I agree completely... I would love to see "Milestone" support or at least see projects (rather than tasks) incorporated into the calendar view.

It would be VERY helpful for me to be able to get a visual understanding of all my projects and tasks. Otherwise I'm forced to think about things in a very linear way -- yes, the whole point of OF and the GTD system is breaking down large things into small things, but I think it's a mistake to lose track of the overall scope. At least for me.

[jltdm]

Originally Posted by Brian

After considering these and some other factors, the team feels pretty strongly that using OmniFocus and a separate calendar is the way to go. (Essentially, we recommend adopting the workflow that Yucca advocates in his post.) The calendar provides information about the hard landscape, and OmniFocus helps you fill in the gaps by holding a stack of actions you can pull from as you're able.

Agreed, but it would be most useful if OmniFocus would have the possibility to remind the user that he has to make a phone call, or email, or start to work on a task or project at a specific time and date, reminding the user with an alarm and message box. I'm a new user, so if this is possible I would really appreciate to know how because i'm ripping my hair out try to find out how.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by jltdm

Agreed, but it would be most useful if OmniFocus would have the possibility to remind the user that he has to make a phone call, or email, or start to work on a task or project at a specific time and date, reminding the user with an alarm and message box. I'm a new user, so if this is possible I would really appreciate to know how because i'm ripping my hair out try to find out how.

Those are all hard landscape items. If you have to do something AT a certain date/time, use your calendar. iCal has plenty of options for reminding you that an event is starting or about to start. If you have to do something BY a certain date/time, use OmniFocus.

How are you going to describe to OmniFocus that you have to start working on a project that takes 4 hours and starts at 10AM? It's not due at 10AM. You could say that it starts at 10AM and set a start date, but now you need to differentiate that task from all the other tasks with start dates that simply describe when you could first start working them, not that you must start working them.

You can have OmniFocus put up reminders, though it may not be possible to get them when you want them without doing some fudging of due dates. If you install Growl (http://growl.info) OmniFocus will put up notifications on your screen (or via email or even SMS) of actions/projects becoming available, due soon, and overdue. You can configure Growl to make those notifications stay up on your screen until you dismiss them (by default, they go away after 10 or 15 seconds, I think). Gets back to my point about the semantics of describing a hard landscape task to OmniFocus, however...

[elrjax]

Hi.

I wonder if we are stumbling into the space of "how people best work" differences. As a technology manager, I am surrounded by folks who can read and visualize list-based information better than graphical information. There are a few of us, at least where I work, that have lobbied successfully to have some visual graphics for each project included in the work package. This helps me get up to speed much quicker than looking down long lists.

The same is true for my use of omnifocus. I struggle with its slavish adherence to the list world and wish it would at least give me some kind of calendar view where I can visualize how badly behind my month or week is going to be. It would be nice to drag an iconic representation of the task, with its metadata, to another day/week/month and have omnifocus do the right thing.

I don't understand the resistance/reluctance to viewing this as a reasonable accommodation for those of us who are mentally impaired regarding lists. I have implemented dozens of Curt's and other's suggestions and have benefited greatly from them. But omnifocus is a cold and sterile environment for me. I thought tags would help, but I now realize that the few synapses of my right brain that still work are dying for a graphical representation of tasks (those that have dates assigned to them) and the ability to drag and drop those around a calendar with ease, or add in tasks that don't have date assignments. I will still look at the lists, and organize with them at the project and category/context level, but even the little bit that Microsoft Outlook (windows) provides at the bottom of the calendar is better than anything I have found so far to visualize omnifocus.

(please don't send me to import/export hell just to visualize my tasks :-).

-Ed

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by elrjax

The same is true for my use of omnifocus. I struggle with its slavish adherence to the list world and wish it would at least give me some kind of calendar view where I can visualize how badly behind my month or week is going to be. It would be nice to drag an iconic representation of the task, with its metadata, to another day/week/month and have omnifocus do the right thing.

I think the OmniFocus view is that your week or month will be as bad as you want to make it. I don't think that it is so much an adherence to lists; I think it is more likely that a design assumption is that it wasn't setting out to schedule the exact time that something is going to get done. I'm not saying that's better or worse (as you say, people like things the way they like them); but more in the hope that suggesting that way of thinking about it will make it easier for you to be successful with.

[whpalmer4]

GTD in general isn't aimed at scheduling your work in advance, so a tool largely inspired by GTD isn't likely to be built with scheduling as a major goal.

Do you put duration estimates on your tasks? How far out do you need to look? Would a widget that showed a bar chart of how many hours of effort you had coming due each week in the next month be useful? One has to be a bit careful when repeating actions or projects are involved, as OmniFocus only has the current one at any given time, and creates the next one when the current one is completed. If you have some lengthy task repeating each week, it would appear that future weeks were less busy than the current week.

[Brian]

I think folks posting here will be interested in some of the OmniFocus for iPad screenshots we'll be posting before too much longer.

Lest I create the wrong expectations: we aren't adding anything that looks a calendar.

We are experimenting with ways help folks do date-based scheduling and load-balancing in OmniFocus, though. And now I shall disappear, wondering if I have said too much already. :-)

[atreinke]

Brian, you didn't say too much at all... I only wish you could say more. The anticipation grows....

[nichescape]

Originally Posted by Brian

After considering these and some other factors, the team feels pretty strongly that using OmniFocus and a separate calendar is the way to go. (Essentially, we recommend adopting the workflow that Yucca advocates in his post.) The calendar provides information about the hard landscape, and OmniFocus helps you fill in the gaps by holding a stack of actions you can pull from as you're able.

Brian, could you point me to that post by Yucca?

Thanks,
John

[whpalmer4]

Most likely this one: http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost...4&postcount=44

Stuff that has to be done at a certain time goes on the calendar, and OmniFocus helps you effectively utilize the time that is left over.