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Originally Posted by dancingbrook
What about dealing with a parallel project with Actions and/or parallel and/or sequential Groups? Only the top Action (in the list) shows up in next-actions. This seems contrary to both the idea of parallel actions and the idea of grouping. Why would I not want to see and plan to handle perhaps 3-4 parallel next actions from one project just as I would from many projects?
Or am I supposed to use Available rather than Next Action?
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To my mind, Next Action views are most useful when you are in execute mode, cranking through those actions, having already decided what you are going to work on. If you're going to do some decision-making, then a wider scope makes for a better decision. By using the Next Action filter, you are asking the software to make a selection for you from a group of choices which you've already declared to be equally available as a Next Action. It does fall down a bit in the case where you've got a bunch of parallel actions in different contexts and the very first one turns out to be in a context where you aren't, even though you could possibly work on every other one of the lot.
Bottom line for me is if the Next Action view says do XYZ and I can't or won't do XYZ right now, pick something else from the Available view. Rely on the regular review to balance the progress across multiple parallel branches.
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Perhaps the whole notion of letting OF (or any other app) decide what I should be able to see (and thus plan to do next) is flawed as most often one needs to be able to make a judgement that is more complex than simply a linear decision?
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It's very much a situational matter -- sometimes letting it feed you tasks one after another is the right thing, and just as obviously at other times you'll need to use your judgment.