[Chaz2010]

I read another post where an OF user decided to break down his Home time into more meaningful contexts (Home:Kids, Home:After Work, Home:Saturday, etc.) and it got me to wondering if there really might be a productivity boost by doing so. I decided initially to keep the number of contexts to a minimum, so as to minimize the amount of thought (and wasted time) I spent trying to figure which context was the 'right' one. Here is what I have:

Church
Errands
Home
Mac@Work
Mac@NonWork
Mtg@Work
Mtg@NonWork
Office
Talk2@Work
Talk2@NonWork
Someday Maybe
Waiting For

Some time ago, I tried making the @Work/@NonWork sub-contexts of the corresponding parent, but I didn't like the way it was represented in the views. Nevertheless, that post got me to thinking if it might be better to create more precise contexts.

Any thoughts on this?

[ext555]

I've found it especialy helpful in forming errands lists .. Errands: grocery store Errands : Sam's /Walmart and with Agendas a separate context agenda for each person that I deal with on a regular basis . The fact that this is a true feature of Omnifocus mac and iPhone and not a " hack " make it especially useful .

[chris101]

Before reading the other post i think you're referring to i also struggled with contexts. Anything other than @work and @home seemed sort of artificial.

However, thinking about my levels of motivation and energy over the course of the week, it became clear that including contexts like "@work:before 9am" and "@home:Saturday mornings" did seem to capture an experience that was quite consistently different from, say, "@work:after 5pm" or "@home:Sunday nights".

Perhaps that's not a great insight but tailoring particular tasks to those particular times of the week seems to have really made a difference to how i get things done.

[ext555]

You can look at this two ways .
1. dividing contexts by energy level takes into account one of DA's factors for priority decision : " energy available " .

2. limiting yourself to these tasks , takes away the review of " seeing it all " that he also talks about .

I've found many times that limiting myself to what I "felt " like doing or thought I could do , made it a lot easier to overlook and ignore tasks I knew I should be doing .

I have found it beneficial to keep a short list of activities called " brain dead " so I can at least keep moving when I don't feel like doing anything . It's true what D.A. says that many times , all you need is some action and it helps you to regain perspective or even brings new ideas by just " cleaning out a drawer " or " getting rid of old computer files " .

[Chaz2010]

Ok, I'm going to take the next day or so and break down my contexts into more meaningful, appropriate, and targeted ones. I do think this will benefit my being able to better look at my tasks in a way that will make it easier to decide which one to tackle.

I especially like the idea of breaking up Errands into the places I frequent...

Thanks for your responses!