I have been trying to move over from Life Balance to OmniFocus, and I am running into some problems with OF. Can someone help me figure out these issues?
1. Projects vs. Actions: I am confused about why there is a distinction between Projects and Actions. For example, I can have a project like “Change the oil in my car” that is also technically an action, but needs to be broken up into smaller tasks. Or I could have an action like, “Have lunch with Joe” that may require additional sub-actions, like “Call Joe and figure out a day for lunch.”*But since OF treats Projects and Actions differently, I get strange interactions, like one-off actions that are not part of a project, so I either have to file them in Miscellaneous (which is different then how I would organize them), or I have to create a “Miscellaneous Tasks” project, and then only the first of my one-off tasks will show up as the Next Action.
It seems like a lot of these problems would be solved if Projects and Actions were treated as interchangeable. Another solution would be to allow users to turn off Next Actions, so that ANY valid action was highlighted and shown as available.
And speaking of which, why don’t projects have an entry in the Context column? I have to go into the Inspector to set the default context, which seems like an unnecessary additional step.
2. Nested Contexts: Another feature I really like in Life Balance is that Contexts (called Places in LB) can be nested. So for example, I can define that Work contains Phone Daytime, Computer, and Email. Then, when I set my location to Work, the only tasks that show up are ones that can be done at any of those places. I don’t know why I should have to distinguish between each context, or why Work: Phone has to be a different context than Home: Phone.
So my quandary now is: Go with OF, which has much better functionality for automatic data entry? Or stick with Life Balance, which has more flexible organization and doesn’t lock me into the “Every project must have only one Next Action” model?
Any suggestions or advice are welcome.
1. Projects vs. Actions: I am confused about why there is a distinction between Projects and Actions. For example, I can have a project like “Change the oil in my car” that is also technically an action, but needs to be broken up into smaller tasks. Or I could have an action like, “Have lunch with Joe” that may require additional sub-actions, like “Call Joe and figure out a day for lunch.”*But since OF treats Projects and Actions differently, I get strange interactions, like one-off actions that are not part of a project, so I either have to file them in Miscellaneous (which is different then how I would organize them), or I have to create a “Miscellaneous Tasks” project, and then only the first of my one-off tasks will show up as the Next Action.
It seems like a lot of these problems would be solved if Projects and Actions were treated as interchangeable. Another solution would be to allow users to turn off Next Actions, so that ANY valid action was highlighted and shown as available.
And speaking of which, why don’t projects have an entry in the Context column? I have to go into the Inspector to set the default context, which seems like an unnecessary additional step.
2. Nested Contexts: Another feature I really like in Life Balance is that Contexts (called Places in LB) can be nested. So for example, I can define that Work contains Phone Daytime, Computer, and Email. Then, when I set my location to Work, the only tasks that show up are ones that can be done at any of those places. I don’t know why I should have to distinguish between each context, or why Work: Phone has to be a different context than Home: Phone.
So my quandary now is: Go with OF, which has much better functionality for automatic data entry? Or stick with Life Balance, which has more flexible organization and doesn’t lock me into the “Every project must have only one Next Action” model?
Any suggestions or advice are welcome.
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