Using OF to utilise your free time better

Let’s build a custom perspective in OF today!
Objective: I want to build a Custom Perspective since long to utilise my free time more reflectively rather than reactively. Typical eg is When am in an ER shift on night when there are no patients to attend to

Requirement: i tend to spend a lot of free time in my shallows fiddling with emails, random whatsapp chats, logging to various discourse forums all this reactively. Reading a page in book 1 then book 2 etc.
What If I have a go to place where when I am feeling lazy or bored there are interesting things which I can do by choice.
It’s like Instapaper for Leisure time.

Drawing Parallels: Why use a Read-It-Later Service

Q1: A tag based perspective? What tags
A:

• Tasks for my Phone use: (iPhone)
• Eg.

  • Imp things that come to mind to be done on phone
  • like calling someone (casually)
  • wishing someone happy Birthday
  • Mailing something
  • Reading on Instapaper
  • Knock off daily habits on Productive
  • Paying Bills
    Reservations/Bookings for Trips, Movies etc.

Tasks for my Mac Use

  • Scanning some documents
  • Downloading something
  • Create an outline on OmniOutliner
  • Take printouts
  • Continue some Online Course
  • Mindful Reading on Kindle.
  • Creating Notes from Recently read stuff.
  • “Thinking” about some idea that I recently read/ came across.

Broad “Daily Habits” :
• Tick Off Productive. (iPhone)
• Clear “ Youtube Later” (iPhone)
• Clear “Instapaper” (iPhone)

Q2: Possible Tags?

  1. Energy: Low
  2. Kindle
  3. Evening
  4. Get in Touch
  5. Errands
  6. Free Time
  7. Print
  8. Subscriptions
  9. Internet
  10. Leisure
  11. Reading
  12. Watching
  13. Activity
  14. Creative
  15. Learning
  16. Drive
  17. Think

Q4: Sorting?
Group actions by: Changed
Sort actions by: Added

PS: Does vice versa seem a better option?

Q3:Refining it ahead?

  • There are important things and not so important things we do on iphone/Mac. How to segregate? an option is to have sub tags below iPhone as work related or non work related but that seems complicated
  • how to use tags effectively?
  • how to sort it better?
  • keeping it simple

Your thoughts are welcome
PS: Special thanks to @timstringer as he has really put across a worthy forum to help with the learning curve of OF.
Over time I realised learning many things together is a recipe for failure.
Initially it is important to bring in the habit of just start opening the app daily. thats step 1. Taking small steps and making them a part of your life can only bring about the use case scenarios specific for you in OF.

I would love to hear thoughts if it iterates with you & about how can we refine the perspective further.

PS: Have posted the same in Omni Forums as well

3 Likes

I’m a big fan of doing a shutdown review at the end of the day. Like you, I also can’t predict when I will be busy or available throughout the day. I do “run away” and leave it to my colleagues to take care of walk-in customers for 60-90 minutes in the day. I sometimes get just 30 minute blocks of free time at any time but am grateful to get 90 minutes.

In the shutdown routine, I select one Big Rock project and 3 Most Important Tasks (MITs) to focus on tomorrow. I write those down in my notebook for tomorrow. When I find myself with free time, I already determined what I wanted to do during my free time. I make my decisions ahead of time so that I don’t waste the first 5 minutes of free time trying to decide what I want to do. Pre-planning my free time work has been a blessing for me. As soon as I finish with walk-in customers, I can quickly start on a Big Rock project or an MIT.