Quote:
Originally Posted by MutantSquid
While Things appears to be very flexible, I found that I really didn't need to tag actions with more than one....any other information that I wanted to tag I'd just write in the actual to do.
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A couple years ago, Merlin Mann did a presentation with the Omni Group at WWDC and brought up a very similar point. He didn't specifically mention Things, but he did talk about tagging in GTD systems.
Merlin argued that the ultimate goal is to
get stuff done, to increase productivity and reduce stress. It's not about building an exhaustive taxonomy of your projects, classifying and organizing rather than
doing. To that end, Merlin dismissed tagging as unnecessary fiddling that poses an obstacle to accomplishing your true productivity goals.
I agree with Merlin (and MutantSquid). I've found a single context is all I need to focus on what's truely important in a task. An item might be associated with making a call and my boss. But unless I absolutely must contact my boss by phone, a "call" context is unnecessary cruft. What's truly important is that I communicate with my boss, whether that be face-to-face, by phone, email, or smoke signals.
When entering new tasks, I don't waste time thinking about all the facets of my life that the action might impact. I just pick the single most important context and move on. It might not always be the best choice, but that's what daily/weekly reviews are for: reasses and reassign as necessary. Over time, I think I've gotten pretty good at identifying what's important and assigning a context that's meaningful and leads to getting the thing done. Couple that with a simple folder hierarchy for my "areas of responsibility" and I'm all set.
-Dennis