[yucca]

To keep my project pane under control, I use folders. Beneath Library I have one Single-Action box, one project called Review, and folders for various project groupings. The purpose of the Review project is to assure that reviews happen as scheduled on a per folder basis. All tasks in the Review project correspond to a top level project folder (or a child folder with a less than weekly review cycle), and have start dates with an appropriate repeating cycle (i.e. equal to the review cycle).

Yes. My approach duplicates some of the effort that the automated review is supposed to help with. However, I have a tendency to not perform reviews as often as I should, and the lack of OR/NOT filtering on project status was forcing me to review On Hold projects needlessly. The alternative was making review perspectives for each type of "Remaining" status (i.e. Active, Stalled, Pending and On Hold), and that was both annoying and inefficient.

Originally Posted by tah

. . . Frankly I don't see contexts useful for organizing more than 25-30% of my time. Contexts are good for managers, people who can delegate to someone else. Or for people who's tasks naturally tend to be short or are logically grouped.

Remember that GTD-based task management does not apply to those times where you have to react to unplanned and unscheduled events. Speaking of events, it also doesn't speak to scheduled events (meetings, classes, etc.). I don't want to read too much into your use of "organizing"; but, if you are like me, it is true that most of the day falls outside planned anything. Most of my work day is spent reacting to situations, participating in meetings, etc.

Using an extreme personal example, a client drops by my cube to discuss a project, the pager goes off, my desk phone rings, the lights go out, and my cell phone rings. I ask the client to have a seat for a few minutes while I check things out; at the same time I'm checking the pager. Hmmm. We went on UPS at a satellite office a few minutes ago. Cell phone is my boss and desk phone is an outside line with no caller id. Answer cell: "Yes, boss. It looks like the city just lost power. At least one other office lost power and you already know about here. Yep. On my way to check the status of the data center . . ." My day is now fubar; but that doesn't mean that I'm out of GTD mode.

I'm taking mental and physical notes as I respond to the situation; and, as soon as I am out of emergency mode, I am processing each of those notes that didn't get dealt with during the emergency. Then it is back to context mode as I will have a ton of follow-up items to deal with.

OTOH, if you are suggesting that you can't find appropriate contexts for non-emergency situations or for non-event time, then you need to think outside the standard contexts described in the book. Arriving at a set of contexts that work for you may not be easy. I found the 43folders web site the perfect antidote to the problems I was having with "getting" contexts as described in the book. It took months of hanging in with GTD to get a set of contexts that worked for me.

Originally Posted by tah

. . . But if you have a 3 day task,

While not impossible, it is hard to imagine having a 3 day task that couldn't be broken up into pieces.

Originally Posted by tah

. . . or a lot of individually unique tasks that I do only every couple months, then context isn't important.

Those are single action items, and context is still relevant. Since you use OF, you won't have to worry about those tasks until they trip the start date (or the repeat due date); and you won't be presented with those tasks unless you are in the correct context to act on them.

Again, a scheduled event (meeting, class, etc.) is not a task or a project. So if this is what you mean, then you are correct that context is irrelevant. However, you may have a prep task(s) or project(s) to prepare for the event; and context would be important then.