jenkins said:
So you don't just drag those projects into an on-hold Someday/Maybe single action list?
No I only have 2 single action lists, one for Errands and one for Miscellaneous. They tend to be short action lists, Errands has 8 things on it and Misc has only 15. Everything else is a project.
jenkins said:
So just to clarify, you keep Someday/Maybe Projects separate from S/M single action lists, e.g., "Restaurants to Try"?
Correct. That is the sort of thing I keep in a DEVONThink note in a folder called Someday/Maybe. I can look at a single page with 50 books to read faster than I can evaluate 50 projects or click on 50 actions in Omnifocus during review. I don't need to see them until I am ready to start a new book, then I review that list. Ditto for things like Knitting projects to do, Scrapbook Projects to do, and similar items. In fact my books to read lists are even more finely divided, I have a Books to Read - Non-Ficiton, Books to read - Mystery, Books to read - Sci Fi, books to read - Travel and more. Books never really make it into my Omnifocus lists but a Weaving project might. So I have a DT note that is Weaving Projects to Do. When I finish my current weaving I'll take a look at that and decide what I want to work on. I see that I actually have say, 3 projects, one for linen dish towels, one for linen napkins and 1 for a linen curtain for the shower. If I decide I want to weave linen I'll make a project in OF called something like Linen weavings and the first action would probably be, decide if I can use the same warp and threading for napkins, shower curtain and dish towels, because all 3 items can probably be woven off on the same warp. I won't know until I design the warp if that is true but it's a place to start. There is no reason to even have it in my Omnifocus system as long as the loom is warped up with something else as I can't change the warp. SO I need to finish the current weaving, or abandon it and cut it off the loom before I could even consider starting a new project. I have 4 looms, I can have up to 4 separate projects but typically projects are best suited for one or the other of the looms. I can't do a wide warp on the table loom, I rarely do tapestry and that is the only thing the upright loom is used for, I have a 4 harness counterbalance loom that can't do anything but 4 harness weaves and I have an 8 harness countermarche loom that can do everything including double weave and wider warps. Most projects are pretty loom specific though.
jenkins said:
Can you expand on the differences between "stalled" "pending" "on-hold" etc? Also, how do you create a custom perspective for just "on-hold" projects? I don't see that as an option in "Filter by availability" in OmniFocus.
Stalled are projects that do not have a next action. In my world they are either finished and I forgot to mark them complete or I was in a hurry and when I finished the action I didn't make a placemark next action to work on or they are in serious need of detailed project planning and may actually be multiple projects.
On Hold is a drop down in the filter projects section in the info pane below filter by duration. I group by folder, unsorted, use preferences for layout, any status, remaining, any duration, on-hold and saved that as a perspective.
jenkins said:
I don't care much for on-hold contexts either. My follow-up question would be, Do you add any contexts to your on-hold S/M actions?
Sure, if they already had them. I put projects in and out of hold as needed. They go into hold if I really need to clear the decks or the season is wrong (although I might put a start date instead for next year when the season is correct) Hold is suspended, all the details, planning, actions etc are kept as they were. when I re-activate them and make them active I review the actions and plan to be sure it hasn't changed. Sometimes it does but usually not, at least not if I did it right the first time.
Edited to add:
I don't typically put ACTIONS on hold, only full projects. Once you put a project on hold the actions are easily hidden, just look at only next or available actions and you'll never see them. It also means that when I do decide to activate a project it's a single change, make the PROJECT active and all my previous planning and actions are suddenly available to me in my lists by context.