[markb]

Originally Posted by bongoman

The deal breaker for me at present with Things is that all projects are treated as parallel in nature - there is no way to work with sequential projects. I don't know about you, but the vast bulk of my projects tend to be sequential.

The net effect of this is that when you are filtering your next actions by context-based tags within Things, you are presented with actions that are not doable yet as the preceding actions have not been completed.

So if Project A is sequential and has two tasks, Task A tagged with 'mac' and Task B tagged with 'out' and I filter my next actions to only show 'out' tasks, then I will be presented with Task B. Which is unworkable for me.

This might well be a function of Things being in alpha and that this will be sorted out in due course.

i was bugged by this too until i realized that if i don't want an action on one of my @context lists yet, i simply shouldn't tag it yet. it can sit there in the project and if it isn't tagged i can easily ignore it. when i'm reviewing the project it's super-easy to pick a few actions that i could do next and tag them with their @context. this isn't as nifty as OF's automatic next-action management but that doesn't bother me, in fact i like the simplicity of the things way. to me using OF felt like i was building a giant complicated machine whereas with things i feel like i'm just making lists (which is the sort of gtd i'm used to, so i am liking things better).

[jasong]

Originally Posted by markb

i was bugged by this too until i realized that if i don't want an action on one of my @context lists yet, i simply shouldn't tag it yet. it can sit there in the project and if it isn't tagged i can easily ignore it.

Every time OF (or some other GTD app) incorrectly shows me something it shouldn't, and I have to mentally block it out, a kitten dies.

One of the things I like about OF (when it's working right!) is that I can look at a context and know that it's really the next physical action can do for that project, or at a project list and know that the actions that are showing up can actually be done now in the appropriate contexts.