[macronencer]

Hi everyone, just something that I realised today while struggling to re-awaken GTD and OF after a prolonged period of disuse: I thought this might be useful to others in the same predicament.

I had a lot of stuff in my inbox - basically I had stopped doing the whole GTD process, except (of course) for the collection part. Because you can't even live your life without collecting actions, and I was occasionally placing them in OF because I thought I would re-start GTD 'eventually'. There were 140 in there. I know - I'm bad!

So I finally got the mental focus required, tidied my office (especially the desk), and began the task of cleaning up the out-of-date mess in my old systems. OF was one of the first things I looked at, and I made the mistake of going through the inbox first. I got pretty disheartened because it wasn't going well. Then today I realised what I was doing wrong. I needed to get the projects in order first. The problem was that I was reluctant to process inbox items because subconsciously I knew that I had no idea what projects they should go into.

So that's my advice (sorry about the word count, I'm a little verbose when I'm enthusiastic). If you're cleaning up after a prolonged absence, the first thing you should do is a review of projects. Probably contexts too, but that can be more of an ongoing thing.

Hope that helps someone...

(just saw the Applying Omnifocus forum - this probably should have gone in there, sorry!)

[wilsonng]

that's what I've found. It's so easy to capture and collect things. But you have to prune the branches before the tree gets too big. Review is your editor.

Start looking a projects and delete projects that are no longer meaningful to you.

Look at any projects that have been languishing in OF for a long time and see what you can do about it. Does it need to be broken down into more digestable next actions? Does the task order need to be arranged to create an easier workflow? Or can the project be delegated to someone else with better skill sets, time, or energy?

I also put the majority of my projects set to On Hold. Ther are lots of projects that I don't need to worry about. So I'll put those projects' status to "on hold". But I know that it will be waiting for me in OF if I ever wanted to put it back to "active" status.

I'd also take time to learn how to use the "Review" mode. This will help you prune your projects and tasks to a more manageable size. The iPad was a godsend when Omni created the Review interface. We'll be seeing this brought over to OF2. I can't wait...

[macronencer]

Originally Posted by wilsonng

I also put the majority of my projects set to On Hold. Ther are lots of projects that I don't need to worry about. So I'll put those projects' status to "on hold". But I know that it will be waiting for me in OF if I ever wanted to put it back to "active" status.

Interesting... I might try to do this more often.

It's amazing to see how many projects in my system I can look at and realise that I really don't care about them at all any more. Hitting DELETE is a good feeling. Out with the old, in with the new!

[danlandrum]

Thanks macronencer and willsong for this thread. One of the most useful topics I've seen in a while.