Could anyone share the most elegant way to keep all my everyday work tasks from showing up overdue on the weekend? It's distracting.
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daily repeating work task showing due on the weekend | Thread Tools | Search this Thread | Display Modes |
Member
2010-01-23, 07:46 AM
Could anyone share the most elegant way to keep all my everyday work tasks from showing up overdue on the weekend? It's distracting.
Post 1
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Member
2010-01-23, 10:12 AM
What I do is simply make 5 copies of the task, one for each weekday, with a start date so it doesn't show up before its day, and set to repeat weekly. I'll often put the weekday in the action name in parentheses just to help keep it straight if I miss a few days and have to reschedule them. Here's an example of the obvious thing (which ends up with unwanted repeats on the weekend) followed by my version. Note that in mine, the repeats are every 1 week, not every 1 day, and that the project is set to be parallel so that Tuesday's action isn't blocked by Monday's action from next week, as OmniFocus will insert the new action for Monday next week immediately after Monday's action of this week. Also, if you are viewing available or next actions instead of remaining actions, you won't see all the other days if you've set up start dates.
It's a bit more work to set up, but less work on an ongoing basis.
Post 2
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Member
2010-01-23, 01:29 PM
Cool... well, sort of. I was afraid the answer would be something like this. I guess (once again) I've got my work cut out for me. I've got tons of these. Hopefully these seemingly endless gyrations are going to pay off once I pass the newbie phase and get everything set up and running smoothly.
Life Balance used to let me set up hours for my contexts (or "places" as they call them). My work and home schedules are pretty regular; so too are various weekly meetings with certain people. --I drop off my kids at school at the same time every day, the bank has late hours on thursday, yada yada... So yeah, it's cool that my iPhone can suggest contexts based upon my current location, but it seems almost like a gimmick compared with something as seemingly straightforward as a context based on time. Last I checked, in addition to a GPS, the phone had a clock. Ugh. Sorry if I seem grumpy. I do really appreciate the reply. It's a lovely workaround. But I'm beginning to worry that perhaps I'm trying to put a square peg in a round hole. And it bums me out because there is a lot that I really like about OF.
Post 3
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Member
2010-01-23, 02:54 PM
Well, that's certainly not the only possible solution. Another is to download Dan Byler's Defer script. When you wake up Saturday morning and see all of those things that don't apply to the weekend, you click on all of them, launch the script and defer them until Monday.
I've also suggested time-based contexts, but I think that is a concept that hasn't occurred to enough people to reach critical mass.
Post 4
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Member
2010-01-23, 05:43 PM
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These kinds of things should not be in OF, by my reckoning, but on your calendar, since they truly are regular things (except maybe the bank when it comes to locations and the iPhone, in which case I could not agree more with your request for time + location tags). You might need to check off that a meeting was held before you can move on to some next tast; think "had meeting" instead of "go to meeting".
Post 5
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Member
2010-01-23, 06:59 PM
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This can actually be accomplished right now with the aid of iCal. Put in a calendar event with an alarm that opens a URL of the form omnifocus:///perspective/perspectivename and you'll get a window opened up in OmniFocus displaying that perspective at the time of the calendar event.
Post 6
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Member
2010-01-24, 06:31 AM
Yes whpalmer, that is what I meant but I wasn't clear.
I have tons of mundane little things I have to remember to stay on track. They generally always happen in the same places and during the same hours. It's not that I need to remember to bring my kids to school (well, heh... I do but that's another story --iCal works fine for that LOL). What I need is to see, while I am there, that I need to drop off those forms, pick up the old moldy thermos, and, if i happen to see her, introduce myself to Billy's mom who happens to be production manager at MongoCorpGlobal. I see no reason why I should need to do anything to see that list if I know it's going to be Tuesday at 8:45 am. I should just be able to just open my list and see my stuff. Instead I'm fumbling about, trying to remember which perspective is going to work best for this. Do I want to see "next" or "remaining"?. Oooh look... cool. There's a hardware store nearby and I need nails. Meanwhile there goes Billy's mom, driving off --probably giving my competitor a ride to work. During the week I need help remembering stupid stuff --lots of it (like "refill humidifiers" so the instruments don't go out of tune). Same with home. But when the weekend comes up and I start seeing lots of overdue flags for stuff I can't do it makes the concept of overdue items sort of meaningless. The extra step of running a script just isn't me (not that I don't appreciate the tip. I do!). I'm going to sit down and copy my repeating stuff so it shows up weekly as you suggested. I guess that will work. A lot of it I can probably copy and paste in blocks. But there's a lot of little stuff and it's going to be tedious work... work that I've already done, and done again. So again, thanks. I too shall submit a feature request. The nice folks at Omni are getting to know me I'm afraid. Probably as the guy that whines a lot. Have you used OF long? Have they been responsive to suggestions? Do they update, improve frequently?
Post 7
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I don't mind bringing the context list for my current location up myself, but I can see how that would be handy if my schedule had less variation. On the flipside, though, it would really annoy me if I deviated from the planned schedule and my phone was showing me the wrong task list... We do have feature requests on time-based contexts in the dev database, as well as repeat types that exclude the weekends. By emailing the ninjas and letting them know you need them, it helps bump them up the task list. (In general, we try to add the things that the most folks have let us know they need first.) Quote:
Does "we try to be" count as an answer? :-) Last edited by Brian; 2010-01-26 at 03:25 PM.. Reason: insert emoticon in 2nd to last response
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Member
2010-01-27, 01:15 PM
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Member
2010-02-06, 06:45 PM
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