Backing Off Defer Dates: An OmniFocus Experiment

For years, I’ve been using defer dates to manage the flow of work in OmniFocus. I’ll often push projects out days, weeks, or even months so they disappear from the radar until a later time. Using this method, I’ve generally been able to keep my daily task list to something manageable while at the same time knowing all that other stuff is managed.

With lots of little projects, managing those defer dates can get tedious. It’s the end of the year, so I’m doing lots of small corporate compliance-type projects for legal clients. As a result, I realized I’m spending more time than usual managing defer dates in OmniFocus.

So I decided to a little experiment where I’d stop using defer dates for awhile. Over the last few weeks, my list of available tasks in OmniFocus has swelled to hundreds of items. For this experiment, I’m accepting that I’m not going to finish that long list any particular day. Instead, I’m simply flagging the priority items as they show up. (I’m trying to keep that to 3-5 tasks a day.) Once I knock out the flagged tasks – hopefully before lunch – I’m then just working contexts, projects and the other ways OmniFocus can slice and dice my task list until the end of the day.

This experiment has been interesting. On the plus side, I don’t feel compelled to spend as much time managing defer dates. I still use defer dates but now only where they make sense. For instance if I’m going through the big list and see something about paying a bill next month, I’ll defer that task to next month. Before this experiment, going through that general finance project, I’d defer everything except for those items I intended to finish that particular day. Another advantage is that you don’t feel lousy at the end of the day if your task list looks untouched. Micro-managing defer dates, as I’ve historically done, can make you feel miserable if you set up your tasks carefully in the morning only to get none (or very few) of them done during the day. With this alternative system, it doesn’t work that way. I’d argue a third benefit is that this system is a little more forgiving for flow and energy. My prior system of limiting the daily list to just a few items can at times be artificial and the projects that you ear-mark in the morning may turn out to be the wrong projects for you 6 hours later. Being able to snipe through my big list at will can feel more productive and more consistent with how I’m feeling at the moment.

While you may think this new method takes less time to manage (since you aren’t constantly juggling start dates), I’m not sure that’s true. You still need to manage your tasks. This requires you to be double sure nothing important gets lost in the noise. If I don’t flag or set a deadline for a task, it can easily get lost among its hundreds of brethren. Taking the time to properly read through what is out there is important. I think working this way also makes having a reliable project review practice important. Additionally, with this big list system, you lose that ability to see a list of 15 just things in the morning and the satisfaction of knocking them all down by the end of the day.

I’m only a few weeks into this experiment but it nice to mix things up every once in awhile and I can report at this point that the experiment isn’t an abject failure. I’m finding things I like about this method and other things I don’t. At this point, I’m extending the OmniFocus experiment until the new year to see how things go. I’ll report back then.

Sponsor: OmniFocus and the Review Feature

This week the blog is sponsored by my friends over at the Omni Group and their best-in-breed task manager application, OmniFocus. There is so much to love about OmniFocus. It’s a powerful task application that works with you to not only check off your boxes but make sure you’re on track with your own priorities and goals.

OmniFocus represents a lot of rethinking about what a task management application should be and as a result, there are several unique features. One of my favorite unique features is its ability to review projects over time.

OmniFocus allows you to set a review period for all of your projects. It is user customizable on a per project basis and that is part of the reason it’s so powerful. By tapping the Review button a few times a week, you can take a look at all of your projects that are due for an independent review. For a corporate client that I don’t do much work for, that review time may be every six months. For an active project where, perhaps, the client is acquiring a competitor, I may make that review period every four days.

Because I’ve taken the time to set up these review frequencies appropriately, when I tap the Review button I just see those projects that truly require my attention. I’ve made this a regular practice and it has paid great dividends. Using the OmniFocus Review feature I have:

Found projects that fell off the wagon, allowing me to get them back on track and not look like a fool.
Discovered additional work that needs to be done for clients because I took a moment to sip some tea and think about their project in the abstract.

Best of all, a regular review routine gives me peace of mind. Knowing that I’m keeping track of projects lets me know that I’m doing my job and allows me to sleep easy at night. Whenever I feel a little frazzled, it is because I’m behind on project reviews.

Review is just one more reason why I love and use OmniFocus. To learn more head over to the Omni Group and check out OmniFocus.

The OmniFocus Video Field Guide Gets Streaming and Closed Captions

When I first started distributing the video field guides, I wanted to make it as simple as possible. Customers pay and then download a video. It worked great originally but lately I’ve been getting emails from customers that just work on iPad and iPhone. For them, getting a 2GB video file onto their device is not trivial.

For those customers, streaming the videos makes more sense than downloading. So I’ve been looking for a way to distribute the videos that lets customers stream, download, or both. Vimeo gives me that so new customers will now get the OmniFocus Video Field Guide through Vimeo where they can stream or download.

I’m pretty happy with this new distribution method. It gives customers more flexibility and allows me to update small portions without requiring everyone to download the entire video all over again.

Also, with the move I’ve also added closed captions to all of the chapters. So if you have trouble hearing or english is a second language, check the closed caption box while watching and you’re all set. If you’ve already purchased the OmniFocus Video Field Guide and want a closed captioned copy, please drop me a note.

Tasks vs. Calendar Events

I get a lot of emails from readers asking me exactly how I distinguish between tasks and calendar items. In a perfect world, a task is an item you need to do and a calendar item represents a place you need to be. However, the way I work makes things a little muddier.

For example, I like to schedule appointments with myself. This helps me manage big projects. I will often schedule a block of time on the calendar for a big project. Something like, Thursday 10 AM-12 PM, ACME contract review.

So now that calendar event shows up in my calendar but I’ve also got a collection of tasks related to that contract review in OmniFocus. So how do I resolve that? It really isn’t that hard. I will go into the project view in OmniFocus and select all related tasks to the contract review and set their deferred date to Thursday at 10 AM. Then the tasks disappear from my active OmniFocus list until that time and I don’t think about them anymore.

The trick to all of this is being honest with yourself. If you set these appointments with yourself to manage big projects but don’t keep them, you lose faith in your system and the wheels start falling off. Treat those task-related appointments just as sacredly as you would an appointment with your boss. If something comes up that requires you to move that appointment, go ahead and move it but follow all the necessary steps. Reset the appointment in your calendar and move the tasks in your task manager.

Another advantage of setting aside blocks of time for big projects is that it gives you a more realistic view of how much you can actually get done in the day. If suddenly you see yourself completely blocked and there are still significant tasks left on your list, that should be a warning sign that you’ve got a problem.

So to answer the question, I generally am a purist and keep tasks in my task list and calendar events in my calendar. When I do use the calendar to block time for an extensive set of tasks, I will simultaneously move all of those tasks to the designated time and date.

OmniFocus Video Field Guide Update Coming Sunday

I’ve been working the last few months on an update to the OmniFocus Video Field Guide. I’ve updated it for several new features and gone deep on the iOS Automation and URL linking. I’m making final edits and additions over the next few days and intend to publish it sometime Sunday (probably late). The update will be free for people that have already purchased the field guide. However, please note that for new buyers the price is going up to $19.99. So if you want to get in on the current $9.99 price, do so between now and Sunday afternoon when it goes up.

Excel to OmniFocus

The new Rubin Cardigan blog has an interesting post for OmniFocus users stuck on Windows where he uses an Excel spreadsheet to add new tasks. Clever.

∞

Automating OmniFocus on iOS

I’ve had my head down a lot lately between the day job and the upcoming Hazel Video Field Guide. One thing that’s happened is that I’ve gone completely mad with automating OmniFocus on my iPad. A few weeks ago The Omni Group released a new version of OmniFocus that can interface with template files to create project templates on iOS.

Given the inherent limitations of iOS, it’s a pretty elegant system once you figure it out, and I’m going to explain further as soon as I get done with these big projects. Now I prefer to set up project templates on iOS. I didn’t see that coming.

Task Management Pain Points – The Overachiever

Because I’ve written and screencasted so much about OmniFocus, I get a lot of email from people about their particular pain points with task management. With this series I’m going to focus on a few of the more common issues and how I solve them.

The Overachiever

By far the most common problem I read about is how some folks get overwhelmed. I hear from readers that explain they need over an hour every day just to sort through their tasks. That’s nuts.

If you are facing a task list that has hundreds of entries every day, you’re doing it wrong. I think the most common cause of this overload is our technology. Back when I used to write my task list every day longhand in a Franklin Planner, I never wrote more than 20 tasks in a single day. I think it was something about the act of using pencil and paper that my brain just accepted the lunacy of overloading myself. However with computers, there is a certain amount of abstraction and that can work against us.

With most modern task management applications, setting up tasks and projects is a snap. With very little time we can build a task management database with literally thousands of tasks in it. Moreover, because of that abstraction, we often give our brains the afternoon off while adding those tasks, telling ourselves we’ll figure out how important all those projects and tasks are sometime later down the road.

This leads to waking up with hundreds of available tasks that we then spend hours kicking down the road a day or two, only to drag ourselves through the same mental muck again tomorrow.

Just because computers can track hundreds of projects and thousands of tasks doesn’t mean you can do them all. Indeed, as many readers are finding out, loading yourself up like that can be debilitating. You spend so much time pushing the monkeys around every day that you don’t actually get any of them off your back.

If that is you, don’t beat yourself up. I fall into this trap myself more often than I’d like to admit. You can dig yourself out of this and get back to a more manageable task list. It’s going to require a little work though.

1. Begin by looking at projects

If your task list is bursting at the seems, first start by looking at your active projects. In OmniFocus I’ve set up the Today perspective for precisely this reason. I can easily see the existing projects and how many tasks they’ve got attached. With the color coded check-circles I can even see if any active projects have flagged or due items attached.

The point is that in sweeping through the project list, you need to be brutal. Remember the point is not to have to drag through all of this every day. If you see a project that there simply isn’t time for in the next three weeks, defer it 3 weeks and move on. Don’t refuse to accept reality and defer it just two days so you have to go through all of that again. If you see a project that you’ve now deferred three weeks several times, you should probably delete it entirely or, at least, defer it three months. Stop juggling things you are not going to do. It’s just taking you away from the things you need to do.

2. Next focus on tasks

Once you’ve blown out the cruft of unnecessary projects, bring that same killer instinct to individual tasks. Again defer and delete the stuff that isn’t going to happen so you can put a big spotlight on the stuff that needs doing.

It is easy to fall into this overachiever trap because modern technology makes it so easy to build an entirely unrealistic task list. If you follow these steps however and are truly willing to swing your digital machete at unnecessary projects and tasks, you will regain control of your task list and get rid of that underlying dread you’ve been feeling looking at over 200 tasks every day for the last week.

What is your task list hangup? Let me know.

My OmniFocus Courses at Lynda.com

I recently had the privilege of spending a week at the Lynda.com studios recording screencasts about OmniFocus. It was a lot of fun and now the courses are available for viewing and download to Lynda member. There are two courses:

OmniFocus for Mac Essential Training

OmniFocus for iOS Essential Training

If you are a Lynda subscriber (or know a Lynda subscriber) please watch the screencasts and spread the word. I’m quite proud of them.