I'm trying to improve my use of OmniFocus and I realised that I'm not sure of how detailed I should be on action descriptions. Here are two examples of my current usage problems.
Example 1: shopping list
I have a project called "General Home Shopping" where I add a list of all the groceries I need to buy; it usually looks like this:
General Home Shopping
- Eggs
- Cheese
- Spinach
- Juice
This organisation is obvious in planning mode, but it doesn't make as much sense when seen in context mode, where I will have "Eggs", "Cheese" and other similar actions listed under Errands. It's not absolutely clear what those actions are supposed to be. "Buy eggs" would be a much better description, but I find it annoying to add "Buy" to the beginning of each action description.
Example 2: software development
I use OmniFocus to make a list of all the steps I need to do in order to finish a particular assignment. One such assignment is a database I'm working on at the moment where I have a long list of integrity restrictions I need to apply. Again, in planning mode, it looks like this:
Programming Assignment
- Read specification
- Integrity restrictions
- Person of type A cannot do action B
- Action C can only be done on location X
- Action B has to be done by at least N persons
- Etc...
- Write report
- Submit code on website
- Deliver report to teacher
It's quite obvious when looking at it in planning mode, but it doesn't make much sense when I look at it in context mode, where I see "Person of type A cannot do action B" under the Mac context.
I could write a longer description such as "Apply integrity restriction: Person of type A ...", but it becomes quite annoying to write that for a long list of restrictions.
How do you guys handle these things?
Thanks!