[Grail]

This is semi-narrative, semi-opinion seeking.

How many times have you been in this situation: your significant other (SO) calls, during the conversation SO asks you to pick up the proverbial milk and bread on your way home. Later in the day (during your @phone processing) you call a friend to let them know you've finished that book and want to return it. Then the property manager calls and you offer to drop by on the way home to check the tenant applications.

The day progresses, and finally at knock-off time you get up from your chair, head to the car, end up in auto-pilot mode, drive the 20km home and it's only as you're pulling in the driveway that you remember you had tenants to sign up, a book to return, and shopping to do!

D'oh!

OmniFocus (and GTD) to the rescue!

At first I did silly things like adding a context for the property manager, but I could never remember to check "@property manager" and "@friend" and "@cornerstore" before heading home. Besides, some of these contexts were once-off tasks.

Then I tried adding these tasks to the calendar, but since I might want to rearrange the actions so that I take the shortest path home I found it was easier to put them into a list which I act on later.

Thus I created a context "@Trip Home" for any task that needs to be completed on the trip home. Any time I think "I could do that on the way home" I add the task to the @Trip Home context. When I get to the car at the end of the day, I check OF for the @Trip Home context, add the various addresses to the satnav, pick the first address to drive to and only then start driving. After each task is completed mark it complete in OF, pick the next address to go to and eventually have nowhere else to go, so head home!

The "@Trip Home" context is the same type of context as the "@Phone" context - I've got this block of time that I'm going to dedicate to doing things while on the phone, on the trip home, etc.

It would be nice if I had a satnav app on the iPhone which would let me plan a route with several waypoints (property manager -> friend's place -> corner store -> home), but the maps I use at the moment (OffMaps and TomTom) don't support that feature.

Ideally I could add a location to each task and have OmniFocus build the route for me, send the route to the satnav application, and start me on my way home - but I figure we're about two or three years from having the applications and app interfaces required to achieve this magic.

Does this workflow make sense? Any suggestions for other ways to handle these "on the way home" tasks?