[wilsonng]

I think everyone will have their own secret recipe.

I don't necessarily do planning every day. I think clearing my inbox is a different step from project planning. During my daily review, I try to clear my inbox first and place it into the appropriate folders or projects. The the second step is to go to the new projects that I created and start planning my next actions.

Afterwards, I set my review interval and look at these new projects again on the next review date and try to tinker some more if I haven't already started on it.

The beauty of OmniFocus is that I can set different review intervals for different projects. Some projects requires more constant follow-ups and I'll set it to a shorter interval (every day, every 2 days, every week, etc.). Other projects (especially on hold projects) can be set to a longer review interval (every 2 weeks, every month, every quarter).

I also do a more intensive monthly review and quarterly review. The weekly review and quarterly gives me a longer period of time to actively edit out those new projects that were great ideas when I first thought of them. I may find some projects that either weren't plotted out properly (next actions out of order or unnecessary next actions) and I'll edit viciously.

Other times, I'll realize that this "once brilliant" project is actually bone-headed and the return-on-investment isn't worth my time. Then I'll just drop it. I'll set the project status to drop and enter a note indicating the date/time and the reason I dropped it.

Sometimes I do find inspiration and need to flesh out something when I have sudden flashes of inspiration throughout the day. I'll quickly enter some tasks into a separate OmniOutliner document and I'll process them later.

I constantly have to remind myself that doing project planning does not always mean I'm being productive. Don't fall into the trap that I sometimes find myself in. Sometimes I'll get lazy (brain dead) and I'll make an excuse to do project planning as If I'm being productive. I'll start peeking and poking inside OmniFocus and look for projects to tinker with. This is just a procrastination technique that I've been trying to get over. If I keep tinkering with project planning, I'll suddenly find my day wasted and it's time to leave the office to go home. I'll just go ahead and try do some of the more brain dead tasks instead of doing more project planning.

I try to keep my project planning to my daily review hour or my weekly review process. One method I've done is to print out my due soon/flagged perspective list and quit OmniFocus. Having to click on OmniFocus to open it up again is an intentional action that reminds me to stay away from tinkering in OmniFocus unless absolutely necessary. It's just too easy to just click on the OmniFocus icon and start procrastinating when I should be focused on completing my Due soon/Flagged next actions.

It's almost the same as keeping your Facebook and Twitter page open. I don't leave those pages open. It's just too tempting to look at them and it interrupts my workflow.