Feature request: "On hold" status of individual items
 

Apologies if this has been asked somewhere before - it seems like it must have been but I can't find it!

Are there plans to allow setting individual items "on hold?" Right now the only way to do it on a per-item level (as opposed to a per-project level) is to assign the item to a context which is on hold, which essentially overwrites the "real" context for the item.

It also makes it a little harder to see at a glance which items are "on hold" -- I'd like a little "pause" icon to appear next to them, the same way it does for projects or contexts which are on hold.

When I want to put something on hold for a while, I set its start date to "+1w" (one week from now), "+3m" (three months from now), etc. It's a lot like hitting snooze on an alarm clock: the action disappears until that date, then it comes back and I can decide if I want to act on it soon or defer it again. (If I want it to stay on hold indefinitely, well, "+100y" seems sufficient.)

That said, we are considering adding the ability to change an action's state to "On Hold" or "Dropped" just like you can currently do with projects.

[QUOTE=Ken Case;37427]That said, we are considering adding the ability to change an action's state to "On Hold" or "Dropped" just like you can currently do with projects.[/QUOTE]

Yes, please. "On hold" for me generally relates to phone calls I'm waiting to hear back on, and the response may come in minutes or hours, but very seldom days or weeks.

I might have a list of 20 contacts that I'm calling in a day. At the moment there's no way of telling which I've called and am waiting on, and which I've yet to call. I thinking "Waiting/On Hold" deserves special attention: it's a class of action that you need in your face, but which you can't actually act on. OF does a good job of keeping these items in your face, but not of telling you that nothing further can be done at the moment.

[QUOTE=Ken Case;37427]When I want to put something on hold for a while, I set its start date to "+1w" (one week from now), "+3m" (three months from now), etc. It's a lot like hitting snooze on an alarm clock: the action disappears until that date, then it comes back and I can decide if I want to act on it soon or defer it again. (If I want it to stay on hold indefinitely, well, "+100y" seems sufficient.)[/QUOTE]

Hey, that's a pretty good workaround. I'm surprised I didn't think of it myself, but that should totally get me by for now. Thanks!

[QUOTE=bashosfrog;37430]Yes, please. "On hold" for me generally relates to phone calls I'm waiting to hear back on, and the response may come in minutes or hours, but very seldom days or weeks.

I might have a list of 20 contacts that I'm calling in a day. At the moment there's no way of telling which I've called and am waiting on, and which I've yet to call. I thinking "Waiting/On Hold" deserves special attention: it's a class of action that you need in your face, but which you can't actually act on. OF does a good job of keeping these items in your face, but not of telling you that nothing further can be done at the moment.[/QUOTE]

That's not strict GTD, though, AFAIK. When I call or email someone expecting a response, it's a project (takes more than one physical action to complete). There's (1) "Email Joe RE foo" and (2) "Waiting-for Joe to get back to me RE foo". Assuming an "On Hold" status with actions would work like projects and not normally be visible when in that state b/c they're not active, there would be no placeholder to remind me that Joe owes me a response regarding foo. This is why I want to see true subprojects supported in OF as I have so many "more than one physical action" steps in projects that aren't completely sequential (ie, I don't have to wait for Joe to get back to me for me to move on to another NA in the project, but neither is the entire project to be run in parallel).

What would be the advantage of putting an individual action on hold? If something is "On hold", it's waiting for something--a response, another step to be completed, a certain timeframe to pass, etc. Why not create a "Waiting-for" event in that project and leave it set. From my point of view, a truly "On Hold" project would be one, for example, where you're boss says, "We're going to indefinitely table doing x for right now." You may never get back to it or you may, next week or next month or five years from now. Then the project, in my opinion, is truly inactive. I realize it's a fine line of distinction and could be argued either way, but that's my two cents.

I agree with jonwalthour. When I have called someone, I check that action off and create a new one in a Waiting For context. I'm used to putting WF at the beginning of these to distinguish them, so they look something like this:

WF call back from Dr. Dietrich, called 24 May 2008 re: gelding Ace, left msg

That way I can quickly run down my lists of WF items and decide who needs prodding and who doesn't. :-)

[QUOTE=jonwalthour;37443]What would be the advantage of putting an individual action on hold? If something is "On hold", it's waiting for something--a response, another step to be completed, a certain timeframe to pass, etc. Why not create a "Waiting-for" event in that project and leave it set. From my point of view, a truly "On Hold" project would be one, for example, where you're boss says, "We're going to indefinitely table doing x for right now."[/QUOTE]

That's actually pretty close to the situation where I'd like to put individual actions on hold. I have a project called "Fitness" where I put all sorts of tasks and ideas about fitness -- "look into proper form for exercise X," "ask personal trainer about X," "research health of food X, etc." I toss these on the list, but later when I go to organize things, I look at many of them and say "you know, maybe someday that would be nice to do, but who knows when/if I'll ever have to time to get around to it."

If I put these tasks in an on-hold [i]context[/i], then I get reminded of them all they time when they show up in my "working" perspectives, and I've also overwritten their "proper" context. I don't really want that, since they're on indefinite hold in my mind. If I put these tasks in an on-hold [i]project[/i], I have to take them out of my "Health" project, which is where they really belong.

I can work around it with Ken's "start date" suggestion, but it would be nice to be able to put something on hold "for real."

[QUOTE=jonwalthour;37443]This is why I want to see true subprojects supported in OF as I have so many "more than one physical action" steps in projects that aren't completely sequential (ie, I don't have to wait for Joe to get back to me for me to move on to another NA in the project, but neither is the entire project to be run in parallel).[/QUOTE]

You can do this in OmniFocus right now by grouping some of your actions in a parallel group: groups can be set to sequential or parallel independently of their parent project or group.

[QUOTE=jhogan;37451]That's actually pretty close to the situation where I'd like to put individual actions on hold. I have a project called "Fitness" where I put all sorts of tasks and ideas about fitness -- "look into proper form for exercise X," "ask personal trainer about X," "research health of food X, etc." I toss these on the list, but later when I go to organize things, I look at many of them and say "you know, maybe someday that would be nice to do, but who knows when/if I'll ever have to time to get around to it."[/QUOTE]

I think I'd handle this by moving everything up one level. In other words, I'd create a folder called "Fitness" or "Health". After all, it's not really something that is ever going to be completed in a traditional sense; it's really more an "area of responsibility" than a project.

Then, inside my new "Fitness" folder, I'd create the necessary projects and single-action lists (SAL) to organize all my actions. This gives you a lot more flexibility because now you can create multiple projects (which are, in many ways, more flexible than action groups in a single project), and they can be individually marked as complete, dropped, put on hold, etc.

Plus, I'd also create a "Someday/Maybe" SAL in the "Fitness" folder and put it on hold. Any single actions that I'm considering for the future, I'd drop in there. Some might later be expanded into full-fledged projects. Other might remain single actions and later be moved to a different SAL that's not on hold.

Ken: I really hope that you don't believe that parallel action groups are any kind of substitute for real sub projects. .)

Now, back to topic.
The main need for putting individual actions to on-hold is with single actions.
SAL's are kind of a silly construct in my opinion. They don't bring anything new to the table compared to projects. You could just as well create a project and call it fitness, make it parallel etc. Hmm, off topic again.
If you follow jonwalthour's/GTD's idea of being very liberal with what you consider a project, you are going to end up with a lot of projects. This creates the need to organize those projects in some kind of structure and currently folders don't allow that because they can only be dropped (which I like). So we are back to the need for sub projects again!

Omni, come on throw me a bone here...