make project available only when another is complete?

[bigcloits]

Is there any way that I can put a project on hold until another one is complete? Can the completion of one project dynamically un-pause other projects?

[pvonk]

Nope. It's manual.

[bigcloits]

Too bad, but thanks for the unambiguous answer.

[gelcap]

i'm with you, though. that would be a very powerful feature.

[bigcloits]

Yes, it seems awesome, and probably inevitable in a future version. Meanwhile, somehow I will have to rely on my brain to know that I must complete project "earn money" before I can initiate project "spend money"!

[pvonk]

I must complete project "earn money" before I can initiate project "spend money"!

Considering today's economic mindset and climate, this is very un-American. ;-) Of course you may be from a different country, and I apologize if that is the case!

[bigcloits]

Considering today's economic mindset and climate, this is very un-American. ;-) Of course you may be from a different country, and I apologize if that is the case!

:-)

I'm Canadian ... which really is pretty much like being American, except that we get to criticize America without being put on a Homeland Security watch list. I hope. Plus it's chillier.

[JKT]

Yes, it seems awesome, and probably inevitable in a future version. Meanwhile, somehow I will have to rely on my brain to know that I must complete project "earn money" before I can initiate project "spend money"!
Isn't the workaround to create a project called Money that is sequential and have two parents within the project called Earn and Spend (with their respective children)? Assuming this works the way I think it should, as you place the Spend parent after the Earn parent, you can only start on your Spend actions once you have fully completed Earn due to the sequential nature of the Money project.

[bigcloits]

Isn't the workaround to create a project called Money that is sequential ...

You’re absolutely right ... as long as the projects are conceptually related. But sometimes the completion of one project is a rather fundamental accomplishment which fulfills a pre-requisite for a bunch of conceptually diverse projects — projects that rightly belong elsewhere in your .ofocus.

For instance, suppose you live on the moon, and you have a project “fix leak in dome.” Every other project you have is on hold in the the leak is fixed — but none of them have anything else to do with leak-fixing.

That was the problem I ran into: no, not a leak in my moon dome, but diverse projects sharing a common project-completion pre-quisite.

[JKT]

Ah, good point.

[tunesmith]

There's a way to do this that isn't too much of a hack.

Say you live on the moon, and you want to finish assembling your dune buggy. But there's a leak in the dome, which you're track in its own project.

So, make your next action in the "dune buggy" project be "Have leak in dome fixed". Then assign that to a "prereqs" context, which is an "on hold" context. I have it as a subcontext under "waiting".

Voila, it disappears.

I have a perspective that I check frequently for waiting and prereqs. On-Hold contexts, Remaining actions. I just scan through them, and if the dome is fixed, I see "Have leak in dome fixed", and I check it. Boom, its actions reappear in my other contexts.

The only step that is missing is the automatic step. But it's really not a big deal if you review frequently. Plus, you could even drag links to the prereq tasks from the concluding task in the active projects so you're reminded to complete them immediately.

[bigcloits]

There's a way to do this that isn't too much of a hack.

Yep, that could work for me. Might have to study it for a while. Like an hour. :) I don't seem to have gone far enough down the OF rabbit hole to quickly grasp that solution yet. But it does sound like it could work!

Not to sound ungrateful (it really is a good suggestion), but the automation really is the thing. With no hackery or trickery at all, I'm fairly capable of non-automatically activating projects when pre-requisite projects have been completed. I just don't want to have to do it!

[tunesmith]

For me, it's more than just reactivating a project. I have bucket projects with twenty or thirty enabled single-item tasks. I can just highlight fifteen of them, hit option-command-L to put them in a parallel group. Then option-command-L to put that group in a sequential group, and then a prereqs task to block it. That way they all disappear and I never have to see them again until I "complete" the prereq. In the meantime, the project itself is still active and usable.

[bigcloits]

Okay, that is very cool, tunesmith. Seemingly advanced from where I’m sitting, but cool. Seriously, I will try to implement that. Going to have to make it a project though: “try out tunesmith’s jedi mind tricks in OF” ... ;-) These aren’t the actions you’re looking for ...