[rmathes]

I REALLY like this app and to date I've found it to be the best digital implementation of GTD going. But I have a question for Ken Case and the crew: is there any plan to evolve the app to start to capture things above the 10,000 foot level?

For example, I would love to have a section of OF where I can specify my Areas of Responsibility (20,000 feet) and Goals (30,000). But especially the AORs. Not all of actions are related back to a project. For example, I might have an action that says “run 5 miles today”. That’s not part of a project, it’s a single action that supports an AOR (Build and Maintain Optimum Health).

It would be VERY cool and powerful to be able to click on an AOR and be able see my projects and tasks that support it. It could be incorporated into my weekly review process and if I see that some AORs have a bunch of tasks and others have few if any, that’s a signal that perhaps I'm losing balance.

Just wondering if there’s been any discussion to this end, thanks.

[whpalmer4]

Isn't this just a folder for the AOR with relevant projects and a single action list to hold any single actions (and if I'm correctly understanding what I've heard, even that SAL won't be necessary in 2.0)? What essential functionality isn't yet provided? I'm not saying there isn't opportunity for some incremental improvements (like standalone single actions as mentioned above), but whenever I see a "why doesn't OF support roles or areas of responsibility" post, I'm always left wondering just what it is I'm apparently missing about these concepts, because it all looks like stuff one can do with OF right now.

[rmathes]

That’s absolutely one way to approach it. What that would really entail is instead of having a single “single action list“, then having one for each AOR. So I suppose what I could do is as you suggest, create project folders for each AOR, then within each of those have like a “misc” project that was a single action list for that AOR.

That’s a good idea, I'll implement that and see how it works. For whatever reason I’d only looked at folders in the project view as a way to next projects into basic buckets like work and personal and just never taken that next evolutionary step of looking at them as discrete AORs.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[rmathes]

OK, I've realized one limitation for this approach. Project folders are, well, just project folders. I can’t set any attributes for them whatsoever. One issue here is I can’t add notes for a folder. So just like for a project I want to be able to delineate what my intended outcome is, I want to do that for my AORs as well and since I can’t create notes for a folder, that’s a problem. One workaround is I create a placeholder project within each folder that is simply there as a descriptor. Not ideal, but I guess that’s one way I could work around this.

[whpalmer4]

You could use the Single Action List that holds the miscellaneous bits as the note holder for the folder as well...then you don't have any dummy projects, everything is functional.

Agreed that in an ideal world one could attach notes to folders as well as projects and actions, Help->Send Feedback, you know the drill :-)

[rmathes]

that’s actually what I was intending to do. I know SALs are not technically projects, but I was meaning anything below the folder level.

But the more I think about this, the more I'd really like to see AORs as a discrete data entity. Here are some of the things I'd like to be able to do with AORs:

establish review cycles for them, just like projects. For example, set my AORs to review quarterly, and some even monthly, while others perhaps annually.

Assign status conditions to them, like active or on-hold. I may have an AOR that is active, then my job is modified for a year so a given AOR is on hold but will resurface.

Then yes, add descriptors/notes.

I’ll use the work arounds we’ve discussed, but ideally I'd see something more robust. It’s the next natural step in the product design. OmniFocus starts where GTD recommends you start, by collecting, processing, organizing, reviewing and acting upon your inputs and agreements. But once you start to get a handle on that stuff, the process starts naturally begging the question of exploring, defining, refining and reviewing your AORs. I’d love to see the product add this functionality to its tool set.