Filter projects and flag projects with no next action

It would be useful if there was a colour assigned to projects that have not next action, as well as a filter mechanism. This would make reflection, as well as weekly reviews more efficient. Right now, if a project has only one sub-task which is completed, it goes of the radar, as there are no next actions, and no easy way to be reminded of that problem.

Hi @waynemaxsmith - The idea of being able to filter or highlight projects without a next action is something we want to tackle. I agree that it would be very helpful, especially when doing a daily or weekly review.

I’m interested in what ideas people have on how to implement this. I have my own ideas, but I’d love to hear some others.

Thoughts?

I would suggest a little alert symbol inline with the project (or other item). When you hover over or click the alert it gives you the message, or warning. This same element can be used to highlight other warnings about the project or item, e.g. no activities on project for x period. You could also have a view showing all items with warnings in the same place. This is a bit like the focus element. E.g. you have added feature where the focus automatically comes on when a waiting for due date is due, but this could be replaced by the warning system. This is where saved views (or perspectives) would make a difference. I could create query to show all stale projects, or projects with next, or late items, etc.

I definitely support the idea of including a filter for this. Regarding an “alert” symbol, I think you should be careful about this - probably useful, but it would need to be obvious what it means, and not contribute much to visual clutter. Some users would probably hate it, and would want the option to turn it off.

@ike9898 I see in your profile you were fan of mGSD which was also product I have tried and was amazed at! I really think GTDNext is the next best thing, but concerned with its pace of development and community involvement. It is so close, but not quite there! I am not sure how big the market is for these products, but I guess most of them rather try be generic and simple and easy to use for the masses. e.g. Todoist.

Another product which is worthwhile looking at is Dynalist, which really has the list / outline thing happening, nicely evolving the also moribund Workflowy, with a very active community. Unfortunately it is a bit too generic focus on outline processing and makes doing the efficient steps available in GTD next a pain (Next action list, ordering). It is close, as it offer links, but manually doing them take too long, and they are not logical and bi-directional.

GTDNext is the only hope out there!

Hi
This would be really useful, even key for me, a lot of my projects can have single action open as the outcome of that will define what i do next. As such projects with no actions happen regularly and a way to spot them in a review would really help.

Regards

Rob G

You know, one thing I miss about mGSD is Ticklers. It’s been a long time since I read David Allen’s book, but I think that Ticklers were in there. Anyway, since I left mGSD, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a GTD application that specifically implements Ticklers. mGSD was great, but from my understanding, it was just a non-business, side project for the guy who made it. I’m hoping that GTDNext will earn the developers enough money that they can justify spending all of their time on it, long term.

I think everyone thinks about ticklers a bit differently. How would you see ticklers implemented?

Well, this is going to sound obnoxious, but it worked for me. First time you look at the GTD application in the day, if there are any tasks of type Tickler set for to “go off” that day, you’d see a flashing “Tickler” at the top of the page. You switch to the view that shows you just the ticklers, and you look through them quickly. For most of the items, you’ll probably decide that the time is not right, but that you want to be reminded to reconsider that item it next month or next year, and bump the set date accordingly by tapping the “+M” or “+Y” button. Some ticklers you might change to Active items, or maybe demote to “Someday/Maybe”