[dal71]

New to OF, I am tantalizingly close to a setup that makes sense to me but frustrated at my inability to overcome one last hurdle. Any help would be appreciated.

I want to reserve due dates for rare items where my failure to accomplish a task by the due date really does have important consequences. It is useful for something to show up in my "today" perspective in red, and days before its due date, but only in these rare (for me) circumstances.

Therefore, I'm using start dates for the more ordinary case of wanting/intending to do something on a day, but recognizing that it is not really a problem if I don't. Many of my actions have start dates; few have due dates. So far, so good.

Now to my problem: When I get through all items due and starting today, I'd like to look ahead at upcoming items and possibly get a head start on them. In order to do this, I must consider "remaining" rather than "available" items since actions with future start dates are unavailable. But when I move to "remaining", I also get all the impossible-to-accomplish actions from sequential projects that are behind uncompleted items. Sequential projects being a big reason I'm moving from Things to OF, I hate to lose this feature in what is already the most cluttered of my often viewed perspectives.

Any ideas on how I can have the advantages of my current setup without the problem I've created? I want two levels of urgency, with only the more urgent receiving bold color and reminders days ahead of due date. But I also want to look ahead at items slated for future dates without having to look at actions unavailable by virtue of sitting behind uncompleted actions in sequential projects.

Complicated question, I know. If you read this far, thank you. If you have a suggestion, thank you even more!