How do you mark GTD's Next Action and Waiting For in MLO?

[funjul...@gmail.com]

So MLO doesn't have a natural way of marking tasks as "waiting for" or "next action" like in GTD, so I wondered what people used. Some possibilities:

1. What the software seems to want you to do is use "Active Actions" as a substitute for Next Action, but they're not the same thing, and that doesn't give you an option for Waiting For.

2. You could use folders for Next Action and Waiting For, but that's difficult because you'd have to move the whole project or split it up.

3. You could use contexts, which is what I've been trying, though they're not technically contexts.

4. You could use text tags and then search for those text tags.

5. You could use flags.

6. You could repurpose some other attribute of tasks.

7. You could use project status - "In Progress" for NA and "Suspended" for WF. But that only works at project level. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from making everything a project so you can use project status.

Other thoughts? How do you handle Waiting For and Next Action?

[Stéph]

Hello funjul

Well, I use contexts.

Folder hierarchy, for me, is only for grouping tasks and subtasks, or tasks in to roles and goals.

Contexts work well as GTD contexts. You can even give them time slots or locations, which fits in very well with GTD contexts like "@Errand".

So, now onto how I do "wsiting for" and "next action":

When I delegate a task to someone, or I've left a message and I'm waiting for someone to give me some information to be able to complete a task, I change the context to ">waiting for" and I put the person's name at the top of my task note, tagged with a question mark - eg ?Jone Bloggs. That way, when I'm speaking with Joe Bloggs, it's easy to look up the other things I need to follow-up with him - I just search for "?Jue"..

. I use formatting so that "@waiting for" tasks are greyed out until they are due, so I'm not distracted by the things for which someone has more time to come back to me and to highlight those things which are overdue and need chasing.

This works well enough for me that sometimes people tell me they wonder how I keep on top of the list of things I'm working on with them.

Now for "next action" - I have less use for this. I give my actions start and due dates, with the date that the action actually has a deadline, then I often sort my actions by date..
So, that's how I do it.

[Stéph]

Excuse the spelling errors. For some reason, Google Groups has decided to make my text entry box about 1/2 line high, so I can't read what I'm typing...

[Stephen Jones]

I use a Waiting for context. I add it to the existing contexts. It is auto formatted to be purple italics so I can easily identify and then I set a review date. It does not appear on my to list until it is due for a review.

I also have a tab where all the items for review appear so I can quickly look through them in my weekly PReview session. 

Cheers

Stephen J

[Heinz]

I used @waiting as a MLO context for a couple of years but turned away from it because it feels so different from the „real“ contexts I prefer to use. As my choice of task prioritizing is flags, I am using now a low priority flag color (blue) for waiting tasks. If seeing a result from a waiting task is more urgent I combine it with a due date. What works best for me is a „My Day“ view, which is grouped by contexts and prioritized by flags within each group. 

[Dwight Arthur]

I have a context "@Waiting"

A lot of standalone tasks have that status. For example, if I buy something online and it's supposed to show up next Tuesday before 8PM I'll create a task "received widget from storename" with start set to Tuesday 20:00 and context @waiting. If there is any sort of deadline, or date by which there will be problems if this isnt done, I set due date. This will never show up in my to-do lists, once or twice a day I check my WAITING view, which shows all uncompleted tasks whose contexts include @waiting, sorted by startdate. Overdue stuff is red and generally at the top, stuff that should be happening is green and near the top. I generally do not look at the future items in black but sometimes I will glance at it to get a sense of what's coming. If there's an urgency about it I will star it which will put it on my to do list.

I use the same context but applied a little differently for points in a project where I have to wait for someone or something before proceeding. I will generally create a separate task for the waiting. For example, if I give a document to a proofreader, and when I get it back I send it to the customer, I do not consider the waiting to be a condition of either the deliver to the proof reader or the delivery to the customer. I would probably have something like

- Deliver to proofreader @Documents
- Waiting for proofreader @Waiting
- Review and accept proofreader's changes @Documents
- Deliver to customer @Documents

The above sequence would probably be set up in a project with "complete tasks in order" or else explicit dependencies if needed. the waiting tasks would have the earliest possible date to receive the proofread document as the start date and the latest acceptable return date as the due date. If it's not obvious who is proofreading it I would put the proofreader's name in the text tag.

I have a folder for waiting tasks. If a task has somewhere else to be, like in a project, it does not need the waiting folder, but standalone stuff goes to the waiting folder to keep it from cluttering up the inbox.

I have another view called ProjectWork, which looks at all of the projects in my WORK folder and shows the NextAction (as set by the Show Actions filter) so one task per project

-Dwight

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[funjul...@gmail.com]

On Monday, February 15, 2021 at 2:04:37 PM UTC-8 Dwight wrote:

I have another view called ProjectWork, which looks at all of the projects in my WORK folder and shows the NextAction (as set by the Show Actions filter) so one task per project

-Dwight

How does that work? I thought Active showed multiple tasks?

So do you not have a separate Next Action flag or context?

 

[funjul...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, February 11, 2021 at 1:32:09 PM UTC-8 ste...@atmconsultants.com.au wrote:

> I use a Waiting for context. I add it to the existing contexts. It is auto formatted to be purple italics so I can easily identify and then I set a review date. It does not appear on my to list until it is due for a review.

> I also have a tab where all the items for review appear so I can quickly look through them in my weekly PReview session. 

How do you set up the tab for all items for review?

On Monday, February 15, 2021 at 2:04:37 PM UTC-8 Dwight wrote: