[erima]

Background: I’ve recently returned to OF from pen and paper to regroup my my goals for the next year. I just got married, went on a honeymoon, and moved and these big projects took their toll on planning my time. Future plans all became "after the wedding" and "after we move" and I felt OF could help me regroup and look to the future. Once I’ve done this I’ll likely return to pen and paper. Perhaps that colors my interest in this usage that I devised over the weekend. I’m posting this here as I thought it may be helpful to others, as it seems my other Flickr screenshots were. [original post].


Vertical Planning: If you are unfamiliar or need a refresher on Vertical Planning in Getting Things Done read this helpful article. In the past I’ve attempted to squeeze this idea into OmniFocus (v1, v2) but it was either too complex for my brain to process or it devolved into “just a bunch of folders.”

This approach: I decided to go back and try the opposite of the approach in v2 – instead of dropping my goals folders I decided to drop my areas of focus folders. Why do I need to know an area of focus anyway? With a glance at the goal and the project name I can generally discern what area of my life it fits into. The real reward for me is that I’ve found a system that isn’t too heavy on folder hierarchy but still gives me a way to keep my goals in sight. In the instance that I have a project that is goal-less I decided to not stress out about it and leave it at the top level. It reminds me that I should consider how it fits in but I don’t feel forced to figure it out.