While GTD is excellent in encouraging a focus on contexts, there are times when you want to focus on only a few Projects at a time.

For example, you may have more than a handful of projects flagged. Having all of their tasks available may feel a bit overwhelming. Or perhaps you simply prefer to get more done in specific projects over others.

We can use OmniFocus to focus on a few projects while still using a context view as our mode of work.

Today, we’ll look at tasks of specific flagged projects in their contexts, rather than see all tasks for all Flagged Projects. To do so, we’ll take advantage of the Focus command as used in the Context view:

• In the Context View, «Control-Command-F» focuses on the Projects in which they rest, not just on the tasks themselves.

While your use of Flagged projects may differ, the method of focus here is applicable to any number of situations in your own workflow.

As I use them, Flagged projects are those projects that are in my general daily conscious attention. Using a daily review task, I look through my Flagged Projects like so:

The filters are slightly different than the default in order to optimize their review as Projects, not as contexts:

I try to have no more than five of these at any one time, but this “rule” is broken with considerable frequency so take it with a grain of salt. Still, I don’t think I’d ever want to focus on all five projects in a day. I want perhaps two of them.

Method

To focus on two of the Flagged Projects for the day:

• Go to the Flagged perspective
• Select two tasks or projects you wish to focus on for the day using «Command-Click»

• Type «Control-Command-F»

• At this point, if you’re not already Grouping by Context (I am not due to the change in the default Flagged perspective filters), then click the default Context icon in the toolbar.

All the tasks of those specific Projects will now line up in their Contexts:

These are not just the Flagged tasks, but rather the entire Projects. You can check that these Projects are the only ones selected in the Project View:

Cheers