I seem to have issues creating actions/next actions in the application. This affects v 0.1.3.18. If you look at the attached screen shot, you should be able to see the issue. None of the actions that I create are turned into Next Actions. And none of the actions have the “N” icon visible. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong here. I have even tried to use the force next action feature, but not even that will create a next action. So the issue isn’t only that I can not see any “N” icon since the Next Actions view is completely empty as well.
@Elurven: They are created as Inbox actions. You see this on the purple background color and on the red underline of Inbox in the List selector in the edit pane. To make it work you need to manually set the List selector to Active (which is GTDNext lingo for Next).
Related suggestions to the developers:
change the name of Active to Next to make the List selector more easily understandable
when a new task is created, put it on whatever list the user is currently looking at
(unless the user presses ctrl-enter or some such thing to make it an Inbox item).
if created while on the P&A list (or other “list-independent” list), I’d say Next will be the safest default, the most common case. (For example, I imagine people only seldom enter inbox items while looking at the P&A list.)
@Folke - That resolved the issue for the actions that are not placed in projects (and therefore are also available in the inbox). But if I create a new action (while in the “Projects & Actions” view), and then add an action to it (thereby converting the former action into a project), neither the new project, nor the action will have the “N” icon. I still need to select “Active” on the project level (I’m not able to do this on the associated action). And I fully agree with your first two bullet points. And is this what you mean with the third bullet point: “Creating an action in the P&A view will automatically set the status of that action to Active/Next”? If so, I agree with that too ;).
A suggestion: If the Inbox view were to mimic the structure in P&A (but without the listing of projects underneath “Inbox” in the left-hand menu since they are not Next/Active yet) then the default status in the Inbox could be “Inbox”. But if you add actions and projects in the P&A view, the default could be “Next/Active”. That way, you could plan it all in the inbox and only have “Next/Active” projects and actions in the P&A view.
Yes, that is what I meant. (Sorry for being unclear)
Yes, absolutely, but isn’t that what we already said?
Personally, I would not want anything to be missing from P&A. I want “everything” there, including Inbox, Next, Waiting, Someday, Tickler/Calendar/Scheduled and Subsequent/Sequential (and also manually Inactivated projects if they perhaps implement that).
I would have no objections at all if the app would let you plan things while in the Inbox, nor would I object to Inbox items being automatically grouped in an “Inbox” container within P&A.
I hardly ever use the app Inbox, except to receive calendar notifications 15 hours ahead of meetings etc. I have so many other inboxes already, and usually write fresh actions or amend existing ones straight in the place they are supposed to be, so unfortunately I cannot contribute with much when it comes to how the Inbox should work. The only strong opinion I have about the Inbox is I would like to have the user preference option to have all inbox items auto-Focused so that I can see them - I often forget to look in the Inbox, because I use it so little.
