[RocknBlogger]

@Lizard, that's exactly how I've been approaching it and it's starting to take shape for me and is working out. I'm sure as I discover other features of Omnifocus I'll probably find other ways to tweak my information and views.

I'm just happy that I finally have a pretty clear path on using Omnifocus now.

Thanks to everyone who posted suggestions. Keep em comin' if you think of more:)

[mgorman85]

I'm a college student and have been using GTD and Omnifocus now for over a year. I have to say that Omnifocus has really helped me maintain my sanity and GPA.

I agree with most of what everyone else is saying by ignoring contexts. However, I use Omnifocus for school, work, and life in general, so instead of leaving context blank I simply use "HW" as my context since it's quick and easy. I also agree with Brian treating each class as a project instead of a folder. Makes quick entry and such much easier. Also, at the beginning of each semester I take my syllabi from each class and enter the assignments and due dates into OF so that I have everything in one place and I'm not constantly looking for syllabi. I put all my courses in a folder called "school" and keep all my personal projects and such in the library.

If you haven't tinkered around with perspectives yet, I highly recommend doing so. It is really what sets OF apart from any other GTD application and really let's you focus on what you need to work on where you are without being distracted by anything else. I have three main perspectives that I use daily which I call "Home," "School," and "Due." I have these perspectives in context mode and use them so that I can see certain information based on where I am or what I want to focus on. I have "Home" set for contexts that I know I can work on from home, e.g. "Mac," "Phone," "HW," etc. For school, I have contexts that I can only get done at the school "On Campus," "HW" and such. I also sort this perspective by date due since I want to work on my assignments in the right order. And then "Due" I use exclusively when I just want to sit down and crank out HW assignments that I have coming up and I don't want to be distracted by anything else.

Anyways, that's my general set up for college (I could go on and on), and it's really helped me out a lot. Another thing that I've implemented is making sure that I do a daily review and processing my OF inbox in the morning and evening. That way those assignments that I entered using the quick entry get filed away quickly and correctly.

Hope this helped!

[kingsinger]

I can't speak to the student side, but I teach a college class on-line, and I generally stick it in its own project for each quarter. Then I have actions and sub-actions under that. To make it really work well it helps to understand parallel and sequential actions. Combining those two things together can establish some pretty complex dependencies. It took me a while to grasp this, but once I did, it really helped.

Because my course has new assignments pretty much every week, I have a parent action for each week under the project. Then I have additional child actions under that.

If it was me, and all my work was in one physical space and mostly on the computer, I'd probably break the computer related contexts down by program or something like that. Then I would have a reading context for any reading that isn't inside the computer, and perhaps an admin context for any organizational work I might need to do outside the computer.

So for example, if my on-line course is on the blackboard vista platform, I'd either have a context called web browser or one called blackboard vista.

Then all my assignments, quizzes, etc. happening in blackboard vista would be listed under that context for each class.

I might have an MS Word context too, for papers I need to write. Or I suppose you could instead have a writing context.

In my own OF set-up I differentiate between computer off-line and computer on-line, so if I'm out and about with my laptop and I want to see what tasks I can do without an internet connection, it's easy to see those.

As someone else said, if everything happens in the same physical space, then you don't have to have contexts. But on the other hand, contexts are really just a way of filing info/tasks. So as long as the buckets you make are meaningful to you, that's what matters.

If you know you're going to want to easily see what reading assignments you have due, having a reading context is useful. If you want to see what reading is due that you can read without an internet connection or a computer, then you want contexts that are granular enough to set this use case out separately.

That said, it's probably a good idea not to get too carried away with the number of contexts you use. You want to be able to assign them quickly, without too much thought.

I made it through 8 years of college and grad school/professional school without even using a day planner. But I will say that I think in the on-line learning environment it is important to try and stay organized, because you don't have to show up to live classes every week, where the teacher is more likely to remind you about upcoming assignments, etc.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by kingsinger

As someone else said, if everything happens in the same physical space, then you don't have to have contexts. But on the other hand, contexts are really just a way of filing info/tasks. So as long as the buckets you make are meaningful to you, that's what matters.

Well put. If you'll regularly get some value from having a portion of your tasks available separately, then a context for that portion might be worthwhile. The canonical concept is a division by physical location or required tool or available person, but it doesn't have to be limited to that. If it makes it easier to look at your lengthy task list, find something to do, and actually do it, well, that's the point of the exercise!

That said, it's probably a good idea not to get too carried away with the number of contexts you use. You want to be able to assign them quickly, without too much thought.

I think a hierarchical context structure makes this a bit less of a worry, because if you are in a hurry, rather than agonizing over exactly which context it falls in, you can stash it in the parent. Whenever you work one of the nested contexts, also check the parent for any tasks that you can accomplish. For example, I've got a hierarchy of contexts relating to computers; the top level is tasks that can be done on any Mac, the next level is contexts for specific Macs, and under some of them, contexts for specific versions of Mac OS X. So, if some task comes into my Inbox that I know needs to be done on a Mac, I can just toss it in the Mac context. If it really needs to be done on my Macbook when running Tiger, it goes in Mac : Macbook : Tiger. The Omni matching code makes entering the long context names a snap: "ma ti" matches against Mac : Macbook : Tiger, for example. When I'm at the Macbook, booted off the Tiger partition, I'll try to do all the tasks in the Mac : Macbook : Tiger context; if I finish them I'll check Mac : Macbook and Mac for tasks that I can also do. That will catch both unrestricted tasks and any that I didn't fully narrow down to the most restrictive context. I'll also examine the context assignments as I review the associated project. However, if I had a flat list of contexts, much more care would have to be taken in the assigning of contexts and viewing more than one context simultaneously on the iOS clients would be difficult or impossible without making perspectives in advance.

[endoftheQ]

RocknBlogger, if you're serious about only using OmniFocus for studying, I'd suggest taking a look at iStudiez. I haven't used it myself but the junior members of my feral kin (who are at Uni) rave about it.

If you have an iDevice there's a lite version, which might be worth checking out for ideas even if you decide to stick with OF. It's also substantially cheaper at $9.99 for the desktop and $2.99 for the universal App. The ferals also tell me there are a number of YouTube videos which demo various features.

OF is brilliant for industrial-strength GTD (I still use it for my personal stuff) but as you pointed out it's expensive, has a steep learning curve, is probably overkill for what you want to use it for and the lack of some features, such as tags, can prove disastrous in a crisis, which is one of the reasons we abandoned it for business use.

As always, YMMV, but hope this is helpful.