[yucca]

Dom,

Just a reminder that "classic" lofi GTD uses paper lists for task/project management and one or more filing cabinets for reference material. As long as you design and implement a reasonable filing system and as long you are disciplined in the use of your filing system, you are good.

If you follow the same principles with your electronic GTD system, you should be fine. Therefore, OF for task/project management and one or more (keeping it reasonable of course!) apps to manage reference material seems entirely consistant with GTD principles.

[bashosfrog]

Just a bump on this: I miss the ability to add non-actionable project notes. I often want to just add a note - a briefing email, or a reminder - without having to check it off in order to have the project read completed. It seems an oversight not to have this category. Projects aren''t all action items.

[Toadling]

Why not just add non-actionable project notes to the project's note field? Isn't that what it's intended use is? Am I misunderstanding you?

[bashosfrog]

Aha! Light dawns. Thanks for that.

And I've since realised that having most of my notes in Devonthink, with actions in OF, is probably a more sensible way to go.

[Toadling]

Originally Posted by bashosfrog

And I've since realised that having most of my notes in Devonthink, with actions in OF, is probably a more sensible way to go.

Yeah, I kind of use OmniFocus as my front-end organizational tool to give structure and meaning to my projects. Most supporting material (i.e. notes of any significant size) is linked in as a variety of other file types (mostly text and OmniOutliner Pro). Links from a database would work too.

I do use native notes a lot too, but sometimes it's just more practical to link stuff in from outside OmniFocus.

[colicoid]

I deal with reference material by setting up a special "projects and support materials" folder. Inside it I keep a folder for each OF project that requires supporting materials. I then have a link in the OF project to that folder. Sometimes I embed stuff directly in OF but if I have many/large files I use the linked folder approach.

[sgiovannini]

I'm new to GTD and OmniFocus. As I'm processing my in-basket, I keep encoutering reference material that I left out on my desk because it contained numbers that I needed (for example, frequent flyer numbers, member ID of my health plan, credit card numbers). Further, I'm mobile but my Mac isn't (Windows at work, boo hoo). OF will be a great place to keep that reference material since it will (in July) sync to my iPhone.

I don't have the GTD book right here, but I believe it said something in there about putting these small bits of reference into additional lists. The list isn't a project, nor is it a single-action list. It's just a list. And, with OF upcoming sync ability, it will be more convenient to keep these short lists there than in something else like OmniOutliner.

At this point, I'm keeping the reference material in an on-hold project. I'm not sure if there's a better way? Or should this be a feature request?

[blewis]

I do a lot of linking of e-mail messages underneath Actions in the notes field. I don't think the search feature on OF actually searches the contents of the notes though (well at least not when the content of the note is a link to a Mail.app e-mail). At least I can search my e-mail via Spotlight. I've stopped organizing my e-mail into folder altogether and I just use Spotlight now.

I've also been using OmniOutliner to take notes, but I don't like the OO import feature into OF - I can't figure out how to just import my Action items and leave the notes alone, so it takes too much manual intervention to please me.

I just linked, as someone suggested, some OO notes into the Notes field of the Project by dragging and dropping files from Finder into OF. Nice. What would be really nice is if I could get a QuickLook preview of what's in the OO file without having to open OO. That would make things a bit faster.

Altogether it seems pretty obvious that linking OO and OF together in a @Reference/Actionable way would be a pretty complete system.

[Toadling]

Originally Posted by sgiovannini

At this point, I'm keeping the reference material in an on-hold project. I'm not sure if there's a better way? Or should this be a feature request?

Keeping reference material in OmniFocus may be attractive for a variety of reasons: ease of access, everything in one place, iPhone syncing, etc. My impression has been that this is not an intended use, but I don't know of any significant obstacles to prevent you from doing so if you want.

Personally, I like to keep most reference material outside of OmniFocus, linking in folders and files from the Finder, email messages from Mail, database items from Yojimbo, etc. This keeps my database small and lightweight, which makes for easier backups and probably quicker syncing with an iPhone. And if I were to ever run into some kind of OmniFocus database corruption (unlikely, but possible), I don't have the additional complication of embedded reference material.

Of course, it seems likely that most of the linked-in items will not be available on my iPhone once I have it synced up. But I'd be willing to accept that.

I do, however, keep some arbitrary lists in OmniFocus: films, books and music I'd like to explore, web articles I'm planning to read, activities I have planned for my kids, a list of things I want to think about but not act on yet, etc.

Some people keep these in text files or OmniOutliner files, but I found it very convenient to just put them into Single-Action Lists and set their state to "On Hold". I then have a perspective that focuses on the lists in a new window, so I can quickly reference them without impacting the rest of my work in OmniFocus. When I'm ready to do something about an item, I drag it out of the list and promote it to a project.

-Dennis

[Toadling]

Originally Posted by blewis

I don't think the search feature on OF actually searches the contents of the notes though (well at least not when the content of the note is a link to a Mail.app e-mail).

Yes, OmniFocus searches the contents of the note field, but not the contents of linked items (which would be rather difficult, I think, considering OmniFocus doesn't know anything about the contents of the linked object).

Originally Posted by blewis

At least I can search my e-mail via Spotlight. I've stopped organizing my e-mail into folder altogether and I just use Spotlight now.

Yeah, I do the same thing. I just have an "Archive" folder in Mail where I dump everything. Then I just search for items I want (either in Mail or with Spotlight) and sometime create Smart Folders when I need to access a subset of data frequently (like all messages from my boss in the last month).

But if you use OmniFocus' Clip-O-Tron 3000, it copies the textual contents of the selected email into the action's note field. So in that case, the email contents would be searchable from within OmniFocus.

Originally Posted by blewis

What would be really nice is if I could get a QuickLook preview of what's in the OO file without having to open OO. That would make things a bit faster.

Yeah, I agree. OmniOutliner desperately needs a Quick Look plugin. This works great with other filetypes: text, RTF, PDF, Keynote, Numbers, OmniGraffle, etc. I use it all the time!

-Dennis