If I understand, there are the different filters in Review, one of which is All Tasks, which lists all tasks by project. (Phone shot below) I think that’s what you’re after. (There are also Overdue, etc. and I added my own backburner filter. )
For email, you can drag and drop from Mail, etc. as far as I know there is no support for emailing into NotePlan. I realize that might be a show stopper for you.
Thanks John, you were always very helpful. I believe I’m just gonna stick with my current system: OmniFocus, Craft, Scrivener as my primary production tools aside from the obvious things like mail and calendar. I am also going to experiment with Craft as a “linking my thinking“ app rather than Obsidian. The advantage is that I’ll have one less app to deal with and will be using a native Mac app, which I prefer over an electron app.
And you are correct, I bcc OmniFocus all the time so the inability to that would create unnecessary friction in my workflow.
Thanks again John, your help is much appreciated.
No, actually, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head: I don’t write next actions that I don’t need. Granularity is the key, I guess. Just as I wouldn’t need the action that tells me how to brush my teeth in great detail, I also don’t need actions to tell me to keep doing really high-level stuff, either. That stuff I can keep track of without a system to remind me to keep doing it.
Kind of reminds me of my favorite “writing prompt”: You have a mortgage, utility bills, and a weekly grocery tab, and your only way of paying them is by writing. Go!
Okay so I tentatively think we’re in agreement (?)
Of course you can write GTD next actions for writing a novel, but it does not make sense to do so. There’s a dozen per minute, as in all creative work (like @anon41602260 pointed out above). Which is why I’m absolutely saying the GTD model applies, but the method breaks down – you don’t write these, you try to keep up with your mind (or spur it into action depending on the days…) That’s what I meant by “you can’t write a novel using GTD” – not that it’s not possible, but that it’s incredibly inefficient to apply the method as in other clearer areas. Which ties into what you’ve been saying with granularity. “Keep writing” is indeed a next action, but it’s not a very helpful one. Other methods and models have to take over when in creative mode.
John- do I assume (
) that the photo is from the Mac version?
+1 to Noteplan3. It helps keep me sane and productive even on low-energy days.
I like the pseudo-analogue approach to bullet journaling. Combined with Obsidian as suggested by @ryanjamurphy in an earlier thread, it seems to offer a good mix of free-form linking and structured task management.
A timely recall via Readwise:
I love apps like Obsidian, and as much as I find the linking useful, all my outputs are almost always linear. I use Devonthink to gather and sort inputs because, first, it offers easy web ingestion, and, second, it offers linking, and, third (and something I learned here in the MPU forums), its creation of a linked annotation document, into which I can also paste highlights, though I wish it were an automated process, works for the kind of research-intensive projects I produce (books, essays, etc.).
That is, as much as I like all the linking, and I get the appeal of Zettelkasten, I’m not convinced that its productivity isn’t in the process of doing than any particular output. So, if Obsidian tickles your brain and makes you super productive, great. If something more linear does the job, then that works too.
For me, DT for capture and then Scrivener for any longer form work is my primary way of working. I have begun to stay within DT for shorter outputs, relying on Markdown for text-only documents and grouchily using RTF for documents that require some visuals.
DT’s interface has gotten better over the years, but I’m still wrestling with it. My hope is that they one day offer a graph/network view of a database’s contents, but I won’t hold my breadth.
I agree 100%. Wrestling with the information, recalling, writing in ones own words, etc. — that’s the secret sauce. Then there are times when the linking reveals something unexpected.
I’m surprised someone hasn’t created a third-party tool for making graphs of markdown files. It seems like it would be Fairly Easy™ to parse files for [[name]] then make lists of which files link to which. Of course DT’s URL linking (whatever it’s called) would complicate this.
DEVONthink’s link information is exposed via AppleScript, too. I have never touched UI/visualization with AppleScript but it can’t be too hard to “export” the info into a format readable by some other graphing tool.
This sort of gets at it. It creates the mermaid code for my *MOC.md files and sends it to test.md. One needs to add graph TD at the top to make it proper mermaid syntax. It also breaks on Obsidian’s extended syntax using | and #.
egrep -o "\[\[.+?\]\]" *MOC.md | sed -e "s@ @_@g" -e "s@\.md:@ \-\-\> @" -e "s@\[\[@@g" -e "s@\]\]@@g" >test.md
Speedy!
Untested, but you might be able to catch the extended syntax with something like:
"\[\[.+?((\]\])|(\|)|(#))"
Not sure about the sed part, though, as I haven’t used it 
Intriguing. There was also some conversation about using Mermaid or nomnoml for graphing connections between items in Drafts (Simple Graphing Library with nice look and online features - Drafts Community), though that stalled.
I have a slow-burn experiment with vis.js going along similar lines, and I keep promising myself that I’ll get a local installation of Infranodus up and running at some point…
It also has a duration field for tasks and projects.
Hi @ryanjamurphy - I know this is a relatively old topic, but did you ever get an OmniFocus / Obsidian integration / sync / plugin to work in any way?
(Also just watched your video with David Sparks in his Obsidian Field Guide and got a lot out of it - and actually need to rewatch to fully absorb all the great info - so thank you!)
No, I ended up adapting my approach to task and project management and now do it all inside Obsidian (largely via dataview). So, sorry to tease with the mention of a possible plugin! Glad I maybe had some other ideas that were useful to you.
Do you use the tasks plug-in at all?
I don’t! I build out everything via my own dataviews. I’d probably be better off using Tasks but just never got in the habit, and now I’m entrenched, haha.
Anon - There is another way to view this @ryanjamurphy complexity model that may bridge the gap.
I’ve written extensively on it here: Complexity and the Cynefin Framework | Agile Pain Relief Consulting
I see the Cynefin complexity domains as a tool to tell me how to act. Your novel starts in the complex domain. So, this tells me to start running experiments. After a few experiments, I have enough ideas for the basics of my novel. I lay out a basic map. With the map in hand, I’m now navigating the complicated domain. In the complicated domain, I can work in smaller chunks (i.e. writing sessions) towards your goal. After working on a few chapters, I decided the novel wants to change direction. My map needs replacing. I’m back in the land of the complex, running experiments to see where I want to take it.
So, novel writing never breaks down into David Allen GTD tasks because most work is in the Complicated and Complex problem domains.
I see complexity as a lens. I want to know what problem domain my work is in to know what tools to use.