OmniFocus

There are 13 posts tagged OmniFocus (this is page 1 of 2).

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.

Zenburn theme for OmniFocus

Here’s a draft Zenburn-based theme for OmniFocus. Due to some limitations of the theming engine, some of the status indicators (repeating, flagged, etc.) are displayed as grey-on-grey and are therefore somewhat difficult to read. Otherwise it’s quite usable. Download it here.

Zenburn.png

OmniFocus script: Schedule selected items for this weekend

Here is an AppleScript that schedules the selected OmniFocus tasks for the coming weekend. If a weekend (as defined by you) is in progress, items will be scheduled for the current weekend.

In concept, the script really lets you to set start/due dates based on a relative weekly schedule. Simple modifications include:

  • Changing your “weekend” to a different day/time range is as simple as modifying the settings at the top of the script. You could easily make a copy for “this week”, “next week”, “next Friday”, “next Thursday from 4:00-6:00”, etc.
  • Un-commenting one line will bump it forward a week (think: “next weekend”).

Download it here

Today and Tomorrow (OmniFocus scripts)

11 July 2011: as described here, I’ve switched to a Start-based workflow and updated my scripts to reflect this change. By default, these scripts now set the start dates of selected items, not due dates—though you can still switch to “Due mode”. This post has been updated to reflect these changes.

I’ve added two more scripts to my OmniFocus repertoire: Today and Tomorrow.

As one might expect, Today sets the “Action Date” of selected item(s) to the current date, and Tomorrow sets the action date to the next date. (By default, the Action date is the Start date, but you can switch to use the Due date if you prefer.)

Why might you need this? A few days of ignoring OmniFocus is enough to make any date-sorted view overwhelming. My Defer script is one method to deal with these items: defer them by a day, a week, etc. But sometimes you just need to set these items to today. Or tomorrow.

As with Defer, these scripts work with any number of selected tasks.

If you use the default “Start” mode:

  • The Start date of each selected item is set to the current day
    • If an item has a previously assigned Start date, its original time is maintained. Otherwise, the start time is set to 6am (configurable in the script)

If you use “Due” mode:

  • The Due date of each selected item is set to the current day
    • If an item has a previously assigned Due date, its original due time is maintained. Otherwise, the due time is set to 5pm (configurable in the script)
  • If an item has a Start date, it is moved forward by the same number of days as the due date has to move (in order to respect parameters of repeating actions)

Putting it all together

I’ve set my keyboard shortcuts for Defer, Snooze, Today, Tomorrow, and This Weekend to ctrl-d, ctrl-z, ctrl-t, ctrl-y, and ctrl-w, respectively (using FastScripts), so shuffling tasks couldn’t be easier. Use cases:

Catching up after holiday: Select all overdue tasks, hit ctrl-t to bring them current. Then snooze or defer the ones you won’t get to today.

Planning today’s tasks: Select your tasks and ctrl-t them into the day’s queue. Planning tomorrow? Use ctrl-y instead.

Download them here

 

 

Thanks to Seth Landsman for his role in inspiring my Today script. His version is very similar but doesn’t quite match the defer logic I need.

Usage note: some items inherit due dates from their parent task or project, but don’t actually have due dates themselves. This script ignores those items.

OmniFocus snooze script

Last Updated: 2010-06-15

Here’s an AppleScript that “snoozes” selected OmniFocus items by setting their start date to a future* value. These items will then be unavailable (and out of sight in views showing “available” items) until the snoozed start date.

Usage:

  1. Run the script with one or more items selected in OmniFocus

  2. Choose how long you would like to snooze the items (in # of days)

The script will then set the start date of selected items to the current date + the number of days selected in step 2. For example, snoozing with the default value of 1 day will set the tasks to begin at 12:00 AM tomorrow.

Finally, if you have Growl installed, the script will display a Growl confirmation.

I highly recommend initiating the script from a third-party launcher such as FastScripts or Quicksilver. This will prevent delays within the OmniFocus application due to Growl bugs.)

Download it here.

* This doesn’t have to be a future value. Choosing 0 as the snooze value will set the start date to midnight today; choosing -1 will set the start date to midnight yesterday.

OmniFocus defer script updated

Updated 6/15/10: minor edit to improve efficiency

The updated Defer script for OmniFocus is ready. Changes include:

  • Bug fixes to make the script more reliable, particularly when deferring multiple items.

    • For most of these I’m indebted to Curt Clifton, who made the most critical bug fixes on the OmniFocus forum. (If you use OmniFocus, his scripts and tools are invaluable; be sure visit his site.)

  • The default action now defers both start and due dates.

  • Notifications code has been rewritten to make the script friendly for machines without Growl installed.

    • While testing, I discovered that GrowlHelperApp crashes on nearly 10% of notification calls. To work around this, the script now checks to see if GrowlHelperApp is running; if not, the script launches it. If Growl is not installed or can’t launch, the script displays a generic notification of the defer results.

If you experience delays with the script, it’s almost certainly an issue with Growl, not OmniFocus. This is much less of an issue if you launch the script via a third-party utility like FastScripts, because any Growl-related delays will be absorbed by the script launcher, not OmniFocus. If you primarily invoke the Defer script from your OmniFocus toolbar, you can always disable alerts to speed things up. To do this, simply open the script in Script Editor and change property showAlert to false.

Download it here.

Fidget your way to productivity

Leave it to the OmniGroup to help you stay productive — even when you can’t choose what to tackle next.

The OmniFocus Dashboard widget (“OmniFidget”), released today, does just that. Tell it what contexts you’re in:

OmniFidget 1

And it tells you what to do:

OmniFidget 2

Clicking the task title takes you to the task’s project in OmniFocus. Clicking “No” skips to the next task (but who really wants to disappoint the OmniFidget)?

Get yours here.