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Quote:
Originally Posted by dfjdejulio View Post
For some tasks, I need my mac, the documentation from my office, and my co-worker in order to make any progress.
The way I handle this is to always file things under the most rare (or least controllable) context, which in the above example would be my co-worker, for me. And then, if possible, I make changes to my environment to make the task possible. (For example, if I'm meeting with Tim, I can invite him to come to my office where we can look up the documentation we need to work on the task in question.)

The goal is to remember to get this stuff done, which won't happen if I never see the task until all of the right contexts happen to be present at exactly the same time—and only if I also happen to be looking at OmniFocus at the time and if I've told OmniFocus about the exact set of contexts I'm in at the moment (morning, in my office, 28 other people in the building, etc.).

Yes, this does mean that tasks will seem to be available in my context lists when I can't actually do them. (For example, if Tim and I are in California and I check my Tim context, we can't really just go grab the documentation from Omni's offices in Seattle.) But that's easily handled; I just defer the stuff that I can't actually do at the moment. (In this case, I'd set the task's start date to a day when I know Tim and I will both be back at Omni.) And if I realize that I actually see Tim more often than I'm around the stack of documentation, I'll change the task's context to "stack of documentation" and when I'm near it I'll try to find Tim.

Does that make sense?

My overall goal is to get my tasks done, not to figure out the exact set of circumstances required to get them done. I don't want to be spending much time managing my tasks, because that's time not spent on actually doing them.

Last edited by Ken Case; 2009-07-30 at 10:56 PM..