[steve]

I would like to pose a problem which might result in some better work flow ideas or an applescript/feature.

Because of the quick entry panel, I have mastered getting things into my system. I have hundreds of projects from the simple and unimportant to the mission critical. I have mastered capture.

I have moved many of the projects to hold, but when I sit down to work, the essential and urgent NA's get lost in a sea of stuff that really don't have to be done immediately. Sometimes I feel like I would make more progress if I concentrated on 20 projects instead of 100.

Here are potential solutions from within OF:

1) Only have 20 active projects-- move the rest to HOLD
2) Change the start date on the less mission critical projects
3) Flag the most essential NA's
4) Use the Next Review feature and use the inspector to increase or decrease the frequency of review given the importance of the project.

I think my favorite option is #2— change the start date. It gives you a chance to renegotiate commitments with yourself or others. In doing this, you can get things off your screen so you can focus on what is really important. Of course, one major flaw would be the tendency to keep changing the start date. Is it possible to see the date you added an item? That would be helpful.

Any thoughts on a good workflow.

A great possible script is change start day by x number of days.

Thanks for any insight.

Steve

[Craig]

Are you aware of the Focus feature? Seems to me like it does exactly what you are wishing...

[al_f]

As Craig says, I'd select the projects you want to concentrate on on a particular day from the list and then focus on them so you only see actions related to those projects in context view.

[curt.clifton]

Don't overlook flagging whole projects as well. All the project's actions inherit the flag status. I use flags to flag the 4 or 5 most important projects that I identify in my monthly review.

[steve]

Wow! Thanks. That opens up a whole new world. I didn't realize that when you focus on a project, you only see those NA's in the context view. I also didn't know that you could focus on multiple folders. Finally, I didn't realize that flags were inherited and that you could limit the view in the context view to only see flagged items.

* The flagged status in the view bar doesn't seem to do much in the project view— I expected it to hide all unflagged projects. Only the flagged items showed up, but they are hard to find in a sea of projects. Is there a way to show only flagged projects in the project view? That would be great!

* It would be really nice if you could see the flag or highlight items that you wanted to focus on in the project column and so, when you unfocused, you could quickly find them again. I realized that you could do this by saving the perspective. This might be helpful when you can name the perpectives— "key November projects"

Thanks,
Steve

[stormer]

being completely new to OF I'm wondering where so many of the features that I read about in the forum are documented?

[Lutin]

Currently, nowhere. OF is still in alpha.
At the point it reaches 1.0, I'm sure there will be a manual.

[MEP]

Originally Posted by stormer

being completely new to OF I'm wondering where so many of the features that I read about in the forum are documented?

Writing documentation at this point would be counterproductive for several reasons.

1. Someone has to write the docs and right now, every one on the OF team is busy making the app work. Taking time to write docs now would distract the developers from development.

2. Features are still changing. Some features are being discussed and debated pretty heavily on the forums and others just plain don't work yet and their interface might not be fully defined until after they are implemented. Any docs that would be written right now would almost certainly have to be rewritten later.

I still think it would be nice to have definitions of the main concepts. Those are unlikely to change and definitions would help people understand the approach, discover features or use the application more effectively.

For example, the message of day often mentions features that are not obvious and not defined (recent Ex: "action group")

[MEP]

Originally Posted by pavesina

I still think it would be nice to have definitions of the main concepts. Those are unlikely to change and definitions would help people understand the approach, discover features or use the application more effectively.

For example, the message of day often mentions features that are not obvious and not defined (recent Ex: "action group")

Well, on that note, I think Omni is kind of assuming (perhaps incorrectly for those who signed up to the mailing list later) that most of us are coming to OF from Kinkless and are already pretty familiar with the main concepts of the application and how OF represents an improvement in many ways over what Kinkless offered.

If you just want an introduction to the very basic features, read the Kinkless documentation on the 43Folders wiki to see where the basic ideas for OF came from or watch Ethan's introductory OmniFocus screencasts (one and two) to learn about some of the highlight features and see the biggest differences between KGTD and OF.