Another new users question. I really like the Next actions view, i notice it “refreshes” as you work. As you tick an item off the next on that project pops up.
Total understand why but is it possible to make that refresh a manual process, so i work through the next actions and see the list diminish and at an appropriate time I run it again to get the next batch of next actions.
Perhaps I’m over thinking it, I’m currently trying the Focus view to achieve the above but as I do have a lot of small projects and accordingly actions having the above behaviour would be interesting to try.
Interesting thought. I can certainly understand your point of view, and I think using the Focus list, as you are now, is the way to go. (Hiding perfectly valid next actions from the next actions list would seem simply wrong.)
But I could also perfectly understand the diametrically opposite point of view - that it would sometimes be useful to be able to focus an entire important project and thereby have the first subsequent next action automatically come into focus when the current one is checked off. This would be useful if you are in fact focusing your attention and time to a particular project but do not want to clutter your Focus list with actions that are not yet possible.
I can see why you might want to have the next action refresh be manual. However, I think most people want it to auto refresh, so I don’t think we will change that behavior. I think you are on to something with using the focus list though. It sounds like you using it in similar fashion to how I do . Take a look at this blog post for more info on how I prioritize using the next and focus lists. http://blog.gtdnext.com/gtd-prioritization-video/