[Harry]

Oh don't get me wrong, I'd love more control over folder status. I just meant that I find the review cycles to be a bigger problem for me personally. There are several issues with folders, all of which relate to the level of control you have over them versus the level of control over the projects and actions.

To be fair I'm not sure using folders for AORs does max it out. Since you can nest folders they can go as "High" up the vertical GTD "map" as you like. You could have a folder, for example, for each 50,000 life goal and work your way down from that. At the moment the lack of control over folders makes it a less than ideal way to do it, but with greater control the sky's the limit (pardon the GTD-based pun).

I'd say that rather than deciding how "high" they want to go, the bigger challenge Omni face is working out how, if people do begin to use OF as their entire GTD system, the database sizes can be kept down. Syncing depends on small databases, and the better OF gets at handing the larger outcomes the larger those databases will get. Then again, knowing the guys are Omni I'm sure they'll come up with a creative solution for that.

[gerben]

Interesting discussion! The thing i have noticed a bit is that when i'm in a planning cycle folders for areas work really well. But when i'm in a hectic production period this approach does seem to fail simply because AOR's are not the first thing i need to see in the morning. Maybe this isn't very gtd, and also would call for an extra layer in OF I think flexing folders a bit could do the trick. I mean, i've used an OF competitor for a while that does brake everything down in chunks (1 "capsule" for active, another for scheduled, and yet another for someday, etc.) this totally fails in my opinion because the connection between all these bits is lost; there was now way to get a good sense of perspective. I could imagine that giving folders attributes, note capabilities and colors could work really well. If that would be combined with the power of custom perspectives i guess you could create a thinking OF view, and a working one. Might do it for me.

[Harry]

If you're talking about Things, that was my experience with the app too. There are a couple of things (pardon the pun) that Things does well, but for me there was a definite sense of "disjointedness" between all the "parts".

Where I think OmniFocus excels is the inherent flexibility in the system. That's why I think adding more flexibility (by adding power to folders) rather than a more "static" concept of AOR (like Things uses) would be best suited to OF.

[David4GTD]

Originally Posted by rmathes

\\
One decision OmniFocus has to make is how ‘high’ they want to go on the horizons of focus. If they use folders for this, we can use those as AORs and then we’ve pretty much maxed out. And I could certainly understand if they wanted to stop there.

But how cool would it be to have an app that integrates both the 10,000 level and below, but also has sections for vision, goals and AORs and allows those to be tied together systematically? That would really be powerful. Can certainly do it offline, I've got AOR definitions now in Notebook, but would love to ‘unfragment’ all this stuff as much as possible.

I agree with this - you did someting great with managing projects, contexts, etc. But the point of GTD is much more than just getting suff done. It is about getting the MOST Important stuff done that is aligned with your vision, mission, and goals. There is always a why behind a project - Omni has done a great job of taking care of the tactial issues ... it would be far more powerful if it linked Vision and MIssion to Goals and then link that to Projects. Again, I have to find another program or way to work with the 10,000 foot view Omni does not apply.

David