[michelle]

duodecad, you bring up an interesting question that we have been discussing at Omni. Our plan all along has been to automatically choose your next action once you complete the current action. We recently had someone disagree with this concept. He feels that manually going through your projects and choosing your next action is part of the GTD process and it should not be automated. We feel this takes time away from actually doing actions. Are there others that have a strong opinion on this?

Michelle

[duodecad]

I'm sure other folks will chime in here, but for me, that's something that's done at the weekly review. Having to think of what the next action is every single time I finish one, for every single project, would be totally painful.

At my weekly review, I'm thinking at a higher level, looking at one project at a time and thinking through what the next several NAs will be, then moving on to the next project, until I end up with a grasp of what I want to accomplish during the coming week. If I can get those several NAs per project into my trusted system, then during the week I can just rock right through them without having to think about it too much. The weekly review is for higher-level thinking; my regular work during the week is pretty down-in-the-trenches. Having to switch back and forth between those two levels of thinking every time I finish a NA is just not feasible.

This is why I like the idea of the next action, if defined, sliding into place when you check off the current one; or, if you haven't defined one, "Define next action" sliding into place as the NA. That way you can either define a bunch of NAs ahead of time or not, depending on the nature of your project and/or your personal preference. That would be *awesome*.

[imdat]

As far as it's (a) not on by default or (b) can be switched off easily and does not interfere with my intentions, it's ok to have.

Life for me is a balancing of between 6-8 company building- and acquisition projects. Then there are the standard, recurring events/actions, communication requirements and such, which are not part of a project but nevertheless required to get all projects and the main program going well.

And for me, it's more important to have the list of actions/tasks and decide myself, based on the current context, what I'll do next.

[rickla]

I've been reading this thread with intense interest. I really don't know, even for myself, what the best way to go would be, but have a few thoughts related to the issues discussed.

Sometimes, it's great to have your software say, in effect, "Do this now", just to get some things done quickly without having to think too much. Other times, this can be dangerous, because, unless you always do your weekly review with the utmost thoroughness and great foresight, there are going to be gaps in your mastery of your situation.

A whole load of lists are of only limited help for really getting a firm grip on your situation. Some kind of graphical view is going to be essential, I think. Although Eastgate's Tinderbox sucks in some significant ways, its map view is invaluable, and I'm surprised that more software developers haven't found inspiration there. It leverages relative position and colour to render a more complete picture than lists alone can.

It's clear from the blog that Omni people involved with Focus have been thinking about leveraging Omni's graphic expertise in interesting ways. I hope this isn't put aside in the desire to make things simple. No reason why it can't be simple on the surface and by default, but also include hidden depths.

[LizPf]

Originally Posted by Tim Wood

One question to answer with this conversation is "how does this make you more productive?"

Really the question boils down to how having detailed explicit dependencies will make you more productive. Sure, we can all construct cases where it would be minorly useful, but should you as the user really be spending your time here charting out dependencies on each task or should you just get back to work?...
Still, if you have ideas about how this would make you more productive day in and day out, keep 'em coming. We've certainly thought about this a fair bit, but we may have missed something.

I would really like the DAG model. This is how my work life operates.

I'm a high tech person in a Luddite job -- I'm a housewife and stay at home mom. I have a vast array of different types of actions I need to do, and the context / single next action for each project doesn't work well. [I tried, KGTD is great, but just didn't work out.]

I'll take one "project" -- my child's birthday party. There are lots of sub projects: food, entertainment, decorations, guest list, birthday presents, ... There are dependencies all over: my son and I have to decide on the guest list before I plan the menu (I cook differently for 3 kids vs. 13). I can buy some things at any time; others have to wait until I have the Rsvp's and know how many guests there will be. When I do shop, since the party store, crafts store, and supermarket are in the same place, I won't shop until I have to go to all three.

Now, I've done enough parties that I can schedule a lot of this mentally -- but I'm not planning one party in a vacuum. I have two kids with birthdays 5 days apart, in late October -- so I have to coordinate 2 parties and Halloween at once. And I only want to go to that craft store once for all three projects. I need to set up both Do and due dates (to borrow from another thread) so I'm not making 2 cakes and sewing a wizard robe, all in one day. Plus, there's the standard cooking, cleaning, running kids to activities, etc. {Hmm ... anyone want to trade for a nice, simple desk job, like office manager at Omni?:D }

I *need* a GTD program that lets me plan everything out, including all the dependencies. Then it needs to hide things I can't do yet, so I don't see hundreds of actions. I need to be able to easily find out "What else can I do when I go to the craft store?" I don't see any way of setting up all this without some form of DAG system.

[tacartwright]

Originally Posted by michelle

Our plan all along has been to automatically choose your next action once you complete the current action. We recently had someone disagree with this concept. He feels that manually going through your projects and choosing your next action is part of the GTD process and it should not be automated. We feel this takes time away from actually doing actions. Are there others that have a strong opinion on this?

Yes, I believe that there is a human element to selecting one next action from a list of possible next actions that cannot be automated, at least not always. The GTD book even talks about scanning your list for a next action that fits your time available, priorities, energy level, mood, interests, etc.

And stepping back just a bit, GTD is more than a productivity-enhancing system. Forcing all feature discussions to be measured on the productivity scale seems to miss something essential about the GTD system. Yes, it helps with productivity. But it’s also about getting little details out of your head into a trusted system so that (a) you remember and can intelligently manage your work to fit your life and (b) you can spend time thinking about higher-level things more often. IMO, discussions about OmniFocus features should treat these goals as being equally important as productivity and time-savings.

Now, having said all that, I think it would be a fine OPTIONAL feature to have automated next-action selection. It should come with a simple switch to bias it toward depth-first or breadth-first selection: that is, to prefer taking as many tasks as possible from a single project or to prefer taking one task from as many different projects as possible. Not only do I think that this should be an optional feature, but I think it should be easy to toggle between using it and not.

To put it a different way, there are times when I know that my tasks are all about equal and I’m fine being fed an automated stream of tasks. And just as often, there are times when I want to use my brain to pick the most appropriate tasks. This, I believe, is consistent with the word and spirit of GTD.

— Tim

[tacartwright]

Originally Posted by LizPf

I would really like the DAG model. This is how my work life operates.

And what better method for designing software than, “This is how my life/brain/job operates”?

LizPf: Great examples, especially from a work domain traditionally underserved by software!

Once again, let me say that I think a full DAG model and its required interface would make a great OPTIONAL feature. If it must wait for version 2.0, I understand.

— Tim

[tacartwright]

Originally Posted by Tim Wood

We certainly don't want to add a full DAG of tasks since then we have to actually start doing cycle detection, violation alerts and various sundry other things that OmniPlan already does; this is supposed to be somewhat simpler than OmniPlan :)

Really the question boils down to how having detailed explicit dependencies will make you more productive. Sure, we can all construct cases where it would be minorly useful, but should you as the user really be spending your time here charting out dependencies on each task or should you just get back to work?

I have another data point on the value of the DAG model. After reading LizPf’s comments yesterday, I told my wife about the debate in this thread. I wanted her feedback, because she’s in a similar position as LizPf — very busy stay-at-home mom. I tried to present both the DAG model and the sequential/parallel task groups models as neutrally as possible. My wife’s basic response was to say that the sequential/parallel system made no sense to her at all, but that the DAG model (specifically, declaring prerequisites where needed), would be very helpful.

Now, I generally categorize my wife as being technically non-savvy. Technophobe might be more accurate. So I fully expected her to say that both prerequisites and sequential/parallel groups were all nonsense. Instead, she agreed with LizPf and said that recording some task dependencies would in fact help get some noise out of her head. It’s one of the things that makes her life hard — remembering what depends on what — and that becomes critical to her when she has only a brief time between childcare duties to get things done.

Version 1.5? :)

— Tim

[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by LizPf

I *need* a GTD program that lets me plan everything out, including all the dependencies. Then it needs to hide things I can't do yet, so I don't see hundreds of actions. I need to be able to easily find out "What else can I do when I go to the craft store?" I don't see any way of setting up all this without some form of DAG system.

It sounds like what's needed is good integration between OmniPlan (which is the right tool for planning out a complex project with lots of dependencies) and OmniFocus (which is the right tool for showing you what you can do now). This is part of the roadmap for both products, though not for version 1.0.

[tacartwright]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

It sounds like what's needed is good integration between OmniPlan (which is the right tool for planning out a complex project with lots of dependencies) and OmniFocus (which is the right tool for showing you what you can do now).

I disagree that this is a solution to my request. OmniPlan is overkill for what I want, and I have no intention of buying it. Even if I did, my wife would never use it.

IMO, adding prerequisites to tasks would not make OmniFocus too complex, especially as an optional feature. I do not understand the apparently deep objection to this feature at Omni.

— Tim