I use Dynalist for GTD. My projects are organised like this:
PROJECTS
* Project A
1. Item 1
2. Item 2
3. Item 3
* Project B
1. Item 1
2. Item 2
3. Item 3
* Project C
1. Item 1
2. Item 2
3. Item 3
… and so on.
Is it possible to do a search at the PROJECTS level that will only return the first item (#1) for each project?
Hi @Jorge1,
Sorry for the late reply. Unfortunately, there’s no search operator that search for items based on its order (or index) right now.
I guess the only way is to tag these "item 1"s and then search for that.
Thank you for replying. Unfortunately I was hoping to take advantage of the fact that, when you enable the option to hide checked items, when the first item gets checked off a list the next item becomes number 1. So if a filtering system like the one I was asking about existed, you would be able to have a number of projects with multiple sequential items and just see the next “doable” (first) items for all projects at the same time.
I could create an “item 1” tag as you suggest. But then every time I do the next action in a project I would have to delete the “item 1” tag, check off the item, then add the tag to the next item and so on, which is not a very agile way of working.
I’m trying to implement David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” system using dynalist. It mostly works really for it, but this is perhaps the biggest issue I have when trying to fully implement GTD. If you can think of any other way to achieve what I want, or if there’s an upcoming feature that will enable me to do it, please let me know.
Regardless, thank you for taking the time to answer.
I believe in GTD there’s a separate list called “Next Actions”, and when review your tasks, you send your Actions in each Projects to the “Next Actions”. Does that work?
I know this involves a bit of manual work, but it also gives you more control. For example, you might not want to see the next actionable task of a “Maybe/Someday” project next to a current project.
Hello Erica.
Good point. I do use a “next actions” list where I have all my items that only require one action to get done.
The issue is that I like to keep projects, which require multiple actions, grouped in their own lists. If I take the next/first action out of a project list and move it into the “next actions” list, I remove it from its context. I could tag it with the name of the project, but then I will end up having to create lots of tags manually, an my tag list will become very large rather quickly.
So not an ideal solution in my case, I’m afraid. That’s why I asked about a search functionality that would allow to return first unchecked item from a numbered list. Since I turn all my project items into numbered lists, next item to do in a project is always item 1. Something to be considered for a future feature perhaps?
In terms of getting unwanted results from “Maybe/Someday” projects, I keep those in a separate page, so it’s easy to filter them out.
Cheers
Yeah, I think it’s a good idea to rephrase it as post it as a feature request. Other users who practice GTD might find it useful too.
Once we can confirm there’s more interest in this kind of search, we’ll definitely give it more consideration.
Thanks for being so understanding, Jorge!
