[Brian]

Originally Posted by abates17

If you do GTD on a piece of paper, the paper doesn’t care if you mentally classify something as a project or action. So why should OmniFocus?

Paper has the advantage of having exactly one user, who knows all the rules and can customize them 100% to their needs. Software could be written to work that way, but then you'd only have one customer. :-)

[abates17]

Originally Posted by Brian

In other words, completing the last action in a project doesn't automatically mean that the project is complete. It's often useful during a review to take a last look and say "is there anything else to do?". If the answer to that question is 'no', then you complete the project.

Okay, let me play devil’s advocate for a moment (in the interests of improving the problem, and possibly bettering my understanding): I understand the distinction between actions like “Buy milk”*and projects like “Become fluent in Esperanto.” Where I get confused is with something like, “Take car in for tune-up,”*which may end up becoming a project if you first have to “Call mechanic and schedule appointment.” So once I call the mechanic, the only thing left to do is actually take the car in, which means I now add an action “Take car in for tune-up” to my project “Take car in for tune-up.” In this case, it seems like I should be able to bump my project back down to a single action, instead of leaving it as a project which remains out of sight until my next review.

So maybe my solution is “do more reviews,”*I don’t know. I just see a big distinction between a formal review like, “What do I need to do to accomplish Become World-Class Heart Surgeon?”*and a more casual review like, “What do I need to do to Return Library Book?” Maybe I’m going against the GTD methodology here, but do you see what I’m getting at? Some “projects”*are actually very simple tasks in and of themselves.

[abates17]

Originally Posted by Brian

The option I would probably recommend would be to make the Miscellaneous project into a single-action list; even when the Next Action filter is selected, all the available actions in a SA list are shown.

Thanks, I didn’t see that option!

[abates17]

Originally Posted by Brian

We try to make it easy to promote an action to a project (or demote a project to an action in some other project) as needed, but the distinction isn't meaningless for most of our users.

Okay, I’ll bite: How do you demote a project to an action? And are Action Groups not Actions themselves?

Originally Posted by Brian

It sounds like you want to select View -> Status Filter -> Available; next actions will still be colored purple, but any action you can work on will appear in the window.

Yes, that works, thanks! I also just changed to color settings so that Next Actions look like every other action. That helped!

[abates17]

Originally Posted by Brian

More specifically, what you want to do to set up (for example) your Work perspective:
Switch to context view
Command-select the various contexts that apply, including the phone context.
Select View -> Focus on <list of selected contexts>
Select Perspectives -> Save Window as new Perspective
Name the new perspective (and optionally assign a keyboard shortcut).

Okay, that is very helpful! However, “Focus on Selected Projects” does not work from the Context menu. Other than that, yes, a new Perspective is very helpful! I’m glad I can at least approximate the behavior of Places in Life Balance.

And by the way, can I just take a moment to say that I’m not trying to be antagonistic or obtuse or overly critical here. I love the OmniGroup, and I have been using your products since before Mac OS X. I am just trying to wrap my brain around how this works, and how I can get the functionality I am looking for. You have been very helpful!

[abates17]

Originally Posted by Brian

Action groups are an uncomfortable compromise between at least two groups of folks - one camp uses action groups as just another action that needs checking off. The other group wants the ability to say "I need to think about this some more, so I don't want to check this off. I also don't want to block the rest of the steps in the project from completing". Your example would indicate that you fall into the first camp :-)

Even if there were a global preference like, “Treat action groups as actions,”*that would be really helpful, and should at least mollify both camps. I can definitely see the benefit of having an action group become an action when its sub-actions are completed.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by abates17

Okay, I’ll bite: How do you demote a project to an action?

Drag the project into another project. Poof, it turns into an action group in that project. If you drag an empty project into another project, it becomes an action instead of an action group. Similarly, if you drag an action or action group to the sidebar, or just outdent it with cmd-[ or Edit->Outlining->Outdent, it will turn into a project.

And are Action Groups not Actions themselves?

Yes. No. Maybe. What was the question, again? :-)

Action groups act like actions in most ways. However, an action group which has not been marked completed (even if all the included actions have been marked completed) in a sequential project will not block subsequent actions.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

Action groups act like actions in most ways. However, an action group which has not been marked completed (even if all the included actions have been marked completed) in a sequential project will not block subsequent actions.

Another important distinction is that an action group "name" will not show up in context mode. One proposal that has been floated in the past is to have the action group "name" show up in the context mode when all of the contained actions have been completed, though it isn't clear to me which context should have it. The default context for the action group, perhaps, except you don't have to assign one.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by abates17

Okay, that is very helpful! However, “Focus on Selected Projects” does not work from the Context menu.

Yeah, I'm not quite sure what Brian had in mind there, as the instructions should work fine without that step. I don't know what it would mean to focus on a subset of the contexts, exactly -- what would you do if you flipped back over to project mode, only show the actions from the restricted set of contexts?

[abates17]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

Another important distinction is that an action group "name" will not show up in context mode. One proposal that has been floated in the past is to have the action group "name" show up in the context mode when all of the contained actions have been completed, though it isn't clear to me which context should have it. The default context for the action group, perhaps, except you don't have to assign one.

I think that the action group name should show up in the context mode, as it is (or could be) an action itself. This is one of those distinctions that I think is unnecessary: An action group should just have a context, just like any action, and then the documentation could say that actions inherit the context of their parent action group. Then when all sub-actions are complete, the action group is treated like any other action. After all, that is EXACTLY what happens when all sub-actions are deleted: The action group turns back into an action.

Really, if action groups were implemented in this way, it would solve a lot of the problems I have with using OF.