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Hello! I'm new here and figure I should take a moment to introduce myself - but before I do that - want go give the Omni Group kudos for putting OmniFocus out there! I just installed it yesterday and really pleased so far!

I've been implementing GTD since taking David Allen's workshop in Feb 2003. My implementation has gone through plenty of incantations analog to digital, lightweight to heavyweight, simple to hyper-experimental. I also bring experience using the original Netcentrics Outlook Add-in which segue ways into the topic I'm posting...

I've taken the time to read through 3 posts I feel that straddle this topic:
  1. http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=5089
  2. http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=8210
  3. http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=4641

I'm going to do my best to shed some light on this matter in as integrated of a way as I can while being aware I'm a newbie looking for ideas.

So where I'm coming from is being in agreement with many of you - you'd like OF to be your GTD portal for all 5 phases of his workflow - external links (URLs, files, events, etc.) are fine and most of you don't seem to expect OF to be the kitchen sink which is good.

To cut the chase, having traceability from a project to day-specific next action is critical. In the context of OF, not being able to visibly see a link from OF to an iCal event (not todo) is something that is currently missing for me in my GTD implementation on OF.

To explain further: there are circumstances where you have a project where the next action is in iCal [as an event]. For example, I have a project to write a book and my next action is to "discuss revision of chapter 2 with my editor" - this occurs as a meeting next week on Monday. I'm clear between now and next monday, there are no other next actions to take. I also want to be clear that this date is distinct from my deadline for the project 4 months from now.

So during my week review, say Friday - I should be able to review all my projects, check that all my projects have next actions and for the instances of projects like the example above, I should clearly see a next action exist as an event. (I intentionally do not get into other aspects of a weekly review for purposes of keeping this discussion focused)

This was done very well in the official Outlook Add-in. I've stopped using this add-in for many reasons that OF clearly addresses quite well and again, request to have any comparative conversations on a separate thread.

My current workaround is to have a dummy next action and context of "Calendar" - a simple reminder the project has a next action that exists on my calendar.

I hope this clarifies the situation around the need for projects to visibly link to day-specific next actions implemented as events on iCal.

Would love to hear people's thoughts on this specific facet of GTD and if you've discovered another way to solve/workaround this issue, [please share!]

Let's hammer this out quickly before the iPhone launch! ;-)

Chinarut

Last edited by chinarut; 2008-06-28 at 08:59 AM..