[Paul Hoadley]

Hello,

I'm collecting quite a few singleton tasks with no project. What's the easiest way with the current UI (r87967) to show these tasks? I can't find them at all in project view. In context view, they're grouped by context, which isn't quite what I want---I just want a list of my singleton tasks, much as I can get a list of tasks in any project in project view. No doubt I'm missing something quite straightforward.

[Wild Rye]

I've been creating catch-all projects such as "Errands" or "Chores" to collect these types of tasks. Things like reminders to check my tickler, update my status report, wipe the mud off my shoes before coming in the house...

[Paul Hoadley]

Originally Posted by Wild Rye

I've been creating catch-all projects such as "Errands" or "Chores" to collect these types of tasks. Things like reminders to check my tickler, update my status report, wipe the mud off my shoes before coming in the house...

Thanks for the reply. Good workaround.

Surely I'm just overlooking something with my original question, though? How can I show tasks that have no project?

[rish]

Originally Posted by Paul Hoadley

Thanks for the reply. Good workaround.

Surely I'm just overlooking something with my original question, though? How can I show tasks that have no project?

The way I use my single tasks is that I've created a parallel project by the name Single Tasks and I've put all my single actions in it. Hope this helps!

[coconino]

By definition, an action which is not part of a project will not show in the project view. There's a clue in the name of the view! ;)

More helpfully, the workarounds suggested are good. I'd only add that when I've been entering actions which at first seem not to be part of a project, on further consideration I've seen that they do belong to a higher order outcome, the result being that I have had few project-less actions.

Project-less actions show up in context view, under their appropriate context—which is where I reckon they should be.

(Actions which have neither project nor context stay in the in-box after clean-up. This is good behaviour too, in my book.)

[Paul Hoadley]

Originally Posted by coconino

By definition, an action which is not part of a project will not show in the project view. There's a clue in the name of the view! ;)

Evidently that's the case, but I guess one of the questions I'm asking is whether that is the most desirable behaviour. Calling it "project view" is somewhat arbitrary---it could just as well be called "task view", and projects just happen to be the way we group sets of related tasks.

Originally Posted by coconino

More helpfully, the workarounds suggested are good.

They're certainly reasonable workarounds, but given that singleton tasks are creatable at all, my original question remains: how can I get a list of them?

Originally Posted by coconino

I'd only add that when I've been entering actions which at first seem not to be part of a project, on further consideration I've seen that they do belong to a higher order outcome, the result being that I have had few project-less actions.

Fair enough, but it just doesn't seem unreasonable to me that a task can exist without a containing project. All I want to know is how to find them.

Originally Posted by coconino

Project-less actions show up in context view, under their appropriate context—which is where I reckon they should be.

I noted that in my original post, and I agree that context view is one of the appropriate places to find any task, singleton or otherwise.

I can only assume that the answer to my original question is that I simply can't get a list of tasks without containing projects.

[aimee]

Originally Posted by Wild Rye

I've been creating catch-all projects such as "Errands" or "Chores" to collect these types of tasks. Things like reminders to check my tickler, update my status report, wipe the mud off my shoes before coming in the house...

Okay, so my issue is this. I want to have my projects organized into (in some cases hierarchical) folders and other groupings that reflect my actual way of thinking about things and the different roles and relationships I have in my life (I am a mom, a professional, a student, and a homeowner, just to name a few -- it makes more sense to me to have projects grouped according to role and idea).

I already have a "Single Tasks" project separate from those groupings, at the top of the whole pile, and if I realize something is more complex than I thought, I move it down to where it belongs, but the fact is, it seems really kludgy.

I could, of course, create a "Single Tasks" project in each major grouping that is likely to do that, but then I end up with quite a lot of these, and that makes scanning the rest of the projects and tasks more difficult.

The other workaround is that I create a lot of projects that really only have one task, but that is a lot of keystrokes for something pretty simple. Again, it feels very kludgy, and it takes up a lot of screen real estate.

So right now, it is not possible to have a task that lives in a folder -- a task can only live in a project. I would like a task to be able to live in a folder all by itself. Is there a way for that to happen?

-- Aimee

[al_f]

Originally Posted by aimee

So right now, it is not possible to have a task that lives in a folder -- a task can only live in a project. I would like a task to be able to live in a folder all by itself. Is there a way for that to happen?

I think the issue with this is that in GTD parlance a project is something that requires more than one physical action step to get it done, so single tasks don't really belong in Project view at all (as by definition they aren't projects). I'd handle your issue by putting any tasks that require more than a single action step in as projects, then entering the truly 1-step ones as actions in the appropriate context. An "aha!" moment I had when implementing GTD is that a lot of things I originally regarded as single tasks were actually projects i.e. required more than one step. It took me a bit of time to get used to the degree of granularity required for this approach.

I don't think you really need these single tasks in Project view for review purposes, as you should be looking at all your context lists as part of your weekly review anyway. If you do that nothing should slip through the cracks.

[Shanana]

The biggest issue that I'm having with this is that my quick entered tasks don't default to Inbox and also I can't assign "inbox" as a "project".

These new tasks that will either get assigned a project during "processing" or left as individual tasks but OF doesn't seem to be considering them "next actions" or even "available". This makes since but it means I never see them in any of my views since my context screen is filtered to show only available actions. Thus, these tasks never turn up visible anywhere and seem to be lost. They aren't, of course, but I don't want to have to change my view in order to find these errant tasks in context view just to try and then assign them a project.

For now I'm creating two projects that aren't really projects, an "inbox" and a "none" so that single actions can go in the none project and new stuff that I don't want to think about yet can go to inbox.

I'm not sure why my quick entry stuff isn't just turning up in the inbox?? Any suggestions.

Shanana

[curt.clifton]

Originally Posted by Shanana

I'm not sure why my quick entry stuff isn't just turning up in the inbox?? Any suggestions.

I suspect its because of (what I consider) a bug in the handling of quick entry items that have a project or context. See this post for more details and a fix.