Quote:
Originally Posted by psidnell
I tend to live in an "Available & Flagged or Due" perspective . . . .
However, If I want an item to become visible immediately on becoming available, I'll give it a start date AND flag it. I try to use as sparingly as as due dates.
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This is my practice also. The down side is that Actions you have set a "future flag" for are not available whenever you filter for for Available Actions.
The biggest improvement I can conceive of to OF would be adding a date field to the Flag, such that the user could indicate on what date an Action should become flagged. In this way, Actions that are available remain available - and still get their Flag on the date you planned for them (alternatively, the Flag could be left as-is and a new date indicator added which would hold the date you plan to complete that Action, as determined during weekly review and/or updated as things change).
This has implications for the Forecast view. It could, optionally, display a Forecast of actions whose Flag will be lit on the future days shown rather than when the Action will come Due.
Personally, I don't want to be reminded that something is nearing its Due date nearly so much as I want to be reminded that I had a plan to work on such-and-such today. If I get close to a Due date without completing an Action, that is a minor Fail. (_Passing_ a Due date without completing the Action is a train wreck.)
This would extract greater value from the Weekly/Daily review process. In addition, it makes for an obvious calendar sync or integration feature: Provide a calendar view (or sync to iCal) such that one screen shows hard landscape calendar entries along with Due actions and actions that are planned for the date(s) displayed (most useful for day-at-a-glance and week-at-a-glance sorts of views). This would facilitate working as planned, while preserving all that is great about OF (including the ability to find a next action relevant to the current context even when the "plan" has been disrupted).
Such an arrangement:
in no way violates GTD,
prevents our "work-around" from "breaking" OF functionality
(by hiding Actions that really are available), and
facilitates Mind Like Water mode of being.