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Best Practices for Naming OmniFocus Projects

What’s in a name? Quite a bit. The names you give to your OmniFocus projects and single action lists can significantly impact your productivity.

Project names that are vague and uninspired can make your system (and your life) feel drab and boring. Conversely, thoughtfully-named projects and single action lists visibly spring to life and encourage action.

In this article, we’ll look at some best practices for naming projects and single action lists, drawing some wisdom from David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) approach. We’ll also look at how consistent naming conventions can help you quickly locate related projects and how emojis can be used to add clarity and visual flair.

Projects Versus Single Action Lists

Understanding the difference between a project (as defined in GTD) and a single action list is essential.

David Allen describes a project as having a defined outcome requiring at least two discrete actions. For example, “Plan Trip to Vancouver” is a project because it has a defined outcome (i.e., planning for a trip to Vancouver is complete) and requires multiple actions (e.g., researching airfare, booking a flight, and calling a travelling companion).

In GTD parlance, one-off actions not tied to a specific outcome are considered “next actions.” For example, phoning the garage to make an appointment to book an oil change would likely be the next action, assuming you know where to take the car for service. A project like “Find New Garage” might be in order if you didn’t.

OmniFocus supports three types of projects: parallel, sequential and single actions. OmniFocus projects that are parallel or sequential are GTD projects. They’re intended to be used for working towards defined outcomes and are considered “stalled” if they don’t contain any actions and the outcome hasn’t been reached. OmniFocus projects with the type set to “single actions” are used to group related items and aren’t considered stalled if empty because they don’t define a destination.

In this article, I’ll refer to parallel and sequential OmniFocus projects as “projects” (i.e. GTD projects) and OmniFocus projects with a type of “single actions” as “single action lists” (i.e. GTD next action lists).

Naming Single Action Lists

As mentioned previously, single action lists can store lists of related actions. For example, you might have a single action list called “Car Maintenance” that houses all of the one-off actions related to caring for your car (e.g. checking the oil).

Generally speaking, I recommend that Single Actions Lists be named according to the area of your life or work they represent. These lists typically exist for as long as you’re responsible for or focused on this area of life.

When a folder contains projects and single action lists, I recommend grouping single action lists at the top and placing projects at the bottom. Projects will come and go, whereas single action lists will likely be around indefinitely.

On a side note, you’ll probably want some actions in your single action lists to repeat automatically. For example, if you have an action of “Water plants” in your “📦 Household” single action list, it would probably make sense to configure it to repeat every week based on this action’s completion. This way, you won’t have to keep recreating this action manually; this vital responsibility is less likely to be forgotten. Your plants will thank you.

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