[myotis]

I have just started reusing Omnifocus and wondered if someone could tell me if this is possible.

I'm not interested in time estimates of short tasks, but it would be useful to give estimates for longer tasks, say more than half a day, and then give the month you hope to start/complete the task.

Then to get a view by Month that would show and calculate total major commitments for that month, or even just show the tasks and let you add up the hours yourself.

It would then be relatively easy if someone asks you do activity x that needs 5 days work and is required by 1st of December, to flick through this view and see how many days work you are already committed to in each month between now and 1st of December.

I used to do something similar on paper many years ago, and found it an effective approach to avoid promising work that I was in fact far too busy to realistically get done in time for a deadline.

An answer may well come to me as I explore Omnifocus, but I would still be grateful if someone could shortcut me to a solution, or tell me it can't be done.

Many thanks,

Graham

[CatOne]

OmniFocus is more of a task management/GTD application than it is a wider-scale planning application.

I think OmniPlan may be a better fit for what you're looking to do.

[myotis]

Originally Posted by CatOne

OmniFocus is more of a task management/GTD application than it is a wider-scale planning application.

I think OmniPlan may be a better fit for what you're looking to do.

Thanks, but omniplanner looks like a project management tool, I'm just looking for simple way of filtering future tasks to give me rough idea of how busy I am likely to be in any particular month.

I have actually tried project management software in the past for this, as I was already using it for managing projects, but it isn't actually much use. It is far too complicated and time consuming for personl task management.

Graham

[CatOne]

The forecast view (which is currently iOS only) is the closest you'd have to this. But, really, throwing arbitrary dates on things to gauge how "busy" a particular month will be, months out, is not a strength of OmniFocus. Frankly, it's better for a calendar than for a task manager.

[whpalmer4]

It's pretty easy to use OmniPlan to do this, though it certainly isn't the cheapest tool one could imagine for the job. If you wanted to devote roughly half your time to big tasks, you would set up an empty project plan, create a single resource (you), set the project hours to be the normal amount of time you work, and your individual resource hours to be the amount of time you want to devote to big tasks. This can vary on a day-by-day basis with no trouble.

Then, when you get big tasks on your plate, you just add a row with the task name, the number of hours of effort you expect it to take you, and if necessary, any start/finish constraints or dependencies. Level the plan, bring up the utilization view, and you can see at a glance where you have available time in your upcoming schedule. You can easily see what you would have to defer or cancel to make something fit in a given time frame.

My little example here shows me working only in the afternoons, except for the week of Sept. 5 where I work full-time, and taking the 15th and 16th off. Gray areas are non-working hours. The red blobs indicate overcommitment, so I would have to split the "proposed lengthy task" or shuffle some of the others around.

Gantt chart:


Utilization diagram:

[myotis]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

It's pretty easy to use OmniPlan to do

Thanks for this, but as I said, I am familiar with Project Planing software, and it's really an overkill for what I am looking for. I am getting the feeling that a perspective filtered on month and task duration cannot be done.

So at least it has saved me time trying to work out how to do it.

Graham

[myotis]

Originally Posted by CatOne

The forecast view (which is currently iOS only) is the closest you'd have to this. But, really, throwing arbitrary dates on things to gauge how "busy" a particular month will be, months out, is not a strength of OmniFocus. Frankly, it's better for a calendar than for a task manager.

OK, thanks again, I was hoping for a simple view (perspective) that filtered any tasks with duration over 4 hours, with start dates within a specific month, but I guess this cannot be done.

Thanks for saving me the time trying.

Graham

[whpalmer4]

RobTrew's Where in OF can do such a search, but the result will just be a set of projects containing those actions, with the matching actions selected. That probably won't be very convenient for assessing the schedule, because there will potentially be a lot of other stuff in the view. You also have to

Such a search query might look like this:

tasks where ((completed is false)) and (estimated minutes > <num>) and ((start date ≥ <dte1>) and (start date ≤ <dte2>))

and the script a) allows you to keep a library of such queries and b) prompts you for those placeholders (num, dte1, dte2).

[psidnell]

Originally Posted by myotis

Thanks, but omniplanner looks like a project management tool, I'm just looking for simple way of filtering future tasks to give me rough idea of how busy I am likely to be in any particular month.

I have actually tried project management software in the past for this, as I was already using it for managing projects, but it isn't actually much use. It is far too complicated and time consuming for personl task management.

I have to agree.

As I understand it, in GTD contexts represents resources, and OmniFocus is an excellent tool for identifying what tasks you can perform when you have access to that resource.

However, in real life resources are constrained: there are only so many waking hours in a day and equipment is rationed etc. Project management tools like OmniPlanner/MS Project claim to be good at this (I have doubts), but mortals use things called calendars.

The missing piece of the puzzle for me is a simple and intuitive way to know:

A) How many tasks I can complete (based on my task duration estimates) I can achieve with a particular level of access to a resource. And/or:
B) How much access it will take me to complete a set of tasks.

If there were a way to relate a context to a set of calendar entries representing times when that context was pertinent e.g I'm at the office from 8-6 or I have the truck on Wednesday - then I could see how a tool could tell me when a project might be complete, or that I have a problem.

I know Omni are working on integrating OmniFocus and OmniPlanner in some way and I'm very curious to see how that turns out.

However, I have a big problem with traditional project planning tools (agile vs waterfall etc). As you rightly point out - they're heinously complex, totally over the top as a personal productivity tool and in my experience often produce useless plans unless used by very gifted managers.

The dogmatic position that calendars are evil is unhelpful. Even if it's true, everyone around me forces me to commit my activities to them and share plans via them.

I personally would love a way to unify these worlds - but preferably one that doesn't have me wiring up gantt charts or fiddling with resource utilisation percentages.

I understand calendars without going on a training course.

[myotis]

Psidnell

I agree that todos and calendars should be combined. In the Windows world there are programs like Timematters, Achieve Planner, and a plug in for outlook that allow you to assign times to tasks or blocks of tasks, add appointments or other time constraints. The programs then semi-automatically juggle tasks to fit the available time blocks, deadlines and the times a task will take.

I used TimeMatters for years, and it works extremely well, but it requires too much on going management to get it to work properly doesn't have any mechanism to sync calendars except through Outlook,and of course is windows only.

How my paper system worked, which I was trying to emulate with OmniOutliner was based on planning a maximum of 13 days a month. I just did this as list with tuning total. The list included task longer than half a day, plus appointments, which were also almost always more than half a day.

Then depending on deadlines, I would juggle tasks between months, as new tasks were added. Moving tasks into a different month once any month had 13 days of time committed.

At the beginning of each month, I took these large chunks of work for that month only and assigned them to specific days and times. These major Tasks now became appointments with myself when I wasn't available for meetings, answering email etc.

All the minor and the must be done this month/week/day work was then managed as a normal todo list but fitted into times outside the timetables major task chunks. Which, although devised 20 years ago, was managed almost exactly as a GTD todo list, with contexts etc.

For example, I had a telephone chunk of time timetabled for an hour every afternoon, and built up a telephone calls to make list, which I worked through during that hour.

It all worked extremely well, but being paper based it involved much scoring out and rewriting. I am still looking for a computer based tool. Nothing I have tried works, all are either too simple or too complex.

Graham