Comments on: ~Playing the Waiting Game

By: Beth Greenapple

Beth Greenapple — Tue, 24 May 2011 22:05:30 +0000

I don’t see why OmniFocus can’t provide us with two alternatives to Completed, i.e., Delegated or In Process. I found these very useful back in the bad old days when I transitioned from Franklin Planner to FP for my Palm Pilot. Then, if one wants to do so, using Waiting as a context or a person as a context can also be used. The simplest approach is to just leave the item in the Incomplete Task category and having stay where it was, marked Delgated or In Process.

By: Scott Spiro

Scott Spiro — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:11:50 +0000

This is all excellent info- I’m coming into this conversation a little late (and implementing Omnifocus iPad as well), however I must say that although the script is very useful, it does remove your previous context and change it to “waiting” which can become a problem. The flag idea is not a bad compromise. Another problem is depending on if you are viewing available or remaining action items, your “waiting” items could disappear from view!

A solution of either flags, folders, etc. might solve the problem but because GTD does not use multiple contexts I’m not sure we will see this solution come from OF.

By: Mr. B

Mr. B — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:55:06 +0000

If I may just share my OF workaround for Waiting For.

First of all, I share the view that creating a “Waiting For” context COULD create havoc where Context, as classically defined by GTD’ers, might prove a factor in reviewing your Waiting For list. For instance, part of my Weekly Review is shooting follow-up emails to those I was waiting an email response from (hence, my @Email context). Apparently I don’t want to play the waiting game where the playground is inappropriate (can’t resist the pun, sorry), like when I’m offline. So here’s what I’ve done:

Say I emailed a quote to Client A and will be waiting for their reply, I’d tick off “Email quote to Client A” and then add another entry that says something like “WF: reply from Client A re: quote” with the context @Email, of course. Now say I created hundreds of entries of that sort (with the “WF:” prefix), what did was type “WF:” on OF’s search box and Boom! all those prefixed entries will be displayed. Then I’ll save the window as a new perspective and call it, um, “Waiting For.”

There you have it: one window view of all your Waiting For tasks with their different contexts intact.

Hope that helps in any way. Heck, hope I’m doing it right! =)

Best,

Mr. B

By: кaппИ

кaппИ — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:33:33 +0000

Автор, посты , конечно, очень интересные. Но вы не думали заменить дизайн?

By: Will Rubenstein

Will Rubenstein — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:57:42 +0000

John – Thank you for the quick reply. Everything you suggested in #1 and #2 worked perfectly.

For some reason, I can’t get #3 to work. The “Get Info” box does not recognize (ie., there is no green plus sign) a jpeg when I drag it on top of the Preview section. In OF, there is a button in my toolbar that works, labeled “Reply”, but with an image that is a rectangle that says “jpeg”. I apologize for boring you with these details, and if you are reading this and thinking, “this dude is an idiot!”, I couldn’t blame you. I can live with the fact that the button is in the OF toolbar and it works. But a custom picture would be really nice. Any suggestions?

By: John Kendrick

John Kendrick — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:58:28 +0000

Will – let me answer each question as others may have the same. 1) To install the toolbar button, just right-click on any toolbar button and click “Customize Toolbar . . .” Look for the script in the list, and drag it to the toolbar. 2) The button text is the name of the script, so to change it, just go to where you saved the script, ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/OmniFocus and rename the script, leaving the extension the same. 3) To change the icon used for the script, again navigate to where you saved the script, right-click on the script and select, “Get Info”. Then just drag the image you want to use for the toolbar button over top of the default image in the Preview section of the “Get Info” box. Hope that answers all your questions. And thanks for reading – John

By: Will Rubenstein

Will Rubenstein — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:25:28 +0000

OK, I got it to work on my own, which is great! But the button says “Complete and Await Reply” and the picture is the AppleScript standard pic. Any thoughts?

By: Will Rubenstein

Will Rubenstein — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:03:44 +0000

John – This is the script I have been waiting for in OF! Thank you for bringing it into existence with Curt. While I am a veteran Mac user, I am new to scripting. Followed your instructions to @Michal when I encountered the same problem – no button in the OF Toolbar. Can’t seem to get it to appear, even after re-starting OF three times. I created the folder, as you suggested, but cannot get the button to appear. Any chance at a screenshare to see if I stuck it in the wrong place?

By: John Kendrick

John Kendrick — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:24:36 +0000

Michal – Here are a couple of things to check. First, did you download the script (zip file) and install it in …/Library/Scripts/Applications/OmniFocus folder where … is your user account? If you don’t see this path, you must create it from your library folder – you most likely will not have it if this is your first OF script.

Next, you will need to restart OF, and then right click on the toolbar and select Customize from the context menu. You will see the script with the green check mark icon in the list. Drag it to your toolbar.

This should do it. To use the script, make sure your cursor is somewhere within the task to which you are awaiting a reply and click the button in the toolbar. Let me know how it works. John

By: Michal

Michal — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:09:31 +0000

@John: thanks for answering. I do have uncompleted task selected, yes. The thing is there is no “Reply” or any other button, I mean there is no way to invoke the script. At least I cant see it…