The colored singleton buckets are distracting.

A key strength of Omnifocus is a general lack of visual distraction and a facilitation of focus. Up till now the user's eye has been presented with only two information layers: a generally muted background, and a colored foreground for next actions.

The colored buckets introduce a third visual plane (eye-catching points of blue) which does not correspond in any useful way to a third information layer.

The visual contrast between projects and singleton groups should be enough to distinguish them, but no more. To minimize visual noise, I would suggest that the "bucket" should be the same gray as folders, and in the same graphic idiom (simple and unelaborated) as the regular projects.

[al_f]

Personally I'd just have a "single actions" top-level category in the sidebar with a folder icon in the same format as the Projects one.

Originally Posted by al_f

Personally I'd just have a "single actions" top-level category in the sidebar

Personally I do find it useful to have multiple and nameable groups of single actions, grouped within different folders - it's just the dots of color that I find distractingly noisy ...

[LizPf]

Originally Posted by RobTrew

Personally I do find it useful to have multiple and nameable groups of single actions, grouped within different folders - it's just the dots of color that I find distractingly noisy ...

I believe our friendly neighborhood Omni Ninjas said they expect this icon to change. It is a bit uh, vibrant, isn't it? [Actually, I have to applaud the design Ninjas for keeping the interface so low key that a small blue bucket is perceived as too bold. It certainly doesn't get in the way of the data.]

I noticed it also obliterated an "On Hold" marker on the project. Whatever we end up with, I don't want it to hide other markers.

--Liz

[al_f]

Originally Posted by RobTrew

Personally I do find it useful to have multiple and nameable groups of single actions, grouped within different folders - it's just the dots of color that I find distractingly noisy ...

Fair enough, but you could still do this if OF allowed subfolders (like the project folders) in the single actions category.

[Craig]

Originally Posted by LizPf

I noticed it also obliterated an "On Hold" marker on the project. Whatever we end up with, I don't want it to hide other markers.

Would singleton "projects" ever need to be on hold? I can see taking them "out of focus," but I don't think I'd ever need to put them on hold in my workflow.

[LizPf]

Originally Posted by Craig

Would singleton "projects" ever need to be on hold? I can see taking them "out of focus," but I don't think I'd ever need to put them on hold in my workflow.

They do in my workflow.

I clean the house using a modification of FlyLady's Zones. Each week I focus on a different part of the house, and do the cleaning/maintenance tasks for that area.

My OF setup for this work is:
Folder: Liz the Housewife
Projects: Kitchen (this week)
Bathrooms (on hold for next week)
Living Room (on hold for 2 weeks from now)
etc.

I could set up each zone's Project as either Sequential, Parallel, or Singleton. Sequential doesn't make any sense, Parallel shows me only one Next Action, which I don't like. So I currently have my On Hold zones set to Singleton.

I suppose now that repeating Projects works, this might be a better solution. But I can easily see other collections of singleton Actions that one may want to put on hold. [Things to do once the kids are settled in school, random thoughts related to the remodel we plan to do before the next Ice Age, etc.]

--Liz

[al_f]

Originally Posted by LizPf

I suppose now that repeating Projects works, this might be a better solution. But I can easily see other collections of singleton Actions that one may want to put on hold. [Things to do once the kids are settled in school, random thoughts related to the remodel we plan to do before the next Ice Age, etc.]

An alternative way to handle these would be to keep all your "someday/maybes" as on-hold projects. Then, when you activate them, you can either leave them as a project if they turn out to be multi-step or convert them to a singleton action if they are really one-step tasks. Not necessarily better than your way, just another way of looking at it. :)