How to Integrate Obsidian and Omnifocus projects

Integrating with Omnifocus

What I Want: Omnifocus tasks as Obsidian citizens

• I have projects here which will spawn tasks which I will track in Omnifocus.
  • I want both to be able to navigate quickly from a task in Omni to a project page in Obs
  • I want to be able to see all Omni tasks pertaining to a page.
  • I want tags in Omni to show up in Obs.

Example 1

• I make a new task in Omnifocus using quick entry.
  • When it appears in Omni, this should generate a "task updated" event to Obsid.

Example 2

• I am working in a project and want to add a task to it.
  • It would be nice if that task appeared in OmniFocus with a cross link in Obsid.

Manually managing the situation

• Let’s try having a project in OF for any project in Obsidian that has tasks open, and vice versa, an obisidian project for every OF project.
  • Easy to implement.
• Are there any tasks which are not part of a project? They can be put in a special "no project" project.
  • Example: buy groceries is part of what project? In OF I call this "buy groceries" a project, which I would never open an Obsidian page about.
  • But buying groceries is part of my project of staying healthy and alive. So…?

Omnifocus has projects but not really

• Omnifocus projects are nothing more than collections of tasks with no background or rich linking.
• Many such projects have sprung up merely as ways to organize or even justify or provide context for random assortments of tasks that are one-offs.

Obsidian has tasks but not really

• Synchronization is slow
• Sync is also still a bit dangerous to count on for task tracking.
• Task entry is awkward
• Reading on a phone is hard.

What I’m in the Middle of doing

• I’m trying to reduce Omnifocus to a minimum set of active projects that do now or will correspond to definitely named Obsidian projects.
• These projects should be the only ones in Obsidian in the active project folder.
• Populate Knowledge and Projects folders in Obsidian.
  • Knowledge: anything that does not spawn tasks and grows over time.
    • Journal entries and meeting minutes
    • Technical, academic, background data
      • Completed or mothballed projects go inside their knowledge domain.
  • Projects folder contains anything that spawns tasks.
    • Active formally named projects
      • Complete or mothballed projects move into the Knowledge folder.
    • Planning, Templates, Web Clips and an Inbox folder also fit the definition.

What I’ve done

• I have renamed all projects up to Finances with at least the names of folders in Obsidian.
• I removed due dates from everything that does not meaningfully have a deadline on some due date.
• "I want to see this on that day" is not the same as Due On.

What I Plan to do

• I want to have the discipline to link all Omnifocus tasks into obsidian like this:
  • put all Omnifocus tasks into obsidian as links
• It looks like ==if I don’t assign a project, it goes in the inbox==.
• Then in the morning I can assign inbox items to projects.
• testing inbox behavior
• Now that I have been trying to match things up, I’m realizing that there is no clear place to connect a task. E.g. "work on biceps" is a hard task to track a project down for. Is it rehab, strength training? where do those live again?
• Solution: Formal project structure in obsidian.
  • Knowledge and Projects folders

Do not use due dates to sort!!

• Really! Even though I have almost nothing due this week! It’s OK.
• But still things are important, so either do them or mark them as not important.

Limitations of using Omnifocus

• I don’t like how tags and file name/link changes in Obsidian don’t affect tasks in Omnifocus
  • workaround is to ==always link a task with at least one Obsidian page==.
• I don’t alike how Omnifocus limits sort options. By assiduously using links I can probably sort better on my desktop at least. Ironic eh. I keep trying to suck OF into Obsidian but I cannot

Dragging Omnifocus into Obsidian? Nope

• [[Replacing Omnifocus with open source]]