Not Everything is a task/action.
 

What if I just want to log a phone call. Add a document to a project. Or??? Omnifocus seems to see every row as a task or action.

You can add it in a note. Or you can add it as a task and check it as completed.

To take malisa's suggestion a bit further, you could add such things to the note field of the project itself. That way the info continues to be available for the entire life of the project rather than just for a specific action.

It really depends on what the info is and how you're going to use it, I guess.

-Dennis

I created a context cleverly named "notes" and use that to keep notes in a project. To keep them out of view when I am working my to-do lists, I do not include notes among the contexts in my various perspectives.

Not Everything is a task/action...

I mentioned something like this in a previous post as something I would like to see but I was shot down somewhat. I would like to have a 'tick box' style action 'list' choice a bit like OmniOutliner has.

Simply put, some things are lists and not actions but should stay in OF for convenience. And lists can be parts of projects. However with lists they need a slight tweak to behave properly and not behave like next actions by cleaning themselves away or getting disconnected from their parent. A checklist is very so slightly different from a next action list and it would be cool if there was a way of creating them in OF - taking a small leaf out of Omnioutliner's book but still remaining GTD friendly.

BevvyB, though there isn't a way to create tick box lists directly in OF, you might be interested in jharrison's [URL="http://jhh.med.virginia.edu/main/OmniFocusScripts"]Project Folder and Project Notes scripts[/URL]. The scripts create project folders and project notes as OmniOutliner files. You can, of course, manually create an .oo3 checklist and attach it to a task's notes field, but the script automates it a bit. druido has recently posted updated versions of both scripts in [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=10863"]this thread[/URL].

Hey that's cool. But I think it does show that this simple behavior change of some actions to lists would be a good thing, and it makes sense for OF to do this inside the app. As Omni have done it in Outliner I think it's not un-Omni-ish or un-GTD-ish.

How about 'sequential', 'parallel', and 'list' as a new choice?

[QUOTE=BevvyB;66248]Hey that's cool. But I think it does show that this simple behavior change of some actions to lists would be a good thing, and it makes sense for OF to do this inside the app. As Omni have done it in Outliner I think it's not un-Omni-ish or un-GTD-ish.

How about 'sequential', 'parallel', and 'list' as a new choice?[/QUOTE]

I respectfully disagree. It just feels like unnecessary complexity to me. There are already a variety of solutions available using the notes field in OmniFocus or OmniOutliner or plain text files outside of OmniFocus. Adding a list option to the sequential/parallel toggle seems muddled to me and dilutes (pollutes?) the concrete purpose of that functionality.

Screwdrivers and flashlights are both useful tools; every toolbox should have them. But the best screwdrivers and the best flashlights are the ones that strive to be [I]either[/I] a screwdriver or a flashlight, not both.

-Dennis

[QUOTE=Toadling;66254]I respectfully disagree. It just feels like unnecessary complexity to me. There are already a variety of solutions available using the notes field in OmniFocus or OmniOutliner or plain text files outside of OmniFocus. Adding a list option to the sequential/parallel toggle seems muddled to me and dilutes (pollutes?) the concrete purpose of that functionality.

Screwdrivers and flashlights are both useful tools; every toolbox should have them. But the best screwdrivers and the best flashlights are the ones that strive to be [I]either[/I] a screwdriver or a flashlight, not both.

-Dennis[/QUOTE]

Then we must agree to disagree :)

I agree with you BevvyB;-)
I use 2 applications for getting the mess out of my head; devonthink and omni f.
Devon does all freeform stuff and omni the lists part that i want or need to keep an eye on, but not all these lists are actionable. Some are pure brainstorm items/lists, or more reminders of things. This has been very useful on my iphone for instance! I mean this works also now, but it would be way more elegant and reduce the complexity (for me at least) if this could sit somewhere without having a checkbox in front of it.