How I use omnifocus¶

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