[jhogan]

Apologies if this has been asked somewhere before - it seems like it must have been but I can't find it!

Are there plans to allow setting individual items "on hold?" Right now the only way to do it on a per-item level (as opposed to a per-project level) is to assign the item to a context which is on hold, which essentially overwrites the "real" context for the item.

It also makes it a little harder to see at a glance which items are "on hold" -- I'd like a little "pause" icon to appear next to them, the same way it does for projects or contexts which are on hold.

[Ken Case]

When I want to put something on hold for a while, I set its start date to "+1w" (one week from now), "+3m" (three months from now), etc. It's a lot like hitting snooze on an alarm clock: the action disappears until that date, then it comes back and I can decide if I want to act on it soon or defer it again. (If I want it to stay on hold indefinitely, well, "+100y" seems sufficient.)

That said, we are considering adding the ability to change an action's state to "On Hold" or "Dropped" just like you can currently do with projects.

[bashosfrog]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

That said, we are considering adding the ability to change an action's state to "On Hold" or "Dropped" just like you can currently do with projects.

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.

[jonwalthour]

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.

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.

[Ambar]

I agree with jonwalthour. When I have called someone, I check that action off and create a new one in a Waiting For context. I'm used to putting WF at the beginning of these to distinguish them, so they look something like this:

WF call back from Dr. Dietrich, called 24 May 2008 re: gelding Ace, left msg

That way I can quickly run down my lists of WF items and decide who needs prodding and who doesn't. :-)

[Jon C]

Originally Posted by Ambar

I agree with jonwalthour. When I have called someone, I check that action off and create a new one in a Waiting For context.

Q: Is it possible to move an action between contexts, so in the above example rather than delete the action and then create a new 'waiting-for' version of the same thing you can just drag the original action into a 'waiting for' list?

I'm not a current user, I'm considering switching to Omnifocus iPhone when the latter arrives in the UK, and since something similar to the above (recategorising actions as waiting-fors) is what I currently do when doing GTD with my Sony Ericsson P910i, and I'd be sad to lose that functionality.

Thanks - Jon

[jhogan]

Originally Posted by jonwalthour

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."

That's actually pretty close to the situation where I'd like to put individual actions on hold. I have a project called "Fitness" where I put all sorts of tasks and ideas about fitness -- "look into proper form for exercise X," "ask personal trainer about X," "research health of food X, etc." I toss these on the list, but later when I go to organize things, I look at many of them and say "you know, maybe someday that would be nice to do, but who knows when/if I'll ever have to time to get around to it."

If I put these tasks in an on-hold context, then I get reminded of them all they time when they show up in my "working" perspectives, and I've also overwritten their "proper" context. I don't really want that, since they're on indefinite hold in my mind. If I put these tasks in an on-hold project, I have to take them out of my "Health" project, which is where they really belong.

I can work around it with Ken's "start date" suggestion, but it would be nice to be able to put something on hold "for real."

[Toadling]

Originally Posted by jhogan

That's actually pretty close to the situation where I'd like to put individual actions on hold. I have a project called "Fitness" where I put all sorts of tasks and ideas about fitness -- "look into proper form for exercise X," "ask personal trainer about X," "research health of food X, etc." I toss these on the list, but later when I go to organize things, I look at many of them and say "you know, maybe someday that would be nice to do, but who knows when/if I'll ever have to time to get around to it."

I think I'd handle this by moving everything up one level. In other words, I'd create a folder called "Fitness" or "Health". After all, it's not really something that is ever going to be completed in a traditional sense; it's really more an "area of responsibility" than a project.

Then, inside my new "Fitness" folder, I'd create the necessary projects and single-action lists (SAL) to organize all my actions. This gives you a lot more flexibility because now you can create multiple projects (which are, in many ways, more flexible than action groups in a single project), and they can be individually marked as complete, dropped, put on hold, etc.

Plus, I'd also create a "Someday/Maybe" SAL in the "Fitness" folder and put it on hold. Any single actions that I'm considering for the future, I'd drop in there. Some might later be expanded into full-fledged projects. Other might remain single actions and later be moved to a different SAL that's not on hold.

[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by jonwalthour

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).

You can do this in OmniFocus right now by grouping some of your actions in a parallel group: groups can be set to sequential or parallel independently of their parent project or group.

[jonwalthour]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

You can do this in OmniFocus right now by grouping some of your actions in a parallel group: groups can be set to sequential or parallel independently of their parent project or group.

That's not exactly true. These are action groups, not true subprojects. If I have a project called "My project" and an action group "Call Joe RE foo" then an action "Call Joe at 555-1234". I called Joe, he wasn't home so I left a message on his voicemail. Now, I'm "Waiting for Joe to call me back RE foo". This the second, and next, action in the "Call Joe RE foo" action group in the project "My project." So, I go to context mode and look under my "Waiting for" context and see "Waiting for Joe to call me back RE foo" associated with "My project". This is not correct from my point of view. I think the project should be "Call Joe RE foo".