Welcome to the forums!

It seems to me like you are mixing up Project Support with your Next Action Lists. Three things to consider:

1. Any project that requires it should have dedicated Project Support. This may be a paper folder, a binder, an electronic folder or whatever you need to hold everything you need to know about the project. This is where you would record milestones, project plans etc. And this is where any action that you cannot yet do should be.

2. Your Next Action lists should only include actions you can do now, if you are in the correct context. You referred to a project where a scheduled meeting (appropriately on your calendar) was the very next thing to do and everything else depended on it. If that is the case you would not have any actions related to this project on your Next Actions list. If you had prevously thought about potential next actions, you may have recorded those and they belong in Project Support as noted above.

3. The project should be listed on your Projects list. This is vital for not losing sight of the project. Let's say you go to your meeting and then you are busy with all kinds of other work. You might be concerned that you now have nothing in your system (nothing in calendar; nothing on your Next Actions list). That is why it is on your Projects list. The next time you review your Projects list you will catch that and add the Next Action. It may be obvious to you what the Next Action is or you may need to review your Project Support material at that time.

Hope this helps - any more questions, ask away!