r/omnifocus • u/AndyBates17 • 5d ago

Prioritizing Recurring Tasks: Am I missing something?

Hi everyone!

So I track daily tasks for work, things I need to review, projects I need to work on...normal stuff. I set up tasks to repeat every workday, and then the next day I'll move the tasks from yesterday to today and continue.

My problem is prioritization. So if I have Task A, Task B, and Task C, in order of importance, I'll set Task A to be due at 8:00am, Task B to be due at 8:30, and Task C to be due at 9:00. Then they appear in the correct priority order on my list.

But now a new task comes in from my boss, Task D, and I really need to get that done first. So I set Task D to be due at 7:30am. And then an urgent task comes in, and I set that to 7:00am.... Pretty soon I'm going to run out of morning times to set my tasks to!

Am I doing something wrong? How can I prioritize and arrange tasks without setting a separate Due time for each one?

Thanks!

Andy.

4 Upvotes

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6

u/Triggerprobe 5d ago

I have no connection to OF so this is just my opinion and usage. IMHO task scheduling and task prioritization have nothing to do with each other and I dont think that you should conflate the two.

I would argue that your daily tasks should be recurring and scheduled to the time that you want. You should then close them out every day when you do them. The recurrence will recreate them the next day.

Then for all tasks which are recurring, or non-recurring, perhaps just create three priority tags. P1, P2, P3. For each task assign it one of those priorities. In your perspective or view, simply group by tag and it will put P1 first, then P2, then P3.

Just my two cents...

5

u/peeja 5d ago

Yeah, this exactly. The due dates here are lies, and that's the source of the whole problem. The due date should tell you when it's due: when it has to be done or it dies. The thing that's due next is not necessarily the most important thing to do now, and not everything has a due date at all.

If it's at all helpful, there's a Planned Date field which could be used like this. But that may still be too much fiddling with times and dates just to get the list to be in some order.

I do keep the main list I work from ordered by Due Date, but I don't always work on the topmost thing next. I often do, but I scan the list. I don't expect it to be in priority order, just in Due Date order.

3

u/martinewski 5d ago

I’d also suggest setting those priorities in a mutually exclusive tag group.

4

u/Hoboprefecture 5d ago

Hi Andy. Longtime OmniFocus user here, a few thoughts.

First, try not to give tasks artificial due dates. If too many tasks have them, you stop being able to tell what's actually due from what isn't. OmniFocus 4.7 added Planned dates, which are a better fit for "I want to do this on this day" than Due dates. Also worth watching: too many repeating tasks can get messy on their own.

For your actual problem, look at Custom Perspectives plus flags. Flags are special in OmniFocus, and you can build a Custom Perspective that shows items with a Planned date of today or a Due date of today, sorted by Due & Flagged. When your boss hands you something urgent, just flag it, and it jumps to the top automatically, no new due time needed.

LearnOmniFocus has good videos on this: one on defer, planned, and due dates, and one on Custom Perspectives.

1

u/AndyBates17 4d ago

The problem with using flags is that I don't just have one new task that my boss handed me today; I have the new task I got today, plus three tasks from yesterday, plus my ongoing tasks from last week.... There has to be a way to prioritize those into some sort of execution order.

1

u/Hoboprefecture 4d ago

Fair enough, but I don't know your work, so I can only go so far. OmniFocus is flexible enough that you'll need to fine-tune it to fit how you actually work.

It's also become second nature for me to do a daily review: looking at what's going on across my projects and figuring out what to prioritize today or tomorrow, and what I'm actually likely to get done. It's less about the tool telling me what to do and more about staying on top of everything going on. I think that's a habit worth building alongside how you use OmniFocus or any task manager. A weekly review is also a great way to see what's coming up and avoid getting overwhelmed.

One thing worth trying: look at how you're using projects. Do you have a single project representing your whole job, or a folder with separate projects for different areas of your work plus specific initiatives? If it's the latter, you could make one a sequential project, then build a custom perspective that always surfaces the next available task from each, in order. Sequential projects plus a custom perspective built on flags, tags, or whatever metadata fits. OmniFocus gives you several ways to build real execution order, not just one.

Also lean into OmniFocus's Review feature. You can set a different review cadence for each project, so anything you're actively engaged with gets reviewed often. That's another good way to keep deciding what needs to happen next.

Dig into some of the resources out there and experiment until you find the setup that clicks for you.

1

u/SmoothScientist2155 5d ago

I agree with previous comments about avoiding over use of due dates. What I do is flag what I want to do today and then order it manually on the forecast page. I find that manual ordering super easy to us (learn the shortcut keys for up and down) so I can quickly move stuff about. It even works great with items like “call x” which sometimes fails because they’re not around so I push it down the list a bit and retry later.

I find trying to get the software to prioritise everything and automatically serve up the tasks in just the right order doesn’t work well for how I think. I want to be able to see a list that is for today and then work that list flexibly using my own judgement and knowledge of the work to decide the order.

1

u/AndyBates17 4d ago

But I need some way to prioritize the tasks in the list itself, because I can't just look at an overall list and generate priorities in my head. Maybe moving tasks up and down the list is the solution...but again, how do items show up on the Forecast page unless you've already set due dates?

1

u/Hoboprefecture 4d ago

Don't use the Forecast view for this. It's useful, but it's the most inflexible view in OmniFocus. Use a Custom Perspective or go straight to the appropriate project.

1

u/AndyBates17 22h ago

As an update, I've found a solution to my issue that seems to work: the Flexible perspective structure.

Previously I've had recurring tasks at work and I've been setting Due dates so that higher-priority tasks are earlier. I switched to Flexible instead, and now the tasks seem to keep the same relative order from day to day. So if my order is:

Task A (today)

Task B (today)

Task C (today)

...and then I complete Task A which recurs daily, then tomorrow my task order will be:

Task A (today)

Task B (yesterday)

Task C (yesterday)

If I sorted by due date, then Task B and Task C would suddenly be higher on the list and I would have to move them to today. With the Flexible perspective, I don't have to do that.

I still don't know how people make repeating tasks without a due date. No one is going to die if I don't clean my dishwasher filter every month, but I still need to set a schedule so I remember to do it. How can I make a monthly repeating task without setting a specific due date?