I think you need to change the way Someday works for projects. And/or implement a manual Inactive setting for projects.
As it is now, if you have a project with a mix of actions - Next actions, Waiting for actions, Calendar or Tickler actions (Scheduled), Maybe (or Plan B) actions (Someday) and then change the whole project’s status from Active to Someday then all the actions underneath it will be converted to Someday, and later when you change the project back to Active they will all become Next (“Active”) actions regardless of what they really are (were before). So you would need to have the overall inactivation apply implicitly to everything below without tampering with the recorded setting of each individual action.
Maybe you were aware of this, I don’t know. I mentioned it just in case you weren’t.
Thank you, we are aware of the behavior. It’s not slated to change just yet, but it is on our radar as something that could use some improvements. Thanks!
James, I just wanted to affirm that, in my opinion, this feature works correctly. If a project goes inactive/someday, then all the incorporated actions are also inactive/someday. If any actions are active, then they are no longer part of an inactive project.
Then please let me affirm that I too agree that actions in an inactive project (or a Someday project) should not be visible on the main lists (Next etc).
BUT their setting should not be destroyed. That’s an important difference. If I make the project active again, then all its actions should be restored automatically to the correct lists - next actions go on the Next list, waiting for actions go on the Waiting list etc etc. Please look at Nirvana or Doit if you like to see a real example - the whole project goes “offline” when you inactivate it, but nothings is permanently destroyed, and you can revert it to an active state at any time.
In many ways this is perfectly similar to the case where a subproject is sequentially inactive until its turn comes up. Its individual actions are not permanently transformed to Someday just because the subproject is not yet active. The actions remain “ready for action” in the intended way (for different GTD lists), and become activated onto the correct list the very moment the subproject is activated without any manual reclassification being required.