Non-OF Question: My contexts rarely vary

[jpepper]

Does anyone have tips on how to actually get things done when most of your contexts are available most of the time. (Sorry. This is not an OF question.)

I've been loosely following a GTD philosophy for almost 3 years now. I tend to jump on and off the band wagon. I seem to always come back to the same dilemma: most of my contexts are available most of the time.

For example, I'm an IT worker. I rarely travel. I have access to the internet almost all the time. I can access my work files from home and my home files from work. As a result, I have difficulty deciding what context to process, when and how often.

What I've been doing recently is making a list of my contexts and making sure I work through them daily or every few days. This is not ideal because now I have another list of items to track: I'm tracking my progress through contexts. This just doesn't feel right.

I'm open to any suggestions. How do you make sure all your contexts get attention when your contexts don't vary (or are not isolated)?

Thanks.

[pvonk]

I've been loosely following a GTD philosophy for almost 3 years now. I tend to jump on and off the band wagon. I seem to always come back to the same dilemma: most of my contexts are available most of the time.

You sound like me! This is a light-hearted response: I think we need to get a life! Like you, I can do most things almost anywhere I am, and that's the problem.

[joelande]

I had the same feeling, and posted about it - there are quite a few replies there:http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=5874

Personally, my advice is to stay away from contexts such as Computer: email, Computer: upgrades, ect.

It just didn't work for me (although for others I guess it does).

Also, I started with a long list of rather specific contexts and crashed and burned on that one as well. So, I reverted to starting with as few as possible and then adding as they became necessary as an improvement. (i.e. rather than trying to think of every possible context (or organizing context) ahead of time, start with as small a list as possible, and grow as necessary as you learn how your GTD/OmniFocus workflow flows). That approach worked for me.

Here is my current list:
@Office
-----Strict (MUST be done at the physical work office)
-----After Hours (for server maintenance when nobody is logged in)
@Calls
@Emails
@Agenda
-----CoWorker1
-----CoWorker2
@Waiting
-----CoWorker1
-----CoWorker2
Errands
Home
Reading
Training

[nggalai]

Morning,

I had similar problems when I started playing around with contexts. I work at home and 99% of my tasks are computer tasks. So I had a “@Mac” context and that was that.

But then I focussed on this last percent and found my contexts. I live in two towns, hence two contexts popped up for official stuff, i. e. finances. Then I moved all the E-Mail activities into @Agenda, as most of those (rare) discussions could just as well be handled on the phone or in person.

Another thought: I know of other writers who use daytime contexts as they have a strict regimen how they do their work. So they have @morning, @noon, @afternoon, @evening, the contexts reflecting the different mind-sets they have during the day. I heard of at least one developer who works the same way, e. g. he does all the application modelling in the morning and the code crunching at nights.

But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having very few or even only one context if your work / life permits it. Or even asks for it.

Cheers,
-Sascha

[sprugman]

I'm in a similar situation. I've been using project- and area-of-life-based contexts for a long time. It can be helpful to be able to click on client-x rather than having to go to the project view. However, I have it in the back of my mind to get rid of those and pare down the list even further and see how that goes. Here's Merlin's post on the topic. (http://www.43folders.com/2006/07/31/simplify-contexts)

[ptone]

I also do most of my OF tasks on the computer (which is of course where I have access to OF - duh). I'm starting to experiment more with state of mind contexts. Sometimes I need certain focus to do script or code writing, other times I'm in a groove to use a particular language or application. Other times its about doing a certain activity like archiving files (I'd rather burn 5 DVDs in a row then just now and then).

YMMV

-P

[ids]

I created a diagram when I was trying to figure out contexts. I started by making a quadrant out of what seemed to be the two major contextual divides in my life. Once I had that I found it quite simply to easily populate each of the quadrants with usefully distinct contexts.http://eejit.co.uk/GTDContexts.png
This felt very much like a good way to think about it, but I confess that I can't quite figure out why, so your mileage may very well vary.

In @meetings I have explicitly subdivided into various regular meetings that I attend, and in @people I have subdivided into different specific people.

While the quadrants actually work fairly well, there were some overlapping contexts. That's because the people in @people can be either work people or friends/family etc., and because @sideprojects tend to creep outside of work hours. Again, your mileage may vary.

You can draw your own conclusions about my work life balance from looking at where the lines are drawn :)

[jasong]

ids, love the concept, and have a question: why is @career and @sideprojects contexts? They sounds (just from the name) like groups of projects.

[ids]

You might be right :)

They are focus areas for me, in the sense that I want to think about them separately, which suggests as you say that they are groups of projects.

However, the context-like thing about them is that I don't want actions from these things to be visible when I'm trying to do my core job. I find these things to be particularly distracting, and so only want to think about them when I want to think about them. Same goes for @admin.

Does that make sense?

[vinyl_warrior]

I'm in a similar situation: all my contexts are available all the time. I've found that my big GTD stumbling block has been that I've been focusing too much on contexts, and not enough on projects.

In terms of populating contexts with actions, I try to keep work stuff separate from home stuff. I'll do home stuff at work, but not vice-versa ;) I'm excited about OF because of the way it allows me to group contexts and see all of my Mac things together or drilling down into Mac : Work1 (I have 3 different workplaces :S ).

I think that I've been falling off GTD because I get tired of doing single tasks based on contexts; the real excitement is in consciously knocking off projects, not doing them accidentally as a result of working through contexts.

[bigcloits]

New to everything here, but I’m entranced by this “context” concept.
Is a “mood” a legitimate, useful context? It feels like it.

I have all my resources all the time, as I work at home. So it’s MOOD that seems to determine what kind of actions I want to work on. I ask myself, “What MENTAL resources do I have available to me right now?” I’ve created contexts to suit. I’m in the mood for email, the mood for calling, the mood for writing, the mood for troubleshooting ...

Does that make sense, or is this some kind of n00b GTD boner? ;-)

[jpepper]

@pvonk -- Sometimes I feel the same way. I need a life away from work and GTD.

@joelande -- Thanks. I read thru the noted thread. I like the idea of just keeping things simple.

@nggalai -- I'm intrigued by the idea of @morning, @noon, @afternoon, @evening. I'm been thinking about it all day. May prove useful.

@sprugman -- Thanks for the link to Merlin's post. I think I read that back when it was published. Still helpful.

@ptone -- I tried State of Mind contexts a while back, but I just couldn't stick with it. I am tempted to try it again. I had contexts such at @no-brainer, @half-brainer, @focus, etc. based on the brain power I thought would be necessary to accomplish the task. But then, I started thinking about something that I read and that stated that all the tasks should be broken down to their most elemental level - they all are no-brainers - 'like processing widgets'.

@ids - Nice graphic! This could be used an example of my problem. You have @desk, @career, @admin and @sideprojects grouped within Work+Online. The challenge for me with this is how do you decide which to focus on? I usually end up giving something too much focus and as a result neglect another context.

**That is my biggest challenge. How do you make sure you do not neglect a context?**

[curt.clifton]

I find that using and focusing on folders or groups of folders in Planning Mode, then switching to Context Mode, is a great way to handle "area of life" issues. I do a "Select All" in the Planning sidebar, then Cmd-click my Work folder. After that a Focus hides my work folder and pushes the work-a-holic in me to spend some time on other life roles.

[ids]

@ids - Nice graphic! This could be used an example of my problem. You have @desk, @career, @admin and @sideprojects grouped within Work+Online. The challenge for me with this is how do you decide which to focus on? I usually end up giving something too much focus and as a result neglect another context.

**That is my biggest challenge. How do you make sure you do not neglect a context?**

I aspire to do this by partitioning my time.

The idea of this is that I schedule some regular time in my calendar for (particularly) @career. @career contains things that are important but not urgent, so it's vital to force it in somewhere or I end up spending a year where I do a lot for my employers, but don't move forward in ways which matter to me. The thing is that there are always urgent things in @desk that threaten to intrude into this time, but ultimately I have to recognise the importance of @career and defend this time slot.

Of course, this is hard in reality, and I'm not there yet. What I'm doing instead is spending quite a lot of time in a Perspective which essentially contains all flagged items from the whole Work+Online domain in my diagram. Then in reviews, when I am flagging critical items, I occasionally flag something from @career - and in this way I normally get around to doing it. However, I am painfully conscious that this approach only just about keeps the whole thing from flushing down the pan, and I absolutely need to devote more time to @career - hence the previous paragraph ;)