Find Projects without Next Actions

[steve]

One of the big holes in my system is being able to find projects without NA's. In theory, I would find these during my weekly reviews. I would love to be able to apply a filter and find projects without NA's or have some sort of badge or color change for projects in need of a NA.

Would this be helpful?
How are people working around this without some sort of filter or badge?

Curt Clifton has an applescript (http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~clifton/software.html#VerifyNA) which will add "Missing NA:" to each project that is missing NA's. Although this works well, I find it cumbersome to constantly fiddle with deleting "Missing NA:"

[SpiralOcean]

I concur... other threads have been talking about this almost since the inception of the Alpha.

Put in the request through the feedback form if you agree.

[curt.clifton]

I definitely would like some built-in system for identifying projects and actions groups without next actions. My script is really just a hack until Omni bakes this in. In the interim, would it be helpful to add another script for clearing the "Missing NA:" prefixes that my first script leaves behind?

[curt.clifton]

Here's a quick script that I banged together for clearing the Missing NA prefixes: 370 This hasn't been tested as much as I'd like, so I'm not putting it on my software page (http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~clifton/software.html) yet. Please try it and let me know if it works for you. If it seems stable I'll post it to the main site.

The script clears any "Missing NA" prefixes from the selected items in OF. Any items that lack the prefix should be left unchanged.

[steve]

Curt,

Thanks for doing this. I will definitely test it out and let you know how it works. Typically, when I run your script I end up with 20 projects that are missing NA's. Manually undoing the title of the project after having added NA's is always a block to me actually running the script.

Steve

[Tim Wood]

We have bugs logged for:

<bug://bugs/38655> (mark projects when they do / don't have a next action)
<bug://bugs/38053> (Request: Filter to see only projects with no tasks/single items ("blocked projects"))

so feel free to reference those in feature requests to omnifocus@omnigroup.com. Neither of these are currently scheduled for 1.0, though this would definitely be useful in some fashion.

As the OP noted, one reason these didn't make it in is that this overlaps with project reviews -- a weekly review of active projects will already let you find blocked projects. Now, in some cases, you might find a more timely notification useful, so it would be helpful to explain situations where you'd use this where a weekly review wouldn't be sufficient.

[curt.clifton]

As the OP noted, one reason these didn't make it in is that this overlaps with project reviews -- a weekly review of active projects will already let you find blocked projects. Now, in some cases, you might find a more timely notification useful, so it would be helpful to explain situations where you'd use this where a weekly review wouldn't be sufficient.

I checked for blocked projects and action groups without next actions on at least a daily basis, in my evening review. As an academic my work is incredibly deadline driven. Dozens of firm deadlines pass by every week. A weekly review for action groups without next actions isn't even close to sufficient.

A typical specific use case is that I'll add an action group like "Write Final Exam" to my "Enthusiastically Delivered Intro. to Software Development Course" project. Within that action group I might add a couple of actions, "Print previous final exams" and "Review previous exams to spark problem ideas". I won't fully list all the steps to completing the action group.

Now, I review my deadline-rich projects on a daily basis, but occasionally I haven't metabolized enough caffeine to notice that I'm missing a next action. Having some highlighting to draw these items to my attention would be helpful.

The due-date badges help with this use case by drawing my attention to action groups with deadlines. I no longer have to fear missing a deadline because it was on an action group without a next action.

[steve]

How are you guys defining a "blocked project?" A project without action steps? Next actions that are blocked by a Next Action that can't be done for some reason?

Curt when you wrote I won't fully list all the steps to completing the action group. is this because once you are involved in the project you will intuitively know the next step?

I have a friend who only writes the NA. When he is done with that NA, he will figure out the next step. I have tended to write mega detail going through each step of what it will take to finish a project. Sometimes I'm afraid I'm putting in too much detail and taking too much time to fiddle with writing down all the steps.

[dhm2006]

I have a friend who only writes the NA. When he is done with that NA, he will figure out the next step. I have tended to write mega detail going through each step of what it will take to finish a project. Sometimes I'm afraid I'm putting in too much detail and taking too much time to fiddle with writing down all the steps.

I write only the next actions for routine projects where I know what to do and in what order.

I use more detail projects that are new or out of the ordinary. I find going into some detail helps me to identify what is the most effective next action, which, as often as not, is something different from what I thought it would be when I started detailing the project.

I also use more detail on projects that I am dragging my feet on for some reason. Those I break down into smaller and smaller actions until I find a pill I can swallow.

[curt.clifton]

is this because once you are involved in the project you will intuitively know the next step?

I only write as many steps as occur to me in the moment. If I'm already in serious planning mode, then I might do more planning of steps. But sometimes a couple of sequential actions will occur to me while I'm doing something else. I'll send them both to the Inbox using QuickEntry. While emptying my inbox I'll group the actions into an action group to express their sequential dependency.

I tend to capture fairly fine grained actions for a couple of reasons. I often meet with students who just drop by my office. The fine grained actions serve to get me back on task later. Also, if I find that certain patterns of actions are generally useful, I might capture them for use as a template (http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~clifton/software.html#PopTemp).

[Tim Wood]

I checked for blocked projects and action groups without next actions on at least a daily basis, in my evening review.

So, if we had a 'blocked' indicator of some hypothetical sort, would you find that annoying throughout the day, or useful? Another option that would avoid adding yet another visual indicator might be to bump the review interval on these types of projects to daily; of course, that assumes you know up front the project is going to be of fast turnaround type. Yet a third option would be to have an indicator that is not in the sidebar, but is in a status item or dock tile or the like.

Any ideas about why any/all of the above would/wouldn't work would be helpful when we get around to this (I've attached the thread to our bug database).

[jasong]

I'd like to suggest that you stop adding visual indicators for stuff, and instead add smart mailboxes or other filters that can be used to "pull" items together. An "overdue" filter, a "missing actions" filter, a "due soon" filter, etc.

I think seeing, e.g.

OverDue Items (5)
Coming Soon (12)
No Next Action (32)

would be helpful to me, and would eliminate the need to scroll through dozens or hundreds of projects and actions to find those "important" items, eliminate cluttering the already-busy interface with more indicators, and provide a way of hiding the "reminders" for those who don't like them ("don't create smart mailboxes/filters with that criteria").

[curt.clifton]

So, if we had a 'blocked' indicator of some hypothetical sort, would you find that annoying throughout the day, or useful? Another option that would avoid adding yet another visual indicator might be to bump the review interval on these types of projects to daily; of course, that assumes you know up front the project is going to be of fast turnaround type. Yet a third option would be to have an indicator that is not in the sidebar, but is in a status item or dock tile or the like.


I do review those projects daily, but sometimes in the heat of battle I'll fail to notice that a next action is missing. I'm definitely not looking for a sidebar item. That would be too noisy and would be annoying throughout the day. In Planning Mode it's fairly obvious when a project is missing a NA (though less so now with the due date highlighting, since a non-actionable items might be in bold-faced orange or red and not in italic). The real issue for me is when Action Groups are missing NAs. Perhaps the action group's disclosure triangle could be used to carry this information?

I have to admit that the number of notifications competing for attention has reached (or exceeded) the saturation point. I posted one idea for how to deal with that here (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?p=24566&postcount=11).

[curt.clifton]

I'd like to suggest that you stop adding visual indicators for stuff, and instead add smart mailboxes or other filters that can be used to "pull" items together. An "overdue" filter, a "missing actions" filter, a "due soon" filter, etc.

This is the best use case for smart folders that I've seen yet!

[eronel]

It seems like there are two different preferences among users for how to distinguish sets of tasks. One is to segregate items into a separate list through the use of smartfolders or filters. The other is to highlight items within a larger list through visual cues. Both approaches are useful and not need be exclusive. For example, I personally like the visual cues in most cases, especially regarding dueness and availability, and I'd also readily use a smartfolder for blocked projects that have no next action.

I suggest having both alternatives available: smartfolders that can be built from smart queries using named attributes and styles that can be built using named attributes (somewhat like styles in OOP). Because of the possibities for style confusion/overload, OF could continue to provide a default "sane" set of styles for some attributes such as next actions, unavailable actions, overdue actions, etc. But users could change or nullify any style they wished.

As the display gets busier, I wonder if it would be helpful to have a UI feature for highlighting the highlights.

I agree that it would be useful to be able to identify which tasks have certain named attributes. If OF used styles in a manner similar to OOP, then, just as in OOP, you could click on the style and have all matching items identified in the outline via a kind of neutral highlighting.

[Chris]

I'd like to suggest that you stop adding visual indicators for stuff, and instead add smart mailboxes or other filters that can be used to "pull" items together. An "overdue" filter, a "missing actions" filter, a "due soon" filter, etc.

I think seeing, e.g.

OverDue Items (5)
Coming Soon (12)
No Next Action (32)

would be helpful to me, and would eliminate the need to scroll through dozens or hundreds of projects and actions to find those "important" items, eliminate cluttering the already-busy interface with more indicators, and provide a way of hiding the "reminders" for those who don't like them ("don't create smart mailboxes/filters with that criteria").

I'm a little confused by this suggestion. Some of it already exists; you can group and sort by due date, so that takes care of the first two.

Also there seem to be two different suggestions here. New filter settings are pretty different than smart groups (which would live in the sidebar?) Would smart groups just exist in planning mode, or would they appear in context mode as well?

I guess I can't quite visualize what's being suggested here.

[steve]

I just got around to testing the script (found here) (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?p=24453&postcount=4), and I'm sorry to report that I can't seem to get it to work on my machine. Have others gotten in to work?

I think an essential component to GTD is being able to find project that are missing NA's.

Steve

[jasong]

Hi Chris, sorry for taking so long to respspond. I'm not sure which part of my suggestion is confusing, other than perhaps the use of filter and smart mailboxes together.

A “smart mailbox“ (aka “smart folder“), is a definable repository which pulls together items of similar nature. “All unread mail”, e.g., or “No next actions”.

A “filter” is a way of limiting the display of a large body of content to a definable subset of that content, e.g. “From Jason” or “Available actions”.

The two are indistinguishable except in presentation. A smart mailbox/folder groups the results into a special location for reviewing at a time of your choosing; filters tend to act on the view you're currently seeing, showing and removing items as necessary.

The two can work together; you can create a smart mailbox of, say “All Overdue items”, and then further filter them to show only items with a time estimate under 15 minutes.

You note that the first two items, OverDue Items and Coming Soon, already exist. True, they exist, in that you can see items which are overdue, or which are coming soon. What you can't do is group them together in some meaningful way. Grouping and sorting by start date dont show me my overdue actions, nor do they show actions which are deemed “coming soon”. I currently have five items marked as “overdue”, and to find them, i have to scroll through my 106 active projects. A smart folder would put those five overdue items into a single folder I can easily click on and review.

If you've never used smart mailboxes (in Mail, Journler, iTunes, NetNewsWire and a host of other applications), I suggest giving them a try. They're a fantastic way to view slices of your data.

[steve]

Jason,
Thanks for the terrific description of smart folders and filters. Reading your post made me want smart folders even more. I find them vital in other applications.
Steve

[ksrhee]

The two are indistinguishable except in presentation. A smart mailbox/folder groups the results into a special location for reviewing at a time of your choosing; filters tend to act on the view you're currently seeing, showing and removing items as necessary.

The two can work together; you can create a smart mailbox of, say “All Overdue items”, and then further filter them to show only items with a time estimate under 15 minutes.



You can already do this in OF right now. You can group items by due dates and then filter it by time estimate. If you expand only the overdue items and collapse all the others and save it as a perspective, then you can get back to this quickly.

[jasong]

You can already do this in OF right now. You can group items by due dates and then filter it by time estimate. If you expand only the overdue items and collapse all the others and save it as a perspective, then you can get back to this quickly.

Perspectives, which I find very useful, bring you close, but not all the way. For one thing, Perspectives require a new window (or reusing your current one and then resetting it to your previous view).

However, that's not my point. The fact that Perspectives can solve one of my examples isn't a reason to dismiss the concept of smart folders/mailboxes. Journler has the best implementation of smart folders I've seen. They're hierarchical, and inherit from their parent, so you can set up stuff like

Places to...
... Go
...... Distant
...... Local
... Eat

"...... Distant" will contain only items which would appear in "... Go" and in "Places to...". This means I can use categories of "Places to Go", "Places to Eat", and add keywords of "Distant" and "Local", and they appear in the right places.

Further, it means I can move "...... Local" from "... Go" to "... Eat" and, without editing my smart mailbox criteria itself, I can now see "Places to Eat Local".

It also means I can select "... Go" and see both Places to Go Distant and Places to Go Local, for planning a road trip (e.g.)

I just want this power with OF.

[steve]

Not being able to pick out projects without a NA continues to be a hole in my system. If there was a easy way to identify projects without a next action (yellow highlight, a special smart folder, a perspective), then I could relax and not over plan. Instead of having to switch from context mode into project mode to add NA's before you cross something off, you could rest assured that at regular intervals you could make sure that all of you projects have next actions.

Projects with concrete Next Actions are the essence of GTD. This seems like it should be a core feature of OmniFocus.

Please cast a vote or shout out if you agree.

Thanks,
Steve