OmniFocus Perspectives

Yesterday I mentioned the one of the main reasons I like OmniFocus is because of the custom Perspectives. Think of these as filters to see the available tasks.

Here are my perspectives in the sidebar of OmniFocus:

Inbox

This is where all of my task go when I enter them into OmniFocus. I’m bad at assigning details as I enter the project, so at least once per day I clear out the inbox and make sure all projects fit into a project and are assigned a context.

Dashboard

Here’s where I spend most of my time. This is a perspective that shows all of my Due or Flagged tasks. I decide on these the night before by going through my contexts and flagging the items that need to get done the next day. Later in the week, I’ll explain how I have this set up.

Neutralize

There are some tasks that need to be done repeatedly in order to keep your world stable. It can be little things like check tire presser, change furance air filter, update budget, etc… I have these in a Single Actions list and use a custom perspective to make them easy to find. I try to clear this list every week.

Projects

Here I can quickly see a list of all of my projects. I use this view regularly when I am looking for tasks to work on.

Contexts

I rarely use this perspective. I probably wouldn’t miss it if I removed it, but a handful of times per month I’ll look for something to work on based on the assigned context.

Forecast

This is a combination view that combines Due / Due Soon / Calendar items. I typically check this once a day to see what is upcoming and due soon.

Review

My goal is to review all projects once per week (typcially Fridays). Each week I look at all of my outstanding projects and tasks and see what’s still relevent and what I should delete.