[theanthrogeek]

PROBLEM: When “Reference” is both a Folder, Project and a Context"

David Allen, author of GTD, has a paper based filling system for "Reference" materials that I employ at home. This is for stuff you don't want to dump that is currently not “project support” material. He suggests printing out the digital materials you want to keep as well. I CANNOT ACCEPT THAT. There has to be a way to store digital media as part of my "in the cloud" GTD.

Oh Wizards and Ninja of OmniFocus, I beseech you to work some of your Hocus Pocus and solve this dilemma.

In other words, where does one put digital general reference material inside OmniFocus? I believe most of us put it elsewhere for now. I'd like it all in my OmniFocus. If it's digital media that is project support stuff, it can be attached to specific projects but what about general reference materials?

PARTIAL SOLUTION: I made a folder called Reference, in which there are many so-called "Projects" that are just chunks of digital reference material I want to keep in OmniFocus.

This worked until I realized the deeper analytic problem of Context. A simple hack would be to just leave these items with no defined Context. But that lacks flair. More importantly, my firm belief in the OmniFocus Hocus Pocus (i.e., the powerful logic and perspicacity behind you folks) tells me that the logic behind the design should be able to be universally applied to all aspects of incoming data.

For example, where does one put the projects you guys preloaded in there about GTD called "Get started with OmniFocus". I have them in a folder called Reference: a Project called: DGT: and Actions called “Get started with OmniFocus”, etc.. I imagine some people delete them but I found them valuable as review material months after I started using the program.

Before my problematic solution, I therefore had the default Context of @Computer as the Context of most of the reference materials I have gathered (i.e., the so called "Projects" and “Actions” in my Reference Folder). But that meant that my @Computer Context was loaded with a bunch of Reference “Projects” that would never be worked on. This made me never want to look at my @Computer Context, which made me rather unproductive.

My solution was to make a Context caller “Reference”. Now with a “Reference” Context, my @Computer Context is much more approachable.

THE PROBLEM IN NEED OF YOUR GENIUS: I now have both a Project Folder and a Context named Reference and that that is not sound logic. It’s a good enough hack for the time being but I'm sure the clever folks at OmniFocus can do better.

-Jim-TheAnthroGeek-Mullooly