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Omnifocus as a Tool for Lists, not Tasks
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Posted by Paul Korm
Mar 22, 2019 at 08:08 PM
Yes, drag and drop is intended for 16 year olds with fine motor control. Otherwise, cut and paste is better.
MadaboutDana wrote:
>I use a top-level item labelled “Archive”, into which I drag and drop
>all completed tasks. Okay, it’s slightly tedious to do that,
There is, as least on the desktop. Click the eye icon above the document (right hand) and adjust “Checked Items”
>It would be good to have a “disappear” option for completed
>items, but hey, I’m sure they’ll get around to it.
Posted by Amontillado
Mar 23, 2019 at 12:10 PM
>>It would be good to have a “disappear” option for completed
>>items, but hey, I’m sure they’ll get around to it.
The “disappear” setup I like best is to choose Available with the eye icon. Either Available or Remaining will hide completed items, but Available adds a little extra.
I have things that absolutely, positively, must get done every day, and there are a few things that have to happen every Monday, a few more imperatives for Fridays.
Those are all set to auto-repeat based on assigned date, so in case I do a Monday thing on Tuesday it still revives itself the following Monday. With Available view, the item disappears completely when checked off. In Remaining view, I’ll see the next copy appear, grayed out.
Available is what I prefer. I do not merely check tasks off, I slay those lampreys of my time. They don’t complete, they die without mercy’s frail respect, losing all mortal significance (until I choose All, or Remaining if they repeat).
It’s a small thing, but I wish items could repeat with some control over the tags that get forwarded to the next instance.
For example, I have repeating items for all my bills. They defer until a day or so before I figure I should have the invoice in hand, due ten days before what the real due-by date should be. The single-action lists for categories of bills all have a tag “Bills”, so new items inherit that tag, which is also passed on when the bill item is checked off and auto-repeated to the next month.
When I receive a bill, I add the tag “Recvd” so I can view that tag and see a list of all the bills in my physical inbox.
Works great, but when I pay a bill I have to remember to jump from the tags view to the project view (click the arrow in the inspector to the right of the project field), find the bill in the list, and remove the Recvd tag before checking it off.
If I check it off first, the newly created item for that bill will have the right defer and due dates for its next iteration, but it will also have that Recvd tag. If I remove the Recvd tag from the item while viewing it via the Recvd tag view, it disappears from that tag view - makes sense, but I can’t remove the tag and then check it off, from the tags view.
A workaround is to use the Remaining view when I look at the Recvd bills. Unfortunately, when I check off an item I see the next iteration of the bill revive in gray, clawing its way out of its predecessor’s grave, glaring at me with heartless, undead eyes until I remove its Recvd tag. Then, as expected, it drops out of the Recvd view.
Devonthink handles that a little better. If I’m in a rich text note, for example, viewing by way of one of its tags, I can remove or add tags without jumping away from the document, even if I remove the tag that brought it into view. Only when I change away from the document is the tagging really updated. You don’t end up sawing off the tag you’re standing on, which is sort of what can happen in OmniFocus.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Mar 24, 2019 at 09:40 AM
Hm, yes, ditto to Paul’s remark: it’s amazing what you don’t see. I’ve never actually clicked on the “eye” icon (me, an inveterate “click it till it hurts” user!)
What a lot of useful options!
Posted by Paul Korm
Mar 24, 2019 at 10:59 AM
I’m getting converted again back to Dynalist thanks to Bill & Steve solving my two issues.
The Google calendar integration in Pro is very good—too bad though it is one-way (Dynalist—> calendar). I tag the heck out of lists in Dynalist with @person and #object tags, because documents are very simple to filter. And bookmarking filters on the fly is very useful. Plus the [[wikilike]] cross-linking of notes.
@Beck—sorry to hijack your thread and morph it to a different topic, but you might want to checkout Dynalist as an alternative to using OF for lists?
Dynalist is a good complement to my handwritten list-o’-the-day habit.
MadaboutDana wrote:
>What a lot of useful options!
Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 24, 2019 at 11:42 AM
Paul Korm wrote:
>Plus the [[wikilike]] cross-linking of notes.
This would be a killer feature for me. Could someone though enlighten me where this company is based? There seems to be zero info about their geographical location on their website.