I started testing out OmniFocus 4.7 right as I was starting work for the current school year¹. Its marquee features were the addition of “Planned Dates” and more control over repeating events. The latter I didn’t think I really needed, and I wasn’t sure how much of a difference the former would make.

OmniFocus has remained an integral part of my workflow for my entire teaching career, but I’ve let it get out of control the last several years. It wasn’t that the system stopped working for me, it was merely that I didn’t have the time or space or energy to get it back under control. I refused to “declare bankruptcy” with it, but even over the summer, I couldn’t make myself go through and purge old projects. I thought I had reached the point where there was too much to balance for any system.

Planned Dates motivated me to adjust my approach with OmniFocus just enough that I picked up the momentum to get things back under control. It took some time, but I’m feeling much better about a lot of things at work overall by just having OmniFocus be a more trustable place for my tasks, and be more under control. I’m not sure whether or not it was the feature of Planned Dates themselves that led to that, or if it just got me to spend enough time cleaning things that I felt in control again.

I think I’ve written on here before about having tasks multiple decades away in OmniFocus. It remains an incredible tool for managing my entire life.