I like the idea of having my Waiting tags be on hold. I also have set up a perspective to show those items. My challenge comes in that when in a project I built from a template, I may have 5 points in the project where I will be waiting on something. I can’t seem to come up with a perspective which will only show me the next item in the list that is waiting (sequential project). As the context is on hold, available doesn’t work as a filter.
I suspect I may just be stuck with the excess items in my perspective, which I can live with. Just curious if anyone else has run into this and how they solved it.
I have separate tags for on hold and waiting. The difference for me is that the waiting tag is active. I don’t have too many of these items at once so they don’t clutter up any views and it’s easy to track them down and tick them off when I’m no longer waiting.
I have also found that, while philosophically, having a Waiting Tag as on hold makes sense, for practical reasons, it can be more effective to have such actions as active:
it gives the option to have them due and show up in Forecast
it gives the option to also tag them with other tags for being visible in other places (such as a tag with someone’s name)
gives the option to flag them for showing up in other perspectives
I’ve found it easy enough to excludeWaiting Tag from active action-based perspectives I have, now that OF3 has NOT rules.
I agree with Scotty and nostodnayr. I used to have my Waiting tag on hold, but I found that I was failing to notice when something hadn’t turned up. A lot of my Waiting tasks don’t have hard due dates, but on the other hand they need to be completed within a reasonable time. I considered having a separate follow-up task deferred until the date when I felt the item should have been received, but this seemed unnecessary duplication. I also considered setting due dates to the Waiting task so that it showed up as due in perspectives that show remaining tasks. However, I am trying to confine the use of due dates to items that really do have a hard deadline. So in the end, an active Waiting tag seemed the best option.
Using a ‘Waiting’ tag that has the ‘On Hold’ status is useful in structured projects when you have subsequent tasks that depend on the task you’re waiting for being done. These subsequent tasks can be placed after the awaited task in a sequential Action Group (or entire Project). They won’t appear in your perspectives which show ‘available actions’ until they are actionable, ie. once the awaited task has been marked as done.
I prefer this approach because I like to be very agressive in deferring tasks and having tasks not show up until I can/should perform them.
