[offline81]

Thank you so much for your feedback and the cool answers. This is a really cool community.

the more i play around with OF the more i think a lot of questions is related to the personal style.

With regard to that @whpalmer4 due dates is nothing for me because it is not GTD like. if i have fixed dates i use a calendar. the weekly review will do the rest because during it i check the calendar for important things.

So let me clarify my issue a bit more.

i think the big advantage of OF is the possibility to plan projects in project mode. so it is possible to track more than the typical GTD next action. if i have ideas for the further actions, i can plan them as well. so if i have a sequential project consisting of 5 steps or actions, an the 4th action is a waiting for action acting as a reminder for something i delivered in step 3, i would set step 4 to my waiting for category. if i am doing this and then switch to context mode, i see the waiting for action in the waiting for context, even when i am still at step 1 (with regard to the example above). after researching i found out that this is probably because of the status filter that is set to "left" (i hope this is the correct translation because my OF is in german. it is the top item in this filter category). so i set the filter to "available". now i don't see any waiting for item any more. all are hided. even those that were the really next steps in the project. for example step 4 in the example when the three steps before are completed. i still think the available filter is the correct one because it hides also other unavailable tasks in other categories that are later on relevant in other projects.

so the answer of Lucas made me think more about not setting my waiting for context on hold. i have to play around with this a bit and will post my experiences here. i think this could really work for sequential projects. i am not sure if it will work for parallel ones.

but if it does, i am confused regarding the function of setting something to on hold. what is it for then? the documentation says that it is for two kinds of things:

"
Using on-hold or “waiting” contexts
You can set a context’s status to “On Hold” with the inspector; actions assigned to an on-hold context are considered unavailable, and they block the progress of sequential projects. There are two main situations in which you might want to use on-hold contexts:

First, you might create one or more “waiting” contexts for keeping track of actions that you’ve delegated to other people. You can’t actually do anything until you hear back from that person; all you can do is wait for them to finish it, and maybe nudge them about it every now and then. So an action like “get annotated pterodactyl brochure draft back from Dennis” might go in your “Waiting : Dennis” context.

Second, you might have some contexts that you don’t expect to be available to you any time soon. You could put your “Frankfurt” context on hold when you’re in London, or put your “Boss” context on hold until she comes back from vacation, and any actions assigned to them would become unavailable. This helps you see which actions and projects aren’t likely to make progress until your situation changes.
"
interesting is, that on hold actions only block the progress of sequential projects. so this hints me more and more into the direction that it could work for both parallel and sequential projects because it seems that on hold has no impact on parallel projects.

so the first option mentioned in the documentation looks strange to me. this is exactly my case. but it is only working if i see only the waiting fors that are relevant at the moment and not future ones (that are in the context because of project planning). setting the context not to on hold will i think really that what i want. the Waiting For is the re really next step and showing up in the context. or do i miss something?

the second option seems quite clear to me. i think this i a good thing to use on hold for.

do you also use not on hold for theses waiting fors? I would be kind of you if you would send me your comments, etc..

Thanks and best regards
Patrick