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A Suggestion For Those Who Want A Today List Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I recently moved from Things to Omnifocus. Like many who have tried this I was not happy having to give up my Today list. Some of my work is task oriented and must be done on particular days. A Today list made my life easy with regard to the set tasks.

It took me a bit of time to figure things out - I messed up more than one type of Perspective before arriving at this point. I have searched the forums and I have to say most of the work arounds for a today list have been far too labor intensive (due dates and flags that need daily attention... ). It might work for a week tops for me but then I'd lose interest. I want simple - something I don't have to work on every single day. I want to add things to my omnifocus lists and then not think about them again until they need to be done.

Here's what I came up with that works for me. I wanted to post it because it might help someone else. I do realize this will not work for everyone. This is just my way of doing it. YMMV.

First - all items for this Perspective need to have a START date - that is the one necessary column to be filled in.

Create a Perspective as follows:
-- View Mode: Context (it may work under projects... I didn't try it that way someone else might find that way more useful so experiment!)
-- Under Restore I have the following that ended up being checked (I don't remember checking them but I put this out there for information purposes)
Focus
Layout
Expansion
Selection
-- Context Sidebar Filter
All Contexts
-- Group Actions By
Start
-- Sort Actions By
Start
-- Status
Remaining
-- Duration
Any Duration
-- Flagged
Any Flag State

This will give you all actions with a listed Start date that have not been completed sorted by Start date. It includes start dates that have passed but the actions have not been marked as complete and goes through the future. It includes actions with no context, no project, no due dates. As I said the list is based solely on the Start date. Therefore my "Someday Maybe" list items with no dates do not clutter the list.

This works beautifully for me as I put all kinds of things like "water plants" as a recurring task every Monday. I hated using a "due date" because I don't need a highlighted task staring at me from the Omnifocus window when it's not really a super huge priority, just something I don't want to forget to do. My work items that must be completed on a certain day have a due date too so they will turn red if I don't complete them - that's important for me.

And I now have a "Today" list so to speak... ordered by date. I can just look at the list of items for today's date and ignore the rest of the list.

I hope this helps a few people who have been having issues with a "Today" list. I really love the way Omnifocus syncs with my ipod touch and that was my primary reason for moving. Things did not give me any recurring tasks on my ipod - it became a large issue when I was traveling. Now that I've figured out this perspective as one way to view my lists - I will be even happier.
 
Hi Teresa,

nice system. Now, I've been using flags as a today. It requires a daily visit to your lists but I do it anyway. Anyone else here using flag as today?


PS I am a former Things user myself. BEautiful but not ribust enough.

Last edited by Mango Himself; 2010-07-05 at 08:24 AM..
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mango Himself View Post
I've been using flags as a today. It requires a daily visit to your lists but I do it anyway. Anyone else here using flag as today?
I'm with Mango. Flagging works best for me, along with "due soon" items.

As for requiring a visit to my lists everyday, that's fine. My focus changes regularly anyway, so the items I want flagged often come and go. Also kind of works as a brief review. Works great for me.

-Dennis
 
The thing about flags is that I work with some people who flag every single email they send me as urgent. It has rather soured me on the entire usage of flags anywhere. I often see those emails and wish I could return it to them like we used to be able to do with letters... "sorry address unknown".

If I'm gonna flag it - it better be so urgent that the world will come to a standstill until it's done. (in which case it probably would never reach my todo list as it would be a drop everything and do it now situation - heh)

That's why I was looking for some way to work with perspectives that would give me what I wanted without flags. However, it's excellent for people to know they have alternatives and the due date/flag method is certainly workable as you both use it and are happy with it.
 
I use flagging as my 'today' marker, I also use dates on due date fields to keep projects coming up regularly. For many topics I don't use any date, and for some the recurring items works brilliantly. I tend to set recurring items up in dedicated projects inside rough project groups.

I can't claim to clear my today list today, things tend to linger for a week, or if they are ongoing projects I keep them there while taking notes in the notes field, and horror of horrors I actually change the wording in the entry as a job evolves.

I guess in that, I'm using flags not as a today list but as a 'very active list', I'd honestly prefer priorities/tags and then just use flags for real burning issues, my system like everyones is a compromise. On my main desktop machine I have changed the flagged perspective to flames and 'get these sorted' text.

I'd like a slightly snazzier GUI but I found Things too pretty and got lost in the 'look' of it, I forced myself to tag stuff and generally overcomplicated it. I liked the old iGTD. OF is the centre of my work-world, currently I have it open permanently on two desktops, a laptop and iphone.

My big project now is to get my wife using OF on her desks.

PeterS
 
@Teresa_H, like some of the others here, I use the flag primarily as a 'Today' marker, but I also make extensive use of start dates. Your system looks very functional to me, and I have a suggestion on a script that you might want to explore, if you haven't done so already.

Search in the Extras forum on the subject 'defer' for a couple of scripts that will allow you to select a task or a group of tasks and defer the start date by the number of days the user specifies. It's really nice to be able to bump the start date out without manually editing the dates for each task.
 
 


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