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Quote:
Originally Posted by nielkfj View Post
Now I am figuring out how to make my mac do everything I was doing on my PC.
Try not to do this literally. I switched from PC to Mac in 2003 and I kept tripping over this. Think about what you need to get done, rather than how you used to do it. it doesn't matter how you get to the result so long as it i the right result.

Quote:
Originally Posted by nielkfj View Post
Many years ago I attended a half day seminar about work productivity. I didn't absorb much from it but I remember they talked about dividing tasks into a four quadrant system with importance on one axis and time to complete on the other axis. So there are four categories that a task could be classified as:

1) Important - Long time to complete
2) Important - Short time to complete
3) Not important - Short time to complete
4) Not important - Long time to complete

The idea is that a person should prioritize tasks in the order shown above, with "Important - Long time to complete" the first tasks to work on, and 'Not important - Long time to complete' the last tasks to work on. It isn’t a strict rule, but generally more time should be spent in the important - long time to complete quadrant.
The Quadrant I use is slightly different, the length of the task doesn't matter to me. The categories are:

1) Important and Urgent
2) Important
3) Urgent
4) Other

This is a well known quadrant who's origin is disputed, but works well for me.

What you are looking for is multiple contexts, and unfortunately (much to my chagrin) OF will not support this. I think that your system is much more complicated than it needs to be, but you're the person who has to use it.

With GTD, the best way to simplify your model is to use a verb as the first word of your tasks.

e.g.
Buy new Toaster
Write new Policy
Book car in for Service.

This removes this part from your contexts which should be based around being in the right 'Place' to carry out your task.

Some people have Physical Places, Tools required, people to liaise with.

e.g. Desk or Laptop could be used for Research.

Some people use Energy Levels as contexts,

e.g.
Low energy - Water the plants, Filing, fill your stapler
High Energy - Tackle your taxes

Shopping could be a context all on it's own with Sub Contexts for different types of Stores.

Regarding your Canada tasks, have a context as 'Canada' and when you know the dates you will be going home, set dates on the projects and tasks to be done at home. you can gleefully ignore the Canada context in perspectives and have a perspective set up for Canada which would mean you can ignore everything else whilst you are home (if you want to.)

I would suggest you search out David Sparks' screencasts on how to use OF and look at the Asian Efficiency website for their OF starter for 10 http://www.asianefficiency.com/omnifocus/