Omnifocus Discourse

Posted By admin  On 02.05.21



Project and task management is a complex topic that has spawned thousands of apps and just as many strong opinions about each of them. I’ve been trying new tools since I started with a Casio Databank watch in high school and a Sharp Wizard in college. If you don’t remember these tools with nostalgia, you’ll think them horribly antiquated—but for many years, Mac task management software was not much better. It wasn’t until ten years ago that Mac apps in this field began to be consistently useful out of the box.

OmniFocus gives you a great deal of flexibility to customize how you keep organized, including viewing your projects and actions in different ways called Perspectives. In OmniFocus 3, the Forecast perspective gains a number of new features that has transformed.

  • Learn how to use OmniFocus and third-party apps to bring a relaxed, productive flow to your life and work, even when there's a lot competing for your attention. Course Overview This session emphasizes the value of developing skills around focused work and provides practical guidance for usi.
  • Discuss the new version of OmniFocus on our Discourse forum (you'll need to sign up for an account there).-OmniFocus 1 for Mac. 2014-05-20 08:33 PM OmniFocus for iPhone. 2014-05-19 08:32 AM OmniFocus for iPad. Topics related to the iPad version of OmniFocus go here.

This decade of worthwhile software roughly coincides with the initial release of OmniFocus, which helped to create a market in which many apps now compete. OmniFocus has been reviewed here at TidBITS increasingly warmly (see “OmniFocus Willing, But Not Quite Ready, To Help Get Things Done,” 30 April 2008, and “OmniFocus 2 for Mac Brings a Fresh Look to GTD,” 22 May 2014).

OmniFocus 3 is now a multiplatform app, although it works perfectly fine by itself on Mac or iOS. OmniFocus is now roughly feature-compatible on Mac and iOS with the differences mostly relating to the different times and ways the hardware is used. But the experience of using OmniFocus on an iPad and iPhone is quite different, so I think of OmniFocus as a suite of tools crossing the Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and—soon with the release of software now in public beta—the Web.

The release of the Web version will bring with it an alternative pricing scheme. OmniFocus apps will still be available for one-time purchase, but there will also be a subscription model that provides the latest Pro version of every app—and which will be required to use the Web app, with lower pricing if you’ve also purchased the apps. The monthly subscription of $5 or $10 may reduce the sticker shock of buying the apps, as the Pro versions (which I recommend) total $140 on Mac and iOS, dissuading new users.

The problem with OmniFocus, and task management apps in general, is that each requires you to adopt a particular way of looking at your goals, projects, tasks, and time management. Complex apps like OmniFocus give you more freedom to adapt the software to reflect your work style, while simple apps force you into a particular method that may or may not match your natural style. To demonstrate how OmniFocus presents both complexity and flexibility, I’ll start with an overview of how it works, and follow it with a discussion of what’s new in OmniFocus 3 and where it has some rough edges.

Disclosure: After the publication of my book Take Control of Your Productivity, the Omni Group contracted me to write a post for their blog Inside OmniFocus—which I’ll link to later as it’s relevant to this review. I may do similar work in the future but have no ongoing relationship with the company.

An Overview of OmniFocus

This screenshot provides a good overview of both OmniFocus and what I meant earlier by “flexibility with complexity.” There are four sections, from left to right:

  • View Column: The icons in the leftmost black column switch the view of your data. From the top down:
    • An inbox that catches incoming tasks you haven’t organized yet.
    • A projects view that displays nested outlines of your projects and tasks.
    • A tags view that collates tasks by categories you define, taken from multiple projects and presented as a simple list. For example, you may tag tasks with places like “Home” or “Errands,” or with concepts like “Work” or “Volunteer.”
    • A forecast view showing past, present, and future tasks with due dates, which are displayed alongside events from your calendar so you know how much time is left over to accomplish them.
    • A flagged view allowing you to note some items as important or special, and display them separately.
    • A review mode for a regular process of checking your projects and tasks, to make sure they are up-to-date with what you’ve done and properly organized to reflect any changes that have occurred.
    • Additional custom views that you can design, called Perspectives. In this example, you’re seeing the icon for my “Due and Available” Perspective, showing me what’s on deadline but omitting things I can’t do now—so I’m not bothered by my laundry hamper when I’m not home.
  • Navigation Column: The dark grey column shows a navigational structure. In this example, the projects view is selected, and it displays folders and projects only, for quick navigation of your outline. In the tags view, it shows your defined categories. In the forecast view, it shows a calendar with counts of tasks for every day in the next month.
  • Projects and Tasks Column: The center white column displays your projects and tasks in a list—an outline in the Project view and simpler lists in Inbox, Flag, and Tag views. You can modify this column to be simpler and show less information for each task.
  • Inspector Column: The rightmost column shows all the data for the selected task. As you can see, every project and task can have quite a lot of data associated with it—start dates, due dates, repeat schedules, notes, and estimated times among them. You don’t have to use all this metadata, and you can collapse sections and rearrange them so the Inspector shows you what you use most often.

When you’re working with the Projects and Tasks column, you’re frequently going to be using an outline in the projects view. You can nest tasks to break a project down into subprojects, and those tasks can have subtasks. This is useful for complex projects but can raise the question of when to decide a task with subtasks is large enough to be its own project. It doesn’t matter whether you think of a nested task as a subproject or just a grouping of even smaller tasks, but OmniFocus treats projects at the top level differently. When you’re working in a simpler view that lists tasks without a project hierarchy, it’s frequently useful to quickly switch back to see the task in the larger project, and OmniFocus provides that capability in a contextual menu.

Tasks and projects can be assigned tags, allowing for additional categorization. Tags replace what used to be called “contexts” in earlier versions of OmniFocus. You can best think of a context as a filter because a key use of tags is to see only what’s relevant to the situation at hand. It isn’t helpful to see a reminder to buy eggs when you’re in the office—you want that while at the grocery store—but you’ll likely want to see the reminder you need to go grocery shopping everywhere except at the supermarket.

A project or task with subtasks can be sequential with all its components occurring in order, or it can be parallel, where you can do them in any order. Putting on your socks and shirt is a parallel task, but putting on your socks and shoes is sequential. Depending on how you set up your task views, you can hide “unavailable” tasks—in the Get Dressed project, you’ll see both “put on shirt” and “put on socks,” but you won’t see “put on shoes” until socks are marked as done. (This example may sound silly but the sequential/parallel dichotomy is useful for the same reason contexts are. You often don’t want to be bothered about things you can’t do right now.) Putting on your clothes is an example of how complex even simple tasks can be, because Get Dressed is a parallel project with nested sequential components—you also can’t put on your coat first or your underwear last. (Unless you’re a superhero.)

Likewise, repeating tasks can also be complex. You have to pay your monthly cable bill on the same day every month, but a monthly meeting could require a task due by the third Friday. If you want a haircut every month and you delay two weeks, you don’t want to see that task two weeks later. Meanwhile, when a repeating task has subtasks—your grocery list includes things you prefer to buy at store #2, where you don’t want to buy what you already picked up from store #1—sometimes the project or container task repeats, and sometimes the individual subtasks repeat. OmniFocus has a system of assigning due dates and defer or start dates, which hides a task until sometime in the future. Repeating tasks can be based on either, with future tasks scheduled either by date or after enough time has elapsed since the last time you completed it.

Finally, task management is something you always want available. You might get organized on your Mac, brainstorm tasks on your iPad over breakfast, and use your iPhone all day long to check things off. OmniFocus has a free syncing service that handles all of this seamlessly, or you can use a private server if you don’t want your data in the cloud. If you have to use other platforms, the beta Web service is intended for non-Apple desktops and laptops, but not yet designed for touchscreens.

For all of the above basic concepts, OmniFocus is either the best in class among Mac and iOS task-management apps, or at least the standard by which other apps are judged. Many of these ideas weren’t implemented well until OmniFocus came up with a decent interface for them—at which point other apps differentiated themselves by responding to the things people disliked about OmniFocus. Concepts like projects with nested parallel and sequential tasks require a more complex interface than apps that don’t include them. If you want fewer features because you’re tripping over complexity, that’s a good reason to use another app. But I generally recommend using software that’s more complex than what you need right now, so you can expand into it in the future. A missing feature is a low ceiling you can bump your head on, and switching task management apps is a painful, time-consuming procedure.

(The most commonly mentioned app for people who find OmniFocus too complex is Things, which has a nice feature set in a cross-platform package. Choosing and switching to a new productivity app is hard to do right, and I recommend against the shotgun approach of downloading apps until you find one that’s superficially useful. This is the subject of several chapters of my book, Take Control of Your Productivity, and its accompanying blog has an article suggesting additional apps once you’ve come up with an approach to evaluating them. OmniFocus, Things, and Daylite don’t appear in the blog post because they’re covered in the book.)

What’s New in OmniFocus 3

While designing OmniFocus 3, the Omni Group focused on addressing problems that users had with confusing complexity and difficulties using contexts.

Tags Replace Contexts

In earlier versions of OmniFocus, a task could only have a single context, which required jumping through hoops to filter them properly. I divide my work tasks up into several categories (to remind me to make money before I switch to more interesting work that doesn’t), but I also want to filter out tasks requiring my Mac when I only have my iPad. In OmniFocus 2, this required nesting contexts, such as Revenue Work:Mac and Revenue Work:iPad. But I also needed Revenue Work:Apple to indicate tasks I could do on either device, but not on my Android phone. It would have been nice to also be able to divide tasks based on other criteria: things that require a fast Internet connection, or things I can do when I’m tired.

Tags solve this problem nicely, because a task or project can have any number of them. Instead of a ridiculously complex and repetitive context structure, I can create a task and tag it [NonRevenue] [Mac] [iPad] [Low Ebb]. I’ll filter it out until I’m done with more important categories of work, and also by available gadgetry or current neural functionality.

This screenshot shows a tag view of tasks I brainstormed for this article. (Unfortunately, I actually need to do them.) This view is good for prioritizing but not filtering. You’ll never need to see your “Low Ebb” and “On Fire” (mentally) tasks side-by-side, as you would filter for those only when in one state or the other. Custom perspectives are how you filter these tasks with more precision, as you can create views that show “only those tasks with both of these tags,” or “every task except the ones with these tags.”

Tag nesting is still available and sometimes useful: when I tag a task with a person in order to have a ready-made agenda for when we meet, I nest that as People:Josh Centers, which allows me to pull up a People list to see all of the agendas I have to prepare for. This is also useful for keeping a long list of tags organized—I nested my tags in this screenshot in order to avoid showing you all the ones I actually use.

Better Perspective Layouts

Different kinds of work have different requirements, and now you can change layouts and the data you’re shown to match those requirements. Most of the time when I’m working on my tasks, I want to see a Tag or Forecast view with projects, flags, and due dates listed alongside. But when I’m planning future work, I’m in a Project view and also want to see start dates and notes.

It was already possible to toggle display options in OmniFocus’s preferences, but custom perspectives allow you to create sets of options assigned to each view. Perspectives also have task rules similar to smart playlists in iTunes, and let you control what you see in your custom layout. On the Mac, customization is more powerful than before, and in iOS, it’s the first time you can do it at all. Custom perspectives will sync between your devices (but not to the Web app), although in some cases you might want to create platform-specific perspectives regardless in order to make the formatting better suited for the size of the screen you’re using.

Customizable Inspectors

OmniFocus now has project and task inspectors. This change lets you hide interface elements in the task list that you might need only occasionally, and display them only as needed. On the Mac, you can turn sections of the inspector on and off by clicking disclosure triangles. On an iPad, you choose which elements to hide by default, and how to arrange more elements when you tap Show More.

Adaptive controls and custom ordering of the inspector categories also help make the inspector easier to manage: a date picker appears only when you tap a date, a second sidebar slides in when you set a task’s repeat schedule, and you can rearrange your most commonly-used options to the top of the inspector.

Where OmniFocus 3 Is Still a Bit Blurry

Like most apps that have been around for a decade, OmniFocus is generally polished. The woes and suggestions of thousands of users have all contributed to this third version, and it shows. But several problems remain, some of which are related to new cross-platform capabilities.

The biggest of these is that I’ve been using OmniFocus 3 on my Mac and iPad for months, and I still haven’t entirely figured out the iOS interface. I suspect that if you’re iOS-centric, you won’t have this problem. But I do most of my OmniFocus heavy lifting on my Mac, and so when I go to the iPad, there are features I know exist but I can’t figure out the tap targets to invoke them. Most egregiously, the button that shows or hides unavailable tasks—which you’re going to use often—is in different places on the two devices, so I regularly find myself looking into the wrong corner of the screen on both the Mac and iPad.

One solution to the user interface problem is to read the excellent help, which is high quality and written like a manual. (OmniFocus 2 used to provide in-app help as downloadable EPUB ebooks, and I hope Omni Group brings those back. Few people sit and read a manual cover to cover, but it’s a good idea with OmniFocus.)

I would love to visit OmniFocus’s developers and see how they arrange their OmniFocus windows, especially when working from a coffee shop. The next issue would be less troubling on a 27-inch display, but my work is entirely mobile and my workflows are built around MacBook and iPad-sized screens. The OmniFocus window takes up most of the display, so I make it a full screen in Mission Control to avoid having stacked windows. That means I need one Space for OmniFocus to tell me what to do and another Space where I do it. When that work requires me to make ongoing changes in OmniFocus for documentation, I need my iPad as a second screen to avoid switching every two minutes—either showing the iPad version of OmniFocus or working as an external monitor with Duet Display showing my Mac’s OmniFocus window. There are times when I don’t have room for the iPad—planes, buses, Starbucks during rush hour. My instincts tell me there’s probably a better way of working with a small OmniFocus window—such as creating custom perspectives that pop up additional windows with compact information views—but it’s not intuitive or easily discoverable. (Writing this made me realize I could also create a new tag so I can filter out tasks that need two screens.)

That leads me to the last issue. I’ve used OmniFocus since almost the day version 1 was released, and before then, I used its spiritual predecessor. I’ve written a book that features the app prominently. But this review has required long notetaking and research, because whenever I’ve said “you can’t do such-and-such,” I’m still not entirely sure there isn’t a particular 12-step procedure that fits it into OmniFocus methods. (In such cases, I frequently check the OmniFocus forum to either find someone’s clever solution or at least commiserate with other people facing the same problem.) After 10 years of non-stop usage, I feel like I should know its edges and limits better.

This problem was significant enough that I cheekily wrote a story for the OmniFocus blog on when not to use OmniFocus. I did this partially because it’s common to hear people trying to use their task management app to organize and store everything without regard to whether that’s a good idea. Sometimes it’s just easier to pop up a TextEdit window to make a quick list than it is to create and use an OmniFocus perspective. But maybe I’m still using tricks like that because I’m confused about what OmniFocus can and can’t do. Is it too much to expect that I should be able to maximize the productivity tool that I use to manage my productivity? I don’t think I’m there. (In fact, I’m sure I’m not, as I haven’t yet learned OmniFocus 3’s AppleScript commands or iOS Shortcuts.)

In short, OmniFocus has extensive help documentation in the app and on its companion Web site, plus the aforementioned forums. OmniFocus has a steep learning curve, and if you’re just getting started, you should be prepared to scale it. (Note that looking for OmniFocus documentation may land you on a site called Learn OmniFocus. It’s designed to look like the Omni Group Web site, but it’s a different company selling training. The owner of the business has an ongoing interaction with Omni Group and they’ve recommended his work in the past. But I’ve landed here a few times over the years and this is the first time I became aware it wasn’t an Omni Group site, so I think it’s worth mentioning to avoid any confusion.)

OmniFocus’s complexity isn’t entirely the Omni Group’s fault because all productivity methods require a time cost overhead. OmniFocus is no exception. There are tasks that I call “meta-tasks,” which are what you have to do to manage your productivity system. (If you spend 10 minutes every day brainstorming a to-do list, that’s a repeating meta-task.) Some of these are inherent to an organizational method, such as time you spend reviewing current projects and tasks to see if they’re up-to-date. But other meta-tasks can be specific to how the app works. It takes me 10 minutes to set up at Starbucks with my iPad as a second screen; if I could use OmniFocus more effectively on a small screen, that wouldn’t be necessary.

Ultimately, after years of refining and streamlining my task management, I still spend far more time than I’d prefer fiddling with my data instead of checking things off my lists. It’ll probably take a completely different task management paradigm to contrast, in a new app or a future version of OmniFocus, before I can imagine how to solve this problem completely.

The Final Focus

I can’t think of an example of someone who might want to stick with OmniFocus 2; if you like the app, you’ll like the upgrade. If you’ve tried and abandoned OmniFocus in the past, you might find OmniFocus 3 more welcoming, but there’s a catch-22 involved: you can use preferences and custom perspectives to make the interface much simpler, but that’s not how it looks out of the box. You have to learn how to use it in order to make it easier to use.

You can purchase the OmniFocus apps a la carte as one-time purchases for Mac or iOS, or as a subscription across all platforms. The standalone version of OmniFocus 3 Standard for the Mac costs $39.99 and OmniFocus Pro for the Mac is $79.99. The iOS version of OmniFocus Standard is also $39.99, and the Pro version is $59.99. Upgrade pricing is available for earlier versions of OmniFocus, or from the Standard version to the Pro version. I don’t think many people will be satisfied with the Standard version for very long—several features including custom perspectives are Pro-only and they’re too important to skip.

If you want to use the forthcoming OmniFocus for Web, a subscription is required—but if you’ve previously purchased the app, the subscription is half-price. OmniFocus for Web is a stripped-down version of the Mac and iOS apps, meant to be used in parallel, in situations where you can’t use the app; OmniGroup compares it to their first iOS release. If you want to try it out, and you own any OmniFocus 3 app, sync your data to Omni Sync Server and a checkbox on the Web site joins the beta. Subscriptions won’t be available until OmniFocus for Web launches (which their roadmap predicted by the end of 2018, but the beta continues). A subscription will cost $9.99 per month and includes the Pro versions of all apps, or $4.99 per month for just the Web service if you’ve separately purchased the apps you want.

Implementing the Getting Things Done® Methodology with OmniFocus

“OmniFocus is a stellar tool for keeping track of outcomes and actions in the Mac environment. It supports simple but important practices for keeping your head clear, staying focused, and managing your commitments.”
- David Allen

  • The Capture Process in OmniFocus
  • Processing and Organizing in OmniFocus
  • Completing Actions in OmniFocus

GTD Workflow Diagram — Processing with OmniFocus

The Basics of GTD in OmniFocus

Getting Things Done, or GTD, is a popular productivity methodologyimagined and realized by David Allen.

GTD is a way to manage everything from your day to day stuff to those dreams you don’t yet know how to accomplish. This manual intends to explore the implementation of this system in OmniFocus, assuming no previous knowledge of the methodology on your part. At its simplest, GTD in OmniFocus can be summarized with the following concepts:

Capture: Capture every little thought, to-do, or idea. When an idea is safely captured and off your mind, not only are you no longer burdened by it, but you’ve taken the first step towards making that idea come to fruition.

Organize: Organization is an ongoing process, but OmniFocus makes it easy. You can use OmniFocus to take your ideas and turn them into manageable, bite-sized pieces. Instead of trying to tackle everything as it presents itself, you can make a game plan and take on your goals one step at a time.

Do: With many systems, setting up the list is easy; it’s the doing that’s tough. But with GTD and OmniFocus, there’s nothing to it! Concepts in OmniFocus make use of GTD’s logical systems to help you be the multi-tasking dynamo you know you are.

Review: Keep in touch with your projects and actions to make sure they represent your ever-changing goals.

Process: Take a look at all your captured ideas one at a time and decide what it is and when you’ll accomplish it. That is, of course, if you are able and need to accomplish it.

The OmniFocus interface is laid out to be as GTD-friendly as possible. However, that doesn’t mean much until we know what we’re looking for. This section will elaborate on the basics of GTD in OmniFocus.

OmniFocus Through the Eyes of a GTD Practitioner

  1. Inbox: This is a place to capture your stuff. Stuff is anything that has your attention, be it general home upkeep, car repairs, or even screenplay ideas — enter it all in the Inbox. It doesn’t need to be fully worked out; it just needs to make enough sense that when you return to the Inbox, you can recall your intention for the entry.

  2. Actions: For something to become an action, you must first Process your Inbox. This means going through your Inbox, line by line, and deciding what each item really is. Is it actionable? If so, what’s the first available action? Most of your items will become projects or actions. In GTD, a project is defined as “any desired result that requires more than one action step.”

  1. A context is the tool, resource, or location required to complete an action. In OmniFocus, Context views group actions by their required context. This way, instead of working through a project action by action — which could take you to many different places or require different tools — you can consider what’s available to you now and go from there.
Omnifocus Discourse

For example, let’s say you find yourself with a spare moment and decide to make some calls. You know you need to call your co-worker about that really important assignment, and your phone context shows that you need to return a call to your friend. Even though they’re from different projects, they can be accomplished with the same tool. (For more on Contexts, see contexts.)

The Capture Process in OmniFocus

If you are distracted by what you are attempting to keep in your head, you will not be able to give your full attention to the task at hand. When everything is captured, your mind is clear and can operate efficiently.

The Inbox is the central location to collect all of your important emails, your phone calls, your hastily written post-it notes, even your daydreams. Everything that requires eventual action on your part can start in the inbox. It doesn’t need to be fully developed; it just needs to get out of your mind. The first time you use OmniFocus, think of what’s on your mind and add it to the Inbox. This process is called a “mind sweep”.

In general, once you know your next—or first—action, it is useful to add an action verb: “check tire pressure”, “clean up the attic”, “search for tickets to Madagascar”. This makes things clearer when it’s time to go to action.

Adding items directly to the InboxThe easiest way to focus yourself on the Inbox is to press the Inbox tab. Then, press the New Action toolbar button or simply press Return.

Adding items to the Inbox with Quick EntryYou’re not always going to be working in OmniFocus when an idea strikes. Quick Entry is a window that can be called upon at any time OmniFocus is open, even if it isn’t the active application. To open Quick Entry, press Control-Option-Space. Then, enter your item just as you would in the Inbox. Press Return, and your item goes straight to the OmniFocus Inbox. Settings for Quick Entry, including its keyboard shortcut, can be customized in OmniFocus Preferences.

Adding items to the Inbox with Clippings

Often, in order to complete your work, you need to refer to something on your computer, like an email or a web page. Clippings are bits of information that you put in your Inbox for later reference.

To get started, we need to open System Preferences. In the Keyboard section, choose Shortcuts , then Services. Find Text , “OmniFocus 2: Send to Inbox”, and then set a shortcut. (It is best to choose an uncommon one that won’t conflict with other applications’ commands, such as Command– F6.) Then, quit and reopen any applications where you’d like to use the shortcut.

Now, in a different application (your web browser, for example), select some text. Press your newly created shortcut, and Quick Entry appears. Enter a new title for the item if you like, then press Return to save the item to the Inbox.

Adding items to the Inbox with Apple MailYou won’t always be in front of your computer when you need to enter something into OmniFocus. If you’re able to send email (for example, with your cell phone or a friend’s computer), you can send an email to yourself and have OmniFocus process it. To learn about processing actions from Mail, see the “Capture Methods” portion of OmniFocus Help.

OmniFocus for iOS has similar capture functionality to OmniFocus for Mac. Tap the Quick Entry button on any screen to quickly add an inbox item from anywhere. Or, tap the Plus button to add an item to the screen you’re currently looking at.

Processing and Organizing in OmniFocus

When working with Getting Things Done®, how you process and organize your work is key. Luckily, GTD^ organization is logical and OmniFocus makes it a snap. Organization is important because it will determine how your raw ideas become refined into lists you can take action on; those lists are pivotal to a successful workflow. Just like real life, these lists are dynamic. You will look over them regularly and it’s easy to change them.

Processing the Inbox

Set aside time to process your inbox on a daily basis or select a time to process that regularly works for you. When you look at your Inbox, especially after your mind sweep, you’ll probably see a lot of different kinds of items. For now, all you need to decide is what the item is and if it is actionable — whether you intend to do something about it any time soon.

If an item is not actionable, you have three options:

Trash: If you’re not going to do it and you’re not going to have someone else do it, press Delete and stop worrying about it. Everyone thinks of more things to do than they have time for. When you decide what you’re not going to do, you’re deciding what’s really important to you. Deleting gives you more time to accomplish the important stuff.

Someday Maybe: If you don’t want to lose it forever, because you might do something about it someday, add it to an On Hold single action list.

Reference: If you clipped something that you want to remember, but isn’t necessarily actionable, you can store it for reference. Different people have different methods for storing their reference materials, including fine applications such as OmniOutliner, VoodooPad, Evernote, Yojimbo, or even text files in Finder.

If an item is actionable, you have another three options:

Do It: If it will take less than two minutes to do the action just go ahead and do it right now. (Go ahead, we’ll wait.)

Defer It: If you can’t do it right this minute, your remaining option is to defer it. (Most of your Inbox items are probably like this.) It’s time to decide: Is it a project or is it a step to accomplish a project?

If it involves multiple steps rather than a single action turn it into a project and add at least one physical visible action that moves you towards your successful outcome.

If it is an action working toward an existing project, add it to that project via the item’s Project cell or by dragging it to the project in the sidebar.

If it is an action working toward a project that you haven’t created yet, create that project, and add the item to it. (A quick way to do this is to type the new project name into the item’s Project cell and then press Command-Return.)

Delegate It: If the action would be more efficiently completed by someone else, find the appropriate person and let them know what you expect of them. Keep track of the action in OmniFocus by assigning it to an On Hold context, thus marking the action unavailable for you to work on. By default, OmniFocus has a Context called Waiting, but you can also create one specific to the person who will be completing the action.

This way, if the action belongs in a project, but is not actionable by you, you will still see that the action needs to be completed instead of handing it off and watching it float into the ether. Once the other person gets back to you that they are finished with it, you can mark it complete and carry on with your part of the project.

You may find it helpful to create an action to follow up with them, adding a start and due date to remind you.

Projects

A project is any desired result that requires more than one action to achieve. Making a decision about the order of your actions is very important. A project where the actions need to be performed in sequence is called a sequential project. A project where the actions can be performed in any order is called a parallel project. The project type can be specified either in the outline or the Project Inspector. Often, they can only be performed in one order.

No matter what the project type, considering a project’s first available action will make accomplishing the project easier. The first available action is the first action you need to take to move a project forward; it appears in purple text. You can set the next—or first—action by dragging it above the others in the project.

Someday Maybe Ideas

Someday Maybe ideas are those that aren’t really on your short-term agenda — like writing your autobiography or your opus (or just cleaning out the crawlspace). You’d like to do it someday, but you’re not ready to tackle it now.

You can specify an item as Someday Maybe by placing it in a Single Action List. To do so, create a project, open the Inspector, and use the Type control. Use the Status control to specify the list as On Hold to hide it from the ordinary OmniFocus views. You can see your On Hold projects by choosing On Hold from the View Options toolbar button.

Ticklers

If you can’t get to work on something right now, but it’s not too far off in the distance, you probably have a Tickler item on your hands. A tickler item, in OmniFocus, is an item with a start (or defer until) date in the future. This might be a marathon you might participate in or a concert you might like to see. With a start date in the future, it disappears for the time being, but is not lost forever. You can add a start date to the project or action via the inspector or the Start column in the outline.

An item with a start date in the future doesn’t appear in ordinary OmniFocus views. But when the start date comes around, the project or action appears again, ready for you to decide what to do with it.

Folders

Folders are a way to organize projects. Many people use folders to represent life roles or areas of focus. For example, one might have folders named Work, Home, and so on. With such a system, when you are at work, you could use the Focus command on your Work folder to temporarily hide your Home folder and avoid being bothered by the fact that you need to call your landlord while you’re trying to focus on work.

Reviewing

Regular review of your actions and projects is central to making sure the GTD methodology works. OmniFocus has a built-in Review mode that makes reviewing simple. You’ll see projects sorted by the order in which they need review. This includes projects that have no actions known as Stalled projects. Give each project a once-over to make sure it still represents your goals, and adjust it if necessary. Then, select it and use the Mark Reviewed button. Like Inbox processing, it is good to establish a time to do this regularly without distraction. In this system, it is recommended to do this weekly. (See the GTD Weekly Review chart for more on reviewing.)

Some people choose to use folders as a tool to implement the Getting Things Done Horizons of Focus—Altitude Map Model. This model organizes your projects by your current actions, projects, areas of responsibility, one to two year goals, three to five year goals, and finally, general life goals. Everything from the phone call you need to make right now to how you ultimately envision for your life’s purpose.

Review Templates

There may be other things you want to be reminded to check up on regularly, such as your physical inbox, your email accounts, and your mailbox at the office.

To keep track of these day-to-day items, you can create a review template: Choose Add Single-Action List from the File menu, and add actions for the things you want to keep track of. Select each action and use the Inspector to give them a due date and a repeat interval (probably one day from completion date). Then, as long as you keep up with your due OmniFocus items, you can be sure that you’re on top of everything.

Completing Actions in OmniFocus

No matter which system you implement, if you can’t complete your actions, it’s all for naught. Thankfully, it’s easy and logical with GTD and OmniFocus; You can consider what tools and time are available to you to decide what to do next.

Contexts

Contexts are a way to categorize actions by the tool, person, or place necessary to carry out the action. When you add actions, be sure to assign a context to them via the Context field, or review the No Context list in a Context view to add one later.

For example, let’s say you’re at the airport and you decide to make some phone calls. You have about 20 minutes, and your first call ends with time to spare. You can look at your Phone context and see several other calls that you need to make.

The phone call actions are from different projects, but the necessary tool is the same. So you quickly spot another short call you can make, from an unrelated project, and thus are able to move that project forward too. Without the context list, you might not have known that there was another phone call available.

Time Estimates

There may be moments where you have a bit of spare time and you’d like to make use of it. While not central, you might find time estimates useful to narrow down what’s available to you. This is especially great for actions that take an hour or less because you can say, “Okay, I have 30 minutes” and see all the actions that can be accomplished in 30 minutes or less.

To add an estimate, use the Inspector. Then, to see actions that fit into the time available to you, set the Duration filter when creating a custom perspective.

Flagging

When you’re ready to get to work, you’ll likely find yourself with quite a few things you could work on. If it’s too much to concentrate on at once, you can flag certain items as being especially important to you right now.

Flagging doesn’t have any inherent meaning in OmniFocus, but you can use it, for instance, to mark the actions you intend to finish before lunch, some time today, or just sooner rather than later. Some people use flags to keep an eye on items that don’t have a hard due date, but which are particularly important. If you don’t get to them, simply unflag them.

This is equivalent to the GTD practice of writing down a special, selected list of actions to get done as soon as possible.

Perspectives

So, you’ve Focused on your folders, you’ve whittled down your Contexts, you’ve set your Flagged filter, and you’ve set your Estimate filter. That’s a lot to do to just try and get some work done. It would be nice if you didn’t have to set all that up every time you use OmniFocus.

Well, good news! You can create a Perspective. A Perspective saves a window’s view settings for recall later. You can create a Perspective for any window state. Just want to view your Stalled projects? No problem. Just select Add Perspective from the Perspectives menu and choose Stalled from the Filtering section. You can create and manage filters for Perspectives in the Perspectives window, available (appropriately enough) from the Perspectives menu. To learn more about Perspectives, check OmniFocus Help. (It’s also a Pro feature.)

Working With A Calendar

Omnifocus Discount

Calendars have been around for thousands of years and it’s because they’re a great tool for what they intend to accomplish: keeping track of and managing specific allotments of time, or “hard landscape” items. For a GTD practitioner this would include capturing your fixed appointments (like meetings and trips to the dentist) as well as capturing future options or reminders that need to occur on a specific date.

OmniFocus doesn’t mean to replace the calendar, but rather work alongside it. In Forecast, get a quick glance at hard landscape items along with actions with a “defer until” or “due” date. Calendars can be chosen from the View Options toolbar button.

Working With Reference Material

Not everything that finds its way to your inbox requires action, but that doesn’t make it unimportant! Having a system to manage information you can use later is crucial. Phone numbers, addresses, coupons, take-out menus, lyrics scribbled on a napkin, and foreign currencies are all examples of something you want to keep and retrieve easily as needed.

There are essentially two kinds of reference systems: one for information that’s specific to a topic or area (like with a phone number) and one for general reference (like employee files or currencies for later travel).

While much of this can be stored electronically with applications like OmniOutliner or Yojimbo, it’s good to have a physical file that is kept tidy and well-labeled.

Beyond OmniFocus

Additional Help

The GTD methodology can greatly improve your productivity while reducing your stress, but it takes time to learn its best practices. Fortunately, you’re not alone!

A good place to start is David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done. You can purchase it from his website or from the iBooks Store.

Check out other services, systems, and workflows to find out how others are using OmniFocus at http://inside.omnifocus.com/.

You can also talk with other OmniFocus users on the Omni Group forums: http://discourse.omnigroup.com/

Or, get in touch with our Support Humans via email: omnifocus@omnigroup.com

Map of GTD Concepts & OmniFocus Terminology

ActionIndividual action items in a project.

Area of FocusThese areas of responsibility can be represented as folders, on which you can use the Focus command.

ContextTo see your actions grouped by context, click the Contexts tab.

DeferMake an on-hold project or use a defer until date to get tasks off your plate for the time being.

DelegateAssign actions to an on-hold context until you hear back from the person you have delegated them to.

Hard LandscapeOmniFocus doesn’t replace your calendar, but does show your daily landscape.

InboxClick the Inbox tab, summon the Quick Entry window, or use the Clippings shortcut.

First Available ActionEach project’s first available action is darker than others. You can use the filter under the View Options toolbar button to see just those actions.

ProjectChoose the Projects tab to see your projects.

ReviewChoose the Review tab to make sure you’re on top ofeverything.

Omnifocus Discourse Theory

Someday MaybeSet a project’s status to on hold if you don’t intend to do it any time soon; review these projects as needed.

StuffEverything you put in the Inbox to become actions, projects, calendar items, or reference materials.

TicklerGive an item a future start date to file it for later.```

The GTD Weekly Review®

Omnifocus Discourse Definition

Get ClearCollect Loose Papers and Materials: Gather all accumulated business cards, receipts, and miscellaneous paper-based materials into your inbox.

Get “IN” to ZeroProcess completely all outstanding paper materials, journal and meeting notes, voicemails, dictation, and email.

Empty Your Head:Put in writing and process any uncaptured new projects, action items, waiting-for’s, someday/maybe’s, etc.

Omnifocus Discourse Examples

Get CurrentReview Action Lists: Review for reminders of further action steps to record.

Review Previous Calendar DataReview past calendar in detail for remaining action items, reference data, etc. and transfer into the active system.

Review Upcoming CalendarReview upcoming calendar events — long and short term. Capture actions triggered.

Review Waiting-For ListRecord appropriate actions for any needed follow-up. Check off received ones.

Review Project (and Larger Outcome) ListsEvaluate status of projects, goals and outcomes, one by one, ensuring at least one current action item on each. Browse through project plans, support material, and any other work-in-progress material to trigger new actions, completions, waiting-for’s, etc.

Review Any Relevant ChecklistsUse as a trigger for new actions.

Get CreativeReview Someday Maybe List: Review for any projects which may now have become active, and transfer to “Projects”.

Omnifocus Discourse Analysis

Be Creative and CourageousAny new, wonderful, hare-brained, creative, thought-provoking, risk-taking ideas to add into your system?