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It's Perspectives Isn't It? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I'm an application whore and a developer's dream. There are so many apps on my MacBook that I've trialed, purcased used for a bit and then dumped.

Notebook, Evernote, Together, Yojimbo, BBEdit, Today, MenuCalendarClock, OmniWeb and so on and so on. Until yesterday this list also included OmniFocus as for the past 8 months or so I have been using Things which is still a super, beautiful, well-considered application. Prior to Things I had been using OF (I had been a beta tester) but ending up feeling lost and not having a handle on my actions and projects. In Things I could easily develop a workflow of weekly & daily reviews that produced a focussed today list in an app I could trust. However, there was still and itch that I could still do better.

So, changing a habit of a Mac(lifetime), rather than simply buy The Hit List, I fired up OF, spent a few hours putting tasks back in and began to re-evaluate it and I think it'll be sticking around this time.

The key for me is having the perspectives set up correctly so that they map my work flow. I replicated Things' Next and Today lists with the following:

Daily review
View Mode :Planning
Focus : {My work folders}
Filter :Active
Grouping:Folder
Sorting:Name
Action Filter:Available
Time Filter:Any Duration
Flag Filter:Any Flag State

From this list I flag items so that fall into my Today perspective:

Today
View Mode:Context
Focus:No Focus
Filter:Remaining
Grouping:Context
Sorting:Due
Action Filter:Due or Flagged
Time Filter:Any Duration
Flag Filter:Any Flag State

This seems pretty useful to me and with the added benefits that OF brings such a quick look on attachments, groups in projects, timed deadlines, working well with OmniOutliner and OmniPlan then I'm hoping for more success this time around. Can anyone share any other perspectives that they find useful within their system?
 
Yes, OF is certainly powerful if you take the time to set it up. Things is nice because they already have some default perspectives set up.

If you try to grab a sneaky peek of OmniFocus 1.6, you'll be able to see that you can create a perspective that has Due Today and Flagged. This will also emulate Thing's Today view.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by wilsonng View Post
If you try to grab a sneaky peek of OmniFocus 1.6, you'll be able to see that you can create a perspective that has Due Today and Flagged. This will also emulate Thing's Today view.
That's the one I'm working off and, indeed, the due or flagged filter which allows the 'today' perspective is a deal maker as far as I'm concerned. In particular, being able to hide the menu bar and the context column so that I can just focus on a list of things to do right now is a boon. I also caught a video on YouTube where someone had come up with the idea of adding in the duration column ensuring everything in the list has an estimated time entry.

Once done (takes about a minute for the 10 or so items in my today list to be considered and completed). I can then take advantage of this in a couple of ways. First, I can select all items and run an applescript to total the amount of time that would be taken to complete this list, thus allowing me to remove a flag or two if necessary. Secondly, I can also glance at my list when I have fifteen minutes to kill before a meeting and tackle a 10 minute action.

It's been a joy to work with today, in particular the fact that it's managed to sync to the OF iPhone application from within my work's network (despite the fact that general MobileMe sync never works...weird). I never really found the Things iPhone app a part of my system that was worthwhile as I could only sync when I got home so it was always a few days out of date.

I've also added my own version of the completed list which is more akin to the Things logbook, an 'Active Project Overview' and a 'Waiting For & Delegated' list although I'll need to ensure that I don't go overboard on adding perspectives and keep it to a few useful ones.

My next challenge will be nailing a workable review process.
 
That's where the Review perspective comes in.....

This is the most powerful function of OF that I loved. When I finally discovered the power of the weekly review, that's when GTD and OF finally clicked for me.

Previously, I was a pen & paper GTD person. The weekly review was something I always put off. After I became comfortable with GTD + pen/paper, I tried out OF.

OF made the weekly review easier for me.

It's nice to be able to sort by review date. Then just review only the short term or near future tasks instead of looking at everything. Of course you can always look at the long term. Highlight task(s) and click on the Mark Reviewed button. Then it'll set the next review date to whatever interval you had set it to in the inspector window.

The review perspective is a gentle reminder of what you need to review in the next few days, weeks, months, or years.

This is the feature that distinguished OF from the rest of the crowd.
 
That's where the Review perspective comes in.....

This is the most powerful function of OF that I loved. When I finally discovered the power of the weekly review, that's when GTD and OF finally clicked for me.

Previously, I was a pen & paper GTD person. The weekly review was something I always put off. After I became comfortable with GTD + pen/paper, I tried out OF.

OF made the weekly review easier for me.

It's nice to be able to sort by review date. Then just review only the short term or near future tasks instead of looking at everything. Of course you can always look at the long term. Highlight task(s) and click on the Mark Reviewed button. Then it'll set the next review date to whatever interval you had set it to in the inspector window.

The review perspective is a gentle reminder of what you need to review in the next few days, weeks, months, or years.

This is the feature that distinguished OF from the rest of the crowd.
 
Thank You very much for these perspectives. Yes they do help, I am working to find a way of making the viewing of this perspective even "cleaner" - for me the less cluster and more immediate the information is visually relayed to me, the easier it is for me not to get distracted. Does Anyone know if you can "hide" the sidebar in Finlay Boo's "today" perspective?
 
You can hide the sidebar by simply putting the mouse cursor on the right side of the sidebar (or its scrollbar, if there is one) and dragging to the left until it disappears. To restore it, grab the little dot at the left edge of the window and drag it back to the right. Take a snapshot of the perspective when you have the window arranged as you want it, and OF will put it back that way the next time you use that perspective.
 
I think I just had the proverbial slap up side of the head. I've been struggling with OF and am by default a Life Balance user. While I love LB, the pain of entering new items, has me back to considering OF again.

I have a series of accounts I'm responsible for, both existing customers and prospects. I have each of them set up as a folder, and any projects that pop up fall into that folder. That let's me focus in on the account.

Seperate from that, I had a general account review project which had a repeating task for each customer/prospect to insure I reviewed it. I had not discovered the review perspective (RTFM I know). The problem was, when I was checking off that task, I was no where in the tree near the items dealing with that particular customer. Also, there were many times single actions that didn't really warrant setting up a project for.

What I just realized as a better alternative is set each of those status ticklers about the customer as a project under the appropriate folder with a context of 'Review' and non-repeating. Then, use the review date to flag how often I want to see them pop up in my review. Finally, any stray tasks that pop up for that customer/prospect can easily be dropped into that project.

For all you guru types out there, does that make sense?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
You can hide the sidebar by simply putting the mouse cursor on the right side of the sidebar (or its scrollbar, if there is one) and dragging to the left until it disappears. To restore it, grab the little dot at the left edge of the window and drag it back to the right. Take a snapshot of the perspective when you have the window arranged as you want it, and OF will put it back that way the next time you use that perspective.
I always wondering what posters meant by 'sidebar hidden' and those sorts of thing.

Trouble is, this trick doesn't seem to work for me in OF 1.7.5. Did they take away the ability to complete hide the sidebar?
 
No, it's still there. Perhaps you aren't dragging the cursor far enough to the left -- I find that I have to go beyond the window border to collapse it. You can still adjust the width, right? You can't make the sidebar narrower than the width of the oval in the view bar that selects what you want in the sidebar, unless you collapse it all the way.
 
 


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