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Planning / Reviewing - a wish for "idea groups" Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
In this post I will try to develop an idea I posted before (OF containing more than just actions) - in a more systematic and hopefully simpler way.

For me, the revolutionary idea of GTD is the introduction of context lists (introducing the concept of mass production into the work of the individual). And I guess this is the element crying the loudest for implementation by software, because computers are good at this "mechanical" translation of lists organized by principle A (projects) into lists organized by principle B (contexts) - while for us human beings this is rather boring.

But GTD is more than this. Therefore I suggest an additional feature that paradoxically might make OF look less "heavy" to me.

As I understand it, within a strict GTD set-up youŽd have a project list (listing only the "names" of your projects), several context lists, a folder for each project containing ideas / notes and folders for your reference material. At present OF integrates the context lists, the projects list and - IŽm not sure if this is part of strict GTD, but of course it is very useful - a list of planned actions for each project.

My suggestion is to integrate the ideas / notes folders as well. Currently you may add ideas or notes (that do not belong to a single action) as "actions" without a context. But this really blurs the distinction. All idea items yell "No Context" at the user, and they show up in the "No Context" container in Context Mode.

I think it would be really beautiful if there was another option for action groups - "no actions" (obviously, this would cause a problem with the naming). Like there are projects and lists of single actions, there would be action groups and "idea groups", and the elements of the latter would neither have checkboxes nor contexts. And as I imagine them, it would be easy to turn an idea into an action by dragging it out of an "idea group" - because from a programming perspective they would be the same category of items (the only distinction being that the "no context" tag and the checkbox of these items would be hidden while they are kept within an "idea group").

This would provide those of us who like to keep ideas for future reference in the same app as the thoroughly planned parts of their projects, with a convenient way to store notes at any level of organization - without harming those who use OF just for the aforementioned translation.
 
I think you'll find a number of supporters for integrating resources/library functionality into OF. Ive often wished it were easier to use it for full "Trapper Keeper" project notes.

However, I'd like to see a more robust integration with other applications. I'm a big believer is solid single-focus applications doing what they do well, and a well-designed library application (like Journler, Yojimbo, EagleFiler or DevonThink) will always be better than whatever OF includes, simply because it can have its own specialized interface.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jasong View Post
However, I'd like to see a more robust integration with other applications. I'm a big believer is solid single-focus applications doing what they do well, and a well-designed library application (like Journler, Yojimbo, EagleFiler or DevonThink) will always be better than whatever OF includes, simply because it can have its own specialized interface.
I agree; I prefer to keep notes and lists in other applications. Now that there's an omnifocus: URL (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=4970), linking from reference material to OmniFocus will be a lot easier.
 
 


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