Mac Power Users 451: Task Management Strategies

Okay, over an hour in and we’re finally moving off Omni Focus…
My bad… still on it.

Suggestion:

MPU 451: Task Management Strategies using Omni Focus

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It is heavily based on the Eisenhower Matrix, but tweaked and given more direction IMO.

You speak to what you know.

I felt they mentioned others in the process.

You’re using Drafts as your task manager? Interesting!

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I did appreciate the link to the analog Full Focus planner.
I’ve ordered the planner, journal, and notebooks.
I’ve tried a lot of apps, and just feel like I always loose sight of the macro, and meso pictures, or the connections between. Or something…

No planning … just evolved.

I was praising Drafts in another topic. Posted this screen shot of one of my drafts lists (other post was about actions). List pictured is called random. I five other lists that are more specifically targeted.

IMG_0646 https://talk.macpowerusers.comhttps://mpudata.sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/original/2X/a/ab4d27a093a8101162b89ada0f0851717950777d.png

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OmniFocus for Web is coming which may be a solution for you. I’ve been beta testing it (I have several windows machines which I use regularly at work) and it works great for accessing, completing and creating tasks, tags and projects.

Edit: I’m on a training course at work this week and the provided machine is a Windows machine. I’m getting on nicely with OF for Web

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I’m using Todoist at work because Windows, but l’m looking forward to trying OF for the Web. This screenshot made me think I will finally be able to use OF at work!image

I think most importantly is getting rid of excess tags. I did a purge of sorts a couple months ago and that has been awesome! Can’t imagibe 7.000 tasks…I’m sure half or more could be deleted or keep somewhere else.

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I really like the idea of deferring, but I can’t justify spending so much on OF or Things.
I’m not saying they don’t deserve to cost that much as I really appreciate quality software, but my needs are small.

Does anyone have suggestions for a Reminders replacement that does deferred task management?

Would like to hear some suggestions on how one manages which date applicable tasks get deferred to, in OF?

I find that when I am making those deferments, it’s pretty random - as in, “think I will push this out by two weeks, not very urgent”. But before long - especially if I am batch-processing, I might have (unknowingly) deferred a whole lot of tasks to a particular day two weeks away, which then forces a review, and “re-defer”, for that day again…

How do you all ‘pick’ when you will be deferring to?

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Yes this was really an Omni Focus show. But looking back (retired 3 years now) I used other approaches to digital task management. I do use Omni Focus for deferred reminders (change furnace filters, rebalance 401K, other infrequent tasks that are easy to forget) but never got into it for managing work tasks. I was an electrical engineer doing design work as well as a part time electrical engineering college instructor for 25 years.

I find myself gravitating towards todo lists (starting with a Palm Pilot) but I always documented and planned/scheduled projects and courses with OneNote back when I was on Windows and then Circus Ponies Notebook for the Mac. I sneaked a Mac Mini into work for documentation. Anything requiring a final report document I tended to track my progress using Scrivener and its management features. And now for anything where I might have used Circus Ponies Notebook (now things like trip planning) I use Growly Notes.

It works great from an organizational point of view because each project is entirely separate yet each can be shared on multiple devices using, for instance DropBox. For the courses I would start the term preparation with a template with sections for the lectures, assignments, solutions, and any notes on the students. For work projects the Notebook would just grow organically. I think it would have been a step back to have used something like OmniFocus for this which puts everything in one bucket and forces one style.

Excited to hear it’s in Beta. Is there any timeline for release?

I’m keen to use a task manager but use a windows machine at work so need a web access. I will hold off investing time in starting a task manager if OF is soon to be available.

If you have a Mac at home, you could remote in to it from your Windows (Amiga, Linux, et al.) machine.
Of course you’d lose all integration with other apps, but that might be a shortcoming of the web interface too.

2Do is great at this. GoodTask does this as well (but the interface is a little more clunky around Start Dates).

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I’d been on Things for around 6 months, and jumped back to omnifocus as soon as Mojave came out. I’m so much happier! I know in part I was fooling myself because the act of transferring and updating my information served as a big deep review and I checked off a ton of things, but not having the review features in Things in the first place is part of how I ended up here.

  • I missed review.
  • I missed having the ability to check off a repeating task if I happened to complete it a little bit early (not possible in Things).
  • Most of all, I missed not having to worry about my repeating tasks actually repeating. I’m sure it’s my own fault, but sometimes things slipped through the cracks with Things, and if that’s going to happen then this whole court is out of order. My number one use for task management is deferred and repeating tasks, and if it’s broken I won’t even find out until sometime after it’s due when I think ‘hey, I haven’t seen that one go by in a while…’

I’ve been thinking lately that the task tool I really need is a text edit window on my second screen with the font cranked up huge and it says YOU ARE DOING: [TASK]. I’m always falling down these task ladders where I’m working on F because I need it for E so that I can update D which is the only thing missing from C and if I just had C I’d basically have B which is all I need to get through task A.

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Have to agree with repeating tasks, importing from Reminders, etc. I noticed the other day that my pets’ water was low because the recurring task went away for some reason.

I’ve been thinking lately that the task tool I really need is a text edit window on my second screen with the font cranked up huge and it says YOU ARE DOING: [TASK] .

Reminds me of Vitamin-R, a tool to help one focus.

http://www.publicspace.net/Vitamin-R

"When you’re up to your ass in alligators it’s difficult to remember that your initial intent was to drain the swamp.

Enjoyable and useful episode here. I liked @MacSparky’s idea of “vectors” – projects, folders, tagging and contexts are all just ways of getting different views of different subsets of your data and should be mixed and matched where appropriate.

I’m going to try to implement two ideas inspired by this episode:

Mobile tag:
For tasks I can do on my iPhone while on the go. I might even call it “on the go.” I attend a lot of professional conferences, and seem to often find myself in situations where I’m idle but can’t get out my MacBook. Sitting on an airplane waiting for takeoff. Or maybe I’m hiking across a conference center and have a couple of minutes between meetings where I can find a corner out of the way of foot traffic and do some things on my iPhone. I could have this “mobile” tag and get some things done on the iPhone while I’m literally standing around doing nothing.

"Fake priorities."
Use the OmniFocus Perspective tags for tasks I want to remind myself about several times a day. As the day progresses into the afternoon, I’d flag a couple of tasks I feel I must complete that day. Then there’s the regular, available tasks; I guess I’ll check on those once a day or once a week? And finally there are tasks on hold – you might call that the “someday/maybe” list.

You may well ask why I call those fake priorities? They look like actual priorities, right? Flagged tasks are priority 1, Perspectives tasks are priority 2, regular available tasks are priority 3, and tasks on hold are priority 4. I call them “fake priorities” because I’m a GTD guy and GTD says don’t use priorities. Happy to clear that up!

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I’ve started to use iCloud but with Fantastical as the front end. Serves me well at the moment. Felt burn out having tried most of the third party apps.