Get Everything Done

In a conversation outside this forum, I knocked around some ideas with Jupiter and talked about his post above concerning his attempts to combine OmniFocus and SF.

I would like to pass some of these on in case someone is struggling with some results of his latest trial-and-error as described in his post, and maybe provide some clarification or other interesting points.

I have especially been interested in his series of posts because, since I got into SF, I didn’t want to drop OmniFocus completely. But I wanted to keep it simple somehow, and for it to act as a container for project actions. I also wanted a place to throw dated (with reminders), contextual (at least a couple) or other items that I didn’t want in the way right now.

FIRST POINT: Referring to text below where he starts to discuss “About my method”:

He basically affirms the original idea that everything goes into SF as it comes to mind. (I assume he meant in the traditional sense with mixed items. For project-specific “dumping”, OF could be used.)

SECOND POINT:
OF will be used for planning, organising and feeding SF. He stressed that non-actionable and future items can go into SF because SF deals well with them by its own method, i.e., not only weeds out, but also handles future and dismissed well.
THIRD POINT
SF does the controlling and cleaning with its own natural workflow, and OF does its thing only when inside a project itself (this was the main point).
NEXT:
He just elaborated on the above point by saying that non-actionables and futures are easy to pick out in a quick review in SF, and also in OF, but (again) only when actually working on a project in OF.

As far as doing or expanding on project planning steps, he mentioned that he likes MindMaps (over simply adding steps in OF).

He mentioned that it was his experience during a review in SF that some tasks for the near-future (2-3 days) stay in SF, and if they are for the “real future”, or someday/maybes, they go into OF.

By simplifying, he has conciliated action and thinking, and stopped procrastination; that things at any given moment are just a “point of view” at that moment, and therefore things should not be made too complicated.

His distinction being that OF is for thinking, for putting in the Big Rocks, the most important dated items and the someday/maybes.

On the other hand, SF is a killer action tool. It deals with things you really want to do, plus it deals with things you don’t know what to do with.

He went on to say that currently, he uses the right-hand page for SF’s columns, and the left-hand side for short summary notes. When he does his daily review, he uses the notes to help decide the relative tasks that need to go into C1 as normal tasks, or into C2 as urgent or unfinished.

He got this “short summary notes on the left” from an Inc. Magazine article titled, “The Simplest System”. In that article, a running (continuous) top-priorities-for-the-day list is kept on the right-hand side, and the summary notes on the left. Here is the link: http://www.inc.com/magazine/19960901/1807.html

He referred to OF as his “big elephant”, which collects his life and project details, including historical notes and other references about the project itself. But mainly, it is a place for the project big rocks, and goals.

However, SF is his guide (he used the word “stone”), his assistant to help him do things and free his intuition to find the light when he is in the dark, and reveals the “best of his cleverness”.

But for higher elevations, his opinion is that this is where the mindmap “takes the relay”. He went on to stress again that SF is about action and decisions, and the rest is for altitude and collection (in order to obtain a sense of freedom).

For him, the results have been incredible, and he can’t believe it himself. Besides Mark, he is greatly indebted to D. Allen and Tony Buzan (his mentors).

These were some highlights of the conversation. Hope this is useful to somebody.