Sunday, January 5, 2014

OmniFocus for People Who Work From Home

Tyler Hall:

Practically speaking, this means I’ve gotten rid of my Home, Work, and Phone contexts and replaced them instead with labels that borrow traits from Allen’s “Time available” and “Energy available” criteria.

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Replacing due dates with start dates has dramatically increased how often I add something to my inbox. I used to worry about adding trivial small reminders because I didn’t want them clogging up my task list. But now that I’ve discovered the power of start dates, I throw everything in there with a start date, knowing it won’t appear until I can actually do something about it.

I use start dates far more than due dates, and I set my contexts to only show Available actions. This reduces the number actions shown for each context, so it is actually possible to get to “Context Zero.” As a result, when looking at a context, I assume that the actions need to be done soon. I rarely need due dates, so when the Forecast does turn orange or red, I know it’s something important.

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