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Daily perspective, inspired by an Autofocus variant Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Recently I stumbled across a simple perspective that I have been using consistently as my single perspective for getting work done on a daily basis. It was inspired by an Autofocus variant at http://www.markforster.net/forum/post/1530853
which has some of the same features I wanted:

1) I like to work on certain projects requiring strong concentration and then essentially put them away for the day, and work on them again tomorrow. I might work on a manuscript for an hour or more, reach a good stopping point, and stop for the day. I could do this using start dates, but I wanted something more automatic.

2) I want to see recently changed next actions clustered together, because even without deadlines there is a timeliness factor.

3) I want to see the oldest actions, so that they don't linger.

The perspective I use is simple: I have two perspectives with appropriate contexts, one for work and one for home, grouped by Changed, but sorted by Added. I have one dummy task, "vvvv Changed Today vvvv" in context Computer, which appears at home and work. Every morning first thing, I change its start date to now. In theory, new tasks added today will appear above the dummy task, while tasks modified today will show up below it. In practice, Omnifocus sometimes doesn't do what I expect, but it doesn't matter too much. I know that anything appearing in "Changed today" that doesn't pull at me I will have a good chance of working on tomorrow. I tend to work by bouncing between "Changed Yesterday" and "Changed within the last month", selecting tasks based on the usual GTD criteria. I have been surprised at how well this works, particularly because I don't feel a need to use other perspectives (aside from checking for due or near-due items) and I don't feel a need to use flags anymore either. And it's really simple.
 
Thanks for posting this. I'm a big fan of the AutoFocus and keep trying to shoehorn in into OF. I'm going to try your perspectives.
 
I like the look of this and am going to give it a try as well. I find myself wading through all of the stuff in OF quite often, but this seems like a good way to pull the things that actually have my attention (known because I have recently touched them) up to the top so that I can maintain focus on them without having to pick through a bunch of old stuff.
 
You should mention this over at the Mark Forster site--I get the feeling those folks are more interested in possible use of OmniFocus, than the folks here are interested in AutoFocus!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mcogilvie View Post
I might work on a manuscript for an hour or more, reach a good stopping point, and stop for the day.
Ah, sounds like you might be using Hemingway hack! Good on you.

Bob
 
 


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