[SpiralOcean]

so in the above example:
-send email to testCompany
--waiting for response from testCompany

becomes
-send email to testCompany
--send email to testCompany
--waiting for response from test company

It's a good idea... although it is dependent on the parent item being sequential and not parallel.

[curt.clifton]

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

It's a good idea... although it is dependent on the parent item being sequential and not parallel.

Not necessarily. I don't mind having both the Waiting For and Send Email actions available.

[SpiralOcean]

That makes sense Curt.

I'm very orthodox with GTD... except that I separate home from work.

My main principle when working with OmniFocus is
When I switch to context view, I don't want to think or plan, I just want to do.

I want every action in the contexts to be actionable. As soon as my mind has to think...
send email... wait isn't there a waiting for with that item, I can't do that now.

Then the system has failed. My subconscious doesn't trust my list anymore. It thinks...
There are a bunch of tasks here, but I can't trust that it's something I can do right now.

And then I shut down and am overwhelmed.

The key point of GTD is being able to trust the system. What I see in contexts is what I can do now.

This may have something to do with your procrastination.

This is also why I use start dates, I don't want to see actions I can't do right now. Because if I find a task, and think, I can't do that right now, I loose trust in the system and when trust is lost, then procrastination begins. The subconscious thinks, what's the point of looking at all these things I have to do when I can't do half of them.

[curt.clifton]

I don't disagree with any of what you said, SO. That's why I don't have my Waiting For context selected in any of my normal perspectives, only in my review perspectives.

I'd also amplify the use of start dates. Deferring a task or project until I'm ready to work on it is a huge help in keeping my list small enough to be actionable.

(Note that I'm not trying to convince you and anyone else to do things "my way". I just think its useful to see different ways of approaching the system.)

[dondo]

Maybe I need to go re-read GTD, but in my mind, "waiting for" is not a context, but a state. For me, it invariably means "unless whatever I'm waiting for happens, redrive this action in some specific context." As such, I don't have a "waiting for" context, and have changed all my views to include a "start" field so I can quickly set when I want to be done waiting. Then I use the "ticklers" view (sort by "due", an idea I got from some guy named Curt :) to remind myself what I have in the air, just in case I get nervous about my coverage.

That said, it would be really nice to be able to specifically identify the things for which I'm waiting for an external event, versus the things i just can't do yet regardless of the outside world. As such, I think that the "on hold" state is only half implemented. IMO "on hold" is rarely "forever", and I think it would be useful if OF had an ability to specify "On Hold until" (and the ability to filter to see only "on hold" items) -- but it's surely not my highest priority feature request, since "due date" suffices to accomplish most of this.

[dude]

I am not letting this die because this is a big deal to me.