Learn how to use OmniFocus with Getting Things Done to, well get things done!Learn more about OmniFocus at more aboou. While OmniFocus doesn’t offer any direct integration with the Windows platform, and we don’t have any plans to create a client for Windows, many of our Windows customers use our Omni Sync Server’s Mail Drop service to loop their PC into their OmniFocus workflow.

Is your OmniFocus Inbox overflowing with tasks, random thoughts, ideas, and more? Learn how to use Drafts to take the pressure off of your OmniFocus inbox and to store project support materials, templates, and more.

While it may feel good to dump your thoughts into the OmniFocus inbox, you may soon discover that you quickly end up with an unmanageable OmniFocus inbox where critical actions get lost in the noise. An alternate strategy is to capture into the Drafts app (Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch) and use Drafts actions to quickly and easily transform and redirect what you’ve captured.

Drafts can also be a great complement to OmniFocus when it’s time to get down to work. You can store project templates in Drafts and easily transform them into projects. Drafts can also be an excellent place to store your project support material. And it’s quick and easy to link what you’ve stored in Drafts to the relevant projects and actions in OmniFocus.

Drafts: “Where Text Starts”

When you launch Drafts, you’re presented with a blank note and can type (or, if you have an iPad with an Apple Pencil, Scribble) whatever’s on your mind — whether it’s an interesting idea you had while out walking the dog or a promise that you just made to a client. You simply capture what has your attention into Drafts’ inbox, without worrying about where this information belongs and what (if any) action needs to be taken.

Your Drafts inbox may contain information or tasks that are time-sensitive, so it’s a good idea to regularly “clarify” (in Getting Things Done terms) what you’ve captured in Drafts. This process includes determining whether what you’ve captured is actionable, or if it’s something that you’ll choose to keep for future reference. Actionable captures can be transformed into actionable tasks and sent off to OmniFocus. Things that aren’t immediately actionable, but still potentially have future value (e.g. the great idea that you had in the shower) can be sent off to the appropriate repository for future review, or even tagged and archived in Drafts itself.

Using Omnifocus For Gtd

The real magic of Drafts is its support for actions. In a nutshell, actions allow you to quickly and conveniently process your Drafts. For example, one action might transform a Draft into an OmniFocus action and another might send it off to your idea repository in DEVONthink. Drafts comes pre-installed with a variety of actions. And you’ll find many more in the Drafts Directory. If you have the Drafts Pro upgrade you can modify actions written by others and create your own from scratch.

Drafts: Free & Pro Subscription

There’s a free tier of Drafts that allows you to create, edit, and sync drafts and make use of all of the actions in the Drafts Directory. Drafts Pro is an optional subscription-based upgrade that, among other things, lets you create and edit actions, organize your drafts into workspaces, and make use of widgets.

Much of what you’ll learn in this session can be accomplished using the free version of Drafts. Though, we’ll also show some of the features that are exclusive to Drafts Pro to give you a taste of what’s available if you choose to upgrade.

Using Omnifocus With Outlook

Everyone is welcome. No previous Drafts experience is required.

You’re very welcome to attend, even if you’re new to Drafts. This session includes an overview of the Drafts app for Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, highlighting how it’s a natural complement to OmniFocus.

Session Overview

Join this interactive session and learn:

• When and why it makes more sense to capture into Drafts instead of OmniFocus.

• A variety of ways to use existing Drafts actions to transform drafts into OmniFocus actions.

• How to use Drafts to store project support materials, and when it makes sense to use tags and workspaces (Drafts Pro).

• How to create OmniFocus projects in Drafts using the TaskPaper syntax.

• How to create and make use of OmniFocus project templates that are stored in Drafts.

• A quick and convenient way to capture on the Apple Watch using Drafts.

• How to create Shortcuts (iPhone/iPad) that automate the creations of drafts that are linked to new OmniFocus actions.

• How to link Drafts and OmniFocus using Hook (Mac).

• And more…

Open to All Learn OmniFocus Members

If you're already a member of Learn OmniFocus, visit the event page to learn more and to register. Please note that space is limited to 100 participants.

Using Omnifocus For Writing

Let’s say you need to return a book to the library by Saturday, May 1. If possible, you’d like to return it a few days early while you’re out running errands. Simple, right?

Most task managers can’t handle this. They only have one way to schedule the task: set a due date on it. But which date do you put down? It’s due on May 1—that’s when you’re going to have consequences if you don’t get it done. But you want to do it on Wednesday, April 28.

Most apps can’t handle this simple scenario. You have one field. You need to know the due date to plan properly. You can’t sometimes use that field to schedule tasks or you will never trust your system again.

My two favorite task managers handle this just fine: OmniFocus and my Franklin planner. OmniFocus has a defer date which lets you schedule tasks for a specific date, keeping the due date and the do-it date separate. This is a good start, but it’s limited.

How do you schedule a task for the week of May 24? Or 2021Q4? Or sometime next April (April 2022)?

Here’s how to configure OmniFocus to schedule tasks as powerfully and flexibly as a Franklin Planner.

How paper scheduling worked

A Franklin planner natively supports scheduling tasks in the following temporal contexts:

• Daily task lists. This is the bread and butter of time management. To schedule something for April 28, just turn to the page for Wednesday, April 28, and write it down. You can do this as far in advance as your current refill goes.
• Weekly Compass. You could schedule big rocks for sharpening your saw and achieving your goals by putting them on your weekly compass. Then, someday? that week, you transferred the task to your daily task list. (This had the extra benefit of keeping your big rocks highly prominent.)
• Master Task List. During your monthly planning, you created a list of tasks you wanted or needed to do this month. Need to do something next month? In three months? Write it on that month’s Master Task List.

There was also space to jot down a few tasks further out, usually 2–3 years in advance, but these were the three most commonly used.

Out of the box, OmniFocus supports the Daily Task List. The Forecast view is a great view for seeing what tasks you have scheduled for specific days. What it lacks, however, is a way to schedule tasks for “the week of May 24”, “May 2021”, or “2021Q3”.

Setting up OmniFocus

OmniFocus usually uses the Context field to track the resource—the person, place, or thing—you need to accomplish the task. The more important resource to schedule, however, is your time.

Until it’s time to do the task, no other resource matters.Colter Reed

If we try to use the defer date to schedule tasks for a week, or a month, or a quarter, it’s just as confusing as using the due date as a do-it date. We’ll run the same risk of confusing ourselves and dropping the ball. (I’ve tried it.)

Instead, let’s use the Context field to plan when we’re going to perform a task. Here are the temporal contexts you’ll want to set up:

• Today
• Tomorrow
• This Week
• Monday
• Tuesday
• Wednesday
• Thursday
• Friday
• Saturday
• Sunday
• This Weekend
• Next Week
• This Month
• Next Month
• 06-June
• 07-July
• 08-August
• 09-September
• 10-October
• 11-November
• 12-December
• 01-January
• 02-February
• 03-March
• 04-April
• 05-May
• This Quarter
• Next Quarter
• Q4–2021
• Q1–2022
• Q2–2022
• Q3–2022
• This Year
• Next Year
• Someday

Only Today is Active. Change the status of the others to On Hold. (Create them first, then select them all and change the status en masse.) Tasks assigned to those contexts aren’t actionable yet.

Note that if it’s currently April, the current month is This Month and May is Next Month. This is why 04-April and 05-May go at the bottom of the list. They represent next April and May—a year from now.

Get Some Perspective

You can now select Contexts from the sidebar (or Perspectives > Contexts from the menu) and see the tasks you have scheduled for Today, This Week, and This Month, but OmniFocus Pro lets you create custom perspectives. We’re going to make custom perspectives for the Daily Task List and Weekly Compass that are a little more powerful than that.

If you star these perspectives in the Perspectives window (Perspectives > Show Perspectives), they’ll appear in the sidebar on macOS. On iOS, you can rearrange them to put them closer to the top for convenient access.

Daily Task List

You’re going to spend most of your time executing from the Daily Task List. I call this simply “Today” because it fits in the sidebar better. (It also reminds me these are my tasks for today so I don’t add incoming tasks to it by default.)

• Group actions by: Flagged.
• Sort actions by: Due.
• Filter by availability: Available
• Filter contexts: Active

This groups your flagged tasks at the top. These are your big rocks—your A tasks. They go at the top. (If you want to get a full A1, A2, A3 effect, you can.)

Weekly Compass

It’s helpful to keep an eye on the critical tasks for the week, not just for today. Your weekly compass can guide you through the morass of the week.

• Group actions by: Project
• Sort actions by: Project
• Filter by Status: Flagged
• Filter by Availability: Remaining
• Filter contexts: Remaining
• Sidebar Selection: Today, Tomorrow, This Week

Using Omnifocus For Gtd

When planning your week, flag the tasks that go on your weekly compass. When planning your day, start here. Fill your day with big rocks before the gravel starts to come in.

The key is not to prioritize your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.Stephen R. Covey

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all the gravel that pours in. When you focus on when you’re going to do things instead of the person, place, or tool you’ll need, you can keep your head above the fray. You can see what you already have on your plate. Instead of being buried by one more commitment, you will have the courage and clarity to decline or defer incoming requests.

This setup gives you a more powerful foundation for scheduling tasks in OmniFocus. It really does feel like you’re flipping forward and writing down a task for three months from now without assigning an arbitrary date. Let “July 1” mean July 1. Assign a task to 07-July and when the time comes, you’ll see it again, schedule it for the right day, and get it done.

Question: What tasks do you need to schedule months in advance? Share your thoughts in the comments, on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

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