There is a growing thread in the Mac Power Users forums about custom OmniFocus perspectives. Since it’s Sunday, I though I’d share one of my favorite Sunday perspectives. While I don’t use a defer-date management system for my tasks these days, I do use defer dates on flagged tasks. This perspective shows me all of those tasks on their defer dates going forward. It’s a great deal for a little weekly planning on Sunday.

This week Kourosh Dini released the third edition of his Creating Flow with OmniFocus book. This is, by far, my favorite book on using OmniFocus.

Kourosh has been using OmniFocus for years and has some great ideas on how to the most out of the application. The book covers concepts ranging from beginning to advanced and all of them are explained with Kourosh’s gentle and insightful writing style.

This week, the Omni Group has released version 3 of OmniFocus for the Mac. This release closes the loop on the version 3 release which began a few months ago with the release of version 3 for iOS.

While the new version of OmniFocus still works with GTD, I look at the new release as an intentional breaking away from prior constraints related to making it a GTD tool. Contexts are out. Tags are in. But what does that mean? I wrote an article for Inside OmniFocus over the weekend where I explained the addition of tags has fundamentally changed the way I use the application.

Multiple vectors into your task system can only be a good thing. With the new version of OmniFocus you don’t need to put four tags on every task but where appropriate, you could. With increased flexibility with tags, it makes OmniFocus’s custom perspectives even more useful.

One example I cited in my above-linked Inside OmniFocus article is invoice follow-up. I’ve got many legal clients and some automation that will generate a task for me to follow up on invoices. Those tasks appropriately belong with each individual client but with the new OmniFocus, I’ve been adding one additional tag to my creation script that inserts an “invoice” tag. Now when I set aside time to follow up on invoices, it no longer involves a hunt through my system. I simply pull up available tasks with the “invoice” tag and go through my list. That’s a small example, but you get the idea.

Just like with the release of version 3 for iOS, this new version of OmniFocus doesn’t make any change simply for the sake of change but only where it makes the application easier to use or more powerful and, in several cases, both of those things. 

Another example of that is the new Forecast view that now mixes your calendar items in with your tasks in their calendar order. If you have a deadline at 9:00 and a dentist appointment at 10:00, the deadline appears first. Clever.

The deceptive part is that these changes and refinements add up to way more than the sum of their parts. I find the application more nimble and more powerful than before. It’s completely changed my own “system” for using the application. To learn more about version 3 check out the OmniFocus web site. If you’d like a lot more words on the new version, I’d recommend Rose Orchard‘s review over on MacStories. And, of course, if you’d like 5+ hours and 69 separate videos on using OmniFocus, I’ve got that covered too.

This week the Omni Group released version 3 of OmniFocus for iPhone and iPad (with version 3 for Mac coming later this summer). There are few applications I use more than OmniFocus. I started with the beta before OmniFocus version 1, and I’ve used it continuously since then. While I’ve flirted with other task management applications, OmniFocus is my one and only, and now it is up to version 3. So what’s new? Quite a lot.

Tags, Baby!

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Traditionally, OmniFocus had three ways to index a task: by project, by context, by flag status. With the new version, context has been replaced by tags.

The benefit of tags is that it adds a lot more dimension to ways you can slice and dice your tasks. Traditionally, following GTD cannon, context was used to put a task in a certain place or with a certain person. For example, some tasks can only be done on your Mac or with a certain co-worker. However, with traditional contexts you could not qualify a task by both a person and a location because there was only one dimension of a context.

That’s not true anymore. You can now put any number of tags on a task, giving you much more power to filter tasks. Using the above example, I can put a task that has both the “Home” and “Daisy” tags applied. I could then create a custom perspective based on those two flags so, when Daisy is around at home, I can filter down to all tasks holding down those two tags.

This isn’t, however, limited to just locations and people. You can add tags based on any criteria. I’ve been experimenting with tags based on energy level, so when I’m in the afternoon doldrums, I can have OmniFocus show me just a list of “brain dead” tasks I can check off without needing to concentrate. I’m also experimenting with certain classifications of work. For example, I’ve created a tag that relates to a very specific online corporate filing I do for some of my legal clients. It’s a massive pain in the neck to get logged in, and that process started so now, with a tag, I can easily get a list of all those filings (regardless of project) once I do log in to the creaky government flash-based website and batch the filings all at once.

Another use for tags in my experimentation so far is to get much more granular with location. This workflow really combines two new features, tags plus granular notifications. With the new version of OmniFocus, you can set a per-tag notification. You can also set specific geographic locations to tags. This opens up the use of locations in all new ways. 

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For example, when I was finishing up the iPhone Field Guide, I had a long list of pictures and video to add to the book. I decided Disneyland would be a better subject than my home, so I created a tag in OmniFocus 3 based on the Disneyland location and then set an alert based on the geo-boundary. Then, as I was walking into Disneyland with the family, I’d get a notice reminding me to take a few pictures for the book. It worked great.

I’ve been adding more locations tags with places I go often like the grocery store, the post office, Target, and the hardware store so whenever I go in, I get a notification and can take a look at my list. Because this is tag based, it can pull items tagged to my location out of any of my projects.

A lot of folks like to set their tasks in an A-B-C priority order. You can do that. You can do whatever floats your boat. Make tags for tasks you just want to perform in the morning. Make tags for tasks you’ll only perform while drinking tea. You can even tag tasks that are only relevant on a full moon if that floats your boat.

Tag implementation in OmniFocus is easy. You just tap the tag button and then tap on an existing tag or type in a new one. From the tag view, you can set tag status, location, and how notifications trigger. For example, my Disneyland notification tag triggers when I arrive. I could alternatively set a different notification when I’m leaving. All of your tags will work inside custom perspectives, or you can go to your tag list and look through them.

What About Projects and Flags?

So what about the other two traditional OmniFocus task sorting criteria, projects and flags? They’re both still there and for good reason.

Projects are a completely different way to think about and organize your tasks. While you could abandon projects and use tags instead, that’s a bad idea. Projects are often hierarchical and even with an extensive tagging system, a separate sort by project still makes sense.

Likewise, flags deserve to survive. Flags are the easiest designator to apply to a task. On the Mac, it’s one click of the mouse (or even easier, one keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-L). On iPhone and iPad, applying a flag takes just one tap. Applying tags takes at least two taps and a little scrolling if you’ve got a long list. Flags needed to stay.

There is no limit when it comes to tags. That’s the blessing and the curse of tags. When I say you can go nuts with tags, I mean that in the you-can-make-yourself-crazy sort of way. The trick to this will be to figure what tags work for you and try not to go too far past that. After all, you should manage your task app, not the opposite.

I wasn’t initially on the tag bandwagon because I thought it could become too fiddly. But in hindsight that was short-sighted. Tags are only as fiddly as you want to make them and they are a nice, powerful addition to OmniFocus 3. Best of all, the implementation is painless. It feels just like old contexts, but there are more (or less) of them depending on your preference.

Notification Improvements

As mentioned above, notifications are also now much more powerful. You can set notifications based on location, tag, and even set custom notifications on a per task basis. One of the things I like best about the new notification system is that allows you to get granular with a few of your tasks, without getting granular with all of your tasks. I’m using this new features, but carefully. Selective use of this new feature can make a big difference in getting you the notifications that are important to you without overwhelming you. 

Batch Editing

One traditional feature gap between iOS and the Mac version of OmniFocus for the longest time was batch editing. On the Mac, you can select multiple items and, using the inspector, perform actions on them. If you want to take the rest of today’s tasks and push them to a deferred date of next week, you can do that easily. Historically, however, you could not do that on the iPhone or iPad. 

Instead, you had to select each individual task and make the adjustment on a per-task basis. That is not true anymore. Now tapping the “edit” button, you can select multiple tasks sequentially or out of order. Once you’ve made your selections, tap on the Inspector button, and then you can make any changes to the selected tasks just as you would on your Mac. This, combined with the customizable inspector covered later, makes this new version of OmniFocus, particularly on the iPad, a powerful tool for managing long lists of tasks at once.

I am not, however, entirely sold on the interface for batch edits. Once you are done with your change, you must remember to tap on the “done” button. If not, your selections remain selected, and further actions will change them yet again. A few times during the beta, I’d batch edit one group of tasks and then select a second group of tasks without first tapping the ‘Done’ button, resulting me in making the second group changes to both groups. You don’t make that mistake many times without remembering to press the ‘Done’ button in the future, but I think this could be a bit more idiot-proof.

Regardless, I often batch edit tasks, and at this point, the ability to do so on my iPhone and iPad is a significant improvement to my OmniFocus workflow.

Flexible Inspectors

A common mark against OmniFocus is its complexity. This is a powerful application a lot of tools to help you get your work done. While the OmniFocus tool chest is big, you don’t need to use them all. If all you need is a hammer, it has a hammer. For example, one option that OmniFocus includes is the ability to attach time estimates to tasks. Time estimates can help you budget your time and keep you more realistic about the number of tasks you’ll complete in a day. It’s a great feature that I never use. 

With version 3, I can customize the inspector and, essentially, hide the time estimate field in the inspector so I don’t have to look at something I’m not going to use. I can also re-order the inspector items. Maybe you rarely use flags but want the occasional ability to use them, put it at the bottom of the visible inspector. Perhaps you use flags every day, put it at the top. The custom inspector lets you make the app give you precisely what you want and how you want it. No more.

Easier Repeating Tasks

OmniFocus has always supported repeating tasks. The trouble is for the app to figure out exactly what kind of repeating task the user needs. Do you need a certain task to show up every Thursday or do you just need a task to repeat ten days after the last time you marked it complete? With version 3, the Omni Group rethought the interface for setting up repeating tasks. It kept all the power but made the feature significantly easier to use showing you, again, only as much complexity as you ask for.

There’s More

There are a lot of additional nice touches in the newest version of OmniFocus:

• Calendar Integration in Forecast View
  The Forecast view places your calendar events into your task list in relation to their times. For example, if you have a meeting at 9 and a task deferred until 10, the meeting shows up first. Seeing this for the first time is one of those “aha” moments where it becomes obvious that displaying calendar events and tasks together should have always been like this.
• Forecast Tags
  You can also now select a specific tag to show up in forecast view. If you want to assign specific tasks to a “today” tag, this is a great way to selectively see them in your forecast.
• Task Re-ordering
  You can now manually reorder tasks within a specific tag. Nice.
• Better Filtering
  With the pro version, you can use simple logic, like “all”, “any”, and “none” when filtering tasks.
• Tags on Mac
  While we wait for version 3 on the Mac with full tag support, the Mac currently sees the first selected tag as the context. This has not been a problem for me at all throughout the beta.

Power and Simplicity

When I first heard about the significant changes coming with version 3, I worried that OmniFocus was in jeopardy of losing touch with its essential essence. With an app as robust as OmniFocus, change for the sake of change and not necessarily improvement is bad. Spending time with OmniFocus 3 throughout the beta, I’m happy to report that is not a problem. The changes made to version 3 all seem to simultaneously focus on making the application more natural to use while at the same time adding even more power. Version 3 is an improvement over version 2 without sacrificing the things I loved about version 2 like easy capture, review mode, custom perspectives and all of the rest of the OmniFocus goodness. My congratulations go the OmniFocus team. My favorite task manager just got better.

What about the OmniFocus Video Field Guide?

There will be a new version of the OmniFocus Video Field Guide as soon as the Omni Group releases OmniFocus for both iOS and Mac. I’m going to call it version 3 to match the OmniFocus release and avoid a whole lot of confusion. I’m already neck deep in the outline and looking forward to starting recording as soon as the Mac version gets closer to shipping. 

This will be a new purchase because I’ll be making an entirely new screencast from scratch. It’s going to include all of the version 3 goodness and several new workflows for task management that I’ve been experimenting with. If you buy the current video during 2018 and send me proof of purchase (Vimeo doesn’t tell me who buys), I’ll send you a free code when version 3 releases.

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.