[SpiralOcean]

Does this bother anyone else?

If I have a sequential project:
-Paint the House - sequential
--Research Paint to buy
--buy paint
--paint house

The project has a due date that is overdue. All it's children actions are overdue.

When using the Available filter, I only see the top action, research paint to buy. This is what I expect.

But if I use the due soon filter,
then all the actions are visible, even though the project is a sequential project.

In my mind, the sequential / parallel project should take priority over the due soon filter.

[Greg Jones]

It doesn't bother me that it shows as due. If I have a project that is due, or overdue, I'd rather be reminded of the bigger picture that there are multiple actions that need to be completed. Having said that, I would like to see the style preference for blocked actions override the style preference for due/overdue, which would tell me at a glance that there is an action or actions that must be completed first.

[SpiralOcean]

Well said Greg.

[whpalmer4]

Perhaps the right mental model is that the action selector gives you Remaining actions, or a filtered subset thereof (or Completed actions).

• Due Soon gives you all remaining actions which are due soon.
  
• The new 'Due or Flagged' option in the 1.6 Sneaky Peek gives you all remaining actions which are either flagged or have a due date assigned.
  
• Available gets you all of the Remaining actions which happen to be Available actions
• Next Action gets you all of the Remaining actions which happen to be Next Actions

Viewed this way, it makes complete sense that the sequential nature is ignored except for the Available/Next Action choices. From a usability point of view, you certainly want to know that some project actually has 6 (sequential) items due today rather than discovering that fact at 4:55 PM when you check off what you thought was the only one, right? What a nuisance it would be to have to check each project individually after seeing that there was a due item in the context view!

[SpiralOcean]

I agree that you want to know how many items are due, that's what the badges are for. Often, I'll see contexts that will have badges of due items but will not see all the due items in the context.

Example:
context shows 3 items due
action in context is only one

The meets the first criteria that a user should have an alert that items are due.

However, when I have a project whose actions are split over multiple contexts, and the project's actions must be in a certain order, it only muddies the water to show all those action items in the different contexts.

This causes me to loose trust in the system. Because now, when I look at an action in a context, I think:
wait, I can't do that now, I haven't done the first action of that project.

I no longer trust what OmniFocus is showing me. The other requirement for GTD is that you only see actions that you can do something about. This is the purpose of the contexts.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

I agree that you want to know how many items are due, that's what the badges are for. Often, I'll see contexts that will have badges of due items but will not see all the due items in the context.

Example:
context shows 3 items due
action in context is only one

The meets the first criteria that a user should have an alert that items are due.

However, when I have a project whose actions are split over multiple contexts, and the project's actions must be in a certain order, it only muddies the water to show all those action items in the different contexts.

This causes me to loose trust in the system. Because now, when I look at an action in a context, I think:
wait, I can't do that now, I haven't done the first action of that project.

I no longer trust what OmniFocus is showing me. The other requirement for GTD is that you only see actions that you can do something about. This is the purpose of the contexts.

Hmm, if I do GTD on paper, I'm going to see those actions even if I can't do anything about them, right?

I don't quite see why you can't trust what OmniFocus shows you. You ask to see due items, and it shows you all the due items, including those not immediately actionable. Not showing you all the due items would be grounds for not trusting it, in my opinion.

In my morning review, I use the due views to see which projects have actions due in the short term. For any project that shows up, I pop up a focused window on that project by double-clicking the handle on one of the actions. Over the course of the day I use those windows to work through the items that must get done, and as they are project view windows by default, any necessary sequencing is immediately obvious. Or select all the due items you intend to work on and focus; you can now tweak the view in that window to suit.