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Feature Request: task prioritization! Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
In a previous post, Ken Case mentioned meta-data support, similar to that of OmniPlan. Seems to me that all of these feature requests that fall outside "GTD Proper" (prioritization, tagging) will be handily addressed by this extensibility, without getting in the way of users who don't need them.

Bluecoat93, you really have 500 actions in your @Online/@Computer contexts? It sounds to me like you either need to be more granular (@Photoshop, @Coding) or take advantage of sequential projects. Surely most of those 500 tasks aren't actionable yet.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Case
OmniFocus has a notion of priority already: it's the order in which you arrange your items. If you want something to have a higher priority, simply move it up in the list.

This gives you much finer-grained control than a typical priority system, which typically only has a few levels of priority: OmniFocus effectively has as many priorities as you have items.

Does that make sense?
Yes, of course! I didn't even think of that. Duh!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Case
OmniFocus has a notion of priority already: it's the order in which you arrange your items. If you want something to have a higher priority, simply move it up in the list.

This gives you much finer-grained control than a typical priority system, which typically only has a few levels of priority: OmniFocus effectively has as many priorities as you have items.

Does that make sense?
And that's why you're CEO, Ken.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Case
OmniFocus has a notion of priority already: it's the order in which you arrange your items. If you want something to have a higher priority, simply move it up in the list.

This gives you much finer-grained control than a typical priority system, which typically only has a few levels of priority: OmniFocus effectively has as many priorities as you have items.

Does that make sense?
Just to play devil's advocate (I'm happy with OF the way it stands), wouldn't that solution allow you to prioritize within a project but not across projects? (Or am I missing something?)
 
I, too, don't believe that we need a 'priority' field (at least not as a high priority :) but would love to see some way of flagging projects that will make all tasks of those projects stand out in all the different views. I'm not sure how this would integrate with the planned "review" functionality, but I definitely need a way to mark projects that need an hourly review to make sure they're on track.

As for the complaint that priority is non-canonical... I don't have The Book right here, but I do remember that, when discussing the 4 factors for doing (first by context, next by time available, then by energy available and - FINALLY - priority) DA was talking about the possibility that we might at one point have technology that allows us to enter in all 4 elements for all tasks and then filter based on all 4 items. However, based on this, we would need to have an "energy available" field before a priority field.

Usually, energy available depends on the context. So a nice implementation that doesn't require entering so much info for each task might be to assign a default level of energy for each context, and then be able to make the really difficult call and the really easy blog post that you must draft stand out from the rest of calls and drafts you have to make. What do you think?
 
Although not part of the GTD purist approach many (most?) people who plan their tasks use a weekly/daily planning model and prioritize their tasks (A1..., B1...C1....). Can't this or a similar prioritization (optional) capability be added to OF to open the application to more potential users who are not bought into GTD? Being able to order all tasks doesn't cut it for me as there is no obvious focus on tasks that MUST be done first versus reminders and minor tasks in order to be effective in my work.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Charliee
Although not part of the GTD purist approach many (most?) people who plan their tasks use a weekly/daily planning model and prioritize their tasks (A1..., B1...C1....). Can't this or a similar prioritization (optional) capability be added to OF to open the application to more potential users who are not bought into GTD? Being able to order all tasks doesn't cut it for me as there is no obvious focus on tasks that MUST be done first versus reminders and minor tasks in order to be effective in my work.
Charliee,

Have you tried flagging your must-do actions and projects? With the recent flag-based filtering options I'm finding flagging invaluable for the prioritization piece of choosing actions. I put flags on the projects related to my monthly goals. Now I can filter just flagged items to focus on what is important and group by due date to focus on what is urgent.

I don't mean to deny that some would find finer grained prioritization useful. Just wanted to offer a suggestion that's worked well for me. I actually found it very liberating to abandon a Covey-style prioritization system. Now my daily and weekly reviews focus on identifying next actions rather than arranging existing actions.
__________________
Cheers,

Curt
 
One of the reasons GTD abandoned prioritization is that is often doesn't work.

Say you're meeting someone in a downtown hotel for a working lunch at noon. You hit your subway connections well, your lunch partner called to say she's running late, so you have about 30 minutes waiting time in the hotel lobby. You pull out your laptop, look at your To Do list, and the top priority items are: Office Cleaning, check stationary order for typos, call printer and review design for ad.
None of these can be done while sitting in the hotel lobby.
With a GTD system, you can look at your "laptop-offline" and "phone-mobile" items, and see the tasks you can do there/then, without being reminded of the things you can't do. Maybe they're lower priority, but they still need doing (or you wouldn't bother to list them), and you CAN do them.

--Liz
 
Quote:
OmniFocus can be used to implement the "Getting Things DoneŽ" work-life management method developed by David Allen, but it's designed to be flexible enough to accommodate different styles of personal organization.
Arguments about prioritizing in GTD aside, OF is designed to be useful even if you don't use GTD. As long as it doesn't force a user to do things in a non-GTD way, I don't see what harm is done by including non-GTD concepts.

Specifically on prioritization, I don't think it's anti-GTD at all. GTD helps you define what you can do at any moment, and I think the ability to prioritize those results is useful. It would be best implemented as a way to sort the results of your filtering, and not as a filter setting itself.

If I'm making phone calls, and have 3 calls to make: 1) I can call to reschedule an August doctor appointment, and it's due by the end of July while they still have appointments available. 2) I can call Payflex about submitting hospital expenses for reimbursement, also due by the end of July. Or 3) I can call my friend Steven for a chat since we haven't talked for a while, and I should call him in July because he's a teacher and school starts up in August again.
Three calls, all 'next actions', all are 'due' by the end of the month, and I have the time, energy, and context for making all 3, so which do I make?

I should make the Payflex call first, it's hands down the most important. But if I have a long list of calls to make (and the phone call to Steven can easily be multiplied by 20, I'm notoriously bad at keeping in touch with people), I would like to be confident that I'm doing one of the most important things available for doing.
 
 


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