[SpiralOcean]

Originally Posted by wilsonng

If you do't do the weekly review, you can no longer "trust" what is in your system. You'll have items still left inside that are no longer needed and just adds up to the junk. Our daily activities and bright ideas will keep adding more projects/tasks to the ever increasing backlog of stuff that interests you or things that you want to do. But sometimes you have to clear out those ideas. What you thought once upon a time was a brilliant idea no longer seems that great when you look deeper into it. It's time to just delete the project. There are projects that you'll get to eventually. It's time to put it on hold for you to review next time.

Nice reminder wilsonng. I do the weekly review, but am now wondering if I need to start archiving some of those projects. Trying to find that edge of: projects that don't seem as interesting to me and giving it up by deleting it is something I'm looking at.

Any suggestions for determining if something should be deleted? I suppose dropping a project is another option. That way it will move over to the archive when I archive items, and it's still there in the archive if I go back and search for it.

A book I read about clearing clutter (Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui) has helped me with clearing physical clutter. One tip in the book to get rid of books is; donate the books to the library. The book is at the library if you want to go back and read it. (I've never gone back to the library to get a book).

I'm starting to realize clearing out the mental clutter of someday/maybe is something I may want to look at. I've changed many of the someday/maybe reviews to every 3 months, 6 months or even 1 year. This has cut down on the number of items to review in someday/maybe on a weekly basis.

[Brian]

Originally Posted by zoisite

[I]I see a danger (at least for the unexperienced user) that actions get buried deep inside project hierarchies — like: "forget to flag a task and it is lost". Being able to nest sub-projects into projects (and sub-sub-projects into sub-projects and...) is a great organizational feature, but it is also dangerous that they become graves in that tasks get buried.

As I said many times OmniFocus is incredibly powerful (much more than Things), but not used right it can lead to disaster. That is the main advantage of Things: It is designed so simple and self-explanatory that it is virtually impossible for you to miss a task (one would have to try really really hard to do so or be really dumb).

Zoisite, I think you've hit on one of the features of OmniFocus that does scare a lot of potential customers: that they'll get something buried in their database and blow a deadline.

Not missing your items means needing to understand contexts, and perspectives, and how the view filters work, and the difference between Project mode and Context mode... It's a lot of stuff you need to know about. When folks sit down with an app that's supposed to make them more productive, they often feel like they're getting less done because of all the stuff they need to learn about. They don't enjoy that feeling.

By comparison, a tagging system feels a lot better - you can add multiple tags to an item, and be more sure that when you go looking for it, you'll find it. It's also pretty easy to make a new tag that you think you need and add it to your system at any given time.

The reality is that neither approach is perfect. The downside of a system where stuff shows up on multiple lists is that those lists get fuzzier; you'll probably have to spend more time thinking about the stuff on that sublist when you're deciding what to do next.

In OmniFocus, my "Phone" context shows me the tasks that I can only accomplish on the phone. If I'm checking actions off from the phone list, it's because there's no other way I could get that action done.

If I had an action in my database that was tagged "@bob @phone @email", my Phone list would be showing me a list of things I could possibly get done on the phone. There's more stuff to think about on that second list; while the phone may be one way to do that action, it may not be the best way.

A lot of current OmniFocus customers want their lists to show that - the best way. The want to plan their system out, and then let the system do the work.

What I particularly liked about that article was how it illustrated both the power of the current approach and how unfriendly that system can be to folks. We're looking at ways to make the app both more powerful and more friendly: making it more flexible in the manner you're asking for is one of the ways we could do that. But we need to make smart choices about how we do that. :-)

[wilsonng]

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

Any suggestions for determining if something should be deleted? I suppose dropping a project is another option. That way it will move over to the archive when I archive items, and it's still there in the archive if I go back and search for it.

A book I read about clearing clutter (Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui) has helped me with clearing physical clutter. One tip in the book to get rid of books is; donate the books to the library. The book is at the library if you want to go back and read it. (I've never gone back to the library to get a book).

I'm starting to realize clearing out the mental clutter of someday/maybe is something I may want to look at. I've changed many of the someday/maybe reviews to every 3 months, 6 months or even 1 year. This has cut down on the number of items to review in someday/maybe on a weekly basis.

I've slowly evolved my own GTD setup and found that it's easier for me to keep my Crazy Ideas clutter outside of OmniFocus.

I use OmniOutliner and created an outline called "Crazy Ideas". This is where I go crazy and enter any crazy idea that pops into my head. I put crazy ideas into OmniOutliner instead of OmniFocus because I'm not ready to commit to it to as an OmniFocus project. There's no need to clutter up OmniFocus with all these half-baked ideas that I haven't committed to yet. If it's not in OmniFocus then it's out of sight, out of mind. I'll Google the web for web articles, movies, notes, and anything of interest that I've collected in my research in fleshing out a project. When I'm finally ready, I'll make a project and flesh out the next actions.

Sometimes I'm not quite ready for the Crazy Idea and I'll leave it in OmniOutliner to revisit during a weekly review.

I've seen some OmniFocus next actions list with every project set to "active" status. Some folks fear that some projects will fall through the cracks because they can't "see" everything. But I'd go insane if I had to wade through all the active projects and their next actions.

I subscribed to the Zen-To-Done/Covey idea of three big rocks per week. I set all my projects to "on hold" status. The projects are still there but they are not urgent.

Then I switch to Projects/Planning mode to see all of my projects. Based on my schedule and how I feel, I'll select anywhere from three to five project (sometimes seven if I'm feeling gutsy) and set those to "active" mode. These are the big rocks that I want to do for the coming week. My next actions list will show only the next actions that I want done. This reduces my next action list to something more manageable.

So my plate is basically full for the week because I have these three to five active projects and their next actions. I make sure to leave room because life will constantly throw new next actions at me anyways.

I do have an urgent perspective that shows me all the flagged items that I really want done.

Only you can know what projects should be deleted or dropped. If a project doesn't align with your goals at the higher Horizons of Focus, or is no longer interesting to you (what was I thinking when I created this project?), or if it is no longer relevant, just delete it. If you get inspired once again, that project you deleted will come back to you in a wave of inspiration. Then you can always add it back to OmniFocus. If you want a record, then you can set the status to dropped anyways.

During my quarterly review (every 3 months), I'll look back through my daily journals and completed/dropped projects and see if anything in there inspires me to create new projects.

That weekly review is awesome. If you don't do the weekly review, you'll always be worried that something fell through the cracks. My quarterly reviews usually go up to the higher Horizons of Focus to re-align my goals and purge out outdated projects that were just dumb ideas (but pretty awesome when I first thought about it!). Any projects that don't align themselves to my values and goals, I'd say "life is too short to waste time on things that I don't care for anymore."

To cut down the time for weekly review, I make have use of the next review date. Some projects should be reviewed once a week (the default setting). Other projects only have to be reviewed once a month.

I have the "review" perspective with all projects sorted by review date. I believe it is one of the default perspectives built into OmniFocus. So I only look at projects that need to be reviewed (due for a weekly review) or needs to be reviewed within the next week or month. That has helped shorten my weekly review.

My quarterly review is when i want to do more intensive re-alignment of projects to my goals.

If you don't do the housecleaning/weekly review/quarterly review, you'll find that you'll have so much junk and clutter that no longer means anything to you. I hate doing the housework but I know it's essential to my sanity. It's amazing that people forget to do housecleaning with their OmniFocus (or Things) projects and tasks.

Become your own self editor and ruthlessly hack away at all your Someday/Maybe list. Heck, move it out of OmniFocus and put into OmniOutliner. That way, you won't be cluttering OmniFocus anymore. I still have some half baked ideas in my "Crazy Ideas" outline. I'll go in and just toss out stuff that no longer means anything to me.

[SpiralOcean]

Thanks for the detailed workflow description wilsonng. I'm thinking about trying to set all my projects to on hold, except for one project. (This doesn't include the mundane tasks like housecleaning, processing OmniFocus, weekly review and such. Those are all grouped into a folder called maintenance for me.) If I run out of actions for that project, either because it's completed or I have -waiting for- actions, then I'll go into my someday/maybe and activate another project?

Maybe one way to accomplish this is during the weekly review. Set all projects including new ones to on hold.

Another thing I may try is to flag one project a week. That may be easier. Then in my daily processing I can view the flagged filter and try to complete that one.

[wilsonng]

Yes, I also keep my office maintenance, home maintenance, and personal maintenance projects active. All the other projects are on hold except for my "big rocks". All my new projects are automatically set to on hold. If it was truly urgent, I would have already started on it! And sometimes what other people think is urgent is not an urgent priority to you. We have to remember to truly determine if new projects align with our own goals.

Bang away with your weekly review and self-editing. Be harsh and critical with your projects and see what can be dropped and/or deleted. You'll feel much better!

When I do run out of active projects or get stuck, I will often look at Someday/Maybe to see if there is something in there that can be activated.

As always, my GTD setup is a work in progress. But that's the beauty of OmniFocus. It can grow with you.

[Mango Himself]

Good comments.

One thing I do quite differently than Allen is that I perform a 'daily review'. I like to feel in control.

It took me a long time to realize one very basic difference between OF and Things: Things works better for the individual who likes to tackle one project at a time and stick to it until completed. OF allows you to perform actions for several projects almost simultaneously. I love the context feature in NEXT where as soon as you check one action the next one in the same project takes over. It has proven invaluable to me since I run several customer's projects at the same time. If I were to implement Things I would make the other wait until I finish the one I'm working on currently.

[wilsonng]

Yes, I do my daily review in the morning so that I remind myself of what needs to be done today or what next actions are available for me. Then I look at my calendar to see any events for the day. Then I like inside the tickler file to see if there was something important for me to refer to for today.

At the end of the day, I do another daily review, enter notes into my daily journal, and look ahead for the next 3 days.

I do my weekly review to go up one horizon horizon to review my projects and someday/maybe.

I'll do the quarterly review and go to the higher horizons of focus for goals and double check to make sure my current projects are properly aligned with my goals.

So each review (daily, weekly, quarterly) will go higher. One of these days, I'll actually be able to go up to the higher horizons of focus such as vision and purpose. But for now, I'm content with trying to master the lower horizons of focus before I start to get comfortable with the higher horizons of focus.


@Mango Himself:

Thanks for differentiating Things and OmniFocus. That's a great observation about handling multiple projects and single-focus projects.

I hadn't spent enough time with Things to notice it. Things just couldn't grow with me. I couldn't have projects with parallel tasks or sequential tasks. Not sure if Things has updated itself to handle sequential projects or parallel projects.

[Mango Himself]

@wilsonng

thanks. Actually Things has not come up with many changes lately. They do feature a Search function on desktop and iPhone that actually is far superior to OF. I wish OF had some of the Things features starting with the interface. Unfortunately, Things lacks way more than OF. I really like Things but OF does a much better job.

I would probably say that Things is a Task Manager and OF is a Project Manager. Sort of reminds me of the difference between Palm's Bonsai by Natara and Shadowplan by CodeJedi.