A few days ago, the final 1.0 of
omnifocus was
released. Omnifocus is a wonderfully polished "Getting things done"
(GTD) application for OSX. I've been
following the beta releases for a few months now and the quality of the
software humbles me, being a software developer myself. Solid, reliable,
userfriendly, handy.
Over the weeks, I'll think I'll add a few entries (look at the GTD
tag) telling you how I use
omnifocus. Here are some initial ideas that seem to work well for me.
- Weekly repeating items. I don't want to be bugged constantly by items that I
want to do once per week. But I do want to do them about once every week
(review plone.net, review projects, clean out desk). I
especially don't want constant deadlines for them. The solution in
omnifocus? Set them to start 1 week from now ("+1w" is the handy shortcut),
give them a due date 2 weeks from now and set them to repeat themselves
every two weeks, starting 1 week from the completion date.
- I've ordered my projects into three folders. One purely work-related
("customers"). One purely personal ("personal"). And one in-between
("plone/skills/maintenance"). In the last category are open source projects
that I might work on at work or at home. And planning work like doing a
weekly review with omnifocus: that touches both home and work.
- Above three project groupings are what I use as omnifocus "perspectives". A
perspective is just a saved view/filter. So I have a "work planning"
perspective showing the work projects and the mixed projects. And a "home
planning perspective with the personal and the mixed projects. Same for the
accompanying "home tasks" and "work tasks" perspectives which shows the
context view instead of the project view (you'll have to know omnifocus or
look at the 15 minute introduction video
to understand those terms). That "mixed" set of projects is essential for me
to maintain my sanity :-)
Tags: gtd, omnifocus
