[elrjax]

Curt,

Your comments helped me clarify my thinking about this. I hadn't identified that the badging had become so important to me as a distinct element of my workflow, and of my work execution, until you reflected that back to me. I absolutely rely on those indicators during the day to draw my attention to the items/projects/contexts I must give attention to; I might not get them done, but they are an important part of the pool of candidates :-).

It would really help me if OmniFocus fully embraced the dual nature of the problem and became two tools in one. The first tool would be a pure GTD implementation engine that makes all the philosophically wonderful next action automations happen to all the GTD'ers satisfaction (which they have now).

The second tool would be a down and dirty task/action management and implementation "execution" engine with the ability for us to get it wrong every day and easily recover. This would include 'Today' badging, 'Next Week' badging, tags, and a way to easily mass-move between these groups. Perhaps this is even an entirely new part of the tool; "projects," "contexts," and now "working." (or some such thing). That would preserve the purity of the GTD engine while providing the practical, daily, messy implementation tools that would help me (us?) be more effective in our execution of all our planning.

My typical workflow using OF is on the weekend to set week date ranges on the tasks I will try to focus on next week, or the following week, or this month, or next month, knowing that during the week, or sometime very soon, much of my planning will change. So, to get the badging to help me, I set the start and end dates for this Monday through next Friday (if I am trying to set it for 'next week'). For something that has a "boss" priority I also set a flag. If something is due on Monday then I set that as the due date. I have even started on an applescript that will do this for me (finding "next week" or "next friday" has been a trip). I have a few other actions/projects with dates; most of which have extensive backup in the form of project plans, sharepoint sites, subversion repositories, JIRA workflows, weekly/daily status meetings, etc., so all I need in OF is just a thumbnail of my specific tasks and milestones to keep me on track. (I am looking at ms project and JIRA integration, but I'm not sure I want all that detail in OF).

(The downside of this approach is that (1) I have a lot of date maintenance to do in my review session, and (2) I have overloaded the meaning of dates to include "today" and still have to sort out what I need to focus on. I have stared to fiddle overdue to mean today, but that goes bad quickly in a busy long-day week when you don't get the reviews done each night.)

I would love to start each day with some sort of group of tasks/actions that I have identified must be focused on today. I might not get them done, I might need to look in OF at other things, my day might get completely changed around, but this is my best guess at what I was trying to focus on today. Tonight I will move things around, put them in 'this week' or move them to "friday" or to "next week" or let them stay in today; whatever. Then I start it all over again tomorrow. If I was using file cards I would re-review everything, and pull out tomorrows cards, put them in my pocket, and put the others on my desk.

I might even like a nice "today" printout to carry around for meetings where I don't have my laptop. The iphone could be a lot of help here also. Getting big long lists on the iphone hasn't helped me much, but I know the platform is maturing.

I liked the tagging and smart folder ideas you mentioned, and if they included some badging then that would help a lot. Also, it would be nice if the individual tasks got the badge also rather than just be a different color. It would make scanning the actions faster for me.

Your comment on mass updates using the inspector was great. I had tried to mass update by selecting multiple actions and then changing the date on a task, but that of course didn't work. Thanks for the tip; I have already used it several times :-).

I sent feedback as you had suggested, referencing this thread.

And, your coaching is spot on.

-Ed