help: how to deal with mutliple contexts

[JCHH]

I really like Omnifocus, I really do, but there is one thing I just cant get my head around.

Say I want to call Bob about blah blah blah. Do I put that task under @Bob or @call?

...If I put the task under @call, but I meet Bob somewhere I cannot easily find that task to talk to him about it.
...If I put the task under @Bob, I won't ring him when I have a spare 5 minutes to make a call.

With other apps you can use tags, contacting linking or multiple contexts to overcome this.

I would appreciate any suggestions on how to do it (simply and efficiently) in Omnifocus because this is driving me nuts.

Thanks!
James.

[whpalmer4]

I would put it in the context most likely to be encountered. If you see Bob regularly, and there's no urgency, put it in @Bob. If you need to talk to Bob right away, put it in @Calls with a date or flag to indicate the need to act quickly. Or, if you might profitably discuss a number of things with Bob, put it in the @Bob context with the rest of them, and put an action to call Bob in the @Calls context, at which point you go down the list.

The trouble with a tagging system is that unless you are fastidious and comprehensive about your tagging, it may lull you into complacency. If you have the ability to slap half a dozen tags on an action, but you forgot the one that you searched on, those other 5 tags are just a waste of space and effort. You need to be unimaginative in tagging, and imaginative in searching :-)

[JCHH]

That's a fair answer. I don't particularly like tags either, but contact linking would be useful - cheers.

[whpalmer4]

To me, contact linking seems like an independent issue, regardless of how many tags or contexts one can assign. We might have differing ideas of just what contact linking means, of course.

As I recall, you can put a phone number in the notes field of an action, after which tapping it will cause the number to be dialed, if you are using OmniFocus on an iPhone.

[JCHH]

To me, contact linking seems like an independent issue, regardless of how many tags or contexts one can assign.

I think we agree ...I would put the task @Call, but link it to Bob as a contact so that if I bumped into him I could quickly find all tasks associated with him.

[wilsonng]

Personally, I'd put it in @Bob. I have @Bob as a sub-context under Agendas.


So my Contest list will look like:

Context: Agendas
@Bob
@Larry
@Curly
@Moe
@Shemp

If I have a perspective set to focus on Agendas, I don't have a Call context. I tend to put phone calls under Agendas anyways because that would be my main context. Whenever I have a phone or I meet people, I'll just look at Agendas. I might be talking to Larry and I'll want to ask Larry about a job order regarding Curly. So I can quickly switch over to @Curly to inform Larry about a situation or task that might concern both of them.

So I don't have to use @Call context when I'm talking to Bob right now.

I consider the Agendas as my main context. I only need to look at Agendas:@Larry whether I'm talking to him over the phone, on FaceTime, or having a face-to-face conservation in the hallway.

[wilsonng]

Interestingly enough, Kourosh Dini, the author of "Creating Flow with OmniFocus" has an screencast about creating a communications perspective that includes:

Calls
Emails
Texts
Waiting For

This would probably deal with the @Bob or @Call scenario.

http://usingomnifocus.com/textexpander-and-a-communications-perspective/

[JCHH]

thanks, wilsonng - I'll check that link out.

[Brian]

Closing this thread (and similar ones in the other OmniFocus forums) in favor of the consolidated thread for this topic (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=28176).