The end of the book is entirely focused on the use of OmniFocus perspectives and templates in much more depth than even the Omnigroup teaches. There are some new useful ideas in the book I’ve rarely seen elsewhere. He carefully avoids a prescriptive town while still outlining his own use cases. Kourosh clearly lives in OmniFocus and offers his experience as a sort of trail guide for the lost. Even with this balancing act, the tone never comes off as wishy-washy or contrived. The book acknowledges these likely conflicts and attempts to provide alternatives even if they are not part of his personal doctrine. In other aspects we couldn’t be further apart, such as his strategy of moving tasks between projects and folders as work proceeds. In some aspects we are simpatico, such as our aversion toward energy-level prioritization. My needs and approach to task management only overlap with Kourosh’s at a high level. The unique perspective is likely derived from Kourosh’s own profession of psychiatry but with a practical approachability useful in many other fields.
I’m not one to adopt philosophies that I don’t create from first principles but I find Kourosh’s suggestions compelling. It’s one third instruction manual, one third cautionary exposition, and one third philosophical analysis of task management. It is for these reasons that unless we are in a planning mode, we systematically hide tasks that do not pertain to what we want in front of us now.”Ĭreating Flow walks a fine line between a philosophy and technical guide. “I suspect that many otherwise well-founded productivity systems collapse somewhere when lists grow unwieldy. The book was just updated for OmniFocus 3 and is well worth the price of admission for anyone using OmniFocus for complex task management.
#OMNIFOCUS SETUP EXAMPLES MANUAL#
I do, however, enjoy a good technical manual which is what brought me to Kourosh Dini’s “Creating Flow with OmniFocus” many years ago.
I’ve rarely found a “self help” book that provided more value than David Allen’s Getting Things Done. “Productivity” books can feel a lot like a pyramid scheme where each subsequent author retells ideas from other books. I just don’t find the advice very useful in my own life. I’ll be honest, I enjoy reading productivity books about as much as I enjoy reading about riding a bicycle.