Quote:
Originally Posted by bashosfrog
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.
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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.