[sriggs]

Thanks for the response spiral. I see I'm not alone. Well, I was right. I have abandoned this model already. Having all of my projects organized this way is just not flexible enough for the speed that my world changes. Also, I found myself spending too much time figuring out where things are supposed to go when processing my inbox. Oh well, back to my trusted documents outside of omnifocus. Seemed like a good idea at the time. :-) Good luck to you!

[malisa]

I've been back and forth with this too. As I just said in another thread, I've found that this time when I've re-set up OF, I'm only putting in "true" projects (writing Successful Outcome: xxxxxxx into the note of the title). I have one SAL for maintenance type things, but that's it.(And even that isn't the big, giant list of maintenance...I keep it in OO but choose a few things to get done and put them into the SAL.)

I'm using OO for 'everything else'. So far, so good. But on what Spiral brought up about Areas of Focus being the stepchild...I've resisted the Areas of Focus label somewhat. Like you said, I don't consider it a Focus that I have all my medical info, prescription info, insurance info etc. organized and accessible. It's more an Area of Responsibility.

I'm still re-building my system. I have one OO document called Areas of Focus, but I don't like Medical living alongside of Photography. I think I'll either rename it to Areas of... and separate things that I consider to be responsibilities from things that I choose to spend my time on (Photography, Outdoor Activities, etc.). Or I may make it into two separate lists.

Thanks for the discussion.

[SpiralOcean]

My apologies to any red headed stepchildren out there. It was just an expression. :)

I think it's possible to do this with folders. I have some hang-ups about not being able to complete folders and what not. Along with not being able to put a folder into an 'on hold' status. But maybe these are excuses for not wanting to think about life purpose.

What stopped me before is typing out the GTD descriptions of what the horizons are. I was then creating folders underneath those descriptions and that let to over organization. That and resisting going through the 'work' of setting up the organization and thinking about what I want to shoot for in life.

Here is a mock up of how I think this could work with the current implementation of folders. I would probably get use to the indentation of folders and may not need to put 50k in front. This is where I think folder colors could come in handy to help me organize.

One nice thing about OmniFocus is the ability to focus on a folder by double clicking or selecting and then clicking on the focus button. This would allow me to zoom in and out of horizons.

Another nice thing about using folders is... everytime I create a new project, I would need to place it into the hierarchy. I would be reminded why I'm doing the project and how it relates to the big picture.

I chose End World Hunger as a life purpose for this example. While this goal is full of hubris, it was the first thing that popped into my mind. I won't have this as a life purpose in my own focus, but encourage others if they feel led. :)

Why not shoot big for life purpose? Life purpose doesn't have to be attainable. It's a driving force that propels you through life and helps to motivate. Anyway, enough rambling... here is an example of what horizons could look like in OmniFocus.

I haven't gone through this with my own projects. My plan is to go through each project and ask myself... why am I doing this project, then create the goal, vision and life purpose. Just like GTD, I'll start from the bottom up. Then look at the life purpose, and weed out what doesn't feel right to me. Work my way top down to bottom.

The real test is to see how much overhead this adds to daily living and processing of GTD.