New status filter needed: "Remaining but not available"
 

I want to be able to check out unavailable actions, whether they are on hold or have a start date in the future, in order to review things that might need to be scheduled, taken off of hold, or otherwise "undisappeared."

Could you clarify how what you want would differ from using the stalled projects filter in Planning Mode? I'm not trying to be snarky, just trying to imagine a concrete usage scenario where the stalled projects filter would not do what you need.

If I understand correctly, stalled means projects that only have next or available actions in the future (are there other things that can be stalled?)

What I want is a filter for actions (more than projects) that will let me do a quick review of "invisible" actions that may actually need to be done now. This is part of the "losing stuff in OmniFocus" issue.

For instance, sometimes actions are in a sequential project or folder, which seemed right at the time it was created, but some action that I am stalling on doing for some reason has blocked actions after it that maybe have become more important. Or maybe I put something in the future, but in fact it really should be something I'm thinking about now.

Of course, I can just display all actions, but it would be better for me if I could display and look over only the subset of "disappeared" actions with the mental attitude of "Keep an eye out for anything that should be visible."

So perhaps the "Remaining but not available" filter could be called "Unavailable" and appear in the appropriate filter menu, indented under "Remaining", right after the "Available" option. It would essentially do the same thing as the "Remaining" filter except that it wouldn't show the next action (in purple) or any other available actions (in blue or black), leaving only those items that typically appeared in gray in Planning mode.

Does this sound right?

[QUOTE=Frosty Crunch;33875]If I understand correctly, stalled means projects that only have next or available actions in the future (are there other things that can be stalled?)[/QUOTE]

A stalled project is any project whose next action is either undefined (there are no remaining actions) or unavailable. It could be unavailable because it's in a context that is on hold, or it doesn't have a context yet, in addition to having a start date in the future.

Thanks for your explanation. I handle cases like that by doing a thorough weekly review of all my remaining projects. But I can see that if you're in a fast-paced field, the kind of filter you're asking for would be useful.