Waiting, on hold, projects & reviews: this is odd...
 

Ok, so when I mark a next action as On Hold, like @Waiting, then no matter if I have a start/due date on that action or not, it's basically hidden from most views. I have to remember to review my Waiting with the eye icon set to the right setting otherwise I won't ever see it again.

On the other hand projects set to on hold, no matter if they have a start/due date or not, persistently show up in my review.

Something seems to be missing here. If the first solution is good, then why isn't it applied to projects too? Likewise, if the second solution is the best,why isn't that applied to actions?

I would love to be able to set a project to pop back on my lists at a certain date -- and not have to see it in review all that time.

Thats a consequence of OF's design, originating from the GTD concept.

Base idea is that, whenever you have the ability to complete a task, you sit down and check OF for available actions. If an action is "waiting for"/"on hold" then you can not act on it. Other people have to act first. Hence OF hides it so it does not clutter your view on actually available tasks.

Projects on the other hand are meant to organize individual tasks that belong to each other or depend on each other in order to achieve the greater goal, getting the entire project done. Projects are no tasks. They will not clutter your view on individual tasks since they do not show up there, no matter if they are on hold or not. Still they will be visible, even if "on hold", which makes sense to me since you might have want to work on your project's structure even while waiting for the project to become actionable.

OF requires a little personal commitment, so to say. It does a great job of keeping track of your todos, reminds you and so forth. Still, if you use elements like "on hold" you will have to either set view options to show "remaining" tasks from time to time or use the review function to make sure you do not miss stuff.

However, if you put a task on "waiting for" then there should be a third-party action (the one you are waiting for) which will at some point remind you of the task, no?

For an @Waiting I would like to bring it forward at some time; otherwise I have to do the "thinking". Maybe I should forget about the Waiting context and just use start date to have the @Waiting reappear on the list.

In theory when "waiting for" someone else will do something so you go "ah yes!" but often that doesn't happen. The more you GTD, the more you're following up with others asking "I asked ABC -- what's the ETA?"

I like how you explain the idea of visible On Hold projects.

I see the issue with that. What comes to mind is

- a more regular review process. If you review all tasks once per week like many do (me for example) then you will be reminded to ask person X at least once per week.

- configure your perspectives so that @waiting tasks are shown. Assign a starting date in the future (maybe a week) to such tasks that depend on third party actions. That way they will at first be hidden but magically appear a week later, reminding you to ask bob about ABC's status.