[MacBerry]

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

I group by context not only for planning, as I mentioned earlier, but also because I tend to select all the contexts that are currently available (in my office, for instance, I'll select not only Office but also Phone, Reflection, Reading, Computer, and Agenda contexts for people who are in the office that day). The context groupings then help me determine the specific context for a given action. I like a little redundancy.

Thanks! That's a great use of this, and works around what I think is a major failing of OF - the fact that I can't freely choose what data to show inline in each mode. I should be able to show the context inline even in context view if I want to, thus allowing me to see it even if grouped by something else.

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

As for deciding what to do: I have an Urgent perspective that groups and sorts remaining actions by due date; a Flagged perspective that shows me all available actions with flags; a Tickler perspective that shows me actions that start today, tomorrow, and in the next week; and a basic Do perspective with available actions grouped by context. I'll review Urgent, Flagged, and Tickler first thing in the morning, decide what's top priority for the day, get those things done, then go back to those perspectives. If I decide that I've made sufficient progress on the things in those perspectives, then I'll move on to my basic Do perspective; if that looks too big, I'll change the action filter from available to next.

Hmm, good ideas. I'll try implementing my own versions of those. I've been trying to get everything into one "Do" perspective, but am realising I need to sub-divide it into other perspectives.

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

For me, flags are not necessarily for a given day's work; instead, I use them to mark important tasks (those that seem more important than others in a time frame of a couple weeks to a few months). Something with a flag and an approaching due date is both urgent and important; something with an approaching due date is urgent but not important; something with a flag but no due date is important but not urgent; and something with neither is...well, you get the idea.

Ah now, as a newbie to GTD, I'd been trying to avoid priorities like that as not very "pure GTD", but I'm beginning to realise that unless I've missed something, GTD doesn't really offer a way to answer the specific "what am I going to do next" question; it just makes sure everything is collected and processed ready for that decision. I then need to "bolt on" ways to decide what to do.

I used to use exactly those kinds of priorities all the time, so maybe they'd fit into my comfort zone.

But again, this highlights a weakness in OF. I just tried to set up perspectives to reflect "important and urgent", "important but not urgent", "not important but urgent", and "neither urgent nor important", and it's impossible. I can do the first using flagged and due soon filters, can't do the second because I can't filter by NOT due soon, can do the third by filtering by no flag and due soon (inconsistency alert - why can I filter by NOT on some criteria but not others?), and can't do the fourth because again there's no way to filter out items with a due date.

Thanks for your input - very useful.

Mark