I've had the same dilemma with so many possible projects and available next actions in my OmniFocus database, I was going nuts. I couldn't decide what I wanted to do every week or every day. I slowly settled on a sand sifting process. Imagine a sand filter with water poured from the top and going through different sand levels until the water is cleared of debris and pours at the bottom of the sand filter.
I have a lot of projects in my house, personal, and office areas of responsibility. I put most of them on hold. In my weekly review, I'll designate 2-3 projects in each area of responsibility (OmniFocus folder) as active. Everything else stays on hold or in the back burner. I'm not touching any paused projects.
I grab anywhere from 1-3 next actions from each project and write them in a BuJo page. I might have 6 projects with 1-3 actions available. Let's say I'll pick an average of 2 tasks from these 6 active projects. That will be 12 tasks. I write those down in the BuJo and title it:
Weekly Menu for May 9th-May 15th, 2022
- Scan and organize last week's paper invoices
- Test out new walkie-talkies I just bought
- Organize the first shelf of my home office bookshelf
- Take photo of one item and promote it on social media
- Bring the bushcutter to maintenance shop for annual servicing
- Declutter the garage storage chests
This represents the group of tasks I want to work on next week.
In my daily review (at the end of the day), I'll look at tomorrow's calendar schedule. If I have a lot of meetings/appointments/events, I'll know I won't be picking a lot of tasks from my Weekly Menu. I can choose 1-3 tusks from the weekly menu listed above. I write it on an index card as my 3 MITs (Most Important Tasks) on an index card for tomorrow.This index card represents my plans for tomorrow. If I don't have a lot of appointments, I might choose 3-6 tasks for tomorrow.
When I have time between my calendar appointments, I'll take a quick peek at the index card and get right to work on them. If I can finish those tasks, I'll consider it a good day. I usually choose 3 tasks because I know that interruptions and swerves can happen at any time. I might have my wife come into the office and ask me to help her with something (not gonna argue with the wife..... Happy wife, happy life and all that). Other things like a computer hard drive crash, my child had a rough tumble at soccer practice (resulting in me dropping everything to pick up my kid early), or a walk-in customer with an emergency work order might come in and it can potentially derail any plan. I keep my MITs down to 3 to make allowances for the daily events that can change everything.
I keep doing the daily review every day and nibble away at my Weekly Menu. Before I know it, I'll have made significant progress with the many next actions in my task manager. Plan the week with a group of tasks you want to work on next week. Then plan tomorrow's agenda by picking 3-6 tasks from the weekly menu. Mark them off as complete in the task manager app at the end of the day.
Next Action Filtering works for me...