OmniFocus On Hold status question

[Moka]

What is On Hold status in OmniFocus: is it Someday-Maybe project or @Waiting project?

[vbampton]

Hi Moka. You can use it for whatever suits you best.

I use it as a temporary hold - for example, I'm working on a project, but other priorities crop up so I decide to put that project on hold just for a couple of weeks, but don't want to move it all the way back to my Someday Maybe folders.

And all of the contents of my Someday Maybe folder are set to On Hold too, so that none of the actions appear in my active lists.

[mcogilvie]

Note that you can also have contexts on hold. I've gone back and forth a bit, but finally decided that putting contexts on hold is not so useful. If a context isn't currently relevant, I just don't look at it. Also, OmniFocus has this very broad notion of blocked actions, which are hidden in many views and can lead to confusion.

Omnifocus also can filter projects by start date, which may or may not be better than on hold, depending on your circumstances. The feature set is a bit too rich and there's a lot of overlapping functionality.

[vbampton]

Note that you can also have contexts on hold. I've gone back and forth a bit, but finally decided that putting contexts on hold is not so useful.

True. The one thing I've found on hold contexts to be useful is my @Reference context, which just holds snippets of project support information - just because it avoids having to exclude that context from each view.

[kelstarrising]

What is On Hold status in OmniFocus: is it Someday-Maybe project or @Waiting project?

We don't recommend changing statuses at all in our GTD & OmniFocus Guide. https://secure.davidco.com/store/cat...-p-1-c-263.php

Not that they can't work, but we found other simple ways to organize Someday Maybe and Waiting For items in the Guide.

[ckennedy]

Hi Kelly
I've read the new GTD setup guide and find your comment a bit confusing.
In the guide on page 10 it shows a "Waiting" context, but shows that status of that context to be "On Hold"
Am I missing something here?
Cheers
Craig

[kelstarrising]

Actually, you're right, because we stuck with the OmniFocus default for that context name of Waiting and how they set that up. But we don't use it for any other context or list type.

[Oogiem]

What is On Hold status in OmniFocus: is it Someday-Maybe project or @Waiting project?

I use on-hold for Someday/Maybe projects. I use a context of Waiting for for all actions where I am waiting for something. I usually have an action in the project that is Waiting for <item X> and set to context waiting for. Seems much more clean and easy to use that way to me.

[mthar1]

I too use the On Hold-feature to quickly and easily change a project from being an active project to being backlog or someday/maybe. They way it works is that I have my context lists set up to show me Available actions so anything On Hold doesn't show up.

My someday/maybe projects are then also in a separate folder so that I don't have them mix with my active projects. Backlog projects just stay in the normal project lists.

My backlog projects are typically projects that I have already started and that I intend to complete within a couple of weeks but that I don't have the bandwith to work on at the moment. So that is in principal the subset of someday/maybe projects that I want to review more often than the rest.

[Gardener]

For me, OmniFocus's "on hold" means that the item is purely information, and that it's OK for it to never pop up on my radar until I go looking for it. I usually use it for contexts, to label actions that aren't really actions, but are instead ideas or project support materials or information. If I use it for a project, that usually signifies that I thought that a project was going to become actionable and I put some thought and structure into it, but then I concluded that it wasn't ready and I was too lazy to disassemble it again. (I don't like my system to contain full-fledged projects that are delayed indefinitely.)

When I want to delay an actual project, I will generally make it sequential and give it a first action with a start date in the future. When I want to delay actions, I'll again give them a future start date. This means that they will eventually pop up without my having to go look for them.