[Hoff]

I sorely wish I could see parent actions in the context views. At the moment I have to choose between either:

1) having a well-organized project view
2) having a well-organized context view

To optimize project view, I use nested actions. I find nested actions very helpful in my project planning. I constantly find myself entering actions on the fly which then turn out to not be do-able when I start to work on them - and need to break them down further. Nested actions help me keep my folder/project list down to a manageable/viewable size and are a major time-saver for task entry.

Example: I need to get a price on 5 different items as part of a project.

Without nested tasks I would have to enter:
Get price for item 1.
Get price for item 2. etc.

With nested tasks, I just enter:
Get prices:
item 1
item 2, etc.

But to optimize context view, I need to avoid nested actions. Without nested actions, grouping a context list by project gives me a nice agenda to follow when I go to talk to someone:
@Boss
Project 1
action 1 (relevant to Boss)
Project 2
action 1 (relevant to Boss)

But if I've nested actions and switch to context view, I now lack all the parent task information I relied on in project view. Let's say I wanted to talk to my boss about the price of one of the items in the example above (among many other things to discuss). Context view would read:
@Boss
Project 1
item 1

I'm sitting there, looking at my context list with only "item 1" to remind me - did I want to talk about the price or something else? Bummer. I know... if I took the time to enter more detail, or remembered not to nest actions that happen in contexts away from my computer, etc. this wouldn't happen...

Sadly, the work-arounds I've come up with are enough of a hassle that I usually wind up not using context mode at all. I use OF for planning, reviews and capture, but not for actually "getting things done" in real time. The nested tasks are too useful in those other steps of the process for me to give up.

When I'm in "doing" mode, at my computer, I wind up just working from the project view. For contexts away from the computer, I wind up scrawling out a paper agenda so I know I haven't overlooked any crucial parent task information and so I can jot down notes while away.

For a while, I tried printing out a context view and then switching back to project mode to look for any nested information I might be missing, which I would then note on my print-out. Bizarrely, it often seems easier/safer to just write a list by hand in the first place.

But I fantasize about having those nested task headings in context view (just like I can now have project headings when grouping by project). In that world, I would have my quick-to-enter, well-organized project plans AND be able to blast off a context-specific agenda when I'm on the go, knowing I could trust it when my admittedly fractured memory for details fails me. Sigh... :-)