When should I next travel to ... ? Making contexts happen
 

Hi,

I'm not sure how much this is an OF problem and how much this is a GTD problem, but any how... :)

I travel quite a lot for work, so I have a group of contexts called "Out of Wellington" (I live in Wellington) which contains a context for each place I regularly go. That means that when I'm planning a trip to, for example, Timaru I can look for all the tasks I could do while I'm there, and make sure they all get knocked off in the trip. I do a weekly review of my out of town contexts, and if any have enough tasks to justify a trip I arrange one.

Many of the tasks are of the "Next time I'm in the Waikato I should visit ..." variety, others are easy with concrete dates and get a trip planned immediately. Some, however, have particular but vague time requirements (e.g. "Sometime before the middle of March I should ... in Te Kuiti", i.e. not worth planning a trip right now as I'll do it when I have another reason to be there. That said, if I haven't been there before the end of February I should plan a trip).

My problem is with the due dates of the last group. I have "soon" set to show for 2 days, which makes sense for all of my Wellington tasks, but is a bit disastrous for anything which involves a trip away :) What I need is an easy way of seeing, while I'm doing my weekly review, my out of town contexts displaying when the first due task is.

I can't seem to acheive this with the views in Omnifocus :( My ideal would be a perspective showing actions grouped in contexts, then the contexts grouped by earliest due date of the actions they contain. If I can't have that then actions grouped in contexts, and the contexts sorted by first due date.

But... I can't seem to group actions in contexts and contexts by due date, and if I group by context the sort order applies only within the context - so I can see the first action of each context, but not which contexts are more pressing.

Is there a way of doing what I what in OmniFocus?

Is there a way of managing my out of town action due dates in OF that I haven't thought of?

Help! :)

Anita

Anita,

Have you tried creating a perspective that just includes your out-of-Wellington contexts, grouped by due date? This doesn't solve the problem of not being able to simultaneously sort by due date, then context. On the other hand, it would limit your view to just those contexts that require more advanced planning.

Hope that helps.

[QUOTE=curt.clifton;30046]Anita,

Have you tried creating a perspective that just includes your out-of-Wellington contexts, grouped by due date? This doesn't solve the problem of not being able to simultaneously sort by due date, then context. On the other hand, it would limit your view to just those contexts that require more advanced planning.

Hope that helps.[/QUOTE]

Hmm... how do I show only tasks within certain contexts? The filter was what I expected to use and it doesn't seem to have that functionality.

Also, if I simply group actions by due date within the context view, which is what i think you're suggesting in addition to the filter (and is what I sometimes do now) it doesn't show me which context the action belongs to, which means I don't have an easy clue to where I would have to arrange to be. Is there a way I can have the context appear in a context view without grouping by context?

Anita

[QUOTE=Anita;30113]Hmm... how do I show only tasks within certain contexts?[/QUOTE]

Select the contexts you want to see in the sidebar, and you'll only see items from those contexts in the action outline.

[QUOTE]Is there a way I can have the context appear in a context view without grouping by context?[/QUOTE]

We intend to make the context column appear in context view whenever you're not grouped by context.

[QUOTE=Ken Case;30116]Select the contexts you want to see in the sidebar, and you'll only see items from those contexts in the action outline. [/QUOTE]

Well that's kinda obvious - thanks! <blush>

[QUOTE]We intend to make the context column appear in context view whenever you're not grouped by context.[/QUOTE]

That would help a lot I think. It wouldn't be as neat as grouped by context then the contexts sorted by first due date, but it would still be pretty good.

Anita