[BevvyB]

I'm having a review of my contexts at the moment. Hope this helps some people think about their contexts a little different.

COMMS

I agree that having 'email' and 'phone' is kind of ridiculous in this day and age. If you were going to have those, you'd also have to have 'message on facebook' and 'tweet' in my life...

So basically I have one context called 'Comms' (for communications) - anything that involves communicating goes in there. Nowadays the life of a conversation moves from Facebook to email to phone to email...

So that's it. Comms context. Made my life a lot easier.

CHORE

I used to have a context called errands for general 'stuff'. But errands always felt to me like I had to go out to 'run an errand' whereas a chore feels to me a better description for just doing something rather humdrum. Like washing socks, or doing someone a favour across the road. So I use Chore context for that stuff.

NOTE

I started a context called Note. Lots of discussion on these forums about what to do with notes. Usually I think of something when I'm out and about and want to put it somewhere - so I put it into OF on my iPhone and give it context Note. It can still be in the relevant project, but at least marked Note I know it's just something I've put in there to use later.

DECIDE

Decisions decisions... I created this because I realised a lot of the time I had to 'figure some stuff out' about something before I could even approach actioning something. 'Decide on what colour curtains to get' is something like research, but it's not quite like that in my mind because at least 'deciding' sounds like you get to some outcome. I do use a separate Research context, but that context tends to be less action driven or urgent. So for me, Decide context seems to be working.

COMPUTER

Oh no! Everything I do is on the computer! (almost everything) So like many people here, I have a context 'Computer' and sub-contexts 'Music', 'Graphics', 'Web', 'Video'. At least this way I can split my use of the computer into 'modes' of working.

ONGOING / WAITING FOR

I have two contexts which are always set to 'hold' - Ongoing and Waiting For. If a process starts (i.e. I've set the wheels in motion for something, but I can't tick it off as done yet) I drag it into the Ongoing context. If the process involves waiting for someone to get back to me, I drag it into the Waiting For context.

RESEARCH / REFERENCE

I have these two contexts as a place to store stuff which is approaching being actionable but needs research, or has yet to be tied in to some actions.

WITH

I have a context under which I create sub-contexts with people's names. I only create the names when I need to, and I delete names when I'm not using them. Some things can only be done with other people, so when the need arises I create the person's name as a sub-context of With, and use that name context. When I no longer need to keep using someone's name (for instance because they're no longer involved in a project) I remove the context.

SOMEDAY / SOMEDAY M

I don't tend to start off with things in Someday. What tends to happen is when I notice that I am continually failing to do a particular action I give it the Someday context if I think that I've proved to myself that it isn't quite as important as I thought it was. So in many ways this is a place that next actions go to die. When I do my review the things that have ended up in Someday either get re-hashed / re-worded and put back into my action lists, or they get killed.

Someday M simply means 'Someday when I have the money'. There are things you want to do quite often that simply won't start happening until you've got the cash. So those things go in there.