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Originally Posted by pvonk
From what I've read in those threads concerning single actions, the Religion of GTD permits only one next action per project, regardless of the sequential or parallel setting.
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Actually, no. In the strictest GTD sense, every single action in your currently active list of actions is a "next action". Those next actions which are also the next logical step in a sequence of actions are highlighted purple, but they're not "more next" than the other "next actions"; they're simply the next step in a sequence. The use of the term "next action" to differentiate between those actions and any other currently active action is arbitrary at best (but an established habit in many GTD apps for some reason). The only thing the highlighting really indicates is that completing that action will result in another action being added to your currently active list of actions (unless it's the last action in the sequence).
A project can have many next actions associated with it, provided that those actions don't have to be completed in any particular order. When you view your list of actions in context view with the "active" filter enabled, you are looking at all of your next actions regardless of what is and isn't highlighted purple. In a pure GTD implementation, that's what next action means; it's any action that can be done right now, and if it can't be done right now it shouldn't be active.
It sounds like what you guys are using the highlight for is to prioritize your actions. It's like the first action in a sequence takes precedence over parallel actions (and is therefore "next" in your terminology) unless you have consciously decided (before looking at your context view) to assign the "next" state to one or more of those parallel actions (or arbitrarily assigned that state to all singleton actions). That's not the GTD way.
In GTD, the prioritization of actions occurs when looking at the action list for the currently appropriate context (whatever context you're in right now or will be in soon). You decide
right at the moment of action execution which action needs to be done right now. Complete that action and then look at the list
and decide again. One of the main points of GTD is to free the user from arbitrary prioritization schemes which have to be hierarchically assigned prior to the actual moment of action execution; schemes which require us to predict what will and won't be important at some time in the future rather than allowing us to decide in the moment what is important right now.
The purple highlight currently used for "next actions" (still an overloaded term, I hope Omni calls the style "next steps" or something else in their final build) only indicates the next step of a sequence. Every active action is a next action in GTD sense and has equal precedence on the list. If OF is to be a GTD app, that's really how it should be used. Any other behavior is acceptable if that works for you (hell I do tons of things that aren't in David Allen's book that work for me), but let's not fundamentally alter OF's functionality in any way that breaks it as a GTD app.