[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by drewmca

Sorry, doesn't work. Tried it and it completely fell apart. It leads to ridiculous uses of hierarchy. A hierarchical parent-child relationship is fundamentally different from a many-to-many relationship. Trying to use one for the other leads to horribly complex duplicate hierarchies. The duplicate hierarchy thing is the fundamental problem I was running into.

If I want to focus on just calls, and don't care which other category they might fit in, I want Omnifocus to show me my calls. If I want to focus on work and don't care whether it's a call, research, online, or other, I want to have that list available.

You're right, OmniFocus' hierarchical contexts aren't really designed to solve the problem you describe. Instead, I'd suggest using a folder.

It sounds like the "Work" you're describing is actually an area of responsibility rather than a context; in OmniFocus, you might find it more natural to make Work a folder of projects. (In other words, while there isn't a hierarchical relationship between the "Work" you describe and your contexts, there probably is a hierarchical relationship between "Work" and your projects.)

With a Work folder, you could place all your work projects inside it and focus on those projects (using the Focus command, Control-Command-F), then switch to context mode and use the sidebar to focus in on the intersection between your Work and each of your specific contexts (Calls, Research, Online, etc.).

Does that help?