Promote an action to an action group?
 

I hit this use case all the time, and I don't know how to represent it in OF.

1. [In planning mode...]
2. Create project: "Start a circus"
3. Create action: "Buy elephant", context: @farm
4. [Some time later, when I'm at the farm, in context mode...]
5. See action "Buy elephant", realize it's really a bunch of actions: "Learn what kind of elephants there are", "See which farms are selling elephants", etc.
6. Try to promote action "Buy elephant" into a group... and fail

I see menu items for "Add child", "outdent", and "move left". None are dimmed, but add child does nothing, and the other two just beep.

What's the OF way to do this?

I don't think there's a way to do that in Context mode - so you need to switch into Planning mode, at which point "Add child" etc will work. Hit the "Switch" button if it's in your toolbar, or right-click on the task and select "Show in Planning mode".

However, consider converting the action into a project, particularly if it's the kind of thing you can work on in parallel to the rest of the existing project. If this is what you want to do, you just drag the action into the projects bar on the left, and it will convert it into a project for you.

So, for example, if your actions for "Start a circus" include "Hire a big top", "Buy an elephant", and "Buy a top hat", group each of these in one "Starting a Circus" folder - if they're not linear actions, this is often easier than having indented steps within a single project.

Hope that helps!

Another way to approach this on the desktop is to double-click on the action you want to expand. You'll get a new project mode window focused on the project that contains the action, and you can add the child actions. When you're done, you can close the window and you'll be back where you were.

Belated thanks - both of these tips work well for me. In reality, what I'd really want is nested projects; they're independent enough to work on in parallel, but I also want to include them when I'm reviewing the larger project. If I actually did a weekly review, that wouldn't be such a problem, but that hasn't happened in five years...

[QUOTE=Jay Levitt;71219]Belated thanks - both of these tips work well for me. In reality, what I'd really want is nested projects; they're independent enough to work on in parallel, but I also want to include them when I'm reviewing the larger project. If I actually did a weekly review, that wouldn't be such a problem, but that hasn't happened in five years...[/QUOTE]

OmniFocus' action groups don't work for you? If the containing project or action group permits parallel execution, you could have a bunch of action groups that can be worked in parallel.

As for the lack of reviewing, I find it helpful to step away from the concept of a weekly review of everything and adopt instead the notion of a daily review of something. OmniFocus allows you to have differing review intervals and next review dates for each project, and coupling that with the group by next review view allows you to do this in a manner that isn't so daunting. Do a forum search for "prime number review" and you'll get a couple of threads that flesh this out a bit more.

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;71225]OmniFocus' action groups don't work for you?[/quote]

No, sorry - they do. I was responding to Ian's suggestion to convert the action into a project.

I like the "daily review of something" idea very much; it's a very "I'll just get out the folder" trick. Thanks.