I work as a tour manager for a musician. One of the things I use Omnifocus for is tracking all the different things that I need to do for every show that we do. With that, every time we add a new show, I build a project that has the show date as the due date for the project. The tasks that I am responsible for in relation to each show are:
Flights, Hotels, Cars, Scheduling, Hiring, organizing all the equipment, lighting, accounting, meals, payroll, Guest Lists etc etc.
I built a shortcut for all of this. The shortcut asks me two questions. City, State of the show and date of the show, and then it builds the project out based on those as a starting point. The various tasks are mostly built backwards from the show date starting with the booking of flights. In general, the sweet spot for purchasing flights is around 54 days before travel, so I start paying attention to it around that date. With that, the shortcut makes the date of that task be -54 days from the show date etc etc. Some of the tasks are deferred and don’t show up until they are needed, some (Guest Lists, Hotels etc) are available from the moment I create the project. Not sure if any of that helps you.
5 Likes
I use a similar approach for presentations, including a shortcut that prompts me with a few questions and uses my selections to build the project name, folders, defer, and due dates. Within the resulting project, is a task to review the dates/deadlines because I often find I need to make minor per-project tweaks. This system works great for me, because it makes all of presentation projects uniform.
FWIW, I find the question of deferring tasks and how to keep track of them the biggest ongoing challenge and most fiddly part OF for me.
1 Like
Same for me on the prompts. There are a few 7 day prior double check this and that, and 24hr out reviews
I’ll address this from a different perspective. Relying on software to make decisions for you about when you should start a project is a false approach. Regardless of the software, you make the decision pro-actively about when you can start a project and set up the project timeline accordingly.
Relative to OmniFocus, a defer date is technically designed to denote when a project or task can be started, not when you should start it. By example, when you are on vacation for the next two weeks, you cannot start yard work projects that you SHOULD start before the hot July weather hits. So, those projects get a defer date until you return.
Finally, the review process is your best friend here. Set the review on a project in a way that prompts you early and often enough to finally make a proactive decision that you WILL start that project that could be started today even though it is not due for three months. Don’t rely on defer dates as indications of such decisions.
—
JJW
2 Likes
I agree completely. I’m not using OF to tell me when I should start a project. What I’m trying to accomplish is that when a deferred date becomes available, meaning I now need to start working on the multi-day, week, or month task that it remains in my Today Forecast view. Certainly the weekly review is essential. In fact, the main reason I’ve settled on OF is because of its weekly review feature. But, I’m still figuring out how best to keep the newly available task in my today view. I know I can tag it to accomplish this—I just don’t want to forget to tag it properly once it shows up. This sounds more like a user problem than a software one. 
I think I’m repeating advice from above, but I suggest
- Use the Tag set in the Perspective settings for the Forecast perspective (e.g., “Today”). As soon as deferred items reach or pass the deferred date, they will appear in Today until acted on.
-
Use a custom perspective that are deferred and have no due date
-
Make use of the MacOS “Today” widget in the Notifications center.
-
If none of the above gets noticed timely, then for important start dates, add an event to your calendar with multiple reminders, if needed.
1 Like
I think I’ve got it. For some reason I was not catching this in the prior responses but your explanation “clicked.” I’ll give this a try for a week or so to see if this works. Thanks!
1 Like
You can tag it at the outset. As soon as the defer date is over, the tag will appear.
I use a flag to set a task. I have a Perspective called Do First that filters on a specific tag set and flagged.
—
JJW
2 Likes
If referring to my post, I am not allowing Omnifocus to decide, I decided in advance and the shortcut that sets up my project based on those parameters, not by some arbitrary assignments.
1 Like
