[gary]

I like the singleton buckets, and I like being able to see *everything* in one view when I am processing and organizing. I don't want to have to wonder what else is out there.

Fine, but don't make it a project, because it's not.

[Bill Van Hecke]

We just had a little conversation about this here, and from reading this thread, it seems like we might be able to please most people pretty well. Imagine if OmniFocus starts with a "Single Actions" bucket at the bottom of the projects sidebar, and has that set as the default singleton action.

- A new user is made aware of the ability to keep single actions.
- Inbox items with no project go to that bucket when you clean up.
- People who have different kinds of singletons (like Chores, Reading, and so on) can make as many buckets as they need, and put them in folders. Then while focusing on your Work folder, you won't see all your Home singletons. This is why we don't want to put the singletons at the top level as peers of Inbox and Projects.

Maybe the "Projects" parent item in the sidebar needs to be renamed, though. :D

[pvonk]

Originally Posted by wvh

Maybe the "Projects" parent item in the sidebar needs to be renamed, though. :D

Right, I suggested this in an older thread. At the time I suggested a "Maintenance View" instead of Projects, since there are times when we need to move thing around, e.g. a singleton task might suddenly need to be part of some project containing other tasks. There has to be a view that displays everything so we can maintain our projects and tasks (and the inBox).

I don't think we need a "Projects" view if projects become part of a larger view. We could have the ability to highlight the Projects parent and hoist it so that it becomes a more focused view.

- Pierre

[pjb]

Originally Posted by wvh

... Then while focusing on your Work folder, you won't see all your Home singletons. This is why we don't want to put the singletons at the top level as peers of Inbox and Projects...

While I'm not a fan of singletons—tasks that can never become Next Actions, I do want to be able to see them in Project View since that is where planning happens (in my case, so I can be sure to assign them to real Projects); so in this small regard I disagree with GeekLady. Having more than one special project that is parallel and contains these special but unrelated tasks implies there could be one or more collections in each area of interest (Folders) and which would then be available for Focus(ed) viewing. It seems to me that if there is such a collection under the folder Home then while the tasks are not related to a specific project they are related enough that they could be part of a general area of interest project: "unrelated things to get done for the home" and distinct enough from another area of interest Folder. If the problem is seeing too many Next Actions, many from the list of singletons in the "unrelated things to get done for the home" when focusing on the Home area in Context view, then perhaps the fix would be to allow certain tasks to be marked as "not able to become a Next Action". In that way there could be one special repository for actions which are truly project-less and folder-less and if there is only one such special repository I'd expect it to be at the same level as the Inbox and Projects (and it could have it's own default behavior such as the purple bucket has now).

At this point, OF needs to decide one way or the other if Project-less Tasks should be in one bin or more than one bin and if no-Next-Action Tasks are defined by what bin they are in.

[gary]

We just had a little conversation about this here, and from reading this thread, it seems like we might be able to please most people pretty well.

For me, that would definitely help. Though I think single buckets in multiple folders is over complicating things, I realize you've got to satisfy different work flows for different people. Hopefully it'll be kept simple. For example, I've read pjb's above comment 10 times and I still have no idea what he's saying.

[LizPf]

I like the Singletons idea as it currently stands — a top-level bucket for no project items, plus the option of turning any other project into Singleton format as well.

What I don't like is that my Singletons will never be Next Actions. I would rather have ALL singleton actions be NA than none.

I view the NA list as all the actions I should be doing next. My singletons invariably are NA (unless they are On Hold, see another thread), and I want them in my face on the Context View.

Speaking of Views, add my vote to changing Project View to Planning View and Context View to Working View. When planning, I can use Focus and Filter to narrow my view; when working, I can do the same for my contexts.

I would love for OF to get to the point where I can set a Perspective for:
- things overdue, due Today, or undated AND
- Next Actions & Singletons

This would be my daily work view, and I could focus on contexts as appropriate.

--Liz

[dbyler]

I agree 100% with what Liz is trying to do: find useful actions (Next or Singleton), not just available ones.

However, I don't think Singletons should be treated as next actions. In my view, the point of a "Next Action" is that you know it's the next step in a project, and you need to complete it in order to keep the project moving. Single actions are qualitatively different: you do them and they're done. End of story.

What we really need is for Singletons to be their own category of action (aesthetic and real) to set them off from the other types of actions (next actions, non-next actions, inactive actions). That way, you could change the color of Singletons to, say, blue, and know at a glance that they're different from Next Actions and non-Next Actions. Or you could create a view that would include Singletons and Next Actions.

[GeekLady]

This has been also been complained about, but didn't seem to engender much conversation. In my opinion, Inbox deserves it's own button like Project and Context, and keeping Inbox in with Projects is one of OF's biggest flaws. Still not as bad as this one though.

Originally Posted by RobTrew

Well, not quite. By that logic the Inbox should not show up in "projects view" either. There would soon be complaints.

[al_f]

Originally Posted by GeekLady

In my opinion, Inbox deserves it's own button like Project and Context

Agreed: I submitted a feature suggestion for this a couple of days ago (no doubt not the first!). No reply yet though. :)

[jelmore]

Originally Posted by dbyler

However, I don't think Singletons should be treated as next actions.

I vehemently disagree; in GTD, that's exactly what a "singleton" action is -- a Next Action. In my opinion, GTD is built around the concept of Next Actions, not projects. A project is a way of saying "I have more than one Next Action I have to take before this goal is achieved".

I know there's a vigorous debate as to how GTD-canonical OmniFocus should be. For my part I don't mind extra features that people who aren't following GTD can make use of (within reason -- I don't need another calendaring app!) but I especially do not want to see OmniFocus become a program that one cannot effectively use to implement GTD. I think making an distinction between "single" next actions and "project-step" next actions would do this.