The organized programmer: Remove it from your head, so you won’t forget it.

As my career progresses, and I assume more and more responsibilities, I find the amount of stuff I have to remember to be mind boggling. The management of code, developers, and clients leads to a plethora of items that must be stored and maintained on a daily basis.

<p>The application I rely on the most for my high level organization tasks is <a href="http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/">Omnifocus</a> by the <a href="http://www.onigroup.com">Omnigroup</a>.</p>


<h2>The review</h2>


<p>Everyday, I start my day by reviewing the Context Mode to see how the day is going to shape out.</p>


<p><img src="http://idisk.mac.com/osesm/Public/Pictures/Skitch/omnifocus_context_view-20080316-190847.jpg" title="Omnifocus Context View" alt="Omnifocus Context View" /></p>


<p>As you can see, I am hopeless overwhelmed with different projects, but at least I have a way to see how far I am behind.</p>


<h2> Creating new tasks</h2>


<p>As I work during the day, I hate to stop what I&#8217;m doing just to jot a note down for a new task.  Good thing the Omnigroup thought of this and created the quick entry window.</p>


<p><img src="http://idisk.mac.com/osesm/Public/Pictures/Skitch/omnifocus_new_tasks-20080316-191424.jpg" title="Omnifocus New Task" alt="Omnifocus New Task" /></p>


<h2> Keeping organized</h2>


<p>As I found out, I do many different tasks every day.  The Omnifocus project view lets me keep track of what is going on.</p>


<p><img src="http://idisk.mac.com/osesm/Public/Pictures/Skitch/OmniFocus.ofocus-20080317-220009.jpg" title="Omnifocus Project View" alt="Omnifocus Project View" /></p>


<h2>This is how I put it all together</h2>


<p>The first thing you have to remember is you must <em><strong>trust</strong></em> your tool.  This means to start off, you have to dump everything into your inbox.  And everything means <em>everything</em>.  The key to getting this right is to actually trick your brain into forgetting everything that goes into soon after you enter it into Omnifocus.</p>


<p>The next step is to organize your inbox.  All your tasks have to be actionable items.  Your tasks have to pretty specific, so you can easily act on them.  For example, when working on a project, you shouldn&#8217;t have &#8220;Complete website&#8221;, but instead you can have the five items that you would need to complete the website.</p>


<p>What I like to do is assign start and due dates to my tasks.  I don&#8217;t like to see tasks until I actually can work on them, so the start date feature is pretty nice.</p>


<p><img src="http://idisk.mac.com/osesm/Public/Pictures/Skitch/OmniFocus_Inspector-20080317-221335.jpg" title="Omnifocus Inspector" alt="Omnifocus Inspector" /></p>


<h2> What I&#8217;m trying to accomplish</h2>


<p>I want a system that thinks like I do.  I&#8217;m pretty damn organized on my own, and everything has a place and belongs in it.</p>


<p>Omnifocus makes it easy to enter tasks.  This is good.  The easier it is to enter tasks, the more likely I&#8217;ll actually enter it.  And this is the essence of what I&#8217;m looking for&#8212;a way to quickly enter my brain of its contents, so I can go back and look at it later when it is relevant.</p>