Quote:
Originally Posted by CatOne
200 perspectives?! Perspectives management?!
Uhhh...
I seriously think if you're "managing" 200 perspectives, you're doing it wrong. The goal of OmniFocus is not to manage perspectives, it's to manage work. To ensure you have a clear view of what you can and should be working on. You're going to have a _really_ tough time convincing me how managing 200 perspectives is going to enable this.
I have 5 perspectives in my toolbar. Before the latest 1.6 update I had 6 perspectives, but the new "Due+Flagged" perspective merged 2 for me. I can see a few more that might be useful... but 200?! I don't get it.
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CatOne, You mention the number of perspectives you use, though you don't mention the number of actions, nor that of contexts, projects and folders. How can a comparison of how two people use Perspectives in OF be helpful without knowing those additional variables?
You imagine that managing perspectives is somehow different from managing work. Perhaps you're thinking of routine work. If that’s the case, I would agree, since small, easily defined, well-bounded and repeating tasks translate readily in ones thinking to unambiguous physical action, in habitual contexts, and don’t take as much planning.
Knowledge work is different. Tasks need to be defined and refined and understood. Sometimes you don’t even start with a task but merely an outcome you want, from which you need to iteratively define the tasks and their ancillary supporting materials (ie., physical files). The tasks also need to be sequenced and sometimes even have their contexts defined. Did you know contexts are not necessarily fixed? They can emerge as a consequence of defining your work.
Much as you cannot imagine needing more than 6 perspectives, I find it inconceivable that someone could get anything other than routine work done with as few as 6.
Moreover, even if the work is more routine in nature, if you can live with 6 perspectives, it sounds as though you are keeping an awful lot of your method for using OF in your head. If true, it sounds to me as though you're defeating the whole basic premise of GTD, which is to get it out of your head. Under those conditions, I don't know how you could be "ready for anything" as David’ book title reads.
For example, could you scale up your level of planned activity 100% overnight and still continue to define it, review it and develop it?
Lastly, you say, "you're doing it wrong". This would be insulting had it come from someone who had thoughtfully considered their response to my initial post. Apparently no one has told you. There is no orthodox way to use OF. There's scarcely any conventional documentation of how to "do it right"; the Internet is full of differing ways of implementing GTD; David Allen himself shies away from endorsing orthodoxy when it comes to implementing the principles; and, clearly, as is apparent from even a cursory view of the OF forum posts, no two people use OF quite the same way.
I have a hundred perspectives I have already identified. The additional hundred is for standby use. I would suppose that, were someone to manage a hundred perspectives, it would become confusing. I would manage them in groups scheduling their use.
Think about that and do reply. Please: before you use the phrase, “doing it wrong”, kindly define what, in your view, “doing it right” consists of.