[keynotes]

I switched to OmniFocus from Appigo Todo, which I'm afraid failed to meet my needs despite its very clear and intuitive interface. I'd like to do something very simple: Is there a way to view only today's tasks, and prioritize them, perhaps even filtering out low-priority tasks?

Many thanks in advance for any help.

[CatOne]

Flag 'em and use the flagged view.

[psidnell]

You can also put pretend tags in the note field like:

#1. #2. etc.

And then search for them. What makes it practical is that you can save a perspective that includes a search term*.

But flagging is easier...

[*you have to create the perspective without a search term, view the perspective, add the search term, then save over the perspective. I don't know why it won't just let you create the perspective with the search term in the first place.]

[whpalmer4]

Yet another way to roll, assuming "today's tasks" share some common thread, like a due date of today or a start date of today:

Go to Context mode and adjust the view options to show you your tasks in remaining contexts grouped by due date, sorted by due date, availability filter set to remaining, status filter set to due soon, estimated time filter set to any duration. Now close all of the future groups, leaving open only the Today group, and optionally the past groups. Save as a perspective, making sure that the Restore: Expansion option is ticked. This will show you what is due today, what is overdue if you open the past groups, and a bit of what is due in the future if you open the future groups.

You can similarly build a perspective that groups by start date, sorts by due date showing remaining actions with past and future groups closed. This is a "tickler" perspective, like the GTD tickler file. If you use the urgent perspective from the previous paragraph to put out any fires (or keep them from starting), and this to play "whack-a-mole" on work as it first becomes available, you should be fairly productive.

If you want some finer gradations of priority, and don't intend to use the duration estimate field, you can repurpose it as a priority field. Change those perspectives to sort by duration and give the higher priority items a smaller number (duration sorts the shortest items to the top). You don't have to give everything a priority value; anything with a number will sort before everything without a number.

[keynotes]

Thanks to everyone for their replies. What I'm looking for doesn't seem to be supported by OmniFocus at this time. I'm used to looking at today's tasks, then sorting them manually by priority (whatever happens to be most important to me that day). That way, the top of the list is always the highest-priority task and you can just complete tasks in order of priority, so you'll always be working on your highest-priority task.

Could this be incorporated into OmniFocus 2.0? It's a shame that it's not possible to drag to reorder tasks in the Due perspective.

[UnLogikal]

Originally Posted by keynotes

Thanks to everyone for their replies. What I'm looking for doesn't seem to be supported by OmniFocus at this time. I'm used to looking at today's tasks, then sorting them manually by priority (whatever happens to be most important to me that day). That way, the top of the list is always the highest-priority task and you can just complete tasks in order of priority, so you'll always be working on your highest-priority task.

Could this be incorporated into OmniFocus 2.0? It's a shame that it's not possible to drag to reorder tasks in the Due perspective.

I fear Things has sort of corrupted the "todo" list idea and everyone feels that the best way to accomplish things is via a "Today" view.

I get the reasoning, but that isn't always the best way to do it.

What I suggest doing is setting your "Start Date" and "End Date" on your tasks. This will put them into the "Due" view.

There is no way to sort the tasks by priority that I'm aware of.

I suggest ignoring this aspect of your workflow for the time being and give the application a shot outside of this (probably obvious) drawback.

I have tried Things, The Hit List, Todo, and a few others but I keep coming back to OmniFocus. It just handles things a lot better than other applications. It is missing some glaringly obvious things. But the rest of the application is so much better I just can't force myself to keep trying other apps any more.

[gorringe]

Just needed to say a hearty "Amen" to what you posted. Hopefully Omnifocus will add this soon. Just a "Drag & Reorder" option is all we're asking. (We're too busy to click on due dates, etc.) We did all the necessary inputting on the front end. We're talking "Today", so in reality we're ready to get things done.

[rogbar]

One thing you could do - although its kludgy - is to enter different times of day in the Due Date column (1am, 2am, 3am, etc) and sort by time.

OR ... export just today's tasks to OmniOutliner, make each Task a separate Item in the outline, and then drag and drop them into whatever order you like.