@MarcMagn1 as promised, here is my basic workflow.
I have worked hard and long on refining my workflow over the years. It has been built upon a completely paperless (and I mean absolutely no paper) workflow that I committed myself to over 10 years ago. I’ll not repeat everything I’ve posted previously on my workflow but you can read about it here.
In addition to all of my personal projects and tasks, here is how I manage my professional work across teams and departments. As the head of a large private Christian school, I essentially serve as the CFO or the equivalent of a public school superintendent.
- As stated above, I use no paper whatsoever. I’ve trained my staff to give me everything in digital format. If I do receive paper, e.g., a contract from a vendor, etc., I immediately scan and OCR it to DEVONthink (DT). DT is the repository for everything in my life. The databases are backed up via Backblaze as well as in iCloud, Google Drive, and on two external hard drives located in two separate locations—home and office.
- Whereas DT is the hub for all of my documents, OmniFocus (OF) is the hub for ALL of my personal and work projects. I don’t want to switch between applications for my to-dos because my life is integrated with work and personal stuff intermixed depending on circumstances and needs.
- I capture every delegated task to my senior leadership team (SLT) in OF with a tag for the person responsible. I meet every other week with each SLT member. I pull up OF, click on that person’s tag, and go over all of their responsibilities.
- I take all meeting notes in Drafts (I just switched to Drafts from Craft)
- I have a TextExpander snippet for meeting notes that I use in Drafts. My meeting template has meta data at the top (e.g., date), an area for my notes, and then the follow-ups.
- I use the Drafts Action “Send to DEVONthink and OmniFocus” after the meeting. The cool thing about this Action is that the notes sections of my meeting notes go to DT as markdown files and the follow-up actions go to OF. I process the OF inbox daily. I also conduct a weekly review.
- In DT I have project folders, including one named “Priority Projects” that resides in the “Favorites” section of DT for fast access.
- I drag emails related to a project or person into DT databases and folders so that everything that is related is in the same database and folder. I have three DT databases:
- Home and Family
- Work
- Writing and Research
- I crosslink OF and DT files/projects/to-dos
- I use Apple Mail and bcc the OF email address on emails that contain delegated tasks. For very short term (1-2) day small items, I’ll tag the email with the “Waiting For” tag in Apple Mail and don’t send it to OF. An example would be if I ask my EA for a phone number. I don’t put that in OF, I tag it “Waiting For.”
- I do all of my writing—short and long form—including project proposals in Scrivener and then export to other formats/apps as needed.
- I brainstorm projects, presentations, and writing projects in MindNode and then send the outline to Scrivener.
- I use Fantastical for my calendar app.
My workflow has been working well for me and you’ll notice that I use relatively few apps to get my work done. It is not complicated. I believe that fewer apps leads to great efficiency and effectiveness.
I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions or need additional information.