[curt.clifton]

Bob,

I keep everything above 10k' in OO.

I tend to like to retain a history of my goals. For example, my five year goals evolve over time, but I want to keep a record of what my five year goals were a year ago, and two years ago, and so on. Similarly, I want to keep track of my annual and monthly goals. I find that occasionally looking back over the evolution of my goals is a useful exercise.

Because I want to keep these snapshots, I haven't used a nesting strategy like you suggest. Instead, I keep separate OO documents for different levels. In my one year goals document, I have top-level items for each year (e.g. goals for June 2010 as set in July 2009). Under that I have my various life roles. Under that I have specific goals. Similarly, in my monthly goals document, I have top-level items for each month (e.g., goals for March 2010), with roles then goals under that.

There's a fair amount of duplication with this approach, but that's easy to accomplish. (Omni ported the ⌘-D hot key for Duplicate from OF to OO.) The benefits for me are two fold. First, as mentioned, I can review the evolution of my goals. Second, I can open the appropriate document to lift my eyes as high as I need to for my current review without obsessing about higher levels. During a weekly review, I can scan over my monthly goals. I don't have to spend much energy on annual goals then, because I'm confident that my monthly goals contribute to the longer term ones.

I think your approach has merit. It provides more context and motivation than the approach I'm using. If you do decide to pursue the hierarchical approach, please report back on how it's working.