[AquaMethod]

Originally Posted by MJK

Yes, it does. In fact, you would do this if you just used paper and folders. Some things in your Inbox are just parts of previous or ongoing projects, some are brand new ones and some, like reference material, would be moved out of OmniFocus for archival purposes for example.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Collecting is where I feel strongest.

Originally Posted by MJK

There really is no global answer to this. I think I might even be quoting David Allen by saying you need to review it as often as YOU need to review it. So how ever often works for you so that nothing falls through the cracks.

Basically you need to just use your system and get used to it, then you'll see how often you need to review everything. Some even do it daily, but if you have a lot of projects, you don't want to do it as often as that.

So is there a distinction between those kinds of reviews and the Weekly Review mentioned in the book? Is it just a more thorough or more deliberate process of going through the workflow steps?

Originally Posted by MJK

First of all, the mental dump is done in order to get as much as possible into your trusted system. The idea is to get everything in, not 95 percent of stuff, but all of it. Once you have most of it in your trusted system, you don't need to do a dump anymore, but instead what you need is the ability to quickly add new things to your system immediately when it pops into your head. For example in the case of OmniFocus, you could get OmniFocus for the iPhone when it comes out.

Right, that's the point of the whole "ubiquitous capture" which was kind of spun off from the book. OF is going to be the first iPhone app I get--Notes just doesn't cut it, and the whole...email-yourself-a-task thing makes me a little nervous.

Originally Posted by MJK

I don't really have a good answer for this since I personally am waiting for a bit more functionality with stalled actions in OmniFocus.

So instead, I'll just tell you what I do. When I need to pause something, instead of actually putting it on hold, I add a start time to it. A start time hides the item from the Context view until the date you set. And since OmniFocus is smart enough that you can type in different ways in the date fields, I type 1w for example in the start time field, it's easy to do this. In this example it will become active in one week.

So basically I think "how long should I wait on this action before checking in on it" and decide for example "ok, I can wait for 3 days" and so I type 3d in the field and OmniFocus hides it from me for 3 days and after that it pops back in on my list. You can do this to full projects or even single actions.

If I still don't need to check in on it, I just add more time to the start time. Takes mere seconds. And by the way, I review all my actions that are visible on the Context side every morning with my morning coffee.

I only pause projects that are on hold indefinitely like Someday/Maybe lists, if I know approximately when to check up on it, I just add a start time to it. Of course you do review stalled projects in the Weekly Review, so you don't need to do it quite like me, but I still recommend trying the Start Time fields.

But yes, another way to do it is indeed to add a new action called for example "waiting for status of car repair", so when you check "take car for repair" the waiting for status task pops up. Also an easy way to do it and I do this in some cases.

I like that idea; I wasn't exactly sure how to make use of the start and due dates, so I'll give that a try.

Originally Posted by MJK

When you flesh out your project and decide on a next action, you shouldn't decide JUST the next action but flesh out the entire thing from the first step to "what will that project look like when finished" and every single step along the way.

That makes sense to me, but I would imagine that there are some projects which can't be fully planned until some of the action steps are completed--for example, the next action after researching something may be to make a call, but you won't know who to call until you've done the research.

Originally Posted by MJK

Projects and support material and reference material I would say is usually best to have in a different system. Basically that would be your file cabinet or the digital version of it. After all, you can have support material of all kinds, some digital, some not, PDFs, text files, images, videos etc which OmniFocus can't handle.

Besides, the GTD method even says you should have your reminders in a trusted system, in this case OmniFocus. And reference and support material easily accessible when you decide to act on it.

So you need to decide the best way to do it for you. In digital form you could use folders named accordingly and just dump stuff in them, properly named of course. You could use the various apps made specifically for that purpose like Yojimbo or DevonTHINK. Any way you like.

I've planned to look into both Yojimbo and DevonTHINK for the digital side of that purpose--maybe even EverNote, though I'm not sure if it's flexible enough. Do you have a preference?

Originally Posted by MJK

Once you get the hang of OmniFocus I really do suggest reading the book again, you will look at everything from a different viewpoint now. Even David Allen himself has said that people should read the book again after 6 months of reading it.

And you need to test how to best use OmniFocus to your liking, I personally still change some things from time to time and only just recently started using all the features in OmniFocus. I started out without using start times, perspectives and such, just simply. And I've been using OmniFocus for close to 6 months now.

I hope that answers most if not all of your questions. Most of the things you mentioned really do depend on how you like working, so there are no

Your advice has been very valuable. Thank you.

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

OmniFocus gives you some help here that allows you to tailor your reviews to your needs. I usually do a daily review, but I don't review everything, just the stuff that has come up for a review. You can build a perspective that will show you your projects grouped by next review date, and then just adjust the review frequency (and next review date) in the Inspector as desired to make sure various projects get the review attention they need. For me, there's a tradeoff between not seeing things often enough (-> little progress made) and seeing things too often (-> little progress made) and this setup helps me find the sweet spot that keeps things moving along.

Ah, so you give different projects different review intervals, and then use Perspectives like "Daily Review," "3-day Review," and so on?

I think I'm getting there...but I thought of a few things that I didn't mention last time:

Is it typical to leave completed projects in the database, and to use filters to only look at current projects? Does not deleting them bloat the database or cause performance issues?

How are people using flags and due dates? Is it more common to put anything with a due date or time-sensitive into a calendar?