[wilsonng]

In my OmniFocus setup, I have different parts of my life separated into folders. These are my Areas of Responsibilities in the GTD dictionary.

1. Personal Productivity
2. Marriage
3. Spirituality
4. Family
5. Career Development
6. Web Site Skills
7. Golfing Skills

But I rename each folder to a sentence such as:

1. Become a Black Belt GTD master
2. Love my wife
3. Become a better person
4. Live life with my family
5. Boost personal income
6. Improve my company's web site offerings
7. Beat my golf buddy who is kicking' my @$$

You'll find something that fits your situation.

Inside each of these folders, I will create a project with the name of the book or program that will fit into any of these categories. Then I would set all of these projects to "On Hold" so that it disappears from your Active context list. I use the "On Hold" status to hide projects/tasks from my active Next Action list.

The first Next Action in each of these projects is "Read the book <title_name>" or "Listen to audiobook <title_name>"

The next step is to sort all your programs in order of interest. What are your priorities in life? Do you want to tackle the financial part of your life first ? Or do you want to improve your personal productivity habit first? Or is your relationship in serious fixing? You'll pick one that will focus on one part of your life and take care of that part first.

Resist the idea "oh, everything is important and I want to read them all now." It is best to take care of one part of your life first and then take care of the next area of responsibility. Tackle one project at a time.

I created a new project titled "Self Development projects to tackle." Actually, my personal title is "Become Master of the Universe." This project is set to "On Hold" mode and it has a list of the self help programs I want to tackle in the particular order I want. I can always reorder this list later when I feel that I want to push one book ahead of another.

1. Activate "Getting Things Done" self help project
2. Activate "Making It All Work" self help project
3. Activate "Making Toy Balloons" self help project
4. Activate "Making Origama" self help project
5. Activate "Magic Tricks for Kids" self help project

I saved this as a perspective and put it in the toolbar. I put the project status to "On Hold" because I don't really want to see the Next Actions until I am done with the current book (which is the book on the top of the list). As you can see, the first book I want to tackle is "Getting Things Done." I'll go to the "Read Getting Things Done" project, change the status from "On Hold" to "Active." Then I'll check off the task Activate Getting Things Done self help project.

We all have a lot of self help programs. We want to devour all of them to get that instant gratification that we successfully completed reading a book or program. But you won't be able to retain anything if you're reading three books concurrently. You're just reading books and not actually adopting the habits because your focus will go quickly to the next book before the first book's habits set in.

It is better to get laser focused and concentrate on one self help program at a time. If you try to do ten programs at one time, your focus will be scattered. It will take longer to complete all of the programs because you're reading a little bit from one book, a little bit from another book, and then adding another book to read. One thing at a time is probably the best lesson to heed in this case.

When you have chosen one project that you want to focus on, put all of those other programs/books away in a box so that you don't get tempted to see them until you're done with the current book that you are focused on. You will only take the next one out when you are done with your current book.

While reading, I'll use either a notepad or OmniOutliner to take notes of interesting passages or create a list of Next Actions that I gleaned from the text.

I enjoy iBooks on my iPad because I can highlight and enter notes into my eBook. When I finished reading the book, I can go back through the eBook's highlighted parts and create an OmniOutliner outline based on the highlights and notes in the ebook.

When I'm finally done with the book, I'll review my OmniOutliner outline or notepad and clean it up. Then I can create an OmniOutliner outline or a project in OmniFocus. OmniFocus can import OmniOutline outline documents saved in OPML.

Now that the project is in OmniFocus, you have the self help program in OmniFocus with all the Next Actions you'll need.

Now, the important part comes up next.... Set the project status to "Active" on start working on the next action you need to get the project going.

When I'm ready for the next book, I'll click on the perspective in the toolbar to look for the next self help program to activate. Then I'll take the next book out and start again for the next self help program. Resist the urge to take out more than one book.

HTH