[BevvyB]

How do you guys deal with actions that you have 'attempted' but haven't completed. I'm mainly talking about actions like 'Call Fred About A Dog' and other vague stuff. Phone calls and follow ups I always seem to have a problem and never quite know what to 'do' with.

'Doing' stuff can sometimes be a lot about phone calls and emails of course

Let's look at this list:

Call Fred about dog
Email Alan about cat
Call James about giraffe

They're all in my @office context, even though they're in different projects. I'm in doing mode, so I'm in context view or perspective view showing @office stuff. Office is a folder containing @phone and @email contexts.

1. I call Fred about dog. He's not answering.

So this action has been attempted, but isn't completed. I've had a go at it, and failed. I don't want to move it to tomorrow, I want to try again later at some point.

All I really want to do is move it to the bottom of my list of calls and get on to the next one so I end up with this:

Email Alan about cat
Call James about giraffe
Call Fred about a dog (moved from top of list to bottom)

By the time I get back to calling Fred about a dog, he may be replying. Having the action 'Call Fred About A Dog' completely vanishing into another context, being put on hold (which it isn't it's simply being delayed an unspecified time) or being moved to a specific date or time is not what I need. I just need it to drop to the bottom of the list.

This is a very natural thing to want to happen as I am sure you will agree. How about a 'move action to bottom of list' button. In a serial project list where you could only see the top action, it would work great. However, that's not how we work in GTD, we live in contexts, and a list from a context is listed in order of projects. This concept would have to 'break' that form specifically for this kind of behavior by creating a separate short term hierarchy.

Next..

2. I email Alan about a cat. My email has gone into his spam folder.

Now I don't know that Alan hasn't seen my email, but I have crossed off this task as done as in my mind I have completed it. Two weeks later I find out that Alan has found someone else to do cat things with, and I'm out of a feline job.

What I should really be doing with ongoing stuff like email conversations is keeping tabs on them and following them up. One way to do this would be to 'tag' (which we don't have) ongoing single procedures with 'conversation' or 'in progress' or something. You can't break an email conversation down into a project, but it's an ongoing thing that I need to know is current and in a 'state of play'. It's actionable, but the action starts a process which requires feedback or a 'handshake' from someone else.

Until I get a reply from Alan, this task is not actually completed in my mind. However, I don't want it appearing in my next action list, I've done my bit, and may need to follow up should Alan not get back to me. I don't want to change the project for this email action, nor change its context from @email. I want it to go into some 'in progress' state so I can keep an eye on it.

On our computer we have things like 'view active/background processes'. This could be seen as one of those.

Two days later and still no reply from Alan about the cat. If I've ticked the action done I have no reminder. I guess what I could have done is emailed Alan, and then moved the action forward 2 days to remind me to check if he got back to me. That seems pretty non-intuitive to me. It also means this ongoing action can't be seen with other ongoing actions in any list anywhere. The other problem is, if I simply move the action a couple of days later, in two days I get the same action 'Email Alan' appearing - which I've already done.

What to do with this scenario I find myself in every single day? There needs to be an elegant solution which acknowledges ongoing actions, the need to keep an eye on them all, and a way of marking something 'in progress' so that it can remove itself from your normal tasks, yet still be available somewhere for review.

It could be something as simple as a half completed state like a half tick - started but not finished. Not on hold - in progress - not actionable after the initial action but awaiting response. Any ideas?

[Lucas]

For problem #1, I would use the "move to bottom" script that you can find on the applescript forums. There are also instructions in that forum, you might be aware, on how to add scripts as toolbar buttons.

For problem #2, I would use Curt's excellent complete and await reply script. Perhaps modify the script to make the new task in a context specifically for follow-ups - you'll see what I mean if you check out the script. Then make reviewing those follow-ups part of your review.

[BevvyB]

To me these are standard procedures with no built in access. I'm sure most people come up against these questions time and time again.

Thanks for the scripts. The waiting for looks like a good workaround!

However, as I expected, the 'action to top' and 'action to bottom' only moves things inside projects. As we all know, when we attack our calls list the @phone context pulls its stuff from all projects at the same time.

Regardless of project, this context list itself needs to be able to re-order in its 'own world'. I have 20 phone calls to make from a variety of projects. Making calls is not project driven. It's driven by being in the @phone context.

So I guess I'm calling on Omni to let context lists have ordering priorities which are unique to themselves - not because I want to move outside of GTD thinking at all. Simply because I want the order of the calls I am making to properly reflect my workflow. I make a call, they're unavailable, I move on to the next one.

The other problem I now have is that I'm changing context of actions. Having an action switch from @phone to @phonewaiting doesn't seem as intuitive to me as simply having another state for an action to be in - half done/in progress. I want something to stay in @phone with half a tick!

:)

UPDATE: Been playing around with this and have decided to use a context called 'Reply' which is on hold to send phone and emails actions awaiting a reply. Will look forward to getting no reply from someone, and then trying them a second time...

One other question, can you assign command keys to applescripts in OF? Would be cool to assign keys to these new applescripts.