Scotty Jackson is returning to Learn OmniFocus to teach you how to create Shortcuts and Widgets that surface OmniFocus tasks on your iPhone and iPad in a highly-visual way.
OmniFocus is a highly-flexible app for managing personal tasks. With some thoughtful setup and regular use, it can have a profoundly positive impact on your life and work. The challenge is that it’s all too easy to forget about your carefully-crafted system as you navigate days that don’t go as planned. External communications such as text messages and emails can easily dominate your attention, taking the spotlight off of your important tasks in OmniFocus.
Widgets: A Portal Into OmniFocus
Widgets, that live on the home screen of your iPhone and iPad, are very helpful for surfacing information stored within OmniFocus and giving you quick access to OmniFocus features and perspectives. For example, the built-in OmniFocus Widgets can provide a quick way to capture tasks into your OmniFocus inbox, can display a seven-day Forecast, and can display the contents of your most-used perspectives.
Third-party apps make it possible to take this a step further. For example, you can use the clever Charty app to display a bar graph showing completed actions and a donut chart that fills in as you complete actions on your daily Hot List.
What You’ll Learn
Scotty Jackson will join us to share how he uses Shortcuts and Widgets to add a new dimension to OmniFocus on iPhone and iPad.
He’ll guide you through the process of creating a customized home screen that displays OmniFocus tasks in a variety of ways alongside key appointments from your calendar. Along the way, you’ll learn how to make productive use of three apps that add power and flexibility to Shortcuts and Widgets, namely Charty, WidgetSmith, and Toolbox Pro.
Scotty will also provide you with instructions for customizing the Shortcuts and Widgets that he provides so that they’re fine-tuned to your personal preferences.
While You’re Waiting
Scotty has documented some of what he’ll be sharing in this session on his blog. His recent My Reimagined Productivity Home Screen post will give you a taste of what he’ll be teaching during this session.
Also, be sure to check out the Nested Folders podcast that Scotty co-hosts with Rosemary Orchard. Scotty has also shared his OmniFocus setup and workflows as a guest on other podcasts, including The Omni Show, Home Work, Automators, and Productivity in Tech.
About Scotty Jackson
Scotty is a long-time student of David Allen’s Getting Things Done approach to productivity and has been using OmniFocus since the very beginning. He has a disciplined and thoughtful approach to project and task management that he applies to both personal areas of life and to his corporate endeavours.
Scotty has worked in a variety of technology-related roles and currently supports a development team that builds and maintains corporate intranet websites. He works to help digitally enable teams through the introduction of tools, processes, and practices.
His day job is balanced with being a husband and father to three children, including a six-year-old and twelve-year-old twins.
You can follow Scotty on Twitter at @heyscottyj.
Open to All Learn OmniFocus Members
If you're already a member of Learn OmniFocus, visit the event page to learn more and to register. Please note that space is limited to 100 participants.