Following up with OmniFocus

When someone promises me something this is how I make sure it doesn’t live in my brain more than it needs to and that I have future opportunities to re-engage with it in the right way.

I create a task in OmniFocus like this. This is the quick entry modal that pops up. Quick entry is a big thing in OmniFocus, if you’re not using it stop reading this, set it up and commit the keyboard combination to memory.

• The title is enough description for me to remember what I’m waiting for.
• The project is whatever makes sense.
• The first tag is for that context, it’s usually a person.
  • Every person has their own tag. If I have a meeting with that person I’ll have a link in their note to their tag in OmniFocus. That’ll put this in front of me so I can decide if I should to ask about status.
  • This could be something else like a team or a standing meeting that was responsible to come up with something, the same concepts work.
• The second tag is Waiting.
  • I have a reminder as part of my Morning Routine to review tasks tagged with Waiting, that task has a link back to OmniFocus that brings me right to the Waiting tag. In the morning I can decide wether or not I want to see if it’s done.
• The due date is when I really think they should have gotten back to me. If they still haven’t closed the loop it’ll land in my Forecast perspective as something I need to handle on that day. My Morning Routine also has me review my Forecast perspective to figure out what I want to get done for the day.
• The notes can have a link to the conversation where they said they’d do the thing. It might also link to my notes when I captured what they were going to do. It could also contain a link to the artifact they’re supposed to update like a spreadsheet or diagram. This can be helpful for me to get context.

So there you have it 3 ways this will come back in front of me at the right time. I also have links back to give me context. I know that when I’ve captured it like this that it doesn’t have to exist in my brain. I know it’s taken care of and I’ll follow up at the right times.