I think that’s a workflow preference that could be adjusted to meet your needs. I perceive the responsibility I described as a task rather than an event, and I tend to only put events on my calendar, rather than tasks. (My workflow preference.) That said, it’s relatively straightforward to add a task to OmniFocus (or other task manager) and a calendar event at the same time using Shortcuts.
However, the Forecast feature in OmniFocus is a way of seeing your events and tasks in a calendar view. I would add that with the Planned Dates feature, I think that Forecast view is far more useful than it was in previous versions, where I either had to see it cluttered with deferred items, or not seeing deferred items at all, some of which I wanted to see, as I was sometimes using the defer date as a ‘do’ date.
To my mind an event is simply something you’re planning to do at a specific point in time, irrespective of what it is. So that could be a task, an online meeting, a trip to the shop, or anything else. And the calendar is there to map all these commitments in time, irrespective of what they are.
Forecast view won’t show you any calendar details, so its very limited. Not sure why, maybe a technical limitation.
Nice example. Have you tried anything with recurring tasks that have both planned and defer/due? I have a few situations where all three dates would reflect reality, but I can see myself shifting the planned date of individual recurrences too often. Maybe that’s okay if it’s just a quick drag on the Forecast view.
4.0 was still rough, but i think they got the UI to this point around 4.2 or 4.3. From 4.4 on have largely been feature releases. Everyone has a different upgrade threshold and that’s fine, of course.
I’m still getting used to repeating tasks that involve all three dates. I do have a few set up that way, but I’m not entirely sure about the implications or usefulness. In my setup, perspectives like “Today” usually don’t show tasks with only a defer date (unless it’s a repeating defer). And in that case, the planned date ends up matching the defer date anyway. How are you handling repeating tasks with three dates?
One (potential) example: I write proposals every eight weeks on a fixed schedule. They can’t start until all the draft scopes are in Wednesday, they’re due the next Wednesday, and the ideal day to work on them is Monday.
That better describes reality and it’s simpler. And if that Monday meeting ever disappears or changes, I can adjust the planned date or just remove it and work off available tasks.
That was pretty short lived. I’ve have moved back to Things (my longest use of a productivity app) for one simple reason: OF4 sync sucks. I’d complete a couple of tasks on my Mac leave the house pick up my iPhone and the completed tasks were still there. I’d then have to wait around for it to decide to sync, which it eventually did. This happened almost all the time. My db is 300kb only two small attachments. No reason for it to be this slow.
Yes it can. I don’t want to be worrying if I’m working with the latest data. It needs to work. Often when I open my task manager it’s to enter data. To be distracted with , ‘is it syncing’ creates friction.
This was the main reason I left OF, the syncing. I had to force sync each device to ensure I had the up-to-date information. Tried just about all of them. Right now, I am content with Todoist.
Interesting. I’ve been using OF since it was in alpha and have had zero issues with syncing; it’s been rock solid. It’s worth noting that I have a large OF database with hundreds of projects and many more tasks.