Structure your day, combining the notetaking and task management experiences.

I love having a structured day, and using my favourite apps, OmniFocus and Agenda, coupled with Shortcuts, I have been able to establish that structure in a way that I'm excited to share.

These Shortcuts serve to enable a digital Bullet Journal system, where ideas, information, and tasks can be easily captured and put together, with an aim to making future task management easy by using OmniFocus' powerful organization and integration with Agenda to surface tasks of importance.

Author's note: This post will serve as the definitive home for this set of Shortcuts, and will be updated as versions change.

Agenda Daily Journal Builder

This Shortcut, for use with the Agenda app, creates a new note titled as EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. Saturday September 3, 2022) in the project of your choosing (as named with a text action, filled out as an import question for this Shortcut).

The note contains a list of all-day events from your calendar under the heading Today, as well as a list of timed calendar events under the heading of Events.

Next to each event is an arrow which, when clicked, creates a new note (as named with a text action and also filled out as an import question for this Shortcut) linked to that calendar event and pre-populated with that event’s name, location, organizer, and attendees (taken from the calendar). This makes it easy to generate relevant notes for the day. All calendar items in the note are preceded by a designated emoji.

Next, under the heading of Tasks is a checkmark list of tasks from OmniFocus that are either due today or overdue (designated by the emoji 🚨) or flagged (designated by 🔶). Each item is is followed by links to view or complete the OmniFocus task (using OmniAutomation). The latter requires security settings in OmniFocus to allow external scripts, which you can get help with on the Omni Automation site.

Lastly, a horizontal rule is added with a heading of Rapid log, where logging of notes for the day can be added as they occur (which is supported by the Rapid log Shortcut below).

Changelog

1.0: Initial version.
1.1: Added fixes for URL encoding and link quality.
1.2: Changed OmniFocus task presentation: now title of task is no longer linked, but is followed by links to view in OF or complete the OF task (using OmniAutomation). Renamed Shortcut.

Agenda Rapid Log

This Shortcut, for use with the Agenda Daily Journal Builder Shortcut above, appends provided input to the note titled with today's date EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. Saturday September 3, 2022), working in cooperation with OmniFocus for task capture.

The Shortcut asks for input, and multiple lines of input can be provided. Lines of text are each added as bullet list items to the Agenda Daily Journal, each with a timestamp to represent when they were entered.

If a line of inputted text begins with two spaces, it will be treated as a subbullet to the line above it, and so will be indented and will not include the timestamp.

If a line of inputted text begins with a dash and a space - , it is given special treatment and treated as a task. in this case:

• It will be created as an OmniFocus Task (in the Inbox, unless otherwise specified, more below)
• It will be shown as a checklist item in the Agenda note instead of a bullet list item
• The Agenda checklist item’s text will be followed by links to view or complete the OmniFocus task

Additionally, for these task items, text can be entered inline to add treatment to the task created:

• Adding @flagged in this line will flag the task created in OmniFocus, and indicate the checklist item in Agenda with an orange diamond emoji (the actual @flagged text will not be included in either the Agenda text or OmniFocus task title)
• Adding tags inline as #tag1 #tag2 (no spaces) will add those tags to the OmniFocus task created (this text will not be reflected in Agenda)
• Adding a project name as +(project name) will add the task to the first matched project name in OmniFocus
• Adding // (space slash slash space) as a delimiter, followed by content, will place the content following the slashes in the notes of the generated OmniFocus task (and omit them from the Agenda text)

In fact, all supported Taskpaper format parameters can be added to a task's line.

Read about TaskPaper notation you can include →

To make this easiest to use for journaling through the day and capture, I recommend setting it to a hotkey on Mac and to be triggered by Back Tap on an iPhone.

Changelog

1.0: Initial version
1.1: Added comments for OF task with //
1.11: Fix for undesired repeated use of task comments
1.2: Added subbulleting
1.3: Changed tag identification to require preceding space for hash mark (so that Agenda tags can be added with \#), maintaining only the OmniFocus version (no longer building for Reminders)
1.4: Added OmniAutomation links for viewing/completing OmniFocus tasks

Agenda Email Clipper

This Mac-only Shortcut (because of the need for AppleScript and iOS' lack of Shortcuts support for Mail), for use with the Agenda app and my Agenda Daily Journal Builder Shortcut, appends provided input to the note titled with today's date EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. Saturday September 3, 2022), along with the currently selected email.

This Shortcut works very much like my Agenda Rapid Log Shortcut, except that it captures the currently selected email. That email will then be appended to anything entered in the Rapid Log, referred to by a reference that is asked for following the entry of Rapid Log content, linked back to the actual email itself.

The Shortcut will then (optionally) archive the selected email (using the sending of keystroke ^ + ⌘ + a), and then allow choice as to which app to return to (Mail, Agenda, or OmniFocus).

The use case here is fast inbox processing, and this Shortcut is best used when invoked by a keyboard shortcut. Note that this Shortcut here offers all the same syntax support as the Agenda Rapid Log, meaning that tasks can be generated in OmniFocus (which also contain the link to the referenced email), tagged and noted accordingly.

Changelog

1.0: Initial version
1.1: Handled error for running on non-Mac devices, added email subject capture, added choice for app to return to at end
1.2: Added OmniAutomation links for viewing/completing OmniFocus tasks

Agenda Safari Clipper

This Shortcut, for use with the Agenda app and my Agenda Daily Journal Builder Shortcut, appends provided input to the note titled with today's date EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. Saturday September 3, 2022), along with the currently selected email.

This Shortcut works very much like my Agenda Email Clipper Shortcut, except that it captures the currently selected Safari tab (Mac only) or the Safari page shared to it via the Share Sheet (all platforms). That page will then be appended and linked to alongside anything entered in the Rapid Log.

Note that this Shortcut here offers all the same syntax support as the Rapid Log, meaning that tasks can be generated in OmniFocus (which also contain the link to the referenced email), tagged and noted accordingly.

Changelog

1.0: Initial version
1.1: Added Rapid Log updates, OmniAutomation links for viewing/completing OmniFocus tasks

I got clued in to this tweet by the wonderful Federico Viticci through the latest Shortcuts newsletter from the equally wonderful Matthew Cassinelli and was enthralled by the possibility of grabbing an email's URL to refer to it from outside of Mail.app.

Because I get a lot of email, it is often the source of knowledge, wisdom, and tasks, and so being able to refer to emails in other contexts (say, from tasks in OmniFocus or rapid-logged journaling in Agenda) is really valuable. So I set to work to make a Shortcut to manage just this.

I am generally opposed to AppleScript, JavaScript, or AnyScriptAtAll, simply because I'm not a developer, and I find these things too hard. Shortcuts is my jam. But until Mail gets Shortcuts support or a Share Sheet or something (come on, you cowards), I ran towards the danger a bit here.

This Mac-only Shortcut (because AppleScript) is for use with the Agenda app and my Agenda Daily Log Shortcut. It appends provided input to an Agenda note titled as EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. Saturday September 3, 2022), along with the currently selected email.

This Shortcut works very much like my Rapid Log Shortcut, except that it captures the currently selected email. That email will then be appended to anything entered in the Rapid Log, referred to by a reference that is asked for following the entry of Rapid Log content, linked back to the actual email itself.

The Shortcut will then archive the selected email (using the sending of keystroke ^ + ⌘ + a), bringing you back in to the Mail app, so that you can go on your merry way and Rapid Clip the next one (or hopefully just delete all the email).

The use case here is fast inbox processing, and this Shortcut is best used when invoked by a keyboard shortcut (there are too many kinds of shortcuts). Note that this Shortcut (capital S Shortcut) here offers all the same syntax support as the Rapid Logger, meaning that tasks can be generated in OmniFocus (which also contain the link to the referenced email), tagged and noted accordingly.

Update 07/25: Improved URL encoding, link handling, and some other light refinements. Hope you love it!

Since I shared an OmniFocus variant of my Rapid Logger Shortcut, I wanted to also share such a variant of my Agenda Daily Log Shortcut, because that only seems right.

What more is there to say, really?

Update 07/19: Now with OmniFocus task notes

Update 07/20: Fixed unintentionally re-used task note

I shared my Rapid Log Shortcut for Agenda the other day, and it serves its purpose, but I am an OmniFocus user, and so really, my rapid logged tasks need to land there. As such, I have been fine-tuning my Shortcut for use with it, and with some bonus features.

I won't rehash too much about what I already posted, but this Shortcut:

• Asks for input
• Takes input, line by line, and appends it to a Daily Agenda Log
• If the line of input starts with - (a dash and a space):
  • The appended line in Agenda becomes a checklist item instead of a bullet
  • A task is created in the OmniFocus inbox with that line's name
  • That appended Agenda line is linked to the task created in the OmniFocus

Here's what is bonus cool, though:

• The task is created in OmniFocus using TaskPaper addition
  • This means your task could include something like @due(tom) to show that it is due tomorrow, and the OmniFocus task created will honour it
  • ... but that content is stripped from the text appended to Agenda for elegance
  • @flagged is the exception, because if that is added, the Agenda line will be prefaced with a 🔶 to indicate the flagged state
• You can include tags inline as #tag1 and #tag2 (no spaces), and they will be honoured by OmniFocus
  • The Shortcut parses those in to TaskPaper format @tags(tag1, tag2) accordingly
  • You can write tags inline in TaskPaper format too, of course
  • None of that content is in the Agenda line appended (again, elegance)
• You can also include +(Project Name) inline
  • This will become the project to which the task is added (instead of the Inbox)
  • This is a search of Projects in OmniFocus, and the first match returned, so use clever keywords
  • Spaces are allowed for multi-word names/searches
  • The use of a + here is a nod to todo.txt, which used + as the signifier for projects
    • In case anyone cared?
  • Still, elegance
• Lastly, you can use // as a notes delimiter (that's a space, two slashes, and a space)
  • Everything after that delimiter will be added to the notes field of OmniFocus
  • This content will be ignored in Agenda (assumed that this is in service of noting the task, not the journal)

Read about TaskPaper notation you can include →

There is no enforced order here, so one could totally thoughtstream the entry (which I do). For example:

- Call Marie about the budget #Urgent @flagged +(budget presentation) @due(fri) #Calls // The budget presentation is on our shared folder

Metadata does not need to be entered in a particular order.

I find that by rapid logging this way, I capture my commitments in OmniFocus, but I also diary that capture in Agenda, and also give myself the freedom to capture non-actionable things I have discovered or know.

I'd love to hear what you think!

I recently had the enormous pleasure of being able to return to Learn OmniFocus, joining Tim Stringer to share some moves about using iOS Shortcuts with OmniFocus . We also went through ways to use this to customize Home Screens with widgets, with particular thanks to great apps that augment Shortcuts capabilities:

• Charty
• WidgetPack
• ToolBox Pro

Tim has made a sample version of the video freely available to all, so I've added it here below, and is sharing the Shortcuts I built as part of his page highlighting this video/event.

Now in OmniFocus: Opens the Morning, Afternoon, Evening, or Weekend perspective in OmniFocus based on the day of the week and the time of day.

Now in OmniFocus Widget: An adaptation of the Now in OmniFocus Shortcut that displays tasks in a Widget, with some help from WidgetPack.

OmniFocus Charty Ring: This Shortcut makes use of Charty to display a graphical representation of your daily progress.

Add to OF List: Allows you to add a task, complete with notes, to a predefined list (project) in OmniFocus. Using this Shortcut eliminates the overhead of manually adding actions to projects and promotes consistency. This Shortcut leverages Toolbox Pro to create an attractive and functional menu.

Learn OmniFocus subscribers get a full-length video with more detail and context. If you're an OmniFocus user and haven't yet checked out the Learn OmniFocus resources, I highly recommend it.

Update: The links for the Get To It and Dashboard widgets have been updated with fixes (addressed an error if no matching OF tasks in Get To It and changed iconography alignment for calendar events in Dashboard). Enjoy!

Home Screen fever calmed down a bit as iOS 14 wove its way in to my every day. I had settled in to my routines and was living my best widget life.

And then Charty's new beta hit. And I reimagined everything.

With the ability to make ring charts, I pictured Charty as my path to gamifying action. I've written in the past about using Charty data to list counts of OmniFocus actions, but now I can count down.

After playing with the colours of Charty and placing it in the middle of my Home Screen, I thought, "Huh. That screen looks like part of an app." So I opened up WidgetPack and worked more on creating a header widget to lead my screen with, and a revamped widget with OmniFocus actions.

I figured if I can visualize and list my actions, what else could I do? I needed ways to not just see things, but an interface to do things. That led me to adding buttons to the header widget, and then more buttons to run the Shortcuts to refresh the data of these widgets.

Saddened that I couldn't have a calendar widget that suited my needs and aesthetic, I started imagining a second screen that would show upcoming events, as well as counts of and access to more things.

I'm really happy with the result, both in form and in function.

To break it all down, the rest of this post will go widget by widget, sharing just how each is built and what all each does, and giving you the tools to do this, too. Hopefully, this can help you either customize a similar experience, or just plain implement what I've made. Enjoy!

Overall

This was pretty purpose built for me, so substitutions and edits of what I share here may/will be needed. The apps I use to make the widgets are:

• Charty (requiring the TestFlight beta of 1.4)
• WidgetPack
• Toolbox Pro
• OmniFocus
• Drafts
• Agenda

I'll also note that my intent, like I said, was for this screen to feel like an app. As such, I employed a black wallpaper and designed the widgets as white on black. A white Home Screen, even with the intent to feel app-like just felt like too much.

Header Widget

Obviously, this WidgetPack widget shares the day and date, which I had originally pegged WidgetSmith to do, but I wanted to add functions, which is what those four circles are:

• Add new item to OmniFocus
• Start new draft in Drafts
• Refresh the OmniFocus Get To It widget below
• Refresh the Charty chart

To make sure it's current, the Shortcut has an automation to run every day at 00:00, which I highly recommend.

I use a Toolbox Pro action here to return home at the end of the flow (this is true for each of these Shortcuts, actually), just so that if I run it, I end up back at it, but this is optional (though you should still support Toolbox Pro for many reasons).

Charty Omni Rings Widget

This is the crown jewel of the design, and creates three rings with Charty to show progress based on tasks in OmniFocus:

• [tasks completed today with a due date before 11:59pm] / ([available tasks today with a due date before 11:59pm] + [tasks completed today with a due date before 11:59pm])
• [flagged tasks completed today] / ([available flagged tasks] + [flagged tasks completed today])
• [forecast-tagged tasks completed today] / ([available forecast-tagged tasks] + [forecast-tagged tasks completed today])

This is a great visual of my day and its state. One gotcha, though, is that this is a beta, and so doesn't handle zero values elegantly yet. For example, if you have zero flagged tasks, it substitues 100 for the denominator and reports 0/100 complete. I think I'd like to see a closed ring for 0/0 done, but we'll see how this develops.

The Shortcut does require a particular colour scheme, and I've linked to it below.

For the widget, I chose to set the left background to 000000 for both light and dark, and the right to 0F0F10. I turn off the title and legend, and the chart takes care of the rest.

To keep the chart current, one might want an automation set to run the Shortcut on particular intervals or events. I tried doing it each time OmniFocus is closed, but I trigger many Shortcuts from OmniFocus tasks (as URL schemes), and found that exiting OF to run one Shortcut but automation trying to run another produced less desirable effects.

OmniFocus Get To It Widget

This was very much based on my previous WidgetPack widget work for OmniFocus, but is optimized for number of actions, and I think the design is nicer, too.

Like the Charty widget above it, this grabs available actions that are either due, flagged, or forecast-tagged, but then colours the checkbox indicator for each accordingly to match the Charty colour scheme.

Each action in the widget links to its OmniFocus task, and if there are more tasks that can be shown, the "and x more" line links to a particular perspective.

Unlike other iterations, I specifically designed this widget in these colours, or responding to light/dark mode. I have an aesthetic I wanted, and so that's baked in, but it would be possible to edit this otherwise.

Again, an automation to keep this up to date isn't a bad idea, but of course, the Header Widget has a button to refresh it.

Dashboard Widget

I fiddled with this for an awfully long time, but the genesis of this was thinking that if I can count some things with the Charty chart, what else might I count?

As set up (please edit to your needs!), this WidgetPack widget shows:

• Number of Inbox items in OmniFocus (and links to the OmniFocus Inbox)
• Number of available OmniFocus actions tagged with my Waiting tag (and links to my Waiting Perspective)
• Number of available OmniFocus actions tagged with a People tag (and links to my People Perspective)
• Number of drafts in my Drafts Inbox (and links to the search of my Inbox in Drafts)

After being able to see those counts. I thought about the buttons I did for the Header widget, and figured this was a good way for me to add more functionality. The buttons:

• Run my Today Shortcut (that links to today's journal entry in Agenda)
• Run my Rapid Log Shortcut (part of my Agenda journaling system)
• Run my List Manager Shortcut (I'll share this another day)
• Run my Daily Journal Shortcut (again, my Agenda-based system)
• Run the Dashboard Shortcut (to refresh the widget's contents)
• Run the Charty Omni Week Widget (to refresh the chart below)

Phew.

Lastly, I struggled with the best way to see calendar events. I don't like the design of the stock Calendar widget, and it can't be forced in to dark mode to match the rest, so what the heck, I made my own.

Events are shown for the calendar day the Shortcut is run on, but only ones that have not yet occurred/started. As with OmniFocus tasks, each event in the widget links to its event in Calendar (by way of a separate Shortcut, since the Calendar doesn't have a lovely URL scheme of its own). If no events remain, the widget will say so (with a moon, because moons are relaxing).

Charty Omni Week Widget

I've shared this before, but I wanted to have this on my screen as a clear visual of my accomplishments. This Charty-based widget shows the count of OmniFocus tasks completed today and on the six days prior to today, giving me a sense of my wins.

As with the Charty Omni Rings widget, I set the background to 000000 and I hide the Y axis (relativism is more important to me than absolute numbers, YMMV).

Conclusion

And that really is all it! If you've read this far, holy smokes. Thank you. I hope there is material here that you find useful or can adapt to your needs.

I'd love to hear what you think, so feel free to drop a comment here.

Update: just fixed a minor bug in refresh for Flagged and Forecast-Tagged widgets - links updated below!

Thank you everyone for the tremendous support of my first cut at making widgets for OmniFocus with WidgetPack! I know I am finding them super helpful.

After spending some time using them, learning more about WidgetPack, and agonizing over design decisions (padding and spacing matters), I have made new versions of the widgets with better utility and visual appeal.

Here’s what’s new:

• any OF task displayed actually links to that task inside OF so that you could see its notes, edit it, mark it complete, drop it or whatever
• the design specifically only shows a maximum of four actions (this was brutal, but necessary to allow for space for longer task names and still look good)
• a count of relevant undisplayed tasks is shown at the bottom of the widget, linked to the relevant perspective (Forecast Today for the due and forecast-tagged widgets, and Flagged for the flagged widget)
• a colour-coordinated button has been added to each widget to drive right to adding a new task in OF (like quick entry, not automatically assuming a due date or flagged state)
• a colour-coordinated refresh button to run the shortcut that makes it to update widget contents
• dark mode support, so that the widget respects system state of dark mode
• as referred to above, optimized spacing, layout, and sizing of elements
• comments in the top section to enable anyone to (fairly easily?) customize the widget with choices for the accent colour, title, SF symbol, and link to open OF with

And the shortcuts are:

• Due
• Flagged
• Forecast-tagged

These have all really been oriented for large size widgets which I think makes sense, based on the amount of content. Running a shortcut here will create the widget in WidgetPack, so adding a WidgetPack widget to your screen and then editing it to point at the widget you’ve made will do the trick.

I’ll admit that the shortcuts take a bit of time to run, but I don’t know if it’s worth putting in a lot of work to try to optimize; I know the Omni Team is working hard on real native widgets that would be, I’m sure, much more efficient than these.

Hope you enjoy, please keep sharing feedback and thoughts!

Maybe I'm impatient, but I just love OmniFocus as my task management system, but am also finding my way of interacting with my phone deeply changed by iOS 14 and widgets.

I tweeted last week about this: Shortcuts (though that was iOS 13) and widgets let me get at expose functions and content of apps in ways that make me think less about the app itself, and more about the discrete and specific ways I benefit from them. Everything becomes a service.

I'm spending less time "in apps" and way more time just at my home screens. Do I care about what the weather app says in totality, or do I just need to know the temperature outside right now? Do I need to see my calendar, or do I just need to know what's up next and when? Do I need to see my task management system, or do I just need the list of things due today?

This shift is very powerful.

I was referred to WidgetPack, which reminds me a bit of Charty in its conceit: a set of iOS Shortcuts actions to capture, arrange, and format content in to a widget. Given that I love me my shortcuts, this was the solution I needed for bringing the value of widgets to the power of OmniFocus.

Here's my Home Screen:

The stack of large widgets require WidgetPack, and are built with these Shortcuts:

• Due Widget
• Flagged Widget
• Forecast-Tagged Widget

For bonus marks, each of these widgets links to OmniFocus perspectives when tapped: the Today Forecast view for Due and Tagged, and the Flagged perspective for Flagged. Naturally.

The small widget is powered by Charty, and I have written about it already.

Hope these are useful!

I am loving using the iOS 14 widgets to keep a clear eye on my day, and with Charty and its (beta) widgets and data views, I have been able to craft iOS Shortcuts that display really useful data on my homescreen.

I have two charts that I love, each drawing on my OmniFocus data to quickly display useful things:

1. OmniDay: this uses the data view to give me a list of counts of actions I need to be on top of. The Shortcut that generates this chart can be downloaded here.
   • 🚀 Action, a total of:
   • ⏰ Due actions available
   • 🎏 Flagged actions available
   • ⭐️ Forecast-tagged actions available
   • ☑️ Completed items today
2. OmniWeek: this graphs a chart of actions completed today (☆), and in the six previous days leading up to today. The Shortcut that generates this chart can be downloaded here.

With these charts generated, it’s a matter of adding the Charty widgets to a home screen. For bonus marks, I made a third Shortcut called “Refresh Charts”, which just runs the two shortcuts above. I added it as a widget in a stack “behind” the OmniDay data, ensuring I can always quickly update the views.

I hope someone finds this useful and enjoys! Would love to hear what folks think.

One of the features I wish OmniFocus had was the ability to add checklists. As an example, I need to go through a morning routine of four items every morning, but having four discrete actions in OmniFocus feels a little clutterful, and having a badge that reads 4 seems inappropriate.

There are other use cases, of course, where a number of steps represented by a single task makes sense to me:

• Do my weekly review
• Complete post-production on Nested Folders episode
• Make bread in the bread maker

Thanks to iOS Shortcuts, the amazing Toolbox Pro actions for it, and some internet research, I have come up with a solution that creates a single task in OmniFocus, a list in Reminders with the same name, and the steps laid out in that list, which is linked to from the note of the OmniFocus task.

It’s a little bit hacky, but I think this help me keep my OmniFocus actions focused (ha), while giving the discrete steps to my actions a safe home for reuse.

Interested to hear if others find this useful!

One of the things I wanted to make easier was how to build a new action in OmniFocus based on an existing action. If I’m in Forecast, for example, and am completing an action, maybe I want to make a new action in that project quickly and easily.

I made a Next Action Shortcut for exactly this. It works by sharing an action in OmniFocus to it, then asks for a name for the new action, and then adds an action named that to the shared action’s project. For bonus marks, it adds a note to the new action showing what action it was created from, a link to that action, and that action’s note.

Enjoy!

I really really benefit from the review of my projects and actions weekly, but I find it so hard to do. With constant ideas about things I could chase, or looking at that next project or back to one I was at already, I find myself wanting to bounce around the review more than follow it, and this doesn’t have the best effects.

To help myself stay on track for an OmniFocus review, I built myself this Guided Weekly Review Shortcut for iOS.

Best run with headphones 😎

On import, it will ask for the tag to use for actions added. On each run, it will ask for the folder(s) whose projects I want to review, then tell me, one by one, the name of a project followed by a prompt to speak back the next action. If what I say blank is nothing, it goes on to the next project, else it adds what I speak as an action to that project tagged with the tag I identified from import question (I made a tag called “From Review”, so that I can quickly group, review, update, and refine what I add during this process).

What I love about this is that I can throw my AirPods in, go for a walk, and conduct an effective review.

Optionally, I might add a display of actions in the project being reviewed, but my goal was to avoid having to look at the screen. I did add purposeful pauses, though (press stop to halt dictation, press okay to move on) so that I wouldn’t feel rushed to speak my action, and so that I could drive the pace of review and not systematize that.

Hope this is helpful to others - let me know what you think!

I’ve written before about a Boss Review Shortcut, a way to make it easier for me to prepare for meetings with my boss at work, but I have since expanded this to work with members of my team as well. I also had a great time discussing this with David Sparks and Rosemary Orchard on Automators episode 49.

This 1-1 Prep Email Shortcut presents a dictionary of people choices, allows me to pick, and then finds anything tagged with their name in OmniFocus to build an email to them around.

Taken further (but less easily shared with all of you here), this could be connected to a reusable Data Jar dictionary, like I’ve talked about in a previous post. A great way to ensure consistency in data, as well as to update existing Shortcuts quickly with new team members, and a huge time saver in exploring potential new Shortcuts.

Last year, I spent the time reading The Bullet Journal Method, by Ryder Carroll, and also wrote about digital bankruptcy with analog saving me.

While the principles of this are often a saving grace of augmented focus, I love the advantages of a digital system:

• I can search and refer back
• The right metadata surfaces the right things at the right time
• It is easily re-organized based on changing needs

Of course, aspects like metadata, information architectures, and infinite choice make digital systems complex and nuanced. I need something sustainable through simplicity, particularly to make sure I’m ready for change, like how Rosemary Orchard and I talked about on our Nested Folders podcast  (and, more recently, on Automators episode 49).

Thinking of this, I embarked on a journey to digitally bullet journal. After a few iterations, I came up with a list of interoperating tools, which I think will prove a very effective stack.

The platform consists of five pieces on iOS:

1. Agenda: This acts as the journal and reference system.
2. OmniFocus: This is for action management.
3. Daily Journal Shortcut: I've written about this shortcut before, but to recap, this Shortcut sets up a daily journal (that's why it's named that way) with today's weather, calendar appointments, and OmniFocus due, flagged, and forecast-tagged actions.
4. Rapid Logger Shortcut: This is the game-changer. When run, it asks for input, where I can Bullet Journal style add multiple items, each thing on a fresh line. Each line then gets appended to today's daily journal in Agenda, timestamped. If a line starts with a dash, it gets treated like an action, and so appears as a checklist item in the Agenda daily journal note, but also gets added to my OmniFocus inbox as an action. As a bonus, the text going in to OmniFocus is treated as TaskPaper, so I can add flags, tags, and dates accordingly, which is awesome, but that metadata is not included in the Agenda note, keeping that list clean and tidy.
5. Daily Wrap Shortcut: This is the icing on the cake. When run, this Shortcut helps me reflect on the day by asking guiding questions, the answers to which are then appended to the daily journal note in Agenda, along with a list of the tasks I completed today from OmniFocus.

These parts working together are helping to create structure in my life, but even better, it’s sustainable structure, because I can apply the simple notion of rapid-logging from Bullet Journaling combined with the complexities of a nuanced digital system.

Great side effect: I am more disciplined about what I log. A historical problem for me in my collection of actions is overuse of shorthand as a “bookmark” of thinking for later. That’s how I’ve ended up with items in my OmniFocus inbox like “Fifty-four”. I’m sure I knew what I was referring to when I wrote it down, but no idea later. With rapid logging, and thinking of things not just as actions or notes but as journaled facts for future reflection, my capturing is much more robust.

On the Breaking Perfectionist Blocks episode of Nested Folders, Rosemary Orchard and I spitballed an idea to quickly generate a random list of three OmniFocus actions meeting a specific criteria (in our case, a tag).

Here is an iOS Shortcut that accomplishes exactly that. Enjoy!

Processing my OmniFocus inbox is critical for me, because I capture like a maniac, but because I am also easily distractible, processing the inbox can become hard for me, not because any single thing there is tough to deal with, but because it can be hard for me to stick with something long enough to get it done before I’m looking at the next thing.

This can quickly lead to overwhelm, which Rosemary Orchard and I discussed on episode 17 of our Nested Folders podcast.

To combat this, I’ve developed a workflow that I am finding super helpful for myself:

1. Create a parallel project called Triage
2. Move all actions from the inbox to Triage
3. Use this perspective to process Triage:

Now, yes, I could use a sequential project to do this, but I like to be prescriptive about when I employ that, and there are times or moments when seeing the whole project is valuable (scanning the list) so one perspective to see just one thing at a time and then the plain project view (with all its actions being available, just in case) suits me very well.

I am (once again) in love with Drafts, and having all my text start there.

While I love the idea that Rosemary Orchard had about turning on the badge in Drafts to indicate inbox items, badges amp me up too much, and so I needed a less in-the-face method of making sure these draft Drafts don’t get lost.

I felt like the smoothest thing for me to do would be to have a way of scraping whatever all is in my Drafts inbox, and then indicating to me, in OmniFocus, that I have an open action about some text (otherwise it wouldn’t be in my Drafts inbox!).

So this is the Shortcut I built. I figured I should share, because this seems like something others might be able to use, too.

Enjoy, and if you have ideas about how this might be improved, I’d be interested to hear!

There was a question on the OmniGroup Discourse Forums the other day about seeing completed items in OmniFocus, but just the last two days' worth. While this can’t be done with Perspectives, it can be accomplished with the new Shortcuts integrations.

This Completed Items Shortcut creates a list of all OmniFocus items completed over the last two calendar days, sorted by completion time. While it just offers a Quick Look at that list, it could easily be modified to output text to the destination of your choice.

Thought I’d share, as I’m experimenting with journaling and logging my accomplishments. Enjoy!

In the past, I have written about my Agenda and OmniFocus workflow. Today, I’m excited to share an update to my Shortcut.

Now called the Agenda Meeting Wrap-Up, this Shortcut still does the same things:

• parses shared Markdown from Agenda to find both actions and completed actions
• provides the option to move those actions to an OmniFocus project for action management
• appends a link to the OmniFocus project in the shared Agenda note
• provides the option to email the contents of the note, with actions collected together, to meeting participants
• the email will pre-populate with recipients based on a lookup of the Agenda note to calendar events and getting a match's attendees (so it's good to use the Agenda "Link to Event" feature)

This corrects defects in the previous version of the Shortcut introduced by iOS 13 and other application changes. It also stops action content from landing on the clipboard.

Enjoy! I’d love to hear what you think and if this is helpful!

On the last several episodes of Nested Folders, Rosemary Orchard and I have discussed topics that directly relate to how projects are structured.

Now that Agenda supports both re-organization of sidebar items and the creation of projects via URL scheme (woohoo!), I have aligned my project structure between it and OmniFocus, allowing me to have consistent ways of reflecting reference and action material.

For my own absorption of what I’ve done and in hopes that it inspires ideas, I thought I’d share my folder structure here. I’d love to know what everyone thinks!

2020 30k

This folder houses a project for each of my 2020 goals (Horizon 3, or the 30,000 foot horizon in GTD speak), ensuring that I am regularly looking at, reflecting on, and creating actions about my goals and themes for the year. Having this folder at the top of the pile is also helpful to me in ensuring that I’m considering my themes in everything I decide to take on (or not).

Brand Makers

This folder holds projects at my work that are highly visible, highly important, and highly strategic. In other words, these are the projects that need particular attention, because they are the ones that I can use to elevate my brand and career.

Client Projects

Also for my work, these are projects my team has taken on in service of internal client needs. Most of these are production-oriented, as my team designs and builds intranet experiences.

Outcome Projects

Again, for my work, this is for projects that have definable outcomes but that didn’t come from clients. These projects tend to be enablement-oriented, perhaps around process design, consultation, or strategy development.

Properties

More projects for my work! These ones are projects in that they are containers for actions, but do not have outcomes. They are single action lists in OmniFocus, with each “project” representing a different web application, site, or property that my team supports.

Domains

The last of my professional project folders, this one again homes never ending “projects” that represent areas of focus at work (Horizon 2, or the 20,000 foot altitude in GTD speak). There is a list for each member of the team I support, and lists for administration, reporting, budget management, networking, etc.

HeyScottyJ

This folder has a mix of outcome and neverending projects related to this blog, the Nested Folders podcast, and several web sites I build and support. As this area of my life grows, I could see it breaking out into several folders over time, but for now, it can be contained in one, and I like seeing the totality of this aspect of my life when I look at projects there.

Personal

Relating to my personal life, these are outcome projects relating to my home, family, and self.

Areas

This is kind of the personal equivalent of Domains above, a group of never ending projects/single action lists that relate to the 20,000 foot level of my life. This would be lists for my wife, and each of my kids, home and household, car, finances, health, friends and family, and so on.

Checklists

This is for lists that have contain items more than actions. Some examples are lists of books to read, gifts to consider, things I might want to buy myself, foods and wines to try, and so on.

And that’s he breakdown of my folder structure! I like that it is flat, because I feel it is manageable enough that way, and helps me look across all my things easily.

I’m interested to hear if this resonates or inspires, and thank you for taking the time to read this through!

On episode 12 of the Nested Folders podcast, Actions vs. Reference, I mentioned a shortcut to create projects in both Agenda and OmniFocus. This is awesome, because it allows me to have complementary and align organizational structures for both action/task management and reference material.

Here is the proof of concept Shortcut, Project Maker, which creates a project in OmniFocus and task to review and add to the project (which links to Agenda), as well as a project in Agenda with a note that links back to OmniFocus.

Certainly, this could be expanded by tying in input from your workflow as the project, defining more tasks/note content, and specifying folders/categories for projects to be placed in.

How might you improve this Shortcut?

In an upcoming post, I will share my current folder/category structure as a way of documenting how I decide what projects go where. I’m looking forward to it!

I had a blast writing about Shortcuts with OmniFocus 3.4 last week, but based on reader Jason Clarke’s feedback, I think it would be good to round out my Daily Journal Shortcut with a bit more detail, as well as a second partner Shortcut that leverages it.

My Daily Agenda Journal Shortcut (based on the Daily Journal Shortcut I shared last week) connects OmniFocus data (due/overdue, flag and available, and Forecast-tagged and available actions) with calendar and weather data to create a note in Agenda.

What I love about using Agenda for this is that the way its x-callback-urls are constructed (making and opening notes based on titles), I can know the URL to open a given note before I even make it.

With that in mind, I also have a Today Shortcut, whose sole job is to open today’s entry in my daily journal in Agenda for referencing throughout the day. This is a great way to make sure I am maximizing the value of the journal entries.

Thanks to Jason for the feedback, and hope this extended version of the Shortcut is valuable for all!

It’s day five of my series of posts about the wonderful addition of Shortcuts automation in OmniFocus 3.4 for iOS, and I’ve saved the big one for last. Today’s Shortcut is something that is, for me, a really useful tool for creating an ongoing diary of my life.

This Daily Journal shortcut creates a rich text (from markdown) summary of the day, including:

• weather conditions and high/low temperatures
• OmniFocus actions due (or overdue) today
• OmniFocus actions which are flagged and available
• OmniFocus actions which are tagged with the forecast tag and available
• a list of calendar events
• a list of all-day calendar events

I have this outputting markdown and rich text to make this easily extensible for storing the output (I send everything to Agenda, but it could go to any variety of apps that can get content from Shortcuts.

I want to thank Alex Hay, author of the Toolbox Pro app with Shortcuts actions and the Snapshot Journal. His dictionary actions to replace weather conditions with the right emoji were what I used here, and the work he’s done is brilliant.

And that’s the series! I’m a huge fan of the work the OmniGroup has done to enable automation of OmniFocus and create more utility for its content, and have had a blast writing about and sharing some of the ways I’m using this. I’d love any and all feedback about these posts or how you’re using Shortcuts with OmniFocus!

Missed day one’s Shortcut? Check out the Boss Review here.

Missed day two’s Shortcut? Check out the Project Markdown Table here.

Missed day three’s Shortcut? Check out Today’s Actions here.

Missed day four’s Shortcut? Check out the Inbox Processor here.

It’s the penultimate post in this series of Shortcuts for OmniFocus! For day four, I’m serving up a bit of a turkey of a Shortcut.

I’m highly distractable, so even when I hide the panes of OmniFocus on my iPad, I still know they’re there. This is why I built the Inbox Processor shortcut.

This, one by one, serves me up my inbox items from OmniFocus so that I can process and organize them in to their proper spots.

The catch here is that Shortcuts can’t modify OmniFocus content, so this is making new actions out of inbox items. As such, I need to delete inbox items after I’ve gone through this, and I need to go through the whole thing or else risk losing where I was at.

Likely, the real utility of this one is limited, but I wanted to share it anyway because it feels like one of the more creative ones I’ve done, and it might spark ideas for others around how it could be modified.

Hope this is helpful, and that people can also find ways to expand it!

Missed day one’s Shortcut? Check out the Boss Review here.

Missed day two’s Shortcut? Check out the Project Markdown Table here.

Missed day three’s Shortcut? Check out Today’s Actions here.

Carrying on with Shortcuts sharing in support of OmniFocus 3.4, this one is a quick reference progress tracker.

The Today’s Actions Shortcut adds up due/overdue tasks for the day and reports back how many of them have been completed. It also demonstrates using multiple Find Items actions, and how their results can be counted and calculated.

This is a good one if you try to avoid notifications/badges, or for Siri help with if the screen with badge isn’t visible. Weirdly, though, I think the grammar variants were the hardest part of this.

This Shortcut helps me manage towards my bookends, as Rosemary Orchard and I discussed back on Nested Folders episode 3: Building Bookends by giving me a quick snapshot of where I’m at.

Hope this is helpful, and that people can also find ways to expand it!

Missed day one’s Shortcut? Check out the Boss Review here.

Missed day two’s Shortcut? Check out the Project Markdown Table here.

It’s day two of sharing Shortcuts that take advantage of the new OmniFocus 3.4 capabilities, and this is another one that helps me share the content with others that has historically been just in OmniFocus with others.

The Project Markdown Table Shortcut showcases how the Find Items action results can be retrieved on a per attribute basis. It takes these attributes for each action in a selected project and organizes them in to a markdown table for email sending to anyone.

Of course, that text could be shipped or shared in any kind of way, but this is what I use it for mostly.

Much like yesterday’s post, this helps me follow through with some of the things that Rosemary Orchard and I discussed on Nested Folders episode 7, How to Do Productivity with Others (Who May or May Not) by letting me use my system but also share its content.

I hope this is useful to everyone!

Missed day one’s Shortcut? Check it out here. Interested in seeing some other kinds of Shortcuts or have other Shortcuts you’d like to share? Would love your comments and feedback!

There’s a new release of OmniFocus in the world, and does it ever bring some powerhouse features over for dinner. With support for native dark mode, iPad multiple windows, and new context menus for quick actions, there’s a lot to enjoy.

The part that brings the most versatility, though, is the new expanded support of Shortcuts with Shortcut Actions. These enable everyone to be able to automate and expand what is possible with OmniFocus without having to know complex code.

To celebrate this, I wanted to share five Shortcuts I have made for use with OmniFocus 3.4, one each day over this week’s weekdays. Some will be useful right away, others might need to be customized a bit to really be useful to you, but I hope all can spark ideas about how all this new capability can be used.

Let’s get right in to day one, then!

The first Shortcut I wanted to share was also the first one I made, because I saw the immediate utility of being able to take OmniFocus data outside of OmniFocus itself.

With a shoutout to The Boss Review, an older post on my blog, here is a Shortcut I also call Boss Review that drafts an email to someone with a list of actions tagged with a particular tag. I can use this to prep my boss for our reviews by sharing a bullet list of all available actions tagged with her name.

This Shortcut is a pretty straightforward application of the Find Items action, which feels to me like the real hero of this release.

This helps me follow through with some of the things that Rosemary Orchard and I discussed on Nested Folders episode 7, How to Do Productivity with Others (Who May or May Not) by letting me use my system but also share its content.

I hope this is useful, and I’ll be back tomorrow to share a second shortcut!

Earlier this year, I had the great pleasure of working with Tim Stringer of Learn OmniFocus to present my workflows and OmniFocus set up.

It was an amazing experience, and I wanted to re-share it for everyone’s consumption. As always, I’d love to hear feedback, as I love learning from all the other contributors to Learn OmniFocus and the OmniFocus community writ large.

Note that the links I've used to Learn OmniFocus are affiliate links. My session was done before I was an affiliate, though, and I'd happily promote this either way. They're awesome and absolutely worth checking out.

Interested in hearing more?

I have partnered with the wonderful and talented Rosemary Orchard to co-produce the Nested Folders Podcast!

We share our thoughts on productivity topics, hope it's helpful to listeners, and would love everyone's feedback!

A weekly status review on projects with one’s boss tends to be part of having a job, and I was recently asked about how I use OmniFocus and Agenda for this process. It was a great question, because it made me think about my workflow so that I am optimizing for both:

1. Simplicity - having the right amount of detail and ease of execution
2. The audience - making sure my workflow makes it easy for my boss to consume the content I’m offering up

This isn’t super tricky, but it does require some thoughtfulness to make sure that I’m not optimizing for one at the expense of another.

The key ingredients here are my apps of choice:

• OmniFocus
• Agenda
• Calendar (I use the stock app)
• iOS Shortcuts

I’ve broken up my workflow into the following five steps, which I think get me to a positive place for overall outcomes:

1. Create the list of things in OmniFocus: I start with what I want to review by having a perspective in OmniFocus that includes specifically chosen projects:

2. I copy the projects to be discussed: Using my OF perspective, I copy the projects to discuss with my boss:

   [video width="750" height="1624" mp4="[heyscottyj.com/wp-conten...](https://heyscottyj.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/OF_select.mp4)"][/video]

    

3. Convert this OF list into a text list: I use this iOS Shortcut, into which I paste the copied OF into for conversion to a nice text list (copied to clipboard). It includes only project names, as I’d like the discussion to be what shares appropriate detail, and not the list itself. I just want this to be a stage-setting of topics.
4. Paste this new list as an agenda into the meeting calendar event: By putting this content in to our calendar meeting request, I can be assured that the content is in the most appropriate place for both of us to reference before and during our meeting.
5. Create a note in Agenda: I create a new note in Agenda and link to the meeting with my boss. This gives the note the appropriate time/date, a bit of a temporal audit trail, and sucks in the agenda (pun) that I put in the calendar request as a framework for me to take notes against.
6. We hold the meeting: I refer to my OF perspective with the projects worth talking about, using those projects’ actions as context (ha) for the discussion. I make notes of what we talk about in the Agenda note, and identify follow-up actions in the note as checklist items.
7. I process the meeting: Running my favourite iOS Shortcut, I process the notes I took into OF as actions to follow up on and into an email to my boss so that we have a shared understanding of everything discussed. It also gives my boss an open platform to correct anything I might have missed or misunderstood.
8. I do the actions I said I would: Because commitments.

We’re well in to January, but it’s still resolution season, right?

Every year, around this time, I resolve to lose the weight I’ve gained since my twins were born, and every year I… don’t. This year, things are different.

Sure, it’s easier to focus on me now that the twins are almost ten and the little guy will turn five in the spring. Really, though, the eight years of not accomplishing this goal means experience has taught me some things about goal setting:

1. Habits are hard and take time
2. Goals are ideas, not actions
3. Success can’t be measured annually

So what was holding me back?

Action. Like, real planned action.

I have realized that an annual goal or ambition is too vague. It doesn’t mean anything here and now. It suggests I could get to it more next week. Or next month. Or whatever, I’m hungry.

My answer: fifty-two projects. Not one epic year-long project to attack this monolithic goal, but a project for every week.

Why? Because action.

Thinking of what I want to be at this year’s end might be great visualization, but it doesn’t tell me what I should be doing right now. A week long project, however, does, especially if each week has its own success criteria.

Seven days isn’t that far out, and having fifty-two goals instead of one forces me to think about what I can really do, and what choices and plans I can make to be successful.

Every week spells a new project in OmniFocus (but any task management system will work, if it works for you). I don’t make a repeating project, because I need my actions to be purpose built for and achievable in a specific week. If I have more meetings or am away or the weather is going to suck, I have to design actions that will fit.

The only repeating action is the weigh-in at the end of the week, and the updating of a spreadsheet to measure the overall.

The spreadsheet identifies:

• my starting weight
• my goal weight for the week
• my actual weight at week’s end
• a five star rating for the previous week’s activities I might typically do
• a column for notes looking back at the week to track lessons learned and insights

In action, I’m doing more than I’ve ever done before, so I expect the results will follow as I keep at it. If nothing else, I’m measuring and learning all the way.

Need to do some last minute holiday shopping? I know I do. Thankfully, I have a workflow for how I approach gift giving, powered by OmniFocus.

I wrote earlier about how I use OmniFocus for organizing my holiday experience, but in response to a reader question, I thought I’d expand on my gift management workflow.

I know many aren’t fans of keeping checklists or “non-tasks” in OmniFocus, but for me, I find a lot of these sorts of things become actionable over time, so having such things stored in OmniFocus is valuable.

Examples of these lists are:

• Gifts
• Things (like gifts, but for me)
• Books to Read
• Food and Drink to Try

Throughout the year, I collect ideas in these lists as actions, usually tagged Someday/Maybe (which puts them on hold) and with the name of the intended recipient. For bonus marks, I might also add a note of where/why I heard of this as well as where to find it. For books in particular, I like to also note who recommended it (so that I can thank or blame them later).

This creates a great inventory of ideas. As events come up (birthdays or holidays), I can look at those lists, remove the Someday/Maybe tag, and assign the actions to a new project that it could belong to (such as “Christmas Shopping” or “Wife’s Birthday”).

As I move these actions, I can add “Buy” to the action’s name, and then tag it with an Errand tag (with location perhaps). If an online purchase, I can use the same action to track the order and shipment, too (with a Waiting For tag and a link to the shipment tracking).

Having a bank of potentially actionable ideas that I can then turn in to actions in the appropriate project has been a boon to my gift-giving game. What do you use to track ideas and purchases?

In a previous post, I wrote about my iOS Shortcut that connects Agenda to OmniFocus. With thanks to everyone for their questions, I wanted to follow up with some additional details around how I use the Shortcut and what my workflow is like.

This is all surrounding the fact that I attend a lot of meetings, so the goals here are to:

1. set myself up to take good meeting notes
2. store these notes for later reference
3. peel out and handle the actions arising from the meeting
4. share all of the above with the other attendees

I’ll start off by making a new note in Agenda and linking it to the appropriate meeting in my calendar. This brings over text from the event that might be relevant, and also gives the note a temporal assignment (my favourite part of Agenda is how things get dated by when they happen, and not necessarily when they are created/edited).

During the meeting, I take notes as bullets, and identify actions as checklist items:

At the end of the meeting, I use the Share function to send the Markdown (this is a premium feature of Agenda) to my Process Meeting Notes iOS Shortcut.

This does a couple of things:

1. It creates a project in OmniFocus called “Complete Actions from ”, including each action in the note and an additional flagged action (Review these actions for contexts, due and defer dates, or other needs) to draw my attention to the project:

   

2. It starts an email to whomever I like, using the title of the note prefaced by “[NOTES]:” as the subject line. The body of the email is the notes but with action items (and completed actions) grouped under a heading:
   

   

Also, I meet all four of those goals with one note and one Shortcut. Not shabby.

It’s that magical time of year where I have to shovel my driveway four times in one weekend, but it’s so worthwhile, because I’m cozied up by the fire now while the outside is blanketed in beautiful snow that reflects the lights my neighbours have hung with care.

Also, there’s a bajillion things to do. How does one cope?

I thought that, for both my sanity and for the purposes of sharing, I’d break down my holiday construct in OmniFocus.

Now for our household, holidays means Christmas, but this kind of systemic thinking can, I’m sure, apply to any major holiday or event. I don’t mean to be exclusive if I refer to Christmas; I only refer to what I know.

For me, the first step is to break down my projects. I think it’s probably tempting to have a Christmas 2018 project, but I’ve found that to be inadequate - there’s just too many outcomes dancing in my head for one project to track. I have identified these projects for myself, and for each, I’ve included what that project tracks:

1. Christmas Decor for Home
   • Making room for seasonal decor and putting that out
   • Building/crafting new decor elements
   • Buying new decor elements
2. Christmas Dinner
   • Things to buy for hosting/serving
   • Turkey management (that’s a five day brine, yo)
   • Tracking Waiting On actions for pot luck participants
3. Christmas Gifts and Shopping
   • Leveraging my regular single action Gifts project
   • Things to buy and for whom
   • Actions to research ideas, prices, and vendors
   • Waiting For deliveries
4. Christmas Card
   • As we make our own, actions for photo shoot
   • Design and editing
   • Logistics

For better focus (ha) and organizing, I’ve got all of these projects lovingly nestled all snug in a custom perspective like so:

The actual path for these projects is living inside my Personal folder as, though I considered a Christmas folder, my folder structure is pretty sacred territory (read: I like to keep my number of folders to a minimum). Grouping together in a folder instead of using a perspective might be just what you need, though. I think the key is being able to see all these projects and actions thematically together.

Now, I am equipped and ready to face this season. All my actions are organized, and can use the regular Tags of my system to be presented to me in other appropriate lists (like Waiting On/For lists or To Buy lists or Errands lists).

All my actions. All many of them. Better get to work.

I’m a meetings guy. Largely not by choice, but a lot of my work day is meetings.

One of the biggest traps of meetings is that, unless they are very well facilitated (spoiler alert: many aren’t), it gets really easy for agreements or commitments to be made but then later lost or never acted on.

After all, saying stuff is easy.

I’ve found just the right solution to this that works for me, though, and so I wanted to write about it.

It was only a few months ago that I discovered Agenda which, after I’d spent a great deal of time looking for a solid note-taking/storing app, was a great relief.

Agenda’s main conceit is that each note belongs not only to a project (which in turn belongs to a category for organization nirvana), but can also be linked to a date or specific calendar event. In this way, content is searchable by topics and times, giving me multidimensional control over how my content is arranged.

Moreover, Agenda, though it writes in its own kind of editor experience, can export content in Markdown, making it wildly recyclable and reusable.

All of this adds up to my ability to take great thoughtstream-based notes that link to meetings that clearly identify notes and actions/commitments.

The magic happens, though, when I share Markdown from Agenda to this iOS Shortcut I built. That shortcut takes the Markdown from Agenda, identifies lines that are actions, pastes them to OmniFocus (since they get converted to TaskPaper format), and then organizes an email I can then send to all participants.

In this way, I can store content for later reference in Agenda, track the actions through OmniFocus, and create a trail of agreement by sharing all of this.

So as easy as it might be to say things, this means everything said really means something. Nothing lost, nothing left behind.

And that’s something.

One of the marquee features of OmniFocus 3 is the move from Contexts to Tags. I adore this capability, but I think it introduces a lot of questions:

How do I use this? Do I worry about how many Tags I have? In what ways should I apply those Tags to actions?

Now everyone’s answer to this will be different (which is wonderful, and demonstrates the flexibility of the software here), but I wanted to share my own experience.

As I wrote about with my adventure in naming the Forecast Tag, words matter. A lot. Where and how they are applied matter just as much.

Initially, I considered Tags to be like metadata. And, like metadata, the more the merrier, since it’s very little overhead, and allows for greater searchability. This is all true, but I started finding I had nonsensical-looking actions, because Tags were defining too many things:

Draft the storyboard Build TPS Report • Call   Susan   Meeting   Planning

Aces for searchability, thumbs down for this being a very natural way to craft things.

The more I thought about Tags, the more I also thought that Tags, for me, are not a criteria, they’re a list. In other words, my actual usage of OmniFocus taught me that what I really want to see are lists. And yes, one can build all kinds of amazing and capable advanced perspectives in OmniFocus 3, but more often, I’m clicking a Tag to show me all the Email I need to write, or all the things that concern Susan.

Once I came to that, I was able to delete a bunch of Tags, and also redefine Tags to have more apparent meaning.

Now, of course I still multi-tag actions. My favourite use case for this is my expansive list of People subtags (each the name of someone I regularly interact with), along with the action or state. An example is:

Find out what Jordan's gift ideas might be Christmas 2018 • Waiting On   Frank

In other words, I like to have Tags that make sense not just as criteria or metadata, but as lists.

Tags are also a great way to hack the state of an action. I have several Tags, for example, which have an On Hold state, and so therefore take actions they are assigned to out of my actionable pool. Such tags include Someday/Maybe, Monitor (for actions I don’t have to do, am not necessarily Waiting On, but wish to watch), and Reference (yes, I know that OF should be for action and not facts, but checklists, when applicable, benefit from having some reference material close by). As before, these can also make compelling lists based on just one Tag.

What are your thoughts on using Tags? How have you adopted and adapted this feature for your workflows?

Special thanks to Josh Hughes for his amazing iconography that is part of my everyday OmniFocus experience!

I’m going to write a bit more about the Forecast and Forecast Tag in OmniFocus 3, because I think it’s just a plain great thing.

One thing I have found about the Forecast Tag is that it will show in the Today view of Forecast, even if it’s deferred until later.

In some cases, this is super handy (knowing a thing is coming up this afternoon even at the beginning of the day saves me from being surprised later), but in other cases, it’s a bit cluttery.

I have, for example, a repeating project on weekdays called Morning Routine, which walks me through the things I need to make sure I remember to address during my hectic mornings (arrange tasks for the day, check to see if I need to sign any forms or homework for the kids, review chore charts, etc.).

Now, I could have this project due, but to me, that badge is sacred, and this is routine stuff. So no. Not due. The Forecast Tag is perfect for this, though. At the same time, however, that becomes an automatic twelve things right there all mucking about with my ability to see the other Today things (also, twelve feels like a lot of things, even if they’re tiny).

My solution? Forecast-Tagged things do not show up if blocked, since that view can’t know when something will become unblocked. This is where Action Groups (which I’ll be writing about soon) and serial projects come in: by making something (like my morning routine) serial (even if it isn’t actually a serial project in a strict sense), I can hide and then progressive show all the next actions about that routine. True, it forces me into doing them in a particular order, but a couple of tweaks and tries, and that’s just fine.

As always, your mileage may vary, but this could be a neat way of tidying and leveraging the Forecast Tag and its view.

What are your great Forecast tricks and strategies? Please comment and share your wisdom!

In the physical world, things have names for a few purposes:

1. Common language
2. Identity or brand
3. Relative reference

In the digital world, though, a name may be the only attribute a something has, so changing its name does change what it is.

The point of all this? I’ve adored the OmniFocus 3 Forecast Tag since its being introduced as a feature back in early beta. Having a prescribed list of things show up in the Today view of Forecast is incredibly powerful, in that it allows me to look at thing list of things I’m interested in seeing alongside calendar commitments and things I have to do because due.

I had a massive struggle, though, in determining the name for this tag. Because the name, it turns out, is everything.

Seemingly logically enough, I started with the tag name of Today. This was problematic, though, because since these things aren’t due, the don’t have to get done today; I just want to see them today. As such, if I got to the end of a day with three (or more, I’m being kind) of these “Today” tasks left, I’d feel guilty. Ending a day with a feeling of failure instead of accomplishment is the exact opposite of productivity.

Thinking I would solve the problem with the new tag name Next, I got back to work.

Except.

The word “next” means… next. So if I have ten of these, which is actually next? Or next after that? Like, next next, or next?

Awful.

After much soul searching and a tip from a friend, I renamed the tag ☆, and haven’t looked back. Because it isn’t a word, it has no meaning, nor does it imply anything other than what I give it to mean. I interpret ☆ as “show on my Forecast perspective”, and nothing more. I have found this very liberating.

Maybe I overthought this. Or maybe words in some contexts mean more to me than they ought to, but I found my way through to feeling accomplished about what I do again, isn’t of bad for what I haven’t.