[Trey]

I've been doing GTD for about two years now, and because i've had no single trusted app for project management, i've been using 3x5 cards ("hipster PDA") to keep track of my actions. When you use that style, you start to think about context a lot more than you think about projects—projects are something you only think about at review time.

Context in GTD is all about what resources are available to you. For example, cleaning up your desk at work is an action that requires you be at your desk at work. Making a phone call just requires you have a phone, wherever you are. Doing research online requires that you be online.

Perspectives, focus, and context can really work together nicely here. My contexts right now are:

• Errands
  • Grocery store
  • Housewares
  • Drug store
  • Community center
• Home
• Office
• MacBook Pro
• Mac mini
• Online
  • Email
• Windows
  • Work network
• Phone business day
  • Phone anytime
• People
  • Boss
  • Coworker 1
  • Employee 1
• Waiting
• Thinking

Notice that I have "Online", but then I also have "Work network". Things that just require I be online go into the former context, but things that require I be on my office network (whether because I'm at the office, or at home on VPN) go in the latter context. My company has apps that only work on Windows (gack), so "Work network" is a subcontext of "Windows". (If there were offline tasks I could only do on Windows, it would be a separate context rather than a subcontext, but I don't have any of those.)

This may seem backwards—surely being on the work network (which I can do on my Mac) is not a subcategory of "Windows". But the point is in winnowing down the resources available to me at any time. If I left my Windows laptop at home, but have some time to do some work, I can click "Work network" to see only those items I can do on the VPN without access to the Windows machine. If I do have the work Windows laptop, I click "Windows" and see everything I can do on the VPN too.

Similarly, note that instead of a generic "Phone" context, I have a "Phone business day context", and a "Phone anytime" subcontext. During the business day I click the "Phone business day" context and see all phone calls I could make, but outside the business day I click "Phone anytime" and then don't see the doctor's appointment call, but do see the 24x7 customer service call.

(If the backwards hierarchy bothers you, you can just create a "Phone" context with "Business day" and "Anytime" subcontexts, and not put anything into the "Phone" supercontext. It would work just as well.)

In my Library, I have folders for "Personal", "Non-profit work" (I'm a board member of a nonprofit) and "Work". If I were working as a consultant, I'd have folders for each of my clients.

Now, I can create Perspectives to give me exactly what I need. I have an "At Home" perspective where I've selected my "Home", "MacBook Pro", "Mac mini", "Online", "Phone business day", and "Thinking" contexts, showing available actions.

Then I have a "Working at Home" perspective that is focused on the "Work" folder, and has the same contexts as "At Home" plus the "Windows" context, since when I'm working at home I also have my work laptop and my VPN running.

My "At the office" perspective has nothing focused (sometimes I have personal actions, like printing a boarding pass for my vacation, that I'll actually do at the office), but has the "Office", "Windows", "Phone business day", and "People" contexts.

Then finally, my "Errands" perspective gives me a quick way to print off shopping lists for when I'm without my computer.

Contexts shouldn't be overly specific, but they should represent exactly what resources are available to you at any given time. (So why do I have an "Email" subcontext of "Online"? Just because I find it useful sometimes to just fire off all the emails I need to work on at one time.) If a context offers you an available action you can't do at a time when that context should be active, then you need to subdivide your context (perhaps by making a subcontext as I mentioned above).

Using these methods, I haven't found any need to have things in multiple contexts. The only exception is for People—some actions it would be nice to mark as things I can take care of either when I see my boss in person, or that I can do by phone. I could solve that by creating a separate heirarchy for "In-person people" for things I can only do face-to-face, and then creating a new perspective that would meld "Phone" and "People", but so far I haven't felt the need to do that.