[pjc]

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

I don't want to start a holy war, so this will be my last comment on this topic. That said, I think the current implementation does reflect GTD's notion of a next action.

As the instigator of this current debate, I have to admit that you have explained your view very well, and I find your perspective on "Next" actions enlightening. I really like your point people potentially not balancing their projects.

However:

Now, OmniFocus allows us to go further by defining some projects as parallel...

And it is in OF's application of "next" to this extension of GTD that I feel the current notion of "next" isn't quite following GTD's spirit.

In the case of sequential projects, my generalized notion of "next" reduces precisely to your notion of "next". If one prefers to adhere strictly to GTD and use only sequential projects, either definition of "next" is equivalent.

However, if you accept the notion of parallel projects, then it seems to me that the definition of "next" should not be so rigidly sequential. Instead, I read the spirit of "next" mean "the next action in a project that I can do in my current context(s)":

Originally Posted by David Allen

These hold the inventory of predefined actions that you can take...

(emphasis added, thanks djbell for the quote)

Again, applied to sequential projects, this reduces to precisely the traditional definition of "next", because only the top task in a sequential project is available. But applied to parallel projects, it means I can see one task (the "next" one) per project in my current context(s).

To your point, this could indeed cause people to lose some focus in their parallel projects -- but I would suggest that this is the essential result of making a project parallel. To retain the focus you describe, the project ought to be sequential.

That's the theory, anyway. In practice, I have to think about whether certain projects are making less headway than they could simply because the "next" filter is too restrictive. Yes, I can switch to "Available", but that list is far too long and overwhelming, and breaks the "Mind Like Water" state. Switching filters in this way is effectively a form of planning, which really shouldn't be so pressing. I've scheduled a review for each project, and I don't like having to review projects more often than that just to see whether I need to reprioritize (simply to tweak the "next" action) because of a varying mix of contexts day to day.

In short, "next" is too narrow for parallel projects, and "available" is too broad, at least for me.

p.s. Please don't remain silent out of fear of a "war" -- this is an RFC, after all! I specifically want to hear a variety of viewpoints, especially if they differ from my own!