[brooce]

Those two views are worse than unnecessary; they're between OmniFocus and SHIPPING!

Defer those non-canonical boondoggles to 2.0.

[GeekLady]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

What?!?

Flagging is already extremely useful as is. Since separate filtering on flags was added, flagging has been a key part of my system. At the beginning of the month I flag the projects that support my goals for the month. (You just have to flag the top-level project; children inherit the flags.) If my weekly review, or my gut instinct, says that I'm not making good progress on monthly goals, then I turn on the Flagged filter in context view. This lets me really focus on my key priorities.

Heh, so that's how you prioritize. I'm sorry, I started using OF flags to prioritize so I could sort important things to the top, and then within 2 days they got moved to their own filter and I gave up in disgust.

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?

I really hate the way omnifocus deals with single tasks. When I heard of this solution I was thrilled and decided to wait until it was implemented to try omnifocus again.

Almost a month later and I haven't heard word of its inclusion. Can someone from omni tell me if this is still planned? And if so, any idea when?

[jelmore]

I feel as if, in recent builds, the concept of the singleton/single action/atomic task is getting relegated to second-tier status in favor of projects.

It used to be that I could go to context view, pick a context, and add a whole host of next actions by hitting Return after each line item -- which is useful if I'm processing my physical inbox or other collection bucket, or creating a quick shopping list in one of my contexts.

Then actions with a context and no project became inactive actions, which can only be seen if you're viewing remaining or all actions. Somewhere around the same time, hitting Return to create a new line item in a context broke, and hasn't been fixed as of build 90172.

Then this idea of a "singleton project" appeared. I'm hoping this is a placeholder for a real single-action view because I am now required to either assign a Next Action to my singleton project when I create it using Quick Entry, or I have to:

Create an entry
Send it to the Inbox
Use Clean Up to move it to the context list (and default "singleton project")

This, coupled with the broken ability to create new items directly into a context list, have needlessly complicated the elegant workflow that was present when I first started using OmniFocus.

As I said, I hope the "singleton project" goes away and is replaced by a view similar to the Inbox, and single Next Actions do not have to be intentionally assigned to anything other than the context they inhabit.

I still find Omnifocus an incredibly useful program. I just think the current incarnation is much less easier to use than it was in the beginning.

[RiK]

Originally Posted by al_f

I also agree that tasks with neither project nor context should stay in the inbox, as their processing is incomplete: you have neither done, delegated (it'd be in @waiting for) or deferred (it'd be in a context).

Agreed, that makes a lot of sense.

[GeekLady]

Now, I hope the "singleton project" concept stays, it's a nice, useful concept,that I have high hopes of being able to implement a digital Tickler file with.

But I absolutely, positively refuse to lump all of my single actions together in one bucket project just because they are alone. It's an awful idea having to set up the proper implementation of single actions when they used to work PERFECTLY before they were fiddled with.

Now you can't even remove a task from your inbox unless it has a project, which is so bassackwards I can barely function in OF anymore.

Originally Posted by jelmore

As I said, I hope the "singleton project" goes away and is replaced by a view similar to the Inbox, and single Next Actions do not have to be intentionally assigned to anything other than the context they inhabit.

[anna]

GeekLady, when you say they worked perfectly, was that when actions without projects showed up in context lists?

I liked that "no project, context assigned"=="do-able item". But it wasn't perfect, because I rely heavily on the folder focus, and focusing on a folder meant no single actions showed up. So I had to use the "project for singletons" idea anyway. I disliked that very much, especially that the first one was a next action. This is a *slight* improvement.

I really want to leave the project blank, but tag an action as belonging to a certain folder. That would be my perfect solution. I don't know if that's possible given the "folder" implementation.

[Craig]

Originally Posted by anna

I really want to leave the project blank, but tag an action as belonging to a certain folder. That would be my perfect solution.

That's my wish, too.

[pjb]

Originally Posted by anna

...
I really want to leave the project blank, but tag an action as belonging to a certain folder.

What is the barrier to having these tasks just be individual projects under a folder. Is it that there are too many to scroll through, is it that they don't have the right behavior in Context view? I'd like to hear a discussion about this and why some folks have gravitated towards using singletons.

[dhm2006]

Originally Posted by pjb

What is the barrier to having these tasks just be individual projects under a folder. Is it that there are too many to scroll through, is it that they don't have the right behavior in Context view? I'd like to hear a discussion about this and why some folks have gravitated towards using singletons.

As I understand GTD, a project and an action are two different things conceptually. A project is comprised of two or more actions. A project is more like a goal or a finish line. You can't actually "do" a project; you can only "do" the (or a) next action for that project.

Single actions could be placed in a project, but sometimes just a list of single actions is quicker and easier to create and complete. But then, maybe I just haven't thought through my projects (or roles) clearly enough.