Open questions after Ethan

[GiovanniM]

Thank you Omni for bringing this one step closer to delivery, and thank you Ethan for the great demo.
I'll be looking forward to seeing how other features will be implemented:
- Handling of 'on hold' tasks (other that those on hold beacuse sequential to an uncompleted task)
- Handling of start/deadline dates (kGTD points in the right direction)
- Export to iCal/handhelds (I agree with those who say: filtered output to iCal, iCal cannot handle too many tasks, I like to see only my actionable next tasks there)
- Printing abilities: I really would like to be able to carry my task list in printed for with me. Not all people use palm devices! But I would like to be able to define custom printouts (active tasks only by context, all tasks by project etc.)
- On the subject of next tasks in parallel projects, IMO by definition they are all next and should be higlighted as such! If I still want to highlight certain next tasks as my must-do list for the day, I will probably be using some kind of flag to extract those. (Where's the flag?)
Good job so far
Don't take too long!
Giovanni

[michelle]

- On the subject of next tasks in parallel projects, IMO by definition they are all next and should be higlighted as such!


This reasoning is why we also allow you to sort by "available" tasks.


If I still want to highlight certain next tasks as my must-do list for the day, I will probably be using some kind of flag to extract those. (Where's the flag?)


It's not a flag, it's a star :-) You'll be able to star projects using whatever reasoning you want (importance, stuff you need to do today, etc.)

Thanks for watching the video!

Michelle

[duodecad]

I'm so thrilled about OF, I'm just watching Ethan's demo yet again for the sheer joy of it, and something occurred to me. How are you Omni folks thinking about Someday/Maybe items, and how they fit into OF (if at all)? I've been thinking so much about active work requirements that I hadn't considered this issue yet.

This might be a more appropriate question for a later release-- I certainly don't want to bring up anything that would delay you putting a beta into our hands :) but I'm just curious as to whether OF will eventually deal with or store Someday/Maybe items at all?

[JasonI]

I'm so thrilled about OF, I'm just watching Ethan's demo yet again for the sheer joy of it, and something occurred to me. How are you Omni folks thinking about Someday/Maybe items, and how they fit into OF (if at all)? I've been thinking so much about active work requirements that I hadn't considered this issue yet.

This might be a more appropriate question for a later release-- I certainly don't want to bring up anything that would delay you putting a beta into our hands :) but I'm just curious as to whether OF will eventually deal with or store Someday/Maybe items at all?

This is something I wanted to ask about too but thought better of it until I can take OF out for a test drive... but since you brought it up...

[michelle]

Honestly, we don't have a specific plan for someday/maybe items in 1.0. I expect people will find creative solutions. The simpliest thing I can think of is creating a folder for someday/maybe projects.

[michelle]

I've been corrected. Though we don't actually have a feature or any UI labeled "someday/maybe", thought has been put into the concept. Someday/maybe projects can be put "on-hold" with review dates set at some point in the future.

[JasonI]

I've been corrected. Though we don't actually have a feature or any UI labeled "someday/maybe", thought has been put into the concept. Someday/maybe projects can be put "on-hold" with review dates set at some point in the future.

Thanks for the update- it sounds like "on-hold" will work until something more permanent is put into place.

What about "pending" or "open requests"- essentially something that you have acted on but are waiting for a reply from someone?

[duodecad]

That sounds great for 1.0, Michelle-- thanks for the info!

For much later on, in a future release, it sure would be nice to have the app make a distinction between "on hold" and "someday/maybe". "On Hold", to me, is a project that I started but then had to stop working on-- like, say, a bathroom remodel that you started but then you ran out of money, and you have to save up some more money before you can finish it. (Not that that's ever happened to me, or anything. Heh.)

Whereas "Someday/Maybe" is just that-- a kind of "brain dump" list where you put a bunch of possibilities, and then glance through them during your Weekly Review to see if there are any you want to start working on as Active Projects. Items like "learn Italian" and "plant a vegetable garden" are the kinds of things that reside on my Someday/Maybe list.

It's really no big deal, I guess, to keep this huge running list in a separate place. Currently mine is in an Excel spreadsheet-- I use one tab for my Active projects and another tab for Someday/Maybe stuff, so it's super easy to move an item from one tab to the other.

But it would be so lovely and elegant to have that same huge running list stored right in in OF (with the ability to use that fabulous Quick Entry window to add stuff to it on the fly), and then during your weekly review, select something from the list and convert it to an Active Project with a click or a keystroke. Since the Someday/Maybe list is such a key part of GTD, in the sense that it helps you capture all your ideas and then review them periodically to make sure you're working on the things you want to be working on, it would be awesome if OF could eventually support it as its own "category".

Again, though, these are thoughts for a future release... I'm still drooling over OF just as it's shown in Ethan's video! :)

[Ken Case]

For much later on, in a future release, it sure would be nice to have the app make a distinction between "on hold" and "someday/maybe".

I think you could already make that distinction by creating a separate "someday/maybe" folder and putting projects there (since the distinction doesn't matter to the app, just to you). Or am I missing something?

[duodecad]

Hi Ken,

That might do it. Is there a way to adjust the settings for that particular folder so I'm not seeing its items daily among my currently active projects?

[GiovanniM]

I guess at the end of the day David Allen's original solution for Maybes and On Holds is the simplest: Create a context (or two, if you want to differentiate the concepts) for these kinds of tasks (actually probably projects, really, once you get to them).

Or alternatively, work on the project side and define the whole project as On hold and/or Maybe. OmniFocus seems to be designed this way, with Inactive projects (though it does not distinguish between the two, I think a solution could still be to make a Maybe master project folder for the 'real' maybes/brain dumps versus 'real' on holds which as simply inactive.

In kGTD, the other easy shortcut was to NOT assign contexts to on hold tasks, which would then not show in the context view and appear as grayed out in the project view. Omnifocus seems more robust than that.

A different issue is the 'waiting for' category, but that's probably solved with a combination of start dates and/or sequential tasks. We should be in good shape there.

[Lozz]

What GiovanniM said.

I will be setting up a context or folder for such things, and what will happen is is usage is logged or captured someway us users will probably come up with a solution naturally be implmenting GTD using Onmi Focus. I think it will evolve from there