2019-09-18 – OmniFocus 3 Workflows with Jason Atwood

Arkus Co-founder and COO, Jason Atwood joins us from New York City to share how he and his entire company are making productive use of OmniFocus.

Jason is a student of productivity, proficiency, and organization and has taken a deep dive into both GTD and OmniFocus. He holds a BA in Business from Skidmore College, is the co-founder of a thriving consulting company based in New York City, and is an avid blogger and podcaster.

GTD and OmniFocus Background

Jason’s practice of Getting Things Done (GTD) spans 15 years. Earlier this year, he was interviewed by David Allen on the Getting Things Done podcast on the theme of Installing GTD in an Organization. Jason also recently participated in the GTD Summit in Amsterdam and wrote an article for Inside OmniFocus on the theme of Building a Business with OmniFocus Pro.

Jason has been using OmniFocus since the beginning. Prior to OmniFocus’ initial launch, he used OmniOutliner for task management, following the guidelines of the “Kinkless GTD” approach that inspired the creation of OmniFocus.

Using OmniFocus in a Team Setting

Jason is the Co-founder and COO of Arkus, Inc. and describes himself as an “overly certified consultant”. Based in New York City, Arkus is a consulting company and Salesforce Partner that was established in 2010. The company consists of a growing number of expert project managers and developers.

Everyone working at Arkus is using OmniFocus and applying GTD principles. To help reinforce this productive corporate culture, Jason leads training sessions that feature GTD and OmniFocus.

Session Overview

During this session, Jason shares his experiences using OmniFocus and GTD in a team environment. Topics covered include:

  • A minimalist approach to OmniFocus that limits visual clutter and encourages focus.
  • The role that OmniFocus plays when working in a collaborative environment.
  • The importance of learning and using keyboard shortcuts, both for OmniFocus’ built-in features and for frequently-used custom perspectives.
  • Using defer dates to limit the number of projects that are visible at any given time.
  • How adding tags encourages you to further define the actions that you’re taking.
  • Custom perspectives that make it quick and convenient to hone in on specific areas of work and life.
  • How tags can be useful for building custom perspectives that are tailored to your given situation (e.g. working on an airplane).
  • Strategies for using the Review feature that delivers value while avoiding overwhelm.
  • And more…

CloudFocus Weekly Podcast

Jason is also a long-time blogger and has been the co-host of the CloudFocus Weekly podcast for, in his words, “nine glorious years”. This weekly podcast covers the latest in cloud computing news, happenings, and events, and each episode includes the CloudFocus App Pick of the Week.

To learn more about Jason, check out his LinkedIn Profile and follow him on Twitter.

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