Kaitlin Salzke https://kaitlinsalzke.com Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:16:43 +0000 en-AU hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 152119994 Workflows with Kaitlin Salzke @ Mac Power Users https://kaitlinsalzke.com/appearances/workflows-with-kaitlin-salzke-mac-power-users/ https://kaitlinsalzke.com/appearances/workflows-with-kaitlin-salzke-mac-power-users/#respond Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:16:43 +0000 https://kaitlinsalzke.com/?p=1090 Okay, friends, I’ve officially made it on the internet! Last week I was interviewed by David Sparks and Stephen Hackett over on Mac Power Users and the episode was released today.

I had a great time talking all things Mac and Apple, and (of course) plenty of OmniFocus stuff too, no matter how much I tried to avoid it dominating the conversation…!

]]>
https://kaitlinsalzke.com/appearances/workflows-with-kaitlin-salzke-mac-power-users/feed/ 0 1090
How To: Use Shortcuts To Turn Off iPhone 14 Pro’s ‘Always On’ Mode Overnight https://kaitlinsalzke.com/how-to/how-to-use-shortcuts-to-turn-off-iphone-14-pros-always-on-mode-overnight/ https://kaitlinsalzke.com/how-to/how-to-use-shortcuts-to-turn-off-iphone-14-pros-always-on-mode-overnight/#respond Sat, 19 Nov 2022 23:18:02 +0000 https://kaitlinsalzke.com/?p=1068 With the introduction of the iPhone 14 Pro comes “always on” mode. I wanted to have this switched on during the day, but not at night.

If you use the built-in ‘Sleep’ focus mode, this happens automatically. But if, like me, that built-in mode doesn’t work for you for whatever reason, you may have set up a “custom” sleeping mode that doesn’t rely on the sleep schedule.

Shortcuts Automations to the rescue!

The trick to realise is that the ‘Always On’ feature turns itself off when ‘Low Power Mode’ is enabled. Since I’m (hopefully) asleep, I don’t mind if a few things are turned off overnight.

So, my solution is:

  1. Set up an automation that runs when the ‘Sleeping’ focus mode is turned on. This should turn ‘Low Power Mode’ on. (But it can also do other things while you’re there! Mine sets the volume and brightness to 0%, turns on dark mode, sets ‘Lights Out’ in the Autosleep app if it’s after 8pm, switches my watch face to one I prefer at night time, and turns on cinema mode and silent mode my watch.)
  2. Set up an automation that runs when Low Power Mode is turned off. This should ‘Get Current Focus’, and if it is the sleeping focus mode, turn Low Power Mode right back on again.
  3. Set up an automation that runs when the ‘Sleeping’ focus mode is turned off. This should turn Low Power Mode back off (assuming you want it to!). Mine also reverts all of the settings from #1 back to normal.
]]>
https://kaitlinsalzke.com/how-to/how-to-use-shortcuts-to-turn-off-iphone-14-pros-always-on-mode-overnight/feed/ 0 1068
Using Omni Automation to deal with tags on repeating tasks in OmniFocus https://kaitlinsalzke.com/how-to/using-omni-automation-to-deal-with-tags-on-repeating-tasks-in-omnifocus/ https://kaitlinsalzke.com/how-to/using-omni-automation-to-deal-with-tags-on-repeating-tasks-in-omnifocus/#respond Sat, 06 Aug 2022 12:01:43 +0000 https://kaitlinsalzke.com/?p=1022 I recently watched (and greatly enjoyed!) William Gallagher’s OmniFocus Workflows session over at Learn OmniFocus.

At around the 38-minute mark, there was some discussion about the side effects of applying a tag to a repeating task. In essence: when an instance of a repeating task has a tag, and that instance is completed, the next instance of the task will also have the tag. Depending on the tag in question, this may not be the desired outcome.

In William’s case, his ‘First Ten’ tasks are determined each day and shouldn’t carry across to the next:

“I would really like an automation that, if I ticked it as done in First Ten, it also removed the tag.”

William Gallagher

In response to this, Tim jokingly suggested that I might have something like that already, and I had a good laugh because he was spot-on: I have a very similar issue with my ‘Due Today’ tag, which is automatically applied by my Scheduling plug-in.

So, here are a couple of different ways I’m approaching this scenario.

Option 1: Remove the tag when the task is completed

This is, in many ways, the most obvious option, and the approach that William suggested.

There is one fairly significant drawback to this approach, however, which is that (at least for the moment) Omni Automation actions can’t be triggered automatically when a task is completed. As a result, the action needs to be run manually each time you want to complete a task.

Because I’m all-in on automation and I have several things I want to happen when I complete a task, I’ve already trained myself to use a custom keyboard shortcut (⌥ C) to complete a task on macOS rather than using ‘Space’ or the mouse. This shortcut runs my Custom Complete plug-in, which first marks the task as complete, and then, among other things, can remove one or more tags from a task’s repetitions. (It also prompts you if completing the task leaves any action groups or projects stalled, and does a bit of tidy-up work for some of my other plug-ins, if they’re installed.)

I personally use this when it’s convenient, and then catch the rest of the instances using the option below.

Option 2: Remove the tag in the background after the task has been completed

If it’s not convenient to use the option above, or if I simply forget, I have set up a fallback: every ten minutes Keyboard Maestro runs a small Applescript that removes the tag from any tasks that are remaining, but not due today:

tell application "OmniFocus"
  evaluate javascript "tagsMatching('Due Today')[0].remainingTasks.forEach(task => { if (Calendar.current.startOfDay(task.effectiveDueDate) >  Calendar.current.startOfDay(new Date())) { task.removeTag(tagsMatching('Due Today')[0]) } })"
end tell

This particular script does rely on the tasks in question being due on the day that you want the tag to be applied, but, at least in our scenarios, this is the case. The Keyboard Maestro script can be downloaded below. If you’d like to use it, you will need to update the two instances of Due Today in the script with First Ten, or whatever tag you are using.

Option 3: Create a separate instance of the task before tagging

One final option is to ‘skip’ the original task before applying the tag. That way, the repetition already exists without the tag and you are simply ticking off a non-repeating task.

My Duplicate and Drop plug-in is designed for exactly this purpose: it duplicates a repeating task so that it can be modified (for instance, by applying a tag) without affecting future instances.

If you wanted to take this to the next step, you could modify this plug-in to duplicate and drop the task and then apply your specific tag.

This option might be preferable where you would like the tag to persist some of the time, but not always (for example, if there were some tasks that should always be tagged with ‘First Ten’).

The best approach, or approaches, to this kind of scenario is, or are, going to depend on your particular use case and preferences; but in any case, I hope this short post has given some of you some ideas about how you can work with repeating tasks and their associated tags using Omni Automation.

]]>
https://kaitlinsalzke.com/how-to/using-omni-automation-to-deal-with-tags-on-repeating-tasks-in-omnifocus/feed/ 0 1022
April-June 2022 Plug-In Update Round-Up https://kaitlinsalzke.com/omnifocus-plug-in-update-round-up/april-june-2022-plug-in-update-round-up/ https://kaitlinsalzke.com/omnifocus-plug-in-update-round-up/april-june-2022-plug-in-update-round-up/#respond Thu, 30 Jun 2022 11:35:02 +0000 https://kaitlinsalzke.com/?p=1001 I finally had a little more time over the last month to dig into some Omni Automation development, with some substantial work on the Move to Action Group and Agendas plug-ins underway. There is more to come on these!

Move to Action Group (v3.5.0)

  • Added preference:
    • You can now select the tag to be used to denote action groups
    • You can now automatically include all top-level action groups, or all action groups, regardless of level
    • You can now choose whether or not you wish to be prompted to assign a tag to untagged tasks
    • You can now choose whether or not you wish to be prompted for the project before the action group. If not, all action groups that meet the criteria you have set will be selected.
  • Improved options when selection the position of the task being moved:
    • Added the option to “append as note” rather than adding as a
    • Select “beginning” by default
    • Add an option to add under a newly-created action group
  • A ‘filtering’ option has now been added to the action group form, for easier selection
  • Projects, as well as tasks, can now be moved
  • The most recently used project is now selected by default in the search form (note, though, that this behaviour is expected to change in the future where the task is already part of a project)

Agendas (v1.9.0)

  • An additional option, ‘edit note’, has been added to the processing options.
  • A new action, ‘Set Last Updated’, which sets the ‘last updated’ event (i.e. the event that will be selected by default the next time the ‘Add to Agenda’ action is invoked), has been added.
  • A new action ‘Add To Agenda Via Project’ has been added, which allows you to select a project before selecting an event, to narrow down the list.
  • Event tags are now shown in the ‘Add to Agenda’ dialogue if more than one is set in preferences.
  • Certain tags, set in the preferences, can now be shown in the processing dialogue.
  • Inactive agenda items are now labelled with [INACTIVE] and moved to the bottom of the list.
  • A helper Keyboard Maestro action, which resents the processing dialogue, has been added to the repository (but hopefully various bug fixes have made this less necessary).
  • When navigating to a task, the inbox is now opened when the task is included in the inbox rather than silently failing (this is a workaround for an OmniFocus bug that seems to occur when the Inbox is shown in the Projects listing)

Templates (v1.17.0)

  • The createFromTemplate function now allows a destination of type Task.ChildInsertionLocation.

Append or Prepend (v1.2.0)

Text can now be prepended/appended to project names, not just tasks.

Work On… (v1.0.2)

Two small bug fixes were implemented in April, to fix cases where the name was shown as ‘1’ in the dialogue, and where non-word characters (e.g. parentheses) at the end of the name were dropped.

Scheduling (v2.0.1)

A small bug fix, where the ‘today’ tag was not removed when a task was rescheduled.

]]>
https://kaitlinsalzke.com/omnifocus-plug-in-update-round-up/april-june-2022-plug-in-update-round-up/feed/ 0 1001
Talking OmniFocus @ The Omni Show https://kaitlinsalzke.com/appearances/talking-omnifocus-the-omni-show/ https://kaitlinsalzke.com/appearances/talking-omnifocus-the-omni-show/#respond Thu, 12 May 2022 07:51:06 +0000 https://kaitlinsalzke.com/?p=987 Amidst the chaos of moving, I recently had the opportunity to chat with Andrew Mason over at The Omni Show.

I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to talk all things OmniFocus, “productivity”, and life in general.

You can listen to the episode here. I hope you enjoy it!

]]>
https://kaitlinsalzke.com/appearances/talking-omnifocus-the-omni-show/feed/ 0 987
March Plug-In Update Round-Up https://kaitlinsalzke.com/omnifocus-plug-in-update-round-up/march-plug-in-update-round-up/ https://kaitlinsalzke.com/omnifocus-plug-in-update-round-up/march-plug-in-update-round-up/#comments Sun, 03 Apr 2022 02:56:05 +0000 https://kaitlinsalzke.com/?p=972 What a month! I had a great time hosting a workflow session over at Learn OmniFocus, got a new job, resigned from the old one, and am now planning a move to a different town 2 hours away. All that to say: April might be a little bit quiet on the Omni Automation front as I pack up and move! But, for now, here is a summary of the updates for the month of March.

Newly Released OmniFocus Plug-Ins

Work On… (v 1.0.1)

This is an OmniFocus plug-in that is designed to assist with managing ‘Work on…’ tasks. It contains an action to add a ‘Work on….’ task for the currently selected project/task, which is a repeating action. The second action in the plug-in marks that ‘work on’ task complete, with the option to defer working on the task until tomorrow, or mark the main/parent task as complete. If my ‘Scheduling’ plug-in is also installed, it also contains options to schedule work for tomorrow or for another date.

Tag Tasks Due Today (v 1.1.0)

This plug-in is fairly self-explanatory: it tags tasks that are due today with a tag specified in the preferences.

Other Plug-In Updates

Scheduling (v 2.0.0)

I released v2 of the ‘Scheduling’ plug-in, which was completely rewritten. Date management is now improved and tags managed by the plug-in, preferences have been added, and an assortment of other improvements were made.

Custom Complete (v 3.0.1)

I released v3 of the ‘Custom Complete’ plug-in, which contains a number of improvements:

  • A prompt is now shown if there are no tasks remaining in a parent action group (not just the project, as was the case previously).
  • The plug-in now integrates with my [‘Tag Tasks Due Today’ plug-in](https://kaitlinsalzke.com/omnifocus-plugins/tag- tasks-due-today/) as well as the new ‘Work On…’ plug-in.
  • A preferences pane has been added to replace the manual configuration files. (This does mean that the ‘Synced Preferences’ plug-in is now required.)
  • The ‘Function Library’ plug-in is no longer required to be installed.

Note that the plug-in has also (perhaps temporarily) been updated to use a Form rather an Alert for the ‘stalled’ prompt. This is to get around what I believe is a bug in OmniFocus.

Dependency (v 4.2.1)

Fixed a bug where dates were removed when checking for duplicates, causing dependents of prerequisites with repetitions to never become available.

Open URL From Note (v 1.4.2)

Fixed a bug where URL recognition stopped at an ‘:’ character.

Templates (v 1.16.2)

‘Templates’ folder and subfolders are now excluded from the ‘destination’ prompt.

Completed Task Report (v 2.4.1)

Improved handling of situation where tags/projects set in preferences are subsequently deleted from the database.

Note To Subtasks (v 5.4.1)

Fixed a bug where extra dropped and completed tasks were being added to the checklist, and also fixed handling of tags that were subsequently deleted after being set in preferences.

]]>
https://kaitlinsalzke.com/omnifocus-plug-in-update-round-up/march-plug-in-update-round-up/feed/ 8 972
OmniFocus Workflows @ Learn OmniFocus https://kaitlinsalzke.com/appearances/omnifocus-workflows-learn-omnifocus/ https://kaitlinsalzke.com/appearances/omnifocus-workflows-learn-omnifocus/#comments Fri, 25 Mar 2022 23:56:57 +0000 https://kaitlinsalzke.com/?p=968 Last week I was delighted to join Tim Stringer and some members over at Learn OmniFocus for a live workflow session.

It was an honour to be invited and I had a great time talking all things OmniFocus and Omni Automation!

If you missed it, you can watch the video below, and be sure to also check out the rest of the content over at Learn OmniFocus, as it’s a fantastic resource.

]]>
https://kaitlinsalzke.com/appearances/omnifocus-workflows-learn-omnifocus/feed/ 1 968
Waxing philosophical about task management in OmniFocus https://kaitlinsalzke.com/workflow/waxing-philosophical-about-task-management-in-omnifocus/ https://kaitlinsalzke.com/workflow/waxing-philosophical-about-task-management-in-omnifocus/#comments Tue, 15 Mar 2022 20:00:00 +0000 https://kaitlinsalzke.com/?p=963 In the lead-up to my Learn OmniFocus workflow session, I wanted to share some of the nitty-gritty details of how I manage my tasks with OmniFocus. That session will focus on the magic of Omni Automation (✨!). So, over this week, I’m concentrating on the more foundational, structural side of things, like projects, tags, and perspectives.

At this point, we’ve covered:

For the last post in this series, I’d like to zoom out and consider some of the overarching principles I try to keep in mind as I iterate on my OmniFocus set-up.

Iterative and incremental

This system might appear overly complex or overly engineered to some. That’s fine! And the reality is, if you tried to implement a system identical to mine overnight, it almost certainly would not work for you.

My workflow is specific to me and has been gradually honed and refined over the eight or so years that I’ve been using OmniFocus.

Although I’ve certainly had a few overhauls of the whole database during that time, I try to resist the temptation to do this unless it’s really necessary. Sometimes, a significant shift in life circumstances precipitates a big shift in the structure of OmniFocus, and that’s okay. But, in general: small, incremental changes are the way to go.

One in, all in

I keep everything in OmniFocus.

Some prefer to keep the minutiae of their lives outside of OmniFocus, and that’s fine too! I understand this perspective; it certainly adds simplicity. David Allen writes in ‘Making It All Work’:

…the more mundane the level you’re trying to organize, the more complex your system must be to manage it well.

This is 100% true, in my experience.

But for me, the benefits of keeping everything from ‘drink a glass of water’ to ‘complete XYZ really big project’ in OmniFocus are:

  • I always know where to look, and I always know what I need to do next.
  • On days when life is difficult—maybe I’m sick, maybe my son is sick, or maybe I just had a baby and am now living the madness that is life with a newborn (none of these are hypothetical examples…)—the ‘obvious’ things can be less obvious. I’ve found it beneficial both to have a reminder to do these obvious things that I know keep my body, brain, house and life ticking along happily; and also to be able to look back at the end of the day and know that if I have done all of these things, even if I achieved nothing else. Sometimes remembering to wash your hair is an accomplishment, and that’s okay!
  • Over on the OmniFocus forums, Jeff Hester wrote “A single keystone habit – in this case open up OmniFocus first thing in the morning – could be used to bootstrap a great deal more. That includes setting in motion a day of checking OmniFocus on a regular basis.” I don’t think I can do a better job than that of describing exactly how powerful I think OmniFocus can be in building a habit stack. If I put something in OmniFocus in the right place in the right way, I will almost certainly make myself do it.
  • In that same post, Jeff refers to the dopamine hit of checking off an activity. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t get some satisfaction from the simple act of checking items off that list.

Focusing on the next steps

I have a natural tendency to want to map out projects in their entirety.

However, I’ve found it’s often more powerful to get back to GTD basics and focus on the next step, or the next few steps. In recent times, I’ve switched my default setting for projects and action groups to not autocomplete and instead:

Both of these things help me to make the mental shift to not try and plan out projects, particularly big projects, too far in advance.

A related tip I picked up from Kourosh Dini’s Creating Flow with OmniFocus 3 is the idea of a repeating ‘Work on:’ task. I find this helpful in cases where:

  • The next action is relatively obvious. For example, I recently ripped my family’s old home movies from DVD because that was the only place they had been stored. For that project, it was just a matter of sitting down and doing the next thing. The project was, more or less self-emergent and didn’t need to be defined further than that. I wouldn’t have gained anything from doing so.
  • The project is more ‘creative’. And by creative, I don’t necessarily mean art or music; instead, I mean that the project is open-ended – it might be writing a report or pulling together my son’s baby book. The main thing I need to do is show up and sit with the project for a while.

I use my ‘Work On…’ plug-in to help manage these tasks.

Do-ability

I like my lists to be short and feel ‘do-able’. This is, I think, a large part of why my dashboard view works so well for me: it breaks everything down into multiple lists and helps avoid overwhelm. It’s why I like to defer tags that aren’t relevant, and why I like to switch between my ‘focus’ and ‘no focus’ modes.

This is also an important thing that I try to keep in mind when I’m creating individual tasks: is this something I can sit down and do in one sitting? Is it clear exactly what I need to do? If not, I may be deterred from starting it.

Automation as a hobby

I am not deluding myself here: I know that the amount of time I have spent developing Omni Automation plug-ins and related automations leaves me on the wrong side of this xkcd comic.

But I’m okay with that, because I love to learn and I love to code, and I enjoy sharing the results with other people and seeing them get use out of things I’ve produced. Actually getting to use the plug-ins in my OmniFocus workflow is kind of a bonus!

And to that end, I hope you’ll join me over on Learn OmniFocus tomorrow, where I’m planning to share a bit about my set-up and several of the aforementioned automations.

For now, that’s a wrap on this OmniFocus series. I hope you’ve enjoyed our whirlwind tour of my database, and perhaps picked up a trick or two to test out in your own workflow.

]]>
https://kaitlinsalzke.com/workflow/waxing-philosophical-about-task-management-in-omnifocus/feed/ 2 963
Managing Projects in OmniFocus https://kaitlinsalzke.com/workflow/managing-projects-in-omnifocus/ https://kaitlinsalzke.com/workflow/managing-projects-in-omnifocus/#comments Mon, 14 Mar 2022 21:00:00 +0000 https://kaitlinsalzke.com/?p=958 In the lead-up to my Learn OmniFocus workflow session, I wanted to share some of the nitty-gritty details of how I manage my tasks with OmniFocus. That session will focus on the magic of Omni Automation (✨!). So, over this week, I’m concentrating on the more foundational, structural side of things, like projects, tags, and perspectives.

At this point, we’ve covered:

There’s one obvious part of the OmniFocus workflow that we’re missing, and that’s projects. So today, a quick look at how I’ve set up my project list.

Personal v Work

I have three top-level folders in OmniFocus:

  • ✨ Personal,
  • 💼 Briefcase, and
  • 🏢 Accountant.

The first and last of these are probably relatively self-explanatory.

The ‘💼’, is the overlap between these two areas of focus. If there is work I am bringing home to complete at my discretion, I might move it to my briefcase so that when I am planning the rest of my day, I can be aware of it: in these cases I don’t want it hidden from sight. Equally, there are a few work things I want to make sure I don’t want to miss: submitting timesheets, leave requests etc, and these go here too.

On the other hand, there might also be a few ‘personal’ things that I might ‘take to work’ with me. This is pretty rare, but for example my reminder to ‘drink water’ pops up here, so that it’s available in both places.

Folders

For a long time, I used folders for each area of responsibility within the top-level folders above. However, this lengthened my project list and cluttered things up (especially by the time I added a SAL for each one, plus any actual projects).

So then I tried no folders but then I felt like I had a single, long, overwhelming list.

The current approach that I’ve settled on is three main folders within my Personal folder that are based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

  • 1⃣ Physiological / 2⃣ Safety & Security (contains housework, exercise, finances, etc)
  • 3⃣ Love & Belonging (contains anything to do with friends, family, acquaintances or even just being a good citizen of my community or the world)
  • 4⃣ Esteem & Self-Actualisation (contains all the other fun stuff, like automation, travel, and learning)

I’ve found that this works well for me. I am mainly thinking about my project structure as part of a review, and I think it’s beneficial for me to try be mindful of maintaining a balance between these areas when I’m planning.

I don’t typically nest folders any deeper than this, though there are some exceptions: for example, my university degree has a folder of its own (with folders for each subject, each containing a folder for content and one for each assessment task, just because this is a bigger project:

University projects in OmniFocus

My Work folder contains just one additional folder, which is ‘Client Work’. Keeping this separate helps to drive some of my custom perspectives.

Naming Projects

Here are some example project names:

Example project names

I have a few conventions when naming projects:

  • Wherever possible, I frame the project as an action (starting with a verb) and, for anything that’s not an action list, try to make it clear from the name at what point the project will be complete. That said, I’m also not afraid to rename projects if the goalposts shift! (This is not true of client work, covered below.)
  • Each project name starts with an emoji. This usually represents an area of responsibility or role, but is a little bit discretionary. I add these using Rocket so I don’t find them particularly onerous to maintain. As with the emoji I use in my tags: I like having them there and I think they improve scannability. This has helped me to get rid of the folders I had previously, because everything still feels ‘grouped’ appropriately.
  • Client work is named by convention. For example, a job I am reviewing would be titled ‘🔍 (Preparer): Job Type Year [Partner]’ (and we use initials to represent people). My Templates Plug-In does most of the heavy lifting here, and this helps with creating custom perspectives based on this information.
  • I have a single action list for each area of responsibility that contains miscellaneous tasks. These are denoted with a ‘∞’ at the end of the project name.
  • 2-4 projects at a given time will be marked with ‘🌟’ at the end of the name. These are the projects I’d like to focus on at the moment, and available tasks from these projects always show on the ‘Starred’ perspective of my dashboard.

Action Groups

Within projects, I use action groups to group together:

  • Habits ✯ – things I want to make sure I’m doing consistently and on a regular timeframe (drink water, exercise, clean the shower), and
  • Routine ↻ – routine tasks that need to be done somewhat on a schedule, or once they are available as soon as I get a chance, but are not ‘habits’ as such (book dentist appointments, renew passport, take a computer backup).

My ‘Move To Action Group’ plug-in can be useful for this.

These symbols are then used within a “search results contain” rule to populate the Habits and Routine perspectives on my dashboard.

Tomorrow, we’ll step back and take a look at the bigger picture. I’ll wax philosophical on what drives my current approach to task management in OmniFocus—though of course this is always subject to change as I learn and grow.

]]>
https://kaitlinsalzke.com/workflow/managing-projects-in-omnifocus/feed/ 2 958
An Abundance of OmniFocus Tags https://kaitlinsalzke.com/workflow/an-abundance-of-omnifocus-tags/ https://kaitlinsalzke.com/workflow/an-abundance-of-omnifocus-tags/#comments Sun, 13 Mar 2022 21:00:00 +0000 https://kaitlinsalzke.com/?p=948 In the lead-up to my Learn OmniFocus workflow session, I wanted to share some of the nitty-gritty details of how I manage my tasks with OmniFocus. That session will focus on the magic of Omni Automation (✨!). So, over this week, I’m concentrating on the more foundational, structural side of things, like projects, tags, and perspectives.

At this point, we’ve covered my main ‘dashboard view’, more custom perspectives, some automation magic that helps with window management and navigation, and using the ‘focus’ feature and tags to switch between contexts.

Today, a breakdown of my tag structure.

Emoji, emoji and…more emoji? 🤷‍♀️

I am a prolific user of emoji in my tags (and we’ll see this in my projects soon, too). You’ll notice that the vast majority of my tags are either a) an emoji and a label or just b) a single emoji.

At the end of the day, this is mostly a matter of personal preference. I like having them there, and I think they improve scannability. In the case of the single emoji tags, these do also serve a space-saving function.

A quick note about these single emoji tags: if I have a tag that is just made up of a single, non-alphanumeric character, I will typically nest it under another tag that describes its purpose. For example, take my ‘Quick’ tag: the tag itself is ‘⚡’ but it is nested underneath another tag named ‘Quick’. That means that if I want to apply the tag using OmniFocus’ tag field, I can simply start typing ‘Quick’, arrow down once, and select the lightning tag. You’ll see this in the following examples.

Grouping types of tags

I’d like to give a shout-out to the ‘Tags Revisited’ episode of Nested Folders, which precipitated much of how I think about my tags.

After listening to that episode, I added several ‘dummy tags’ into my tag list, with names like ‘———STATUS————’. I don’t use these for tagging, but they add a handy visual separation between the below types of tags without adding complexity to the tag hierarchy itself.

I’ve found that this helps me to consider the purpose of a tag, and to group tags in a logical way.

‘Action’ tags

‘Action’ tags

These tags describe the kind of action that a task entails. Broadly, I’m currently using two categories here: contact tags (email/message/call), and tags to describe the kinds of steps involved in many of my work projects. The latter are used to group by tag in my work-based ‘Today’ perspective.

‘Status’ tags

‘Status’ tags

There are two tags included here that indicate the status of a task:

  • The 🚥 (In Progress) tag is used for tasks I’m partway through. In general, I try to avoid using this tag by ensuring that tasks are completable in one sitting (or by using a repeating ‘work on’ tasks for bigger projects it doesn’t make sense to break up). But real life does happen, so I can apply this tag when I need to. This pulls the task into my ‘ASAP’ perspective so that I can get back to finishing it off as soon as possible.
  • My ‘⏳ Waiting’ tag is an active tag that I typically exclude from custom perspectives. By doing it this way, my ‘waiting’ list only shows me things I’m waiting for now, not things I may be waiting for in the future. This tag also has a ‘Post’ subtag to group things I’m expecting to come in the post, just to group these all together.

‘Constraint’ tags

‘Constraint’ tags

This group of tags represents the people, places or things that are required to do a task. These are, in general, fairly self-explanatory.

Some points of note:

  • My ‘🏠 Home’ tag group contains each of the rooms in my house. This allows me to use my ‘Defer Tag(s)’ Plug-In to ‘defer’ particular rooms (put them on hold temporarily) if I can’t access them for some reason (e.g. someone is sleeping).
  • My ‘🏠 Home’ tag and its subtags are automatically set to ‘On Hold’ by Shortcuts when I connect to CarPlay. When I disconnect from CarPlay, Shortcuts checks where I am and, if I’m at home, makes them active once more.
  • Many of the ‘🚘 Errands’ subtags (e.g. supermarket, hardware shop) are put on hold and made available on a schedule (again using my ‘Defer Tag(s)’ Plug-In plugin) to align with their opening hours, so that I don’t see them when they’re not relevant. The ‘Time’ tags are managed in the same way.

‘Optional condition’ tags

‘Optional condition’ tags

These tags group together types of tasks that might be related or that I might want to see together in particular contexts. I have at least one custom perspective that shows me active tasks from each of these tags so that I can pull them up quickly. Again, I think these are fairly self-explanatory.

‘Helper’ tags

‘Helper’ tags

This group comprises:

‘Scheduling’ tags

‘Scheduling’ tags

This group contains:

  • ⚠ Due Today’ – Keyboard Maestro uses my ‘Tag Tasks Due Today’ Plug-In to apply this tag automatically to any tasks that are due today, to make sure it is included in my ‘Due Soon’ perspective.
  • ⏰’ (ASAP) – This tag represents things I’d like to do soon and/or which are time-sensitive but aren’t necessarily due. This tag populates the ‘ASAP’ custom perspective on my dashboard.
  • ‘TOMM L2’ and ‘TOMM L3’ tags are used for housework and are inspired by The Organised Mom Method.
  • The two ’12WY’ and ‘UNE’ tag groups are for planning out future weeks of The 12-Week Year and my university studies. You may note that there are two tag groups for each of these: I manually move weeks to the first group when the week arrives as part of my weekly review. Tasks under the ‘Scheduled’ parent tag are filtered out of many of my perspectives, so these don’t clutter other views.
  • The ‘🌟’ (Starred) tag is rarely used, but, if I want to pull in a task rather than a full project, I can use this.
  • The ‘Scheduling’ group of tags is managed by my ‘Scheduling Plug-In’ and represent the planned ‘do dates’ for tasks.

Managing all these tags

As outlined in my recent post on custom perspectives, I have a ‘Check Tags’ perspective that I use to check that all of my tasks have been tagged appropriately.

Once I’m satisfied that all tags have been added I use a keyboard shortcut combined with a simple action to apply a blank tag (‘⠀’) to the tasks. This denotes to me that the tags are complete and removes the tasks from this perspective.

I also use my ‘Reorder Tags’ plug-in to keep my tasks ordered consistently.

And that’s a wrap on my excessive number of OmniFocus tags. Coming next: a look at my project list.

]]>
https://kaitlinsalzke.com/workflow/an-abundance-of-omnifocus-tags/feed/ 3 948