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Difficulty with School Stuff Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Hi all,

I'm a new convert to OmniFocus, coming from Things. Things is great, but the customer service is less than stellar, and I need the extra power that OF provides.

I'm trying to figure out a way to have my school stuff in OF. Here's what I would like:
Folder: School
Project: Class Name (i.e. "Intro. to Lit.")
Sub-projects:
*Course reading & online posts
*Research paper
*Etc.

I want to have each class as a project so that I can "complete" it when the quarter/semester is over. If each class is a folder, I'm left with deleting the folder, correct?

But, if I make the "sub-projects" groups instead of projects, there's no way of putting them "on hold" and so forth.

Thoughts on how I might implement my idea? Am I approaching this correctly?

BTW, just finished GTD by David Allen. Really enjoyed it, though I'd love to see a revision with OF taken into consideration; too much paper information.

Any help you all can provide would be appreciate. Thanks in advance!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by admiralackbar74 View Post
I'm trying to figure out a way to have my school stuff in OF. Here's what I would like:
Folder: School
Project: Class Name (i.e. "Intro. to Lit.")
Sub-projects:
*Course reading & online posts
*Research paper
*Etc.

I want to have each class as a project so that I can "complete" it when the quarter/semester is over. If each class is a folder, I'm left with deleting the folder, correct?
You can also mark a folder as dropped. When you do that, the folder and anything inside it will not appear in the sidebar if you are viewing any of the sidebar choices except All or Dropped.
Quote:
But, if I make the "sub-projects" groups instead of projects, there's no way of putting them "on hold" and so forth.
The correct term is action group, not sub-project, because as you've noticed, action groups do not have all the functionality of projects. You can postpone the items in the action group by setting a start date on the action group some time in the future.

Do you think you're going to have many opportunities to put a section of your classwork on hold? :-)
Quote:
Thoughts on how I might implement my idea? Am I approaching this correctly?
It doesn't seem like an unreasonable approach. I sketched out an example of how I might use OF in school in http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=12816
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
You can also mark a folder as dropped. When you do that, the folder and anything inside it will not appear in the sidebar if you are viewing any of the sidebar choices except All or Dropped.
But "dropped" doesn't seem quite right. Isn't "dropped" for projects that you've given up on? I want to be able to mark a class as "completed." Maybe "dropped" is the best I can do.

And, no, I doubt I'll be able to put anything "on hold." :) It'd just be nice to have the option!
 
With folders, you currently only have Active and Dropped as the possible states. I agree that the terminology isn't perfect, but pretend "Dropped" is an alternate spelling of "Not Active" and it should work fine :-)

Use the Help->Send Feedback command to send in your feature requests so that Omni has a way of knowing that there is support for a change. Forum postings don't make it into the database where they track feature requests.
 
I used to do my schoolwork in OF. I used one project per class, then I had action groups collecting all the regular assignments and all the papers; and then the individual nights' assignments and the individual papers were in action groups that had a start date, so I could just look at the context view for available actions and it would show me everything that I could do to be up to date. Let me know if that doesn't make sense and I could re-explain in more detail. It worked great for me.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucas View Post
I used to do my schoolwork in OF. I used one project per class, then I had action groups collecting all the regular assignments and all the papers; and then the individual nights' assignments and the individual papers were in action groups that had a start date, so I could just look at the context view for available actions and it would show me everything that I could do to be up to date. Let me know if that doesn't make sense and I could re-explain in more detail. It worked great for me.
I'd like a further explanation, if possible. A screenshot would be even better.

Why don't you use OF anymore?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by admiralackbar74 View Post
Why don't you use OF anymore?
He said he used to do his schoolwork in OF. For that to be true, two conditions must be met: he does schoolwork, and he uses OF. One possibility (unlikely, I think, given his continuing presence on the forum) is he no longer uses OF. Another possibility is he no longer has schoolwork -- whether that is because using OF was a big success and he completed his studies, or because using OF was a big failure and he flunked out, watch this space for the answer :-)
 
Ha ha yes it was a big success actually and I graduated law school using it. In fact, I want to keep the embarrassing details to myself, but OF helped me to get together a last-minute project that would have kept me from graduating.

Anyway, here's an example that I hope illustrates what I was trying to get at about having one project with start dates across the assignments.
 
Thanks for all of this feedback everyone. It has been quite helpful.
 
A little late to the party, but Lifehacker just did an article on GTD explained for Students if that helps at all...
 
 


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