[clayc]

Hi everyone

im a very new omnifocus user.

ive been spending a lot of time building projects and contexts and reading on the forum to better understand the omnifocus way. in general im loving this program.

im having difficulties conceptualising one thing though.

I need to have a context of hardware store, i buy things at this hardware store for both work and home. how do i organise my contexts so i can see these 'buy' tasks in their respective work and home parent contexts so i remember to do them but also be able to bring up the hardware store context while im in the hardware store so i can see what i need to buy both for work and home?

I have read (funnily enough also about hardware stores)
http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthre...text+hierarchy

and many other threads about multiple tags.

i dont want this post to start an 'omnifocus needs multiple tags' thread because i can see that there are already many of those listed on the forum.

what im asking for is some newbie advice from seasoned omnifocus users on how to conceptualise this type of thing now using omnifocus creatively. where should the hardware store context go?

thanks in advance

[whpalmer4]

It's easy: you just need a hardware store context, which has no relationship to a home context or a work context. If you have a project in your work hierarchy that needs you to buy something at the hardware store, you assign the hardware store context to the action to buy that item. Similarly, a home fixit project that needs a new tool gets an action to buy that tool, with the hardware store context. Doesn't matter whether you are doing something at the hardware store for work or personal reasons -- it needs to be done at the hardware store, and that's the context.

A work context or a home context is used to tag actions which must be done in those locations. "Turn in expense report" might be something that has to be done at work; "Move furniture out of spare bedroom" might be something that has to be done at home.

What it sounds like you want is to divide your *projects* between home and work. I would suggest a Home or Personal folder and a Work folder, populated accordingly. The project to paint the spare bedroom would live in the Home folder, and the actions would be things like Home, Hardware store, etc. The Work folder is going to be populated with projects related to your job, and the contexts may have some overlap with Home projects, but there are likely to be some that never turn up in your Home projects.

When you go to the hardware store, you pull out your computer or iPhone and look at the list of actions (in context mode) in the Hardware store context. If you need to buy a paint brush for the bedroom painting project in the Home folder, and a new contractor's saw for your carpentry business (a project in the Work folder), you can do so on the same trip. You can see the associated projects for those actions (by turning on a column in the desktop version, or looking at the project name in the iPhone version) if for some reason you want to only do tasks for work projects on a given trip.

Does that make things clearer for you?

[clayc]

ok this is starting to make sense. i was thinking i was going to have to have multiple hardware store contexts in parent folders.

just wondering if this method will also work with iphone? i think i have been using context view too much because i havent worked out how to have a 'do today' project 'perspective' on the iphone. i think its coming in future updates. i was a Things user so ive been a bit obsessed with getting a 'today' view.

thanks for the advice

[whpalmer4]

Yes, it works fine with the iPhone.

There are a number of approaches to making a "today" list. One easy one is to just use the flag feature to flag the tasks that are for "today". A somewhat more involved, but in my opinion more powerful, way to go is to develop a "tickler" perspective and use start dates. The "tickler" perspective groups by start date and lets you see actions starting today. If you look at the Applying OmniFocus forum, this is a topic that has generated considerable discussion, and you should be able to find an approach that works for you in there somewhere :-)

[clayc]

thanks for your advice

ive gone with the approach of having places separated from my work and home parent contexts. this appears to help when i want to see both home and work tasks that need to be completed at various places.

example of my contexts

Work
-@office

Home
-garden
-chores

Places
-family centres (i need to go to these places for work)
-hardware
-grocery

what is difficult with this method is when i want to just see places i have to go to for home tasks. if i select the places context (parent) it shows me both home and work tasks. when i try to set up a 'today' context perspective for work, i select both home and places contexts but then it still shows home tasks as well. is there a way to filter out home tasks?

so then ive tried to make a 'today' view in project view so i can just focus on work tasks but it seems to show me all my projects headings even if there arent tasks flagged or due within each project. i have a long list of empty projects then 2 projects listed with tasks due today.

getting a bit confused. reading too many forum posts to try and work this out. not getting things done. starting to look back at Things because it has tags (though not other essentials). hoping omnifocus has a workaround for a newbie!

my brain is hurting....i thought this was supposed to make my life easier :)

[clayc]

ok

after my crisis i dug a bit deeper and did even more reading. here is what ive come up with.

go into planning mode. select work parent project and 'focus' on that, move to context mode and command select @work and @places contexts. all other projects (eg home) are filtered out so i can only see work projects in relevant contexts. i then use the due or flagged view to see my 'today' taks and save this as a perspective called 'today work context'.

i think its working for me. hope this helps anyone else who is confused like me.