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Legal Written by Brett Kelly © 2015 Brett Kelly Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Published by Brett Kelly Media, Inc. 1038 Bastanchury Road Suite 223 Fullerton, California 92835 GTD® and Getting Things Done® are registered trademarks of David Allen & Co. OmniFocus is a registered trademark of The Omni Group. Reproductions of OmniFocus are included here by permission of The Omni Group.
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Introduction Getting started with OmniFocus can be a challenging proposition. Let’s face it: as powerful an application as OmniFocus is, it’d be a touch inaccurate to describe it as “approachable.” Well, as somebody who has been using OmniFocus since it first landed on Macs back in 2008, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to get the most out of the Cadillac of task managers… This brief guide will outline a few of what I consider critical tactics tactics for a successful OmniFocus experience. None of them are terribly complicated, really—some of them may seem a bit obvious, in fact—but building them into how you use OmniFocus will pay dividends both now and down the road, I promise. Let’s Let’s do this thing. t hing.
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Use it Everywhere Duh, right? Actually, Actually, I’ve encountered lots of folks who only use OmniFocus on one of their several Apple devices. Of course, OmniFocus works as a standalone task manager on any of the platforms it runs, but if you want my opinion, you’ll only see the real, unbridled power of OmniFocus if you have it installed everywhere. Personally, I use OmniFocus on my Macbook Pro, my iPhone, and my iPad. Over the years, a usage pattern has emerged; each of the three devices has taken on certain “usage characteristics,” if you will: !
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OmniFocus for Mac is the workhorse; if I need to do a complete review of all of my stu " or rework whole sections of my projects or contexts, I do that on my Mac. OmniFocus for iPad is the mobile cockpit; powerful enough to do most of what I do on the Mac, if need be, but lightweight enough to take everywhere. OmniFocus for iPad is most useful for doing quick reviews and processing the inbox while I’m on the couch, at the airport, or enjoying a cup of co "ee on a balmy SoCal evening. OmniFocus for iPhone is the radio beacon; it reminds me to check my PO box when I’m near the post o #ce, pick up the dry cleaning, or return the Whitney Houston CD my brother left in my car the last time I took him to the haberdashery.
Trust me on this. If you’re serious about making OmniFocus part of your life—and, if you’re doing it right, that’s exactly what it’ll be—you’re going to need to get o " the wallet for both the Mac version and the iOS version (which is a universal app that runs on both iPhones and iPads). It isn’t cheap—Cadillacs usually aren’t—but I’m fond of saying that I’ve gotten enough value for my OmniFocus purchases that it’s easily worth triple the
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price.
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Mac: Quick Input Keyboard Shortcut OmniFocus for Mac o"ers oodles of keyboard shortcuts and I use a whole lot of them. But, for those just starting out, there are only two that you need to build into muscle memory as soon as possible… First is the shortcut that invokes the Quick Input panel. By default, it’s Control+Option+Space, but you can configure it however you like in the General pane of the OmniFocus preferences. You’re going to be using this thing a lot a lot . I use it at least a dozen times per day, sometimes more than that. If you’ve never seen it before, the Quick Entry panel is a small window that allows you to quickly input a new task (and, optionally, assign a project and context). It looks like this:
The keyboard shortcut to launch the Quick Entry panel is universal: it works no matter which application is currently active on your Mac. This means that, no matter what you’re doing, you’re a single keystroke away form recording a new task that will end up in your OmniFocus Inbox, ready for processing. In the hands of a skilled craftsperson, this panel will only be visible for a couple of seconds before the practitioner gets back to work.
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It’s It’s beauty is in its simplicity. Bottom line: pick a shortcut shor tcut that works for you—I use Cmd+Option+Control+Space, if you’re curious—and make that the reflexive action you take when you think of something you need to do. The second keyboard shortcut powers a feature new in OmniFocus 2 for Mac: the Quick Open dialog. In a nut, the Quick Open dialog lets you search all of your projects, folders, contexts, and perspectives from a Spotlight-like search bar. It looks like this:
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that my jaw hit the table when I first used this feature. featu re. It’s It’s smart and so and so fast. fast. I have well over 100 active projects in my OmniFocus database and it scours them all for whatever I type, as quickly as I can type it. By default, Cmd+O invokes the Quick Open dialog. If you really can’t stand using that particular shortcut, you can configure a di "erent shortcut for it in System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts. Unlike it’s it’s Quick Entry cousin, Quick Open isn’t available system-wide; OmniFocus must be active for it to work. For me, the default keyboard shortcut works 7
great. Learn these two keyboard shortcuts early and before you know it, you’ll feel like a ninja with how you’re adding stu " to and searching OmniFocus. I know I do.
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Mac: Defer Inbox Items David Allen’s Getting Things Done productivity methodology prescribes, among many tactics, the use of what the author calls a Tickler File. Back when GTD was originally published, paper-based organization systems were far more ubiquitous than they are today (relatively speaking) and it was often necessary to have a sheet of paper disappear today and reappear in your life a set number of days (or months) later. OmniFocus 1.x for Mac didn’t allow deferring inbox items by date, so to recreate a tickler file system was a bit of a kludgey proposition. You’d need to covert the item into a project, add a next action, and defer the project until the date you next wanted to see it. It worked well enough, but it always felt a little inelegant to me. All that changed with OmniFocus 2. Now, we can defer inbox items by date. If we set a defer date on any inbox item, it’ll disappear until that date, when it will magically reappear in the inbox:
No joke: I spend a few minutes every day simply deferring inbox items because I’m not ready to do anything with them yet. 1 So, add new items to your inbox with complete abandon and know that you can defer them for a decade if you like.
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Which reminds me… we need to discuss OmniFocus’ swanky date parsing capabilities.
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Mac: Natural Language Date Processing Say I get a notice in the mail from the local authorities about an upcoming court appearance. On the front of the paper is the date it was issued and, just below that date, I see “you must respond within 15 days otherwise we’re putting you in the clink.” Well, I’m a busy guy and I can’t be bothered to ask “how high” when The Man starts telling me to jump. I decide I’m going to defer this task for 13 days — you know, just to take the fight out of ‘em a bit. As I add this pesky little task to OmniFocus, I think to myself, “self, you don’t want to see this item on your task list for the next 12 days, do you?” No, I really don’t. And since I’m also terrible at math, I don’t want to have to figure out what the date will be 12 days from now. Luckily for me— and, as it happens, you, my dear reader—OmniFocus speaks human when it comes to parsing dates and times. Check it out:
Yep, that totally works. Once I hit Tab Tab to leave lea ve the defer date field, OmniFocus figures out what “12 days from today” is and adds that as the deferral date. Some others that work: ! ! !
“Friday at noon” “Next Thursday” “2 weeks”
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It also speaks a few abbreviations for day, week, month, and year: “d,” “w,” “w,” “m,” and “y,” “y,” respectively. respectively. In other words, I can type “3w” if I want wan t to defer it for three weeks, “1m” for a month, “12y” for 12 years, and so forth. Bonus tip: all of this crazy date stu " also works for the due date field.
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Daily Maintenace is Key This one is a little less “tipsy and tricksy,” but it bears mentioning here. The Weekly Review is arguably GTD’s GTD’s most important component (and OmniFocus has a built-in perspective for performing it), but I’ve become a serious proponent of a quick daily review. review. I don’t mean a full-blown review of everything in everything in your OmniFocus database. Doing that correctly takes an hour or more, in my experience. No, I’m talking about a quick-and-dirty trot through the current workload. Specifically, Specifically, I’d recommend the following steps: 1. Dump Dump your your brai brain n int into o you yourr inb inbox ox 2. Complete Completely ly proc process ess your your inbox inbox until until it’ it’s empty empty 3. Review Review commo common n contexts contexts to make make sure sure everyth everything’ ing’s s curren current; t; in particular, any contexts where you’re waiting for things to happen or people to do something 4. Choose Choose a few few items items that will will make make up the the day’ day’s work work and and mark mark them them somehow; I use (and love) OmniFocus’ flagging functionality for this. If you do this right, it will take only a few minutes and you’ll begin (or end) the day with a clear head and comfortable in the knowledge that your stu" is squeaky clean.
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Defer Projects, Not Tasks As you slowly work your way toward OmniFocus mastery, mastery, you’re likely to encounter something that resembles the following scenario; Perusing your “Work” context, you notice a task that isn’t going to be due for awhile. Maybe even a long a long awhile. awhile. Knowing how frequently you look at and work from this list, the idea of staring at that stupid task for the next two weeks gives you teensiest bit of heartburn. So, you decide you’re going to defer that sucker with extreme prejudice. Stop. Don’t. Defer the parent project instead. Here’s Here’s why: When you defer a task, the project is still visible and, in most cases, will appear to be lacking a next action (unless you have the “Remaining” view mode turned on, in which case you’ll see the deferred task). I’ve found it to be much be much more more useful to defer the entire project instead of its ingredient actions. This way, the whole thing disappears until the deferral date and I don’t have to keep looking at it in my project lists. Maybe that wouldn’t bug you as much as it does me, but I spend enough time perusing and (occasionally) rejiggering my project list hierarchy that seeing a bunch of stu" I don’t need to see makes me a little crazy. When you’re looking at the task you want to defer (by way of project deferral), click the task once to highlight it, then type Cmd+Option+R to jump to that project in the Project perspective. From there, jump to the inspector and adjust the deferral date, then use the Quick Open dialog we saw earlier to get back to whatever context or perspective you were viewing originally. Easy peasy.
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Tools for Lightning Fast Capture on the Go The Quick Input panel is an extremely quick way to add tasks to OmniFocus when you’re in front of your Mac. But what about those times when you’re not you’re not in in front of a computer? iPhone owners have two great solutions to this little dilemma. Much of the following functionality depends a nifty feature of OmniFocus for iOS called Reminders Capture. In a nut, OmniFocus for iOS can watch a list housed in the Reminders app and import anything it finds into the OmniFocus inbox.2 To To configure Reminders capture: 1. Create Create a separ separate ate list list in Remind Reminders ers speci specifical fically ly for for use use with with OmniFocus. I call mine “Task” since—spoiler alert—it makes using Siri much easier. You don’t have don’t have to to create a separate list if you don’t want to, but I’d recommend it. 2. In OmniF OmniFocus ocus for iOS, iOS, open open the the appli applicati cation on Settin Settings gs and and enable enable Reminders Capture.3 Once enabled, select the list from which you’d like OmniFocus to harvest new inbox items, then tap Done because that’s exactly what you are: don done. Siri
Using Reminders Capture in conjunction with Siri makes creating new OmniFocus tasks with your mouth a snap. Once you’ve configured Reminders Capture as described a second ago, adding a new item is as easy as telling Siri something like: “Add check tire pressure to my Task Task list.” The sentence is a little goofy since Siri will just grab whatever you say between “add” and “to my task list,” but it gets the job done. Drafts
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For capturing typed text, it’s hard to beat Drafts for iOS. The idea is that Drafts launches ready for you to type and you can decide what to do with the text later. OmniFocus for iOS is a complex application with a database and all sorts of other internals that need to load before the user can do much with it. Drafts, on the other hand, launches very quickly quickly and you can start typing instantaneously. Using its integration with the stock Reminders application, Drafts can also send a list of items to the OmniFocus inbox with a single tap:
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When I run the “Send to OmniFocus (List)” action, the tasks are added to a special list in the Reminders app—from which OmniFocus automatically imports anything as new inbox items—then launches OmniFocus. And, just like that…
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Location-aware Contexts will Change Your Your Game OmniFocus for iOS supports location-aware contexts using a fancy technology called “geofencing.”4 Imagine an invisible perimeter around your home (or o#ce, or grocery store, or wherever). When you either enter or leave said perimeter, your iOS device knows about it and, if configured, OmniFocus can take actions based on those movements. Practically speaking, this means you can have OmniFocus do things like: ! ! !
Alert you with your grocery list as you drive past your neighborhood grocery store. Remind you to take a picture of your receipt each time you leave the oil change place. Tell you to try the chicken piccata next time you’re near that fancy Italian joint in lower Manhattan.
The only limit here is your imagination. If you can find a location on a map or using a street address, you can assign an OmniFocus context to it and have your device holler at you when you arrive or leave said location. It’s incredibly It’s incredibly useful. useful. Here’s the short and skinny on setting this up: Let’s say you want to remember to remember to take one of those fun selfie things the kids love next time you’re at The White House. Hypothetically. From the OmniFocus home screen, tap Contexts, then the “plus surrounded by at-symbol” icon at the top of the screen. This will create a new context. You’ll want to call it The White House:
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We want to set this context to the address of the actual the actual White White House. Tap “Search” and search for The White House and OmniFocus will pull up the famous 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address, completely with postal code:
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Tap the address beneath “Assign location to context” to, well, assign that location to this context. Clearly. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be taken back to the context creation view and we’ll see the American President’s President’s address has indeed been assigned:
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Beneath the address, notice the options for “Notification.” These buttons control how you’re notified when you are near this address. The leftmost option is “None” which means you won’t be notified at all. The other two options are to be notified when arriving at this location and leaving this location. Pretty straightforward. (Note: there are other ways to assign locations to contexts beside the method I just described, but this should be more than enough to get you started.)
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Link to Almost Anything in the Notes Field I’ll make this one quick. If you highlighted either an action or a project, you can strike Cmd +’ (that’s a single quote) to reveal an input area below the name of the item. It looks like this:
At first blush, it may appear to only accept text. This, my friends, is incorrect. In fact, you can put a ton of di "erent stu" into this field, including links to files on your computer (drag the file into the notes field; dropping it will create a shortcut to that file) and links to applications (same as with files — drag and drop). If you double-click the shortcut in the notes field, the file will be opened or the application will launch. This is cool because some of us huge nerds have daily action lists — a repeating project full of stu " we do each day. For some of us, that includes things like emptying inboxes, checking the calendar for upcoming appointments, etc.
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In addition, any URL you paste into this field will be clickable everywhere. So, if you see an article you want to read later, just drop the URL into the notes field of the task and you can open it from any device that will run OmniFocus. I use this for albums folks have recommended to me on Spotify, notes in Evernote, even other perspectives in OmniFocus. This field is extremely versatile and you can shove a ton of additional information in there — anything that will make performing the task or completing the project easier.
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Thanks Thanks for reading this! I hope you found this little ditty useful. If you did, give me a holler on Twitter (I’m @mrbrettkelly @mrbrettkelly over over there). About Me
I’m Brett and I wrote this thing. That’s me right up there holding some delicious tacos. I’m a writer-slash-Internet person from Southern 28
California. I have two kids, lots of tattoos, and a hard-earned high school diploma. You can check c heck out more of my stu " at brettkelly.org brettkelly.org if if you’re so inclined.
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Whether this makes me terrible at task management or not is your call; but the app lets me do it
and I’m all smiles as a result. 2
Note that OmniFocus will only import items from Reminders when OmniFocus launches; it doesn’t
happen in the background. 3
If you haven’t already given it, iOS will ask you to allow OmniFocus to access your Reminders. This
permission is required for Reminders Capture to function. 4
Note: it’s not currently possible to assign location information to contexts using OmniFocus for
Mac.
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