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I did read the pov of Omni in regard to Ofocus and calendaring. I realize that omni focus is more of an action taking process.

The only problem I am encountering is with syncing with iCal. Sure most of the items in Ofocus is an action and belongs in the todo list but some steps require a specific amount of time.

The whole purpose is to map out this time so we don't overextend and we can plan our day.

So wouldn't it make sense to have a trigger that will allow us to create a calendar item on certain items.

For example: Say a photographer has a shooting project. part of that project has an action step of importing and categorizing the photos. This say would take 1 hour. This belongs in the calendar and not in a To Do List.

At the moment I am draggin items from the ToDo List to the Calendar. Unfortunately the time interval is not exported to iCal, if it get put in the note field it would help.

Then we can click see the time interval and simply drag to the calendar section. The item can remain in the todo list so when completed it will maintain syncing.

Just a thought.
 
I would create a project in OmniFocus for that photography session. This includes all the necessary steps to complete that project.

After entering all the tasks that make up the project, I'll highlight the project itself and select Edit > Copy As Link.

Then I would go to iCal and create a new event. Let's say Monday, 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm.

In the URL entry, I would paste the link from the clipboard.

So when the time comes, I can open iCal and click on that link to go to the project in OmniFocus. I'll be concerned with just the tasks in that project alone and won't bother looking at other tasks/projects.

This may took some adjustment on your part to think of it this way. YMMV
 
wilsonng i like this tip. It would be great if the entire project was being done in one calendar entry. Usually it would be spread, action A one a specific day, action B a week later etc.

I just feel that the double entry is a waste.

My feeling is that if an action takes 15 minutes or more it should go in the calendar.
 
Completely understandable with the double entry just feeling like an extra waste of time....

Unfortunately, iCal seems to be a bit underpowered when it comes to task management.

The only thing I really do is just create a perspective that sorts everything out by start date. Make sure the View Bar is shown by selecting View > Show View Bar. Then set the view bar with the following:

Context Filter: Remaining
Grouping: Start
Sorting: Start
Availability Filter: Available
Status Filter: Any
Estimated Time Filter: Any Duration


You can see any tasks that have to start on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

From there, you will have to judge how many tasks need to be started on Monday.

Personally, I like to be able to see it in a monthly calendar view myself. That's why I bought BusyCal. I like to visually see my tasks in a monthly calendar view.

After mapping my Photoshoot context to an iCal calendar called Photoshoot stuff, BusyCal puts my task into the day square in the monthly calendar view.

On my calendar, I can see my day squares get filled up for this week:

Monday: 3 tasks
Tuesday: 5 tasks
Wednesday: 6 tasks
Thursday: no tasks
Friday: 1 task


Just by looking at BusyCal, I can pretty much guess how time intensive certain tasks are. I can see that Monday starts off fairly quiet with only 3 tasks but things go crazy on Tuesday and Wednesday. But Thursday is very quiet and Friday only has 1 task left.

So now I can schedule in tasks on whatever day I want. I can guess that i can squeeze in 1 or 2 more tasks on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday looks pretty full with at least 5 tasks on Tuesday and 6 tasks on Wednesday.

I can see Thursday is wide open and I'll likely schedule in another photoshoot there.

Friday is very light and I can schedule more tasks on that day.

Tasks don't have a time duration so I just put it in the notes section for billing purposes.

not a perfect system but it's working. I don't have time to waste looking for the perfect software solution unless I pay someone $1,000.00 to create a custom software solution for me.

BusyCal was the missing ingredient for me. I wished OmniFocus had a "calendar" view but oh well.... Life goes on and I can't wait.....

Hopefully this will work for you.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by wilsonng View Post
Completely understandable with the double entry just feeling like an extra waste of time....

Unfortunately, iCal seems to be a bit underpowered when it comes to task management.

The only thing I really do is just create a perspective that sorts everything out by start date. Make sure the View Bar is shown by selecting View > Show View Bar. Then set the view bar with the following:

Context Filter: Remaining
Grouping: Start
Sorting: Start
Availability Filter: Available
Status Filter: Any
Estimated Time Filter: Any Duration


You can see any tasks that have to start on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

From there, you will have to judge how many tasks need to be started on Monday.

Personally, I like to be able to see it in a monthly calendar view myself. That's why I bought BusyCal. I like to visually see my tasks in a monthly calendar view.

After mapping my Photoshoot context to an iCal calendar called Photoshoot stuff, BusyCal puts my task into the day square in the monthly calendar view.

On my calendar, I can see my day squares get filled up for this week:

Monday: 3 tasks
Tuesday: 5 tasks
Wednesday: 6 tasks
Thursday: no tasks
Friday: 1 task


Just by looking at BusyCal, I can pretty much guess how time intensive certain tasks are. I can see that Monday starts off fairly quiet with only 3 tasks but things go crazy on Tuesday and Wednesday. But Thursday is very quiet and Friday only has 1 task left.

So now I can schedule in tasks on whatever day I want. I can guess that i can squeeze in 1 or 2 more tasks on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday looks pretty full with at least 5 tasks on Tuesday and 6 tasks on Wednesday.

I can see Thursday is wide open and I'll likely schedule in another photoshoot there.

Friday is very light and I can schedule more tasks on that day.

Tasks don't have a time duration so I just put it in the notes section for billing purposes.

not a perfect system but it's working. I don't have time to waste looking for the perfect software solution unless I pay someone $1,000.00 to create a custom software solution for me.

BusyCal was the missing ingredient for me. I wished OmniFocus had a "calendar" view but oh well.... Life goes on and I can't wait.....

Hopefully this will work for you.
wilsonng, thank you very much for describing your approach. The point that you make - and one that I very much share - is that extra steps are a waste of time (one, frankly, I cannot afford on both the temporal and frustration levels). I am happy to invest a great deal of time in setting up a system, but the usage should be such that I need to do nothing extra for the right things to happen - indicating a start date on a task should display it in a way that I will see when I need to start it, going out and creating a calendar entry is a waste.
 
So why won't Omni Group change this. This is such a great app that I decided to stay with an iphone instead of switching to Android.

They just need to make it complete.
 
In process of checking out several task mgmt apps such as OF, THL, Pagico, and Achieve Planner (Win only...)....

The one thing that does seem missing to me in OF is some sort of visualization of your day, week, month activities and the ability to then plan your week to help increase the odds of your accomplishing the important things you want to do.

Pagico has a simple Gantt chart like visualization of your day, week, month, year.....with colored bars for items on it. Looks nice and nice idea, but somehow seems a bit odd to me in terms of understanding my day or week, etc....

Achieve Planner allows you to plan your week in terms of time blocks of activities from your task items....pretty clever and seems to work well. but this is a Windows only app (don't mind that in principle...) and looks like a Windows app if you know what I mean. So, visually, nowhere near as nice looking as the other 3 apps I mentioned above....

Definitely like what I see in OF and will likely purchase it, but do think some sort of calendar like visualization of your day, week, month, would be very useful addition to the program. Especially if it had the weekly time planning features of Achieve Planner....

Anyway, just my 2¢ from a OF noob..... ;)
 
I'll second wilsong's endorsement of BusyCal..it was the missing ingredient for me also .
I did a trial of basecamp and realized that what I loved was the " milestone " calendar that they have [sort of like the forecast view on the ipad app for OF ; )
So I just mapped my active work projects to a context called milestones and mapped that to a calendar and busy cal shows me my week mapped out with start dates .
" start within the next week " just wasn't enough for me ..ymmv.
 
 


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