July 2011

There were 4 posts published in July 2011.

Airfoil volume scripts

Here’s a quick & dirty script to change the volume of all attached Airfoil speakers. Rather than incrementing by a set amount, this uses a multiplier to keep the perceived change constant. It’s nicer on the ears, and gives you more nuanced control when the stereo is set to a higher volume.

property volume_multiplier : 0.8

tell application "Airfoil"
    set all_speakers to (get every speaker)
    repeat with this_speaker in all_speakers
        set curr_volume to get volume of this_speaker
        set (volume of this_speaker) to (curr_volume * volume_multiplier)
        if (volume of this_speaker) is 0 then set (volume of this_speaker) to 0.1
    end repeat
end tell

I keep two copies of this script (“Airfoil Volume Down” and “Airfoil Volume Up”) bound to ⇧F10 and ⇧F11, respectively, to match the volume keys on my keyboard.

If I ever update them, I’ll do so over on Github.

Download: Airfoil Volume Down and Airfoil Volume Up

All OmniFocus scripts updated for a “Start-based” workflow

Like many OmniFocus users, I used to plan my days using Due dates. Planning to pick up supplies a the hardware store today? Set Due Date==Today. Need to call a friend back to catch up? Set Due Date==Today.

This behavior makes sense, on one level level: just sort everything by Due date and you can see when things are planned. But every time a date isn’t met, it has to be pushed back, creating the need for most of my date-related scripts.

Worse, indiscriminate use of Due dates dilutes their value and undermines any task-planning system.

Need to pay a credit card bill today? It’s lost in the mess of other things that are artificially “due” today, and that red Due badge is no longer a respected indication that something needs to happen today.1

But there’s a better way.2 Just use Start Dates to plan what you think you should do, and reserve Due Dates for things that actually have to get done. (To keep this straight, I use a “Due” perspective to show what’s actually due, and a “Do” perspective to show what I’m planning to do.3)

The benefits of this approach are enormous. Things that actually need to happen don’t get lost in the shuffle, and (using time estimates) you can work with more realistic expectations of what can/should happen in a a day.

But switching to this workflow also required re-tooling my scripts, many of which focused on Due dates.

So, as of today, all my OmniFocus scripts default to a Start-based workflow. Here are some of the major changes:

  • Today, Tomorrow, and This Weekend all set the Start date of selected tasks by default.

  • In addition to pushing back due dates of tasks, Defer now has the option to act on un-timed tasks by pushing their start date back by the given number of days. (This option is on by default.)

  • All scripts now work when launched from the OmniFocus toolbar.

  • Scripts no longer fail when an OmniFocus grouping header is selected.

  • All scripts reorganized for performance and clarity.

You can continue these scripts with a Due-based workflow, of course: this is a matter of changing a single setting in each script.4 But if you’re successful with a Due-based workflow, you have much more discipline than me.

Download the lot of them here. (And as always, let me know if you have any problems with them.)

 

 

  1. Lest anyone complain of the cost of OmniFocus: I’m sure I’ve paid more money to my credit card company in day-of-due-date payment penalties than I have to the OmniGroup. ↩

  2. Thanks to David Sparks and Benjamin Brooks for the insights that led to this realization. I mentioned this in a little more detail here. ↩

  3. Here are the settings for my Do perspective:

    Do Perspective.jpg
    … and here are the settings for my “Due” perspective:

    Due Perspective.jpg
    Both live in my toolbar for easy access.↩

  4. For example, in the Defer script, there is a line: “property snoozeUnscheduledItems : true. Simply open the script in AppleScript Editor and change “true” to “false” to switch this setting. If you have any problems, feel free to email me. ↩

Plan your day better with OmniFocus time estimates

Confession: I usually fail to accomplish what I plan for a day. When the morning begins, big plans are in place… but at the end of the day, a pile of undone tasks lingers in my OmniFocus “Do” perspective.1 More often than not, they just get snoozed for the next day’s action list.

And the process repeats.

It’s demoralizing to watch the Pile of Do grow, and I often feel out of control when looking at what seems like a reasonable list of things to accomplish in a day’s time. Clearly, good intentions need to be tempered by reasonable expectations.

Enter time estimates. Over the years I’ve been using OmniFocus, I’ve never really used its ability to assign a time estimate to projects and tasks. It seemed like a lot of effort for very little benefit: all OmniFocus really does with time estimates is sort/filter.2

But time is a critical dimension of doing: without time, there is no action. It should follow that time estimates are just as important.

So here is my new morning routine:

  1. Collect all actions I want to do today by assigning them a Start Date of today.

  2. In “Do” perspective, assign time estimates to each item.

  3. Check the total time of the day’s planned items; remove lowest priority items until my list is doable. (Use the Total time and Snooze scripts to make this step easier.)

This routine has several immediate benefits:

  1. Assigning estimates forces you to clarify next actions. In cases where it was difficult to assign a time estimate, I realized I hadn’t clarified the next action well enough. Poorly defined next action → inaction.

  2. Using estimates helps clarify what is feasible for the day. This morning, my first pass included almost 14 hours’ worth of work. Without time estimates, I wouldn’t have known how feasible this plan was.

  3. You can start right now. No need to assign estimates to everything in your OmniFocus database; just estimate what you’re looking at for today.

Having seen how simple this process is, I’m shocked I didn’t do this years ago.

 

 

  1. I keep two perspectives side-by-side in my toolbar: “Due” and “Do”. Due shows tasks sorted by due date; these are items that really truly have to get done by the given date. Do shows tasks sorted by start date; these are the items that I plan to do on a given day. This gives me the benefit of some planning flexibility without the problems that come from recklessly using due dates. For more on this method, see this David Sparks post, which inspired me to use it. ↩

  2. While OmniFocus doesn’t do much with estimates out of the box, there are some scripts that can do things like starting timers to keep you on task. See this discussion thread for more info. ↩

OmniFocus script: Get total time of selected items

2017-04-23 Update: Fixes an issue that could cause the script to fail if certain top-level perspective separators are selected.

2011-07-06 Update: If you downloaded the script before 18 July 2011, there was a bug that could cause an additional hour to be added to the time. That issue is fixed in the current version.

Total Time.png

Here’s a script to sum the total time of selected items in OmniFocus. Just select some items, fire it off and see how overcommitted you are.

Download it here.