I just finished (finally) reading Kourosh's "Creating Flow with Omnifocus".
http://www.usingomnifocus.com/
I considered myself a fairly strong power user, but picked up some wonderful tips in this book nevertheless. One of the many tips is, in fact tags, in this case Appendix A, "Search and Using Tags".
The revelation (ok, revelation is a strong word...but...) from this appendix is simply the fact that when creating and then saving a new Perspective, whatever is in the Search field can also be saved as part of the Perspective! Wow...I never realized this!
I don't want to spark the tags vs. contexts debate, I am mostly in the single contexts camp, hence why I'm here :). But, I do see situations, where tags would come in handy, for me at least. Example, my Contexts of @errands, @calls, etc work great, but it would be nice to filter, on say, see every task I have related to my kids in one "area" (calls to make for them, errands to run for them, house chores related to them, etc.). Having a Single Action List named "Kids", wouldn't work either, as most of these tasks for my kids fit better into other Projects.
So, using Kourosh's example, I now place a #kids string and the end of the task title (Kourosh puts in the Notes, I like it better at the end of the title). Now, I go to my Contexts, and enter #kids in the Search field, get my views/filters set, create the new Perspective, keeping the #kids search term when I save, and walla, I have a Kids Perspective. Very comparable (arguably better) then "saved searches" in other apps. In fact, this is just a great way to implement saved searches in OF, they just become Perspectives. This is a very non-intrusive way to maintain tags, yet allowing the Context to be the main driver for you "doing" perspectives, per GTD. Also solves the problem of getting crazy with nested contexts in some cases.
Just the realization that Perspectives can contain search strings just changed my game again. Some here probably knew this already, but just sharing in case others didn't know.Thanks Kourosh!
-gandalf44
http://www.usingomnifocus.com/
I considered myself a fairly strong power user, but picked up some wonderful tips in this book nevertheless. One of the many tips is, in fact tags, in this case Appendix A, "Search and Using Tags".
The revelation (ok, revelation is a strong word...but...) from this appendix is simply the fact that when creating and then saving a new Perspective, whatever is in the Search field can also be saved as part of the Perspective! Wow...I never realized this!
I don't want to spark the tags vs. contexts debate, I am mostly in the single contexts camp, hence why I'm here :). But, I do see situations, where tags would come in handy, for me at least. Example, my Contexts of @errands, @calls, etc work great, but it would be nice to filter, on say, see every task I have related to my kids in one "area" (calls to make for them, errands to run for them, house chores related to them, etc.). Having a Single Action List named "Kids", wouldn't work either, as most of these tasks for my kids fit better into other Projects.
So, using Kourosh's example, I now place a #kids string and the end of the task title (Kourosh puts in the Notes, I like it better at the end of the title). Now, I go to my Contexts, and enter #kids in the Search field, get my views/filters set, create the new Perspective, keeping the #kids search term when I save, and walla, I have a Kids Perspective. Very comparable (arguably better) then "saved searches" in other apps. In fact, this is just a great way to implement saved searches in OF, they just become Perspectives. This is a very non-intrusive way to maintain tags, yet allowing the Context to be the main driver for you "doing" perspectives, per GTD. Also solves the problem of getting crazy with nested contexts in some cases.
Just the realization that Perspectives can contain search strings just changed my game again. Some here probably knew this already, but just sharing in case others didn't know.Thanks Kourosh!
-gandalf44
Last edited by gandalf44; 2013-03-25 at 01:57 AM..
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