Custom Perspectives for OmniFocus

Custom perspectives provide a quick and convenient way to tap into your OmniFocus database.

Below, you’ll find examples showing some of the many ways custom perspectives can be used to quickly and conveniently access the most relevant information from OmniFocus and help ensure that your database is up-to-date and relevant. Note that all of these perspectives require OmniFocus Pro. Some reference specific tags and folders or rely on naming conventions. You may need to make changes to adapt them to work with your OmniFocus setup.

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Action Perspectives

When it’s time to take action, it’s helpful to hone in on the most relevant actions as quickly and conveniently as possible. The following are some examples of how OmniFocus perspectives can help.

  • Projects: What’s Next — The next available action for each of your active projects (defined outcomes).
  • Today — Actions that are candidates for being completed today. Some actions show up automatically, and others are handpicked from your available actions.
  • Today: Important — Available actions that are particularly important, either because they’re flagged, overdue, or due soon.
  • Today: BIG Rocks – Actions from your Today list that will take over 30 minutes to complete.
  • Today: Small Rocks – Actions from your Today list that will take 5-30 minutes to complete.
  • Today: Pebbles – Actions from your Today list that can be completed in five minutes or less.

Review Perspectives

It’s important to review OmniFocus regularly to ensure that it accurately reflects your life and work and to keep your commitment level in check. These perspectives give you a quick way of seeing what’s on your plate and what’s on your radar.

  • Projects: Active — All projects (defined outcomes) you’re actively working towards. Single action lists, checklists, and template projects are automatically excluded from the list.
  • Projects: Completed – All completed projects (defined outcomes) grouped according to when they were completed.
  • Projects: Due — All incomplete projects (defined outcomes) with a due date.
  • Projects: Inactive — All projects (defined outcomes) that are inactive, either because they’ve been deferred to a future date or put on hold. Single action lists, checklists and template projects are automatically excluded from the list.
  • Waiting — Everything that you’re currently waiting for, grouped by tag.

System Maintenance Perspectives

OmniFocus 3 perspectives can be very helpful for maintaining a system that is complete and consistent. The following perspectives help ensure that OmniFocus will serve you well when it’s time to take action.

  • Actions: No Duration — All remaining actions that don’t have an estimated duration.
  • Actions: Untagged — All untagged actions, excluding unprocessed actions in the inbox.
  • Projects: Stalled – All active projects (defined outcomes) with no remaining actions.
  • Projects: Unfiled — All projects (defined outcomes)  that haven’t been filed into a folder.

All Perspectives

Actions: No Duration

It can be helpful to give each of your actions an Estimated Duration. This adds a bit of extra work upfront and allows you to quickly pull up a list of short or long actions, whatever’s most relevant to your current circumstances. Additionally spending a few extra seconds to think about how long an action will take can help ensure that you don’t try to pack too much into the day.

This perspective shows all remaining actions that don’t have an estimated duration. Items in the inbox are excluded from this list as they’re considered unprocessed.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Actions - No Duration

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Actions: Untagged

Adding at least one tag to each action helps ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. For example, if you create an action of “Pick up Amazon order” and forget to give it a tag of “errand,” you may miss it when you’re out running errands and must make an extra trip.

This perspective lists all remaining actions that are currently untagged. Items in the inbox are excluded from this list as they’re considered unprocessed.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Actions - Untagged

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Visit our OmniFocus Tags Directory to learn more about how tags can add ease and efficiency to your system.

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Projects: Active

It’s helpful to be able to quickly pull up a list of all projects (defined outcomes) that you’re currently working towards. If you’re considering taking on something new, refer to this list to ensure you won’t become overcommitted by adding another project to your plate.

This perspective assumes the names of single action lists include a 📦 emoji. For example, if you wanted a list of one-off actions related to friends and family, you could add them to a single action list called “ 📦 Friends & Family.” By excluding any “projects” that contain a 📦 emoji, only projects that represent defined outcomes (e.g. 🧭 Final Exam Submitted) are included in the list. The list also includes projects that are with a 🔄 emoji. This emoji is used to design routine, repeating projects (e.g. 🔄 Daily Review Complete) rather than singular outcomes.

This perspective also excludes folders that contain templates and checklists. New projects can be created using templates, but the template projects don’t represent defined outcomes. Checklists are called up when needed and don’t belong in this perspective.

In this perspective, projects are ordered based on how they were ordered in the Projects perspective.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Projects - Active

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Projects: Completed

Looking back at all the projects you’ve brought to fruition can be helpful. This helps clarify where you’re spending your time and attention and can be useful when providing status updates to your employer.

This perspective excludes single action lists by assuming that the names of single action lists contain a 📦 emoji. For example, a list of one-off actions related to friends and family would be called “📦 Friends & Family.” Additionally, it assumes that routine projects contain an 🔁 emoji (e.g. 🔁 Morning Review Complete). These are omitted as well.

This perspective shows a list of all completed projects grouped according to when they were completed. The most recently completed projects appear at the top of the list.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Projects - Completed

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Projects: Due

When reviewing your system, it can be helpful to look at what projects have a due date associated with them and identify any that are past due.

This perspective shows all remaining projects that have a due date. Action groups are also included, but not individual actions. Projects are grouped based on when they’re due.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Projects - Due

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Projects: Inactive

You may have some projects in OmniFocus that are deferred to the future, either because you can’t take action on them yet or because you won’t have the capacity to take on this work until a future date. Additionally, there may be projects on hold indefinitely; perhaps something more important came along, and you had to pause these pursuits temporarily.

To help ensure that these inactive projects aren’t forgotten, this perspective shows all of the projects in your system that are either on hold or deferred to a future date.

In this example setup, top-level folders, checklists and templates are excluded. Routine projects contain a 🔁 emoji (e.g. 🔁 Morning Review Complete) and are left off the list.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Projects - Inactive

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Projects: Stalled

By definition, a stalled project is a sequential or parallel project that doesn’t have any remaining actions. It’s considered “stalled” because these projects represent a defined outcome, and there aren’t any actions to move it toward completion. Single action lists represent related actions, typically in a specific area of life. They can be empty without being considered “stalled” as they don’t represent a defined outcome.

This perspective shows all of the stalled projects grouped by folder.

If the project is complete (i.e. the objective has been reached), simply mark it complete. You can also put this project on hold or drop it altogether if it’s no longer relevant or worth your time.

If the project is still relevant and you haven’t reached your objective, add at least one action to each stalled project to keep them moving forward. If you’re unsure what to do next, consider adding an action to get in touch with someone who’s done this sort of project before.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Projects - Stalled

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Projects: Unfiled

Folders can be helpful for group projects and actions related to specific areas of life and work. For example, you might have a top-level folder called “Personal” that contains all the projects and actions related to personal areas of life and another called “Work” for work-related activities.

This perspective shows all of the unfiled projects and single action lists. In other words, it shows a list of all the projects and single action lists that haven’t been placed in a folder. For this to work as expected, the “Contained within project or folder” rule must include a complete list of your top-level folders.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Projects - Unfiled

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Projects: What’s Next

The next action is the next action to be taken to move a project towards completion. This perspective shows the next actions for each of your active projects.

It assumes the names of single action lists include a 📦 emoji to filter out single action lists. For example, if you wanted a list of one-off actions related to friends and family, you would have a single action list called “📦 Friends & Family.” By excluding any “projects” that contain a 📦 character, only projects that represent defined outcomes (e.g. “🧭 Final Exam Submitted”) are included in the list. This perspective excludes repeating projects identified with a 🔁 emoji (e.g. 🔁 Daily Review Complete).

The projects are grouped by folder so you can easily focus on one area of your life and work. To see all available next actions, tap and hold a disclosure triangle and choose “Expand All.”

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Projects - What's Next

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Today

There are probably many things you could be doing at any given moment. Coming face to face with a list of your available OmniFocus actions will likely be a daunting experience. And you’ll probably spend too much time deciding what to work on next.

The Today perspective offers a subset of your available actions. Actions with defer dates that have arrived and actions that will soon be due will automatically show up in the Today perspective. You can manually add available actions to the Today perspective by flagging them or adding a “☀️ Today” tag.

You can use the sidebar to refine your list of choices further. For example, you could tap on the “Phone” tag to see a list of all the phone calls on your list for today.

Actions are grouped by due and sorted by due & flagged, so your most time-sensitive and important messages will automatically appear at the top of the list.

Also, check out the Today: Important perspective. It’s a natural complement to the Today perspective, only showing available actions that are flagged, due soon, or overdue. There are also Today perspectives based on duration.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Today

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Today: Important

There are likely some especially important actions. Tasks that you’ve promised to complete in the near future and ones that you’d like to get done today, even though they could technically be completed tomorrow with no significant consequences.

The Today: Important perspective shows all available actions that are flagged, due soon, or overdue. This perspective shows a subset of the actions included in the Today perspective.

For this list to be useful, it needs to be kept short. As a rule of thumb, limiting this list to a maximum of 15 items is best. Once you’ve completed everything on Today: Important, you can add more actions by going to the Today perspective and flagging one or more actions. Or you could call it a day and reward your efforts with a warm bath and a good night’s sleep. 😴

Actions that appear on Today: Important are grouped according to the due date so that actions that are due soon or overdue can easily be identified.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Today - Important

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Today: BIG Rocks

Identifying things on your list for today that will take significant time to complete is helpful. You might want to block off time for these longer actions. The BIG Rocks perspective is the same as the Today perspective except that it only shows actions with an estimated duration of more than 30 minutes.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Today - BIG Rocks

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Today: Small Rocks

Identifying things on your list for today that will take some time to complete is helpful. You can complete these actions if you have a gap between meetings. They could also be good candidates for actions to take care of at the start of the day. The Small Rocks perspective is the same as the Today perspective except that it only shows actions with an estimated 5-30 minutes duration.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Today - Small Rocks

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Today: Pebbles

Are you heading off to lunch in 10 minutes? Having a list of actions that don’t take very long and can be completed when you don’t have much time to work with is helpful. The Pebbles perspective is the same as the Today perspective except that it only shows actions with an estimated duration of five minutes or less.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Today - Pebbles

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Waiting

You can track what you’re waiting for by creating actions and tagging them with a waiting tag. Setting this tag’s status to “On Hold” will prevent waiting items from cluttering your lists of available actions. The downside is that it’s easy to forget to review what you’re waiting for.

This perspective makes monitoring your waiting list quick and convenient. It shows all remaining actions that contain a tag of “⏸️ Waiting” (the ⏸️ emoji was added for visual flair and is completely optional).

This perspective is grouped by project so you can easily identify things you’re waiting for in specific projects and single action lists.

OmniFocus 4 for Mac - Custom Perspective - Waiting

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