing time for the action without adding one stitch of value. Some would argue that’s misc, but I definitely use them differently.