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-   -   Home and Work copies of OF, or Home and Work Contexts? (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=7824)

reedx032 2008-04-20 04:34 PM

Home and Work copies of OF, or Home and Work Contexts?
 
Hi,

I am a new OF user, and right now I'm using OF on my work laptop and taking it home every night. I have two main contexts (Home and Work) each with many subcontexts, to divide things I do at home or work. This breaks down if I don't have laptop with me, and since it's not easy to access remote OF data (remote desktop is kind of slow from my home), I'm wondering if I should install OF on my Work desktop and my Home Desktop and just keep the contexts separate?

I've only just started reading GTD, so I don't know which way is better according to the book. How are others dealing with this issue?

Thanks,

Dana

Lizard 2008-04-21 01:52 PM

If you ever need to modify work or home related actions from the other place, you'll probably want one database with both contexts in it. For example, you're sitting at work and realize that you might be running out of cat food and ought to check when you get home. You need a way to put this in your @Home context. This could be putting it in your one shared Focus database. Or sending an email to yourself, that will get automatically added to Focus at home when you check email at home. (See OmniFocus help or some other threads on this forum for other details on this.) Or a sticky note on your cell phone. A key part of GTD is getting stuff out of your head and into the system whenever the thought occurs to you.

And where do you put your @Errands context? If you ever go to the grocery store on the way home from work, you'll need to check it before you leave work. If you ever go on a weekend, you'll need to check it from home.

Many people have a USB thumb drive that they carry back and forth with their database on it. (Much easier to tuck in a purse or pocket than a whole laptop.) See several other threads on this forum for discussions of how to share databases between two computers.

reedx032 2008-04-21 05:32 PM

I think I could manage the two databases just using the formatted emails to add items to the remote location. Since I won't actually be modifying remote items very often (rare enough that I could use remote desktop to do it when necessary), and I won't generally be able to perform tasks from one general context while in the other (the odd non-online shopping trip aside), that two databases might be OK.

I've already set up an auxiliary table in my Filemaker Pro system at work to manage my most common projects and contexts that exist in OF on an ongoing basis. The scripts in the system send tasks to OF automatically with data from the filemaker database. Of course right now this only goes one way. If I took the time to learn some applescript, I could keep the projects and contexts synchronized between OF and FMP.


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