[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by HappyDude

1. Under what context do your leisure events/activities go at? For example, I created a "Go Surfing" event in June, with the start date on June 21st so I won't see it till then. Now, rather than answering what I just asked; I remember David Allen in GTD say that this kinda stuff is what your calendar should be used for.

Well, I'm not so sure I agree in this particular case. Is "Go Surfing" a single action that doesn't require multiple steps? That's the definition of a project, more or less. If you need to do a couple of things to make that surfing trip work (wax the board, find the roof rack, make arrangements for a place to spend the night, etc.) it sounds like a project, don't you think?

(Foreward: My projects pref. setting is at "Sequential" as most my projects are never parallel) I have my projects with obviously many steps. For example, lets say one of my projects has 9 steps in total. Step 2 can't be done until after I complete step 1. So i'll go ahead and complete step 1, then step 2. But step 3 can be done at the same time as step 4. Both step 3 and 4 are at different contexts. But OmniFocus has this set up as Sequential. And I can't click the project to be parallel cause all 9 steps can't be done at the same time. After I complete both steps 3 & 4 I can start step 5. After step 5, I can start and complete step 6. But with steps 7 and 8, those again can be done at the same time. But the final step, step 9 can't be started till both steps 7 & 8 are done. Succinctly put: some of my next actions within projects can be done at the same time as other next actions in the same project, but not always. But frequently enough for me to need a solution for this.

The Omni developers were thinking about you when they came up with the notion of action groups. If you have a sequential project, but there are a few items in the middle that can be done in any order, just select those items and hit shift-G (or cmd-option-L, or Edit->Outlining->Group) to make them into an action group. You'll get an opportunity to name it, if you want, set a start and/or due date, and most importantly for you, set whether it is parallel or sequential ordering. So, you can have a parallel project that has some clusters of actions that need to be done in a specific order, or a sequential project that has some clusters of actions which can be done in parallel, or you can have an elaborate structure that is sequential except for the parallel parts which might have some sequential parts which could have some parallel parts...arbitrary complexity.

3. How do you create contexts?: I saw the omnifocus screencasts and some contexts were specified such as errands: supermarket, while at one point i was vague with my contexts. When I first started GTD I had a context named @car, where all my next actions that wouldn't be at home would take place... but now i've changed it according to cities such as errands: culver city & errands: downey. Also another named errands: Target Store.... essentially what i'm asking here is: how do you go about creating a new context...do you create one if you frequent a location a lot or do you create as many specific contexts as need be when a new location may come along?

Contexts in OmniFocus are disposable and inexpensive. I make a context if having a separate context will make my life easier for a while, and can delete it if it doesn't ever seem to have anything assigned. I have a few hierarchical contexts (Errands is the obvious one) that have lots of subcategories, with most of them being created when I had a need to categorize something that didn't fit well in one of the existing ones. I've got an Errands:Target for stuff I want to buy at Target, Errands:Grocery Store for stuff that is actionable at most any grocery store, and plain old Errands serves as a catchall for anything that doesn't fit one of the subcategories, or I want to get it onto the errands list but don't feel like figuring out which place is ideal (something I might get at either Target or a grocery store, for example -- I check the top-level list whenever I hit one of the categories, and I'd just get that item at whichever place I happened to go first).

4. easy and quick perspective button? for my next actions list only (within context of course)? and all projects with actions to print out too? aside from the keyboard shortcut command?

the keyboard shortcut is okay but would love a specific perspective button on my toolbar if that exists.

Use View->Customize Toolbar to put a button for a perspective (or an Applescript) in the toolbar.