Pausing a project once a specific action is done?

OmniFocus
#1

Say I’ve got a project that I want to do one more action on, and then back-burner for several months once that action is done. Is there any way to accomplish that automatically instead of having to remember to go back to the project and pause it?

The only way I can see to do anything like that is to make it sequential and set the second task in the list to a paused tag. But that’s a very sub-optimal solution because a) it’s not actually a sequential project, and b) I don’t want the project to appear anywhere as being active once the one remaining current task is done.

#2

Nothing I know of. But I can put a defer date on the next action to make it unavailable until then.

Task title: Consider restarting this project
Defer date: December 1, 2019

Or set the defer date of the project itself?

1 Like
#3

You can have a sequential action group within a parallel project. This group could contain:

  1. Action you want to take before putting project on hold.
  2. Action to prompt you to put the project on hold (or to defer it to the future).

Since this group is sequential, the second action wouldn’t become available until the first one is complete.

4 Likes
#4

Setting a defer date on the project makes the one action I still want active inactive, same as pausing the project.

Using a group within the project makes it a giant PITA to add more actions without those actions being active; plus the project as a whole still shows up in lists of active projects.

I’ll just have to pause it manually once this action is done. Not really a huge deal; just a bit of an annoyance. I feel like OF keeps adding friction to my workflow instead of removing it.

#5

I think many of us do this in various ways…
To some degree your project is sequential in that you can’t pause before you do the active item.

As Tim said above - your next active item could be a reminder to pause the remainder of the project

The other option is that if you are performing a weekly review (or whatever frequency you choose) - you could set this project to be reviewed in 2 days or whatever time period it will take you to finish the current active item. This project will then appear at the next review and you can then pause it as required

1 Like
#6

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.