How is “Availability” for a project calculated? I figured it would be straightforward, based on the manual, but I’m not seeing what I expect. Here’s what I’m doing.
Make a new perspective with the only rule being “Is a project”. I see all my of projects. ✅
Add “Availability: Available”. The list becomes way smaller. I eventually realized that what’s left are just projects that have no uncompleted actions. As soon as I add an action to the project, is doesn’t pass the “Available” filter (it does still show up if that is set to Remaining) 🤔
Aside from this gumming up one of my perspectives, I’m just not following the logic of why having actions makes a project not available.
I can see the grounds for confusion but this is intended behaviour. The reason you’re seeing so few available projects is that it’s a relatively unusual state for a project to be in. Availability is more commonly thought of in relation to tasks. The concept has its roots in GTD’s “next action” philosophy: can I complete this project in a single step? If not what “next action” pre-requisites can I identify?
I create a “Post to my blog” project, then decide that I need to “select topic”, “research topic”, “draft blog post”, “proof-read draft”, etc. Depending on how you work you might create this subtask list in one step, as a flat, sequential list, or (as I do) tend to think more iteratively in terms of outlines of tasks with nested subtasks. OF can handle either (or indeed a combination of both). The point is that the Available items are the next action items. A task is “masked” from being available (though it’s still “remaining”) either by having uncompleted subtasks in a nested outline or (if a project has been set to sequential rather than parallel in the inspector) by having uncompleted tasks above it at the same level of the outline (or by being “deferred”, but that’s another topic).
As mentioned, an available project will be relatively unusual: it’s either such a simple thing it has no tasks (and never had any), or, as you’ve found, it’s a project where all its tasks have been completed, but it hasn’t itself yet been marked as done: the implication is that it’s 99% done waiting for a final small push to get it over the line (all I need to do now is press “send” on my blog post).
If were to paraphrase, Available sort of implies “You should be able to work on this (not blocked) and can check it off it you’re done (no dependents)”. Your linkage to subtasks really clicked, and this is the behavior I see when I do a test perspective involving tasks and subtasks. So the behavior is consistent up and down the hierarchy (projects being above tasks), it’s just that most of my tasks don’t have subtasks, so it wasn’t as obvious.
Yup, that’s it. As a final twist there’s an option in the inspector to set a flag for given project to automatically complete when its last task is completed: if you set this you’ll never see an available project!
I would say the logic for a project with no actions left in it to be unavailable, is that OF sees it as if there’s nothing to do (no active actions uncompleted).
My understanding is that available means, fo OF, you can do something about at this moment in time, and this ‘something’ is an ‘available’ action
The other point I realised I failed to make previously is that seeing that a project is available (has no outstanding available tasks to complete) might as I suggested be a sign the project is now done and can be marked completed; or it may prompt you to realise it isn’t yet done and to identify some more next actions (which once entered become available themselves, masking the project itself)
Note that “available” has different meanings depending on whether your perspective is configured to preserve hierarchy or not.
In a perspective that preserves hierarchy (either using the “Preserve hierarchy” switch in a Flexible perspective, or by organizing “Entire Projects” in an Organized perspective), a project is considered available if anything inside the project is available.
In a perspective that doesn’t preserve hierarchy, projects are flattened out so that everything contained within the project is listed first, with completing the project itself listed as a separate action at the end. That action of completing the project is considered unavailable until you resolve (completing or dropping) all of the earlier items within the project.
So if you’re looking for available projects, it’s helpful to understand that the question you’re asking (and answer you’ll get) is different when using a perspective that preserves hierarchy. (Note that you don’t actually have to show any of the contained tasks: you can add a rule for “Is a project” so all you’re seeing is the project itself. Turning on and off the “Preserves hierarchy” switch will either list all the projects that have some available work, or will list the smaller set of projects that are have nothing left to do other than check off the project itself.)
