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Hello everyone,

Just switching over from 4 years of paper-based GTD. Not clear how to set up "Maybe / Someday" items. I don't want to see them every day ... but I don't see any easy way to accomplish this (hide a long list of projects).

Thanks in advance!
 
Turn on the view bar. Set the sidebar filter to show active projects only. Put your someday/maybe projects on hold. Maybe put the whole lot in a someday/maybe folder for additional tidiness.
 
My life is already full of tasks already. So I usually create a new project in my Someday/Maybe folder and automatically set the status to "on hold". There is no sense in adding to a plate that is already full.

Many new projects are important but not urgent and should be placed on hold until your daily/weekly review can be executed. When I do my weekly review, I am more calm and can decide what currently active projects I can shuffle back to on hold (someday/maybe) and which "on hold" projects to activate.

I believe life is already full enough. We sometimes find our lives full of so many "active" projects which can overload our GTD system.

Perhaps you are working in the projects perspective and just see a long list of all your projects? Use the projects perspective to do your planning and getting an overall sense of your projects.

Switch to Context mode to see what next actions are available for each of your projects. Viewing next actions in context mode will eliminate all other actions that are not available because it either has a future start date or the action cannot be started until the preceding next action has been accomplished.

In my life, I usually have 5-8 active projects and everything else is "on hold."

During the weekly review, I'll notice that if a project has stalled and make a decision on my list of currently active projects. I may have lost interest and I'll put it on the backburner once again for a future date by placing it on hold. Then I'll activate another project that has gotten my interest once again. Or I may have issues with the current active project and will have to rethink the next actions or just eliminate the project.

I often shuffle projects back and forth. There are a couple of projects that I will keep active. These are my Big Rock projects. Everything else becomes the Small Rock projects.

After a while, you'll get a sense of what to activate and what to place on hold.

The secret is in doing the weekly review on a consistent basis. This helps you to put stalled projects back to on hold so you no longer see it in Context Mode. At the same time, you'll be engaged in looking at some on hold projects and determining which ones you really want to keep and which ones to eliminate.
 
Thanks for the advice!

Having just started, I am sure I am doing everything wrong ... but am digging out of that hole. Right now I work mainly from the "context" window and am trying to get the hang of using "projects" effectively. I have been using GTD on paper for about 4 years and having just switched to OmniFocus it's an interesting transition!
 
no prob. The reality of Omnifocus is that it will adapt to your habits. You have to be willing to sharpen your GTD skills. The program is only as good as the amount of time put into it. You don't get naturally good at it. You work at it.

Folks who don't put in the effort to learn to use a program won't get much benefit from it. I know of many Photoshop users that have learned to get the most out of Photoshop. You just don't get good at it without some elbow grease.

Even the great sports athletes have great talent but they couple it with dedication in the gym...

I know I have slowly evolved my OmniFocus setup over the last 3 years. Heck, even David Allen said that to be really good at GTD takes at least two years.

Reading a lot of the threads on the OmniFocus forums have helped me try out new tricks and techniques.

I'd start watching the free shows from Screencastsonline here to get a better grasp of OmniFocus:

http://www.screencastsonline.com/ind...ocusbasics.php


http://www.screencastsonline.com/ind...nifocuspt2.php

http://www.screencastsonline.com/ind...ifocusipad.php
 
I found that it takes about 3 weeks of use to really become comfortable with the app. It's truly powerful and each day you will discover another aspect of it which just makes your GTD process easier.

Perspectives are so powerful once you understand how to utilize them. I currently have a Someday Perspective which syncs to the iPhone and is organized by Project. I just assign a Someday Context to project items so I can quickly see everything in a Someday state on all 3 devices.

It's really quite powerful.
 
Policarpo,

Interesting ... that is an idea I had myself ... to create a "someday / maybe" context and dump everything in there. Then it sounds like I can hide it using perspectives, as needed.

Michael
 
Yep. My Someday stuff is only visible in the Perspective View...and the Review Mode.


Makes things squeaky clean.
 
 


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