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:
  • 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]]

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