Putting Things Off - automatically
 

Part of the review process is to notice things that are just getting put off or not done again and again, and then allocating them a more appropriate context (or even just deleting them - sometimes things you thought were important just aren't)

It would be quite cool to have a search or a list of things that have been the most put-off or ignored. For this to happen, each action would have to be internally time-stamped so that OF knew when they were first created. Perhaps they are already.

Projects and actions in projects don't tend to get put off, just put on hold. It's usually single-action items that end up 'floating' and getting in the way.

Anyway, if there was some (optional) way to get OF to highlight or list single-action items that were past some pre-defined sell by date I think it would be a useful way to draw attention to stuff that you really should either ditch or re-categorize. If there was a preference like 'Highlight single-actions that are over 2 weeks old' or something it may work. Or simply the ability to show a list of actions that are just x days or more old.

Any thoughts on this? I think it may help me come to terms a bit better with things that really should be reclassified due to being ignored for too long.

And you could always turn it off if your GTD workflow was so perfect that you didn't need reminding. However, I think a little nudge every now and again can't be bad. I'm sure some of you have some good ideas how to implement something like this.

OF keeps both creation and last modification information and it can be examined in the inspector. You can also use that data for sorting and grouping. See the changed and added selectors in the View bar.

Ah that helps a bit. How the heck to you reverse a column in OF? I've never figured it out. Would be great to see oldest first.

I know that the ability to reverse the sort that OmniFocus does in a column is one of our existing feature requests. Send an email to the [EMAIL="omnifocus@omnigroup.com"]support ninjas[/EMAIL] and they can vote it up for you.

I use the weekly review to do this... I use the review perspective on the tool bar and work my way through the list of projects (it sorts with projects least recently reviewed first). When I look at it, I see what I want to do (sometimes stamping it with the on hold button to indicate that I want to move it to my someday maybe folder later in the review process). I then use the stamp tool in the menu bar to "mark reviewed" which shifts it to the bottom of the list....

The weekly review is the spot where I do my assessment of stuff I want to move off the active projects list or renegotiate somehow...

Randy