[zoisite]

Thanks for you reply Arild.

I’m not talking about so called Personal Information Managers (PIM) like Devonthink, Together or CircusPonies Notebook. Those are apps to collect reference material (pdf, images etc.). They are made for different purposes. Their items are not actionable. I’m talking about Tags in gtd like apps.

Having tried Things myself, my experience is that I spent far too much time thinking through possible perspectives/tags that could be of use when performing the task.

For me it is the other way around: I have 4-7 tags in Things that are more then sufficient for my needs. Assigning them to tasks is not a big deal because you can assign more than just one. In OmniFocus I do spend far too much time thinking through possible context cascades simply because I can assign one, just one solely context. The decision in which context to put an action has infinitely more weight to it.

Why does someone assign contexts to actions? As I understand it, to see all available actions in the context view according to his current context/situation. E.g. if you are physically at the hardware store you click on your context action list „@hardwarestore“ in order to see which items to buy there.

Here is another simple example. „Buy hardware item xyz for Bob“. Ok that’s goes into the „@Errands:Hardwarestore“ context. When I am at the hardware store I click on this context in action view and know what to buy. So far so good.

But: Let’s say I meet with Bob before I did purchase the item for him. Let’s say I forgot the task to buy item xyz for Bob - it is currently not on my mind (nor in Bobs mind). „Hi Bob, how are you? Let’s check my @Bob context to see what we need to discuss (that is the whole point of an GTD app - your external brain, it reminds you to do things you have/want to do)“. The hardware action is missing from the @Bob context => I did not discus this important task of buying item xyz with Bob. => Bob fires me. :(

This would not happen with Things. :)

Now imagine that the contexts @Hardwarestore and @Bob has 100++ actions. You would never find the action „Buy hardware item xyz for Bob“ in the @ Hardwarestore context view. OmniFocus doesn’t give you any hint, that there lies an action in the @Hardwarestore context list that is related to Bob. Thats my gripe: In OF you have to know where to search something - you would have to actively search for the string „Bob“ in the @Hardwarestore context action list. And when the lists are large you will have a hard time...

In Things you do not have to know or remember anything. All the semantic information for all the view in wich you would like to see the task is stored within the task itself: filtering by the tag @Bob shows „Buy hardware item xyz for Bob“.

Ok the example is overly simple and silly but only for the sake of clarity. It explains my whole point. The context @Hardwarestore is simply nothing more than one way of looking at the action „Buy hardware item xyz for Bob“ among others. The flaw I see in single contexts is that they „hard code“ one particular view of the numerous possible views to an action item and blank out the other views that might have the same information value for you as the @Hardwarestore view. This narrows your awareness. There is no „best“ view, no „best“ context to choose from. All can be equally important (By „all“ I mean 2-4 views that have a practical meaning to you). Tags show you the whole thing and allows you to look at it according to any possible situation (=context) that has a semantic conection (that has a meaining to you) to that action.

The benefits of tags are so obvious to me. I don’t know how to explain this much simpler. I feel that using tags in very intuitive. It just feels right. It is the proper way for me to handle an action.

I use OF as clean as possible.
It did not improve my intellect, nor the quality of my work.

Please don’t try to rationalize the lack of tags in OmniFocus. This is really problem, at least for me. In this forum exist many post that ask for tags or multiple contexts. If it works for you, great! Maybe you don’t see the need for tags - other users do.
Thats grandiose GTD ideology mumbo jumbo for me. I see OmniFocus as a useful tool, not as the road to enlightenment. Let’s talk practical. :)