I’m probably missing the boat here, but I would love a perspective or view or something that will let me see available and deferred actions, but not blocked or on hold ones. Available obviously doesn’t work and Remaining includes on hold. Is it anti-GTD that I want to see my actions in that way? For example, maybe I’m finished with everything that was due or deferred until today, and now I want to see things deferred until later but NOT have my view cluttered with actions that are part of an on hold project.
I don’t think there is anything anti-GTD, but I can’t see any way to create a custom perspective that can show all remaining that are not part of an on-hold project.
Other than just suggesting you e-mail OmniGroup’s support team to add it as a feature request, there is a possible way I can think of to do it, but it requires you to organize a certain way. You have to create at least two folders - one that contains all of your active projects and one that contains your on-hold projects. Then (assuming you have the Pro version), you can create a custom version of the “Remaining” perspective that sets the focus on the folder or folders that contain the active projects.
The downside of this is that when you want to set a project on hold, you also need to move it to the “On Hold” folder. Then when you want to set it active, you would need to move it to another folder.
It’s not ideal, I realize. Maybe someone else has a better solution.
you can probably visit the forecast perspective to see deferred items. Make sure to go to the views setting (the eye icon) on your toolbar and check on the box to show deferred items.
You will see all deferred and due items here. Personally, if I am done with today’s items, I look at ahead for the next due item. In my workflow, due items will always take priority over other deferred items.
I also set up my custom perspective called “Due”. This is the equivalent to “Upcoming Agenda” (stuff I should be concerned about in the next 7 days) /
I go to the Preferences window > “Date and Time” and set the due soon to represent one week. Then I create a due perspective:
[ √ ] Don’t user project hierarchy
Group actions by due
sort actions by due
filter by status: due soon
filter by status: remaining
filter by duration: any duration
filter contexts: Active (or whatever you want)
This custom perspective will show any upcoming due items in the next 7 days. Then I can get a head start on due items. In my system, I try to actively stay ahead of due dates. I don’t want to wait until the die date to actually work on something. If I finish things early, it gives me less stress. I don’t have to worry about last minute jobs and trying to put in overtime to get something done at the last possible moment. This unneeded stress that can be eliminated if we look ahead and get due items done early. This gives me a cushion to take care of any last minute emergencies that always pops up from day to day. I always expect an emergency that can suddenly destroy my carefully planned schedule for the day.
Custom perspectives requires the Pro upgrade for OmniFocus 2.
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Hi @mominaustin, deferring items, setting them to on-hold, and blocking them are all just different ways of making an item unavailable, so filtering for availability will exclude them all.
If your on-hold items are using an on-hold context, you can filter for only active contexts, so that would at least hide the items that were assigned to any on-hold contexts, but wouldn’t exclude blocked items that were assigned to active contexts, or items that were on-hold because the project status was set to on-hold. Other than that, there’s not a way to show some unavailable items but not the others.
I would also encourage you to go ahead and email us about this (if you haven’t already). I’d be happy to file a feature request on your behalf, or add you to an existing one.
