[pjc]

My usual solution to this (which is admittedly not especially elegant) is to assign such projects a "Figure out next steps" action that I never check off. I just leave it at the bottom of the project's tasks. When I figure out the next steps, I put them above the "Figure out next steps" task.

That way, in my working view, I immediately see when a project is waiting on me. And I can do this only for the projects where I want to have such an immediate reminder. (Most of mine don't -- they can afford to wait 'til the weekly review.)

You could refine this slightly by assigning all such actions their own special context, e.g. "Waiting on me". Then you could see just those projects whose next actions are "figure out next steps", or obscure them when you don't want to deal with them.

[colicoid]

Originally Posted by YakkoW

In my business, I collaborate with dozens of people from around the world, and so at any given time I may have many projects where the next action is "on hold" while I'm waiting on someone else. The current "stalled" filter is a great way to see those.

I don't understand why you keep these projects on hold. Then you won't know who you are waiting for. If you kept them active and assigned the task "waiting for X to phone me back" to a special "waiting for:X" context you would have a lot less stalled projects and your action-less projects would be easier to find. Just a thought...

[YakkoW]

Originally Posted by colicoid

I don't understand why you keep these projects on hold. Then you won't know who you are waiting for. If you kept them active and assigned the task "waiting for X to phone me back" to a special "waiting for:X" context you would have a lot less stalled projects and your action-less projects would be easier to find. Just a thought...

Actually, the OmniFocus manual itself suggests assigning "waiting for" contexts to an "on hold" status, which is what I've done. For me, this makes sense, since any project with a next action that is waiting for someone isn't really available for me to do anything on it.

Practically speaking, I suppose it's true that I could make those contexts active instead and simply keep them collapsed when working in context mode. But the disadvantage here is that they'd still show up as available actions if I decided to sort by anything other than context.

But if I were to do that, then what would be the point of having "on hold" contexts at all? I mean, isn't the whole point of assigning contexts to "on hold" status that those actions (and therefore those projects) are stalled until something changes? For me, that concept makes sense as something separate from projects that are simply waiting on me to decide the next step.

[chinarut]

wow - thanks for sharing this tip - I didn't know the View bar existed until you pointed it out and the "Stalled" view works great.

I found the "Next Action" view in the process which is also a feature I was looking for!