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Handling Non-Dated, but Important Next Actions (OmniFocus, GTD method)
Scottw | Jan 24 2008
I currently use OmniFocus to implement my GTD method. I find it to be about the best organization app and I live and breath by it and iCal. I try to keep my inbox at zero, and I feel as though I am running with all four on the floor and while that might look funny, my system seems to work for me. HOWEVER... In OmniFocus, I typically tag things with a start day of TODAY (to track when it was entered) unless it has a specific start date that happens in the future. For example, if I need to change the oil in the car, I might put the start date for Saturday with an expiration of Sunday so that it will be "front center" when I reference OmniFocus on what I need to get done come Saturday/Sunday. Let's say that the kids get sick, unannounced visitors show up at your front door to stay and a last minute project from a client all combined means, getting the oil changed is last on your list. Come Monday... WHAT DO I DO WITH THAT ACTION? If the car is not in danger of being damaged and I don't have time to deal with getting the oil changed during the week, do I go in and set a new start/stop date for the following weekend? What if I have a repeat weekend? My due dates become FLUFF. I have this issue with MOST of my tasks and hence my post here. The oil change is just an example, but it might be a something like fixing a bug on my site. It is not a show stopper, paid clients come before it, but I really need to address it. So, what happens is my "DUE in the last week/month" starts to grow and expand and this is not good for motivation with a big backlog. The GTD method says that we should not assign a DUE DATE to a specific next action UNLESS it truly is due that day. Fair enough. BUT, I have a TON of next actions and single actions that just keep growing that unless I put an expiration date on them, they lose place with things I have given an expiration, whether or not they truly have one. Perhaps it's how I am organizing my information in OmniFocus, being more date centric. Perhaps there is a better way to manage next actions that may not be date centric for prioritization. 6 Comments
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 Re: Handling Non-Dated, but Important Next Actions (OmniFocus, GSubmitted by Scottw on January 25, 2008 - 2:45pm.
I think the weekly review is where I am failing. I tend to do this with less precision, when I feel the need to "purge" I will go through and sort through things and send some things to a later date, bring other things to the forground and mark of things that no longer apply or have been completed out of urgency, not because I remembered I had them on the TODO list. Yea, I'll have to think about this. I need a way to organize priority across different projects and the color idea might work, although I don't think coloring is an option in OmniFocus. Looking at things is I group my list by DUE date, and so for things to come to the foreground they have to have a due date else it gets lost under no due date. Maybe I should group by context, and then just flag which ones at my "weekly" review that should gain my focus for the week. I have things that are things like "get trash out for collection" that pop-up on Wed every week. Just more as a tickler and feels good to click the check box when I am done with it. Ah! I just realized how the OmniFocus "coloring" scheme works as it shows by color what is past due, coming due soon, or down the road... which was pointless in how I had been grouping things. Well, maybe I am on the road to something different. It will take awhile to get out of the habit, but I believe in the end it will be a good thing. Thanks for your feedback. » POSTED IN:
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