Next Action and Due Dates
 

Is anyone else as confused as I am regarding why the Next Action isn't automatically one of the actions with the most current due date? I've got a project with stuff due several days from now, and stuff due today. Why would OmniFocus choose the action with the most distant due date as the Next Action? And why, when I choose to sort by due date, it sorts in descending rather than ascending order?

[QUOTE=kweller;37241]Is anyone else as confused as I am regarding why the Next Action isn't automatically one of the actions with the most current due date? I've got a project with stuff due several days from now, and stuff due today. Why would OmniFocus choose the action with the most distant due date as the Next Action? And why, when I choose to sort by due date, it sorts in descending rather than ascending order?[/QUOTE]

For each project, OmniFocus defines the next action as the first action in the project list. The reason is that OmniFocus assumes that the order you give to items in planning mode indicates the order in which you intend to do actions, other things being equal. The fact that one of them is due Tuesday and another is due Friday does not automatically mean that you want to do them in that order, at least not until Tuesday comes. The action due Friday might be more important, and you might prefer to get it out of the way first.

An important part of my daily and weekly review is making sure I have my actions in the right order.

I'm not sure what you mean by due date sorting. When I sort by due date, the top of the list shows items that are overdue, then due today, due tomorrow, due in the next week, etc. In other words, items due soonest are at the top of the list. Is that not the behavior that you get?

[QUOTE=kweller;37241]And why, when I choose to sort by due date, it sorts in descending rather than ascending order?[/QUOTE]

Sorry about that! We're fixing this for the upcoming 1.1 release.

(brianogilvie: kweller is talking about when you manually sort the current selection by due date using the Edit->Sort menu.)

[QUOTE=Ken Case;37245](brianogilvie: kweller is talking about when you manually sort the current selection by due date using the Edit->Sort menu.)[/QUOTE]

Thanks! Is that in the sneakypeek release? I'm running OF 1.0.2, r.100463, and my Edit>Sort menu has only four choices: By Name, By Status, By Date Added, and By Date Completed.

[QUOTE=brianogilvie;37269]Thanks! Is that in the sneakypeek release? I'm running OF 1.0.2, r.100463, and my Edit>Sort menu has only four choices: By Name, By Status, By Date Added, and By Date Completed.[/QUOTE]

Oh, uh, good point, I guess that couldn't be what kweller was talking about then! :) You're running the latest public build.

(Sorry, I was looking in the menu of our current internal build of 1.1 which does include the option to sort By Date Due. I forgot that that was a new addition!)