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Originally Posted by sriggs View Post
Thanks for the reply whpalmer4. It seems that I have no trouble capturing, processing and organizing my actions but… then there is the doing part. I've been struggling with how to deal with doing in a focused manner using OmniFocus. Do you have any advice? How do you do the "doing" phase with OmniFocus?
It depends on how flexible your schedule is. If I have to be somewhere (i.e. in the office, on days I teach or have morning meetings), I'll go there and then select all available contexts. If I have more flexibility, I tend to begin my day by looking over a few perspectives: Due Soon/Overdue; Flagged (for important things); and Tickler (projects & actions with today as a start date). Based on that, I'll decide which contexts are most important, and therefore where I need to go--my study at home, my office at work, the library, or somewhere else. I'll select the appropriate contexts and work from them. Or, if I need to work in only one or two areas of responsibility, I'll first select those folders in Planning mode, then switch to Context mode and select the contexts that are available.

Then, when I get to where I think I should be, I start to do actual work. That takes will power. It's easy for systems like GTD or software like OmniFocus to become excuses for not working. At a certain point you have to turn away from the system and do what it tells you to do.

A regular review is important too, because that's where you can decide whether you've been spending your time wisely. If you review your projects regularly, you'll feel a lot better about the decisions you make about what to do at any given moment.