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Hi All -

Can anyone explain why _contexts_ can be assigned a status of active, on hold, or pending?

To me, it seems actions should have this type of status flag, and I would very much like to assign such to my actions in OF. Is there some way to do so?

Thanks!
 
A context can be active, on hold, or dropped. A context like 'San Francisco' might be on hold because I live in Seattle, but I travel to San Francisco a couple times a year. So when I hear about a great restaurant down there that I want to visit next trip, I'll put an action in the San Francisco context like "Eat at The Stinking Rose". While I'm here in Seattle, the action stays hidden, so I can focus on the things that I can do here and now. Then when I go to San Francisco, I make that context active (and maybe put a few other contexts, like 'home' on hold). Now I can quickly find everything I want to do in San Franciso. Maybe it's a location you rarely visit. Maybe it's a tool that you haven't bought yet. Maybe it's your uncle's pick-up truck that you're borrowing next week.

A dropped context is one that's no longer relevant to you. If you leave a job, you'd probably drop that context. If your uncle says he'll never loan you the truck again, you'll need to drop that context too.
 
OK - I get it.

Any thoughts on my question about tasks? I would really like to mark individual tasks as active/on-hold/dropped. I really only need to do this for my single step actions (OF shoe box items, I guess). It would be convenient to accomplish this with a key stroke rather than having to drag items to a pending project. I don't see this feature in OF. Any ideas for a good work around? - Thanks.
 
There's no way to do this for an individual task. But now I'm curious, why do you want to put a task on hold? All the examples I can think of would involve either some other action that needs to be done first (and so it should be in a project) or you simply don't want to do it yet (set a future start date).
 
In addition to well defined projects and tasks, at any moment I also generally have 20 or so single step tasks that are basically "get to them when you can". Using iGTD, I've grouped these all together and put each individual task on pause. Then once each week I skim the group and activate a few tasks for that week. The activated tasks are still "get to when you can" but now for that week. Granted, setting future start dates would work, but somehow feels to come at the issue backwards - assigning future dates (sometimes repeatedly) to a large group of tasks each week (bummer) rather than activating a few tasks I'm committing to for the week. Perhaps what I want to do in OF is give all these a context of @Pending or some such and switch the context when I'm ready to commit. That sound about right?
 
My situation sounds very similar to yours, dloranz, and I struggled with this issue as well. Ultimately, I decided to make a "Future" Single-Action List and set it "On Hold". Then I just drag single actions to and from the "Future" list to change their state.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lizard View Post
There's no way to do this for an individual task. But now I'm curious, why do you want to put a task on hold? All the examples I can think of would involve either some other action that needs to be done first (and so it should be in a project) or you simply don't want to do it yet (set a future start date).
Setting a future date is a fine workaround, but marking an item as "pending" and marking as "on hold" are two different things. The former you want to come back at a certain time, the latter you don't.

Otherwise we wouldn't have both a Pending and an On Hold project view....

Dropping an action or putting it on hold is especially important with single actions.
 
I have to agree with the concept of on-hold actions. I can't decide whether an "on hold" context is appropriate or not here. I'd rather not have to go back through and re-mark all the contexts I used to have on each individual on-hold task. I'm also a bit loath to remove the action from the project that it's associated with.

So, I guess for now, I'll put it on hold until some future date for review. That's a very GTD type approach. On hold tasks would be appropriate, however (and an automatic listing in an overview/tickler type file)- as projects and tasks only differ by their complexity.

-Allen
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Toadling View Post
My situation sounds very similar to yours, dloranz, and I struggled with this issue as well. Ultimately, I decided to make a "Future" Single-Action List and set it "On Hold". Then I just drag single actions to and from the "Future" list to change their state.
This sounds like the best solution to this delema. I really want to have listed actions that were thought about doing but dropped as well. I don't want to drop the catigory since serveral other actions still apply in the same catigory or project.

Setting future start dates doesn't work because I want to drop it not put it on hold or as pending.

http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=16533
Quote:
Originally Posted by jasong View Post
Nothing built it. I've complained about this myself. Particulary onery with single actions.

You may be forced to "complete" it, with a prefix stating something appropriate (e.g. "dropped: ").

For single actions, and following the suggestions of others in the forum, I created two new single action buckets, one called "On Hold Single Actions" the other "Dropped Single Actions", each set appropriately to appear in their respective areas. I then manually move items into those buckets as necessary.
Hopefully they will also add dropped to actions in OF 2.0 and avoid these workarounds.

http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost...45&postcount=5
 
 


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