Wednesday, January 31st, 2007...9:01 am
Contexts? You don’t need no stinkin’ contexts!
Lately, I have become torn with my selection of contexts. I am in IT so I have quite a number of computer related contexts and lately, I have found that it is easier to put everything on my mGTD that I keep with Moleskine Planner/Notebook. There are columns for next action, context, project, waiting for and S/M on the mGTD. I have found myself writing down NA for all of my tasks. Sometimes I will drop a context in the list, sometimes, when applicable, I will put the project down. I do us the waiting for column a lot.
So that has gotten me to think. Do I really need contexts in my current system?
I always have my Moleskine with me and inside there is 2 mGTDs: one blue for work stuff, and one red for personal stuff. When I am in a situation when I am taking notes and not really worrying about creating NAs then I will use the notebook side of my Moleskine and then create NAs at a later time. I think that this is helping me out significantly more than trying to come up with contexts, and managing them separately on their own lists.
One thing that I have not completely worked out is how to handle projects. Most of my actual work day is working projects. My actual support side of my job is usually done as soon as a request comes in. Eighty-five percent of my support calls take under 5 minutes, so they do not see my lists at all. Those that require additional research and coming back at a later time, go directly to my list as soon as I get back into my office. I would love to see the mGTD add a project form to it stable (**hint hint** Stephanos!) then I could keep my Project lists with the associated NAs with me in my Moleskine. I will have some time next week to really ruminate on this as I will be at a conference in Huntsville, Alabama for 3 nights. I plan on using my alone time in the hotel to think and rethink some aspects in my system to create a better workflow for me. I am also going to try to finally sit down and listen to all of the GTD Fast! CDs, as well as take in a book not yet chosen.
Also on this trip, a little BBP History will be made. Jason and I will finally meet up. Many probably don’t know that Jason and I have never met face to face. We met on the 43Folders boards and found that we had many things in common and struck up a friendship over IM. Hopefully over our lunch, we will start some planning for some things to come on BBP. We both love GTD, and really enjoy having this outlet for our rants and raves about all things productive. So that means that I will be out of pocket until late next week, but I may have another post in me before I leave. We will have to see.
- Michael
7 Comments
January 31st, 2007 at 9:32 am
Actually you do have contexts, two to be more precisely. You call them blue/work and red/personal, but you could just as well call them @office/@computer and @home/@errands.
Remember that the only use for the context limiting the number of tasks on your list to only the tasks you need to be looking at at that very moment. If you are in your office, you look at the blue context not bothered by your personal stuff, and at home you use the red context and forget about the office sores.
January 31st, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Being a bit like meta-tags, contexts are useful mostly when you have sort routines that allow you to block out the other data not passing the context-test. This ability to sort and resort data is something that makes the Hi-fi systems a bit more powerful than the lo-fi systems. However, the Hi-fi systems have their own problems (ease of use etc.).
I myself have found I’m not using my context lists as properly as I should be. Like you my contexts are pretty limited. However, I have recently added more contexts for the microscopes I use at work- hopefully this will allow me to see at the drop of a hat which samples need looking at in various machines.
One of the things that has been slightly frustrating for me, is the concept of true “next” actions and projects and siblings etc. I feel that the computer-related GTD systems should be capable of dealing with Dependencies really well… and figuring out which next-action is next etc. (this is one of the great things that computers can do)- but that no one is really leveraging that in the GTD world right now. [In my limited experience of course]. Now, I don’t want anything too anal, but something that allows me to sort dependencies, and have 5 next-actions all within the same project (they can run concurrently, or when I like), and a series of dependent steps (otherwise known as “waiting for”’s) will really help to pare down my 100+ item action lists. The key being of course that once I check-off the parent action, the child action should immediately be brought forward into next-actions (and each of its children be brought one step forward as well). In some ways this is a bit Gantt-ish… but for real projects with multiple dependent steps, a simple todo list is not going to cut it. This is where I think Omni-Plan and a planning-aware Omni-Focus might be able to fill a gap.
If these things are done well, the idea should be simply, pick up the context card- see all possible actions at that time (and none of the impossible actions at that time)… bammo you know what you need to be doing.
Clutter that list with a bazillion action items that are waiting for others, or the inability to order them in importance in your list, and your brain is going to turn off.
I think this is one of the benefits to having a single-item per page idea that D. Allen uses. There’s not much to see on a single page.. your brain contemplates that one item alone. Our brains need similar decluttering in our action lists, and trust that the items that truly need to get done are highlighted in some way and can be dealt with first.
Sorry I rambled… I just revamped my system (same old system, but I’m trying to incorporate more time-tracking into it ala Printable CEO type stuff). We’ll see if I can be good for a while and use everything properly.
Hope you guys are doing really well!! My best to you and BBP this new year!!
February 2nd, 2007 at 5:28 am
I use Outlook and the GTD add-in to manage my tasks. On the Davidco. forums I found a nice macro called the ‘GTD Police’ doing exactly what you want. If your task belongs to a project, you can write done the tasks to do after completing the current one in the notes. When completing a task, the GTD Police will automatically generate the next task for you. Very handy!
February 4th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Huntsvilla, AL??? I lived there for 5 years. Now, I’m up in Fairfax, VA with a new job. Enjoy Huntsville!!!
February 9th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
I don’t really use contexts, eihter. I haven’t figured out why I need them since I’m basically sitting in front of my computer all day long. But I do use tags in Remember the Milk (http://www.rememberthemilk.com/). They’re more flexible than contexts, and you can have multiple tags per task. You can have a tag for “easy stuff” or “home” or “morning” or “car.” whatever works for you.
February 13th, 2007 at 1:48 am
Oh yes.. you do need contexts… but you just need an easier way to manage them and use them.
Try out my new GTD web application - Nozbe:
http://www.nozbe.com
Sorry for self-promotion, but I really believe I’ve made working with contexts as easy as can be, plus they are shown visually through icons…
Have a look and let me know what you think.
I also do work mainly in projects.. but contexts help me a great deal here - that’s for sure.
April 9th, 2007 at 3:36 am
[...] helpful. I found some parts of this system completely useless (it seems that I’m not the only one). According to Allen, it takes several hours a week just to make this system work for you. I [...]
Leave a Reply