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People wants to move from Things, but they need a 'Today-View' Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Hey there,
I'm sure that a lot of Things users want to switch to OF, but they want to use a 'Today-View'.

I would love to see this feature too. So I can wake up in the morning, starts OF and select what tasks I want to done today.

Now I've to give everything an end-date. That drives me crazy :D
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg Jones View Post
Bottom line is that Things also has a Today view that is nice, while by default OmniFocus does not (a perspective can get similar functionality). Many people believe that Things has a more attractive UI, but as the OmniFocus UI has themes, many people prefer to customize the UI of OmniFocus. Many people believe that Things has an advantage due to its simplicity, while OmniFocus can be just about as simple or as in-depth as the user wants to make it. Things Touch does have the ability to email tasks while OmniFocus iPhone does not.

On the flip side, OmniFocus has parallel and sequential tasks, sub-projects, cloud syncing, project review functionality, custom perspectives, custom toolbar with built-in commands and scripts, scheduled tasks on the Mac and the iPhone with start times, due dates with due times, alarms through Growl/Prowl, and iCal, bookmarklet to add tasks from Safari, the iPhone has Locations Services customized to contexts, imbedded browser, photo support, voice note support, repeat task support, and a completely customizable interface through the use of synced perspectives and icons while Things Mac and Things Touch... do not.
How did you get 'Today' and 'Someday' to OF? oO

Last edited by Brian; 2010-07-02 at 02:19 PM.. Reason: Increased readability of post by reducing amount of quoted material
 
Greg mentions in his post that he's using OmniFocus' Perspectives feature. It allows you to save custom views of your data on the Mac, then sync them over to the phone. You can name them and give them a custom icon.

If you do a forum search for threads that include the words "due or flagged perspective", there's plenty of material available for review.

I don't actually use a Today list, but something like the following may get you started.

Do the following menu selections produce a view that would help you?

View -> Context Mode
View -> Show All Projects
View -> Sidebar Filter -> Remaining
View -> Grouping -> Context
View -> Sorting -> Project
View -> Status Filter -> Due or Flagged
View -> Time Filter -> Any Status

This approach will show all your actions that are due soon or which have had a flag set on them.

If this view does show what you're looking for, you can save it for further use by selecting
Perspectives -> Save window as -> New Perspective.

You can now give the perspective a name, and switch to it at any time under the Perspectives menu.

Once you sync, you can make the list visible on your iOS device by opening OmniFocus' settings and turning Perspectives on. You'll have a new item on the home screen at that point; the today list will be inside that.

This topic is a bit removed from the original topic of the thread it was posted in, so I'm going to bust this out into a new one. Wanted to respond first, though. :-)

Now you can bring that view up from the Perspectives menu at any time.

If that view doesn't do what you want, there may be another combination of settings that does. Let us know what you need done differently and we're happy to help.

Last edited by Brian; 2010-07-02 at 02:42 PM.. Reason: add "it was posted in" to the third-from-last paragraph
 
Okay, found your existing thread, so I moved these posts there instead. :-)

Here's a link back to the thread the previous two posts were pulled from, in case it helps other folks who browse this thread in the future.
 
Thank you, but what I mean in this thread is a real 'Today' flag, like the little star-icon in Things. It is very usefull. I can flag tasks for today easily and fast and they appears in 'Today'.

Now I've to set a due-date for everything - this needs much more time ;)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by lmsboy View Post
Thank you, but what I mean in this thread is a real 'Today' flag, like the little star-icon in Things. It is very usefull. I can flag tasks for today easily and fast and they appears in 'Today'.

Now I've to set a due-date for everything - this needs much more time ;)
Lmsboy, have you tried using the flags in OmniFocus for this purpose? You can easily sort by flags, and create a perspective to track this.
 
Yes I know, but if I use flags for it, the badge wouldn't show me how many things I've flaged (for today).
 
Brian has pretty much explained how I have set up a perspective for a 'Today' list in OmniFocus. I also set the View>Availability Filter to Available so that only the tasks that are currently actionable appear in the list. This setting may or may not work for some, depending on one's preferred workflow. I often flag entire projects, especially sequential projects, and only the next flagged action appears in the Today list. When I check off a particular task in a flagged project as done, the next actionable task in the project pops into the Today list.

I also make use of start dates and times, so tasks may appear in the Today list during the day also, so the number of tasks in the list can go up during the day even though I have checked tasks as completed. For this reason, a badge count of my task list would be meaningless to me.

I use the Today list more as a reminder throughout the day of what I need to work on as well as what I want to work on. I still work primarily out of context mode, although a quick look at the Today list may change my priorities. I don't work well with a master 'to-do' list, and the user that wants a Today list that favors a systematic approach to checking off all items on the list may not be comfortable with my approach.
 
Ah ok, so maybe people who comes from Things needs to think in another GTD-way!?

As you said, there is a 'master-todo' list called 'Today'.

So what would you say, in which way is it more useful to use OF (without a masterlist)?

My contexts are all for a special place, such us Home, Customer A, Customer B, Customer ..., Shop A, Shop B, ..., Phone, ...

And I assigned GPS to every context instead Phone and something like this.

If I'm at home I look into my due-date-view and if I'm on the road or at a customer, I'll look into my near-by on my iPhone, because every tasks got's a context with the place, where I need to do this task. So it's pretty easy to see, what I've to done at the customer or what I've to buy in the shopping mall, etc..

I tried Things for a few weeks and ok, in one way, I lave the 'today' list, because sometimes I lost my focus in OF (because of so much things I've to done and my 'overdue' list getting so long) and there is one thing I really like in Things: Repeating tasks are templates, which will reproduce itself on a special date.

You've to know, that I manage my financial tasks in OF too, so such as my phonebill comes every 15th of a month with such as $100.- so I've create a task called 'Phonebill $100' on 15th (duedate), every month. No it appears and I remember last year, the billing comes but the Phonecompany didn't deduct the money from my bankaccount, so the task still in my overdues and on the next 15th the new billing-task didn't appears, because the old one wasn't finished.

If you have a lot of things to do, this could confuse you, because you think 'oh the phonecompany gets $100' but you didn't recognize that it is $200 now.

In Things it would appears twice in this case - there's no solution for that in OF, or?
 
Without coming out and saying there is a 'right' or a 'wrong' way to manage your tasks, I will say that working primarily from a master task list is not a GTD-way. My understanding of David Allen's primary concept with GTD is to overcome the limitations of a master 'to-do' list. If one is constantly working from a master to-do list, then everything on that list is constantly competing for my attention. Even with the Today view in Things, I expect that most followers of GTD still apply due and tag filters to that view to work in a contextual mode.

As to how I find using OF most useful, it is working from a context perspective, and my 'Today' list is only a quick overview of what I need to work on as well as what I want to work on for a particular day. For my purposes, it is not intended to be an comprehensive list of what I must complete today.

My Today list is also situational, so for example I may flag 'weed garden' to appear on my list today as part of my daily review. If I don't get to it today, then I may be fine with that. I may also unflag it during tomorrow's daily review if the weather is bad or if I am traveling. Or I may also assign it a due date that it must be done today if weeding the garden cannot wait until I return from traveling.

In my opinion, the main concept of GTD that must be done without fail is the Review process. I conduct a daily review the first thing each morning (some review multiple times daily) where I thoughtfully plan my daily objectives given the contexts that will be available to me, the firm commitments that I have made to myself and others, and the objectives I have fleshed out in my weekly review. My weekly review has also been informed by my monthly review, which is in turn informed by a quarterly review, etc. It is only during the various review processes that I allow all the projects, tasks, and processes that are specific to that review to capture my attention. This is the process that I find most effective regardless of the tool I use-Things, OmniFocus, pen and paper makes no difference. Having said that, the review tools in OmniFocus make it easier to conduct a review.

I don't know what review process you have in place, but I have found that tweaking the Location Services feature of OmniFocus can be micro-applied to the detriment of actually getting anything done. I would find working with my customers from GPS location frustrating. First, I would not want to depend on being in a specific area to remind me to contact a client. If I would happen to be in an area where the client(s) are in close proximity, I may not have the needed resources (product mock-up, brochure, job quote, etc.) with me to call on the customer. Or I may only have an hour available to me, but multiple clients pop up in the area, with tasks that will far exceed the available time. Or worse still, I have the resources, I have the time available, but the client is not available to see me. Applying a location context to an errand that I can accomplish in the same geographic area makes sense to leverage my time, but using location context as a primary planning tool for what must be done is not effective for me.

As a quick thought on the other examples, OmniFocus has some advantages when setting repeating tasks. A task can be set to repeat after an interval (like Things) or can be set to start again after completion. OmniFocus also allows repeating tasks to work on the iPhone, which is not currently possible with Things. I see in another thread that you have asked about repeating tasks with an end date. While I can agree that this would be a nice feature, it is during my weekly review where I would see that the task is no longer needed. I would then delete it if it would never be used again, or schedule it for a date in the future if I will need it again.

As an example, I need to write a check monthly for my children's' school lunches. During my monthly review for July, this monthly repeating task popped up. As they are on summer break, I changed the next start date to mid-August when they return to school. In mid-August I will write a check for the partial month and then change the next occurrence to start the first of September. Easier to do than it is to describe.

With your example of a repeating task with the phone bill, I don't see anything in that task that is actionable? Perhaps I am overlooking something, but I have found that if I cannot begin the task description with a verb, then it is not a task that is clearly defined and actionable. What do you want to act on with this task? If you are making the payment, define the task as 'Pay phone company $100'. If the payment is scheduled to be auto-deducted, define the task as 'Confirm $100 payment to phone company' and then decide what the next action should be if the payment does not happen.

Hope this helps.
 
 




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