[pjb]

I have 35 active projects and many more pending a start date or on hold but only a few active contexts so when it's time to focus and get work done, the context mode is most helpful. The usual scenario is "I'm home, have 4 hours, what can I get done?" Not missing that near-overdue item is all about project organization and bubbles up during reviews.

HOWEVER there are certain projects that I tackle in isolation by first focusing on the project and then ticking off items in planning mode. For those few projects I have specific perspectives so one click gets me to the focused planning view sorted the way I want. The question then becomes, or example, "It's time to get next months schedule out, what do I have left to do?" In this example, the planning view is ungrouped/due/remaining and also includes the inbox in the focus in case I've added something recently that has not yet been cleaned up into the project. I like Remaining because I can see at a glance what's left on the table for this project (in gray), but one could use Next Action and then just keep checking off one purple task to see the next.

I think the difference has come about in part because of the complexity of planning mode relative to context mode, but also for some projects there will only ever be one context implicit in the project (I do all my scheduling at the computer with online access).

So you are not alone in working out of planning mode, but avoiding the advanced features and use of a single context for everything does seem to make context mode irrelevant. Use Focus, save Perspectives if you'll use OF this way more than once, and then work from whichever list helps you the most. In my head, the planning view is essentially the "project" view.