With my project and context organization out of the way, I figured it would be helpful to explain how I’m actually using Omnifocus to get things done (or at least try to get things done).

I start every morning by reviewing my calendar in Fantastical. This gives me a good idea of where I need to be and how much time I’ll have to do things.

Next, I go through my inboxes. Email is up first. Anything that is going to require more than 2 minutes gets added to Omnifocus using the Airmail’s built-in integration. I also check my “Action” folder in Readkit which contains anything that I’ve starred in Pocket. This may be a recipe I want to add to Paprika, or something I want to research further. As with email, if it can be dealt with quickly I do, otherwise, it gets added to Omnifocus. Last but not least, I jump over to Omnifocus and process anything that’s been added to the Inbox.

While I’m in Omnifocus, I look over my Waiting perspective and the Forecast View briefly to see if there’s anything I can check off or need to attend to. With that out of the way I go to my Available perspective, which as you might guess, shows all of my available tasks. Based on what I have going on for the day, I decide if there are any tasks I want to tackle during the day and flag them.

Once tasks are flagged, I can work entirely from my custom perspectives (based primarily on where I’m at) to get things done:

• Today shows all due or flagged tasks grouped by context and sorted by project. It’s a nice overview of everything I plan on doing sorted by where I can do it.
• Work also shows all due or flagged tasks, but it’s grouped by project and sorted by due date so that I can tackle the most pressing issues first.
• Home, once again, shows all due or flagged tasks grouped by project, but I sort this one by duration. By the time I get home, I’m usually pretty tired, and doing chores is usually the last thing I want to do so sorting by duration lets me check off the quick wins.
  I do have other custom perspectives like Errands and Grocery List but these are the three I primarily work from.

To stay on top of this workflow, I’ve created a Daily Routine project that lives at the very top of my Projects list. I’ve flagged the project so that every step shows up in all three perspectives, just to serve as a reminder in case I miss a step.