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Excellent! You've just demonstrated that the calendar is no good, because you have to keep your entire list in your brain while using it. How could I possibly make any sense of a graphical representation showing my fixed schedule for tomorrow without knowing precisely what unscheduled steps I might need to take to be ready? It seems so (deceptively) simple, looking at the calendar and seeing that 4-6PM is blocked out for a meeting, and that time is not available for other tasks. Now you're telling me that I need to consider all the facets of the project for which the meeting was called when someone asks if I'm available at 5PM?

I'm very cognizant of DA's thinking about the use of the calendar, as expressed on the pages I mentioned. Perhaps with a bit of thought you could explain how it buttresses your case, which argues for doing the opposite of what he suggests!

I find it particularly useful to include some details about the meeting in the iCal entry beyond "Meeting, 4-6PM". In particular, if I include the topic of the meeting, I'm able to look at my calendar and understand it without reference to the actions detailing how I need to prepare for the meeting. It's quite a nice compartmentalization of the information, which minimizes the amount of information that I need to hold in my head at any given time. If I've done the preparatory tasks in OmniFocus by their due date, there's no need to have the entire list in my head when I look at the calendar to see when and where the meeting is.

Putting hard landscape items in OmniFocus as well as the calendar is the moral equivalent of chartjunk. It clutters the project without providing any substantial value in return.

Tufte doesn't get it all right on the Challenger data, either: http://www.onlineethics.org/CMS/prof...RepMisrep.aspx