OmniFocus Tips?

[FanIn80]

Hey Omni-folks,

I'm finally making the jump to OmniFocus. Anyone powerusers (or any users, really) have any tips? Thanks!

Edit: Using the desktop client and the iPhone/iPad apps, synced over OmniGroup's new cloud service.

[sclitheroe]

Omnifocus is great. Don't have any tips specifically, but if you have any questions, fire away.

What email program do you use on your Mac? There are a number of ways to send emails to Omnifocus tasks, which I find invaluable.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Omnifocus is great. Don't have any tips specifically, but if you have any questions, fire away.

What email program do you use on your Mac? There are a number of ways to send emails to Omnifocus tasks, which I find invaluable.

Historically, I've just used Mail. I have Outlook 2011 (os is it still Entourage?), and I downloaded the free version of Sparrow last night although I've yet to play with it.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Historically, I've just used Mail. I have Outlook 2011 (os is it still Entourage?), and I downloaded the free version of Sparrow last night although I've yet to play with it.

So for Mail.app there is the Omnifocus plugin that you can install from the Clippings tab in OF's preferences.

For Outlook, this guy has a fantastic script, so good in fact that I sent him a donation, because it's core to my workflow:
http://rainer.4950.net/wordpress/blo...ifocus-take-7/

It turns Omnifocus into my personal ticketing system - if an email comes in and I can do or answer it in 2 minutes like GTD suggests, I do it. If its a task that takes longer, it gets sent to Omnifocus and deleted out of my mailbox.

The wonderful part of either Outlook or Mail.app integration like this is that the email goes as an attachment in OF, so when I've completed the task, I can double click the email attachment in OF and reply right from there with the email history intact - I don't have to go back and hunt down the deleted email in my mailbox, so my inbox stays empty.

[sclitheroe]

Once you start using Omnifocus to manage mail and tasks, you'll want some way to review what you've completed, if you have weekly status reports, etc.

That's where Perspectives come into play in OF. I have two perspectives on my toolbar

The Available Perspective (this shows only tasks I can work on right now, sorted by project)
-Project Filter: remaining
-Grouping: ungrouped
-Sorting: unsorted
-Availability Filter: Available
-Status Filter: Any
-Estimated time: Any Duration

The Completed Perspective (shows only what tasks I've completed, broken down into Yesterday, Last Week, Last Month, Last 3 months)
- Project filter: All Contexts
- Grouping: Completed
- Sorting: Project
- Availability Filter: Completed
- Status Filter: Any Status
- Estimated time: Any Duration

With those two perspectives added as icons on your task bar, you can quickly toggle between what I'm doing now, and what I've completed. The Completed perspective I've described above is tremendously useful - I didn't find/figure it out for quite a while, but once I did, it made a huge difference for me.

[FanIn80]

This is awesome, thanks! I've been on the fringe of using OF for a while now, but I haven't really felt the need to dive in until recently. The more I poke around now, the more I wish I dove in a long time ago...

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

This is awesome, thanks! I've been on the fringe of using OF for a while now, but I haven't really felt the need to dive in until recently. The more I poke around now, the more I wish I dove in a long time ago...

It was life changing for me, literally. If your a big GTD person (I'm not yet, more of a neophyte), the idea of a trusted system where you file stuff so you don't have mental baggage is so liberating. Omnifocus can be trusted implicitly - I've got stuff in there that I won't see again as a task for years, but I know they will show up properly when they are due. It's not just a good organizer, its rock solid and has never let me down with lost data, etc.

[Flames Fan, Ph.D.]

OF helps me to really capture ideas and then organize them. So my recommendation would be to rapidly familiarize yourself with the keyboard shortcut (control-option-space by default, I think) to bring up the little menu to capture ideas. Works great for me. I toss things in there all the time, regardless of how important I perceive they *may* be.

I'm not a big GTD guy in that my tasks are a little more fluid and of the "things to spend time thinking about" variety rather than "reply to this email" type. However, through Omnifocus I've been able to capture ideas into the inbox, then filter those into the specific projects I've set up in the library.

The interesting thing is that the feature I've really, really appreciated is the Forecast in the iPhone app that is absent in the desktop app. I currently use Fantastical to capture calendar events, and iPhone OF pulls those up in the Forecast. But I could see myself cutting one more program out of my workflow once Forecast shows up on the desktop OF.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Flames Fan, Ph.D.

OF helps me to really capture ideas and then organize them. So my recommendation would be to rapidly familiarize yourself with the keyboard shortcut (control-option-space by default, I think) to bring up the little menu to capture ideas. Works great for me. I toss things in there all the time, regardless of how important I perceive they *may* be.

I'm not a big GTD guy in that my tasks are a little more fluid and of the "things to spend time thinking about" variety rather than "reply to this email" type. However, through Omnifocus I've been able to capture ideas into the inbox, then filter those into the specific projects I've set up in the library.

The interesting thing is that the feature I've really, really appreciated is the Forecast in the iPhone app that is absent in the desktop app. I currently use Fantastical to capture calendar events, and iPhone OF pulls those up in the Forecast. But I could see myself cutting one more program out of my workflow once Forecast shows up on the desktop OF.

Yeah, forecast on the desktop will be killer.

And I agree with using the quick entry to catch those fleeting thoughts for follow up on. I'll even capture a song I hear to remind me to listen to a particular band that catches my interest at the time.

Another great way to quickly add stuff to OF is to add the bookmarklet to Safari, which lets you send a link to the current page to an OF task. I am pretty close to using this technique in place of Instapaper to keep track of stuff i want to read later.

If you're a Alfred user (and if you're not, what is WRONG with you?) Don South has some nice scripts to allow you to pop things into Omnifocus from Alfred using natural language, another nice little bit of integration. Check it out here:
http://www.dirtdon.com/?p=963

[Flames Fan, Ph.D.]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

If you're a Alfred user (and if you're not, what is WRONG with you?) Don South has some nice scripts to allow you to pop things into Omnifocus from Alfred using natural language, another nice little bit of integration. Check it out here:
http://www.dirtdon.com/?p=963

This Alfred v Quicksilver thing has come between us. Again.

So I figure I'll share the suite of apps I use in my workflow. If either of you guys have any suggestions of ways to streamline, and or other programs to check out, let me know.

Email: Sparrow. I was using Mail, but found Sparrow to be more fluid with Gmail. I don't really rely on Microsoft Exchange, so Sparrow's limits in that regard are not a big deal to me.

Calendar: Fantastical.

Drawing / Figures: Omnigraffle and Adobe Illustrator

Idea Capture / Organization / Planning: Omnifocus and Omniplan.

Notebook: Evernote. I keep a detailed notebook of labwork that includes explicit protocols, figures, images etc... Evernote is indispensable for it. I've converted the post-docs and grad students in the lab to it so that we can share information as well.

Data Analysis: Excel / Igor Pro

Writing: Scrivener

Reference Management / PDF Management: Papers

General Utilities: Quicksilver as a launcher, Pathfinder as a Finder substitute, 1password, Knox

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Flames Fan, Ph.D.

This Alfred v Quicksilver thing has come between us. Again.

Oh really? I don't recall lol. I tried Quicksilver, but Alfred was a better fit for me. (well, to be honest with you, Quicksilver seemed like a disjointed, buggy, clumsy mess of an app that was 72 hours into a meth bender, but I digress).

Both were better than Launchbar, again imho. And either is better than none, we can leave it at that.