OmniFocus is a really flexible app. I let's you do a lot of modifications to suit YOUR specific workflow. The problem, however, is how to build YOUR specific workflow. Because OmniFocus doesn't come with an easy inbuilt one. And over the long run this will slow you down and hinder your productivity.
What you have to do, is figure out how you want your workflow with OmniFocus, and then implement it!
Perhaps you have already experienced one of the following problems
- The next action list grows to enormous size
- Urgent tasks hides behind non-urgent stuff
- You use a lot of clicks, when moving around the application, slowing you down and hindering your ability to get a clear perspective on the state of affairs.
Well, luckily there's a remedy for these nuisances. And it's all about tweaking the software to suit you. And though I can't tell what your optimal workflow, what I CAN do, is show you how I have tweaked Omnifocus.
BUILDING MY OWN WORKFLOW
Customizing OmniFocus to fit your workflow will save you a ton of time.
The goal we're aiming for is to have a set of custom perspectives and corresponding short cuts in the toolbar.
Perspectives are predefined views/sortings of your tasks, and they are really handy. I have a set of custommade perspective for each cornerstone in my GTD workflow.
- Inbox
- Today
- Next Actions
- Projects
- Waiting For
- Review
In the recently published version of OmniFocus some of these got build in. But I still prefer to make my own. It let’s me make precisely as I want them, and I get to have keyboard short cuts.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN PERSPECTIVES
To make a perspective is quite easy. You just fool around with the possible sortings and filtrations, until satisfied, and then you go to the perspectives pulldown menu and press save as perspective.
You can watch the whole process in this video:
OmniFocus Workflow from Jens Poder on Vimeo.
Short cuts to perspectives in the toolbar got into OmniFocus from version 1.1. Right clicking and customizing the toolbar, will let you put your custom perspectives buttons into your toolbar.
This is what pulls it all together. Discard the unused stuff and put in your own perspectives.
Now you have all the main ingredients of your GTD-workflow at the click of a mouse or keyboard shortcut.
Tomorrow we'll look at how to tweak OmniFocus to only serve your tasks relevant right now.
- Jens Poder
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