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Phil,

People above seem to be describing 2 approaches:
1) Every area of responsibility is a folder, which may contain some projects. So when you assign the action's project, you're also implicitly assigning its area of responsibility. (The project is inside a folder.)
Example:
A of R: Pet Owner
Project: Build fence so Fido can play outside

When you create the 'buy fence posts' action, you'll put it in the 'Build fence' project, which implicitly puts it in your 'Pet Owner' area of responsibility.

The 'Pet Owner' folder might also have a project named 'Misc. Pet Chores'. When you create the action 'Buy Dog Food', you can put it in 'Misc. Pet Chores' and it will be in your 'Pet Owner' area of responsibility.

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The other approach suggested is that the project IS the area of responsibility. If taking care of your pet is just a lot of independent actions, rather than larger projects, 'Pet Owner' might simply be a single action list, and when you create the action 'Buy Dog Food', you stick it straight in 'Pet Owner'.

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As with many aspects of GTD, it depends on what your life is like -- lots of smaller roles, or a few large roles. You might also take a step back and ask why you want to track what area of responsibility each action goes to. If you want to figure out whether all your time is going to taking care of the dog your kids promised they'd handle themselves, it might be worth it. But on a day-to-day basis, you buy dog food because you need to buy dog food, not because it's in the Area of Responsibility you're focused on this week.