[pvonk]

Originally Posted by GeekLady

Oh, I use them all the time. But they don't need planning, so I don't want to see them in Project view, that's planning mode. I only want to see them in doing mode, context view.

Ah, I see. Unfortunately for me, I frequently have singletons that really are single actions until a new directive comes down to me that suddently incorporates that action into others that I suddenly become responsible for. That's when I have to go back to the drawing board.

I've been re-reading GTD, and I don't find any discussion of dynamic events. The examples I find are all static, a perfect world where things don't change. Perhaps I'm missing some crucial pages or just getting info-overloaded.

[curt.clifton]

Originally Posted by GeekLady

I understand that there are people who want that special project for singletons, and their opinions are just as valid as mine. I'm just begging that it please, please, please be hideable, because I really hate the idea of seeing single actions in my planning space.

If there is a pseudo-folder in project view for Singletons, would it meet your needs to just collapse the pseudo-folder?

[Paul Hoadley]

Originally Posted by GeekLady

... I have no desire to have a group of pansy single actions cluttering up my planning area.

I actually laughed out loud.

[kmarkley]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

We're planning to make every action be visible in both project and context view, rather than only having them be visible in*the corresponding view when they have an assigned project or context.

Actions with no project (aka singleton actions) will go into some sort of "quick list" smart group in project view, and single actions will probably have their own style (colored blue?) in both project and context view.

Actions with no context will go into a smart group in the context view (perhaps the "Unassigned" context, or maybe just the "No context" context?).

Does that help?

Yay! Exactly what I was hoping for.

[kmarkley]

I have to say that the difference between a view with everything and a view with everything except single action would be quite small for me. My planning space is already too big to work with all at once. I love that I can just select one or a couple folders/projects and do my planning with a divide-and-conquer methodology. I imagine a psuedo-project for single actions would be pretty easy to ignore, as I typically ignore 80-90% of my projects at any given moment as is.

[jelmore]

Originally Posted by pvonk

I've been re-reading GTD, and I don't find any discussion of dynamic events. The examples I find are all static, a perfect world where things don't change. Perhaps I'm missing some crucial pages or just getting info-overloaded.

I'm not sure what you mean by dynamic events, but the whole concept of "mind like water" is about being able to react appropriately to things as they come at you. If you inherit a new bunch of tasks, you figure out what to do with them and put them in the appropriate places (defer, delegate, add to action lists or project lists as needed).

How and when you do that are left up to the urgency of the tasks and the intuition of the person; I think David Allen favors the "toss it into your Inbox and deal with it when you have the time" approach, but circumstances may force you to stop and prcoess it right now, which is okay too.

I think David Allen deliberately keeps GTD-the-book light on specific implementations because people need to adopt a system that will be comfortable to them and because people like to nitpick specifics, which distracts them from seeing the system as a whole...

[LizPf]

GeekLady:
2. Singletons show up in context when you've focused on a project
3. You can't convert a project's task into a single task easily

Originally Posted by Craig

For now, #2 and #3 can be solved by making a "singletons" parallel project.

But the way things are set up, tasks in a parallel project aren't parallel, not really.

If they were, they'd all be next actions, and show up in my context view. Instead, the top item is "Special", and I see none of the others.

If I were in charge, I'd add another project type, so we'd have parallel, sequential, and All Next Actions. Parallel would be intended for complex projects with many sub projects where actions could be done in any order, sequential is for step-by-step things, and All Next Actions would be for projects where we can do any of the items, in any order, and want to see them all as Next Actions.

We could set up our singletons in our choice of one ANA project, or set up several Singleton projects anywhere in our Project structure.

Then again, I'm not in charge here.

--Liz

[pvonk]

Originally Posted by jelmore

I'm not sure what you mean by dynamic events, ...

At times, everything in a project changes. There may be new duties to attend to that impact existing tasks. For example, a project to establish a new Advising Sciences Web Site for incoming freshmen at our college may suddenly change to a global Sciences Web Site. Existing tasks in the current project and subprojects may need to be reassigned to new subprojects, merged with other new tasks, or removed altogether, since the college's web group has taken over part of the work. This requires a mantenance view in which I need to see projects and singleton tasks (there have been some) and reorganize.

I don't think GTD-book gets into such redesign of projects/tasks in a methodical way.

[brooce]

I don't think GTD-book gets into such redesign of projects/tasks in a methodical way.

Sequel!

;)

[GeekLady]

There's too much to quote here and it would make this even longer, so here goes nothing.

First of all, nothing should ever be unsearchable, whereever you are in the application. However that single actions aren't searchable in projects is a limitation of the search, not of the projects view. The same problem exists when you search for something that is hidden by your current filter settings.

Second, I don't like the idea of a maintenence view because I don't think it fits well into the GTD concepts. If something has gotten to the point that it requires such extensive reworking as you describe, I much prefer to send it back to the inbox for a proper reprocessing.

Third, when I want an overview, I look at my context view, because it does contain everything. It is my jello landscape, tasks that need to be done, but don't have the scheduling cojones to live on the hard landscape. And I can't even begin to wrap my brain around a task that doesn't have a context.

Now I understand I'm the only person here that doesn't want to see single tasks in Project view, and I'm not campaigning against you guys. I'm just begging that there be a preference to hide the Project-less tasks Project and the Context-less tasks Context. The concept already annoys me, but being able to make them hidden but active would make everybody happy I think.