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NEED assign to multiple Contexts Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Did you know that you can use boolean searches in the location field?

Such as:
"Ace Hardware" OR "L & M Hardware" OR "True Value Hardware"
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by m.wrenn View Post
I don't quite follow your point about nested tags. Could you explain a little more, please?
Just a sample:

You could have a tag "errands" with sub tags "hardware store" and "grocery store".

You could have a tag "People IT department" with sub tags "Jack" and "Joe".

If I have "Jack" on the phone I just select the "Jack" tag and see all the tasks and projects which are related to him.
If I am in a meeting with the IT department I select the "People IT department" tag and I see all the tasks and projects of interest to all of the people I am meeting, including "Jack" and "Joe".

Why is this not possible with contexts? Because for me a context is a place or a work condition like "office", "home" or "phone". But what about "Jack"? I could meet him in the office or call him on the phone. It does not make sense to me to have different office:Jack and phone:Jack contexts since it often does not matter if I speak to him on the phone or in the office.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rauchbier View Post
Why is this not possible with contexts? Because for me a context is a place or a work condition like "office", "home" or "phone". But what about "Jack"? I could meet him in the office or call him on the phone. It does not make sense to me to have different office:Jack and phone:Jack contexts since it often does not matter if I speak to him on the phone or in the office.
I wouldn't do it that way, either - 99% of the time, the method I'm using to have the conversation is irrelevant. In the rare cases where there's something that I want to discuss in person, I note that in the action.

My setup works like this: I have an "omni" parent context; one of the subcontexts is 'people', with each of the folks I work with underneath. Ditto for friends and other the other high-level context categories I use.

Tasks relating to a given person get filed to the person's context; I check that context when I'm talking to them regardless of the method I'm using.

My 'phone' context doesn't have any subcontexts - it's only used for calls to relatively anonymous folks, businesses, etcetera. Things I'm extremely unlikely to accomplish in person.
 
I do things much the same way... In fact, to take it one step further, I note the individual things I have to talk to a person about in that person's context (under a parent context called "People"). If I need to make an action item to call a person to drive something forward, then that becomes an item in the Calls context.

In other words, my "Calls" context is a list of calls I need to initiate, not merely a list of things I have to talk about when I'm making calls.

I speak with most of the people I work with on a regular enough basis, however, that there's very rarely any need to put an item both under "People" and "Calls"
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rauchbier View Post
Just a sample:

You could have a tag "errands" with sub tags "hardware store" and "grocery store".

You could have a tag "People IT department" with sub tags "Jack" and "Joe".

If I have "Jack" on the phone I just select the "Jack" tag and see all the tasks and projects which are related to him.
If I am in a meeting with the IT department I select the "People IT department" tag and I see all the tasks and projects of interest to all of the people I am meeting, including "Jack" and "Joe".

Why is this not possible with contexts? Because for me a context is a place or a work condition like "office", "home" or "phone". But what about "Jack"? I could meet him in the office or call him on the phone. It does not make sense to me to have different office:Jack and phone:Jack contexts since it often does not matter if I speak to him on the phone or in the office.
I fully agree.
Tags is a missing feature for now and needs to be implemented asap.
Tags could actually work as contexts, while contexts could not work as Tags due to the limitation of 1:1 (1 context for one task).

Another way would be to allow multiple contexts. Then they could be used as tags.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by vballas View Post
I fully agree.
Tags is a missing feature for now and needs to be implemented asap.
Tags could actually work as contexts, while contexts could not work as Tags due to the limitation of 1:1 (1 context for one task).

Another way would be to allow multiple contexts. Then they could be used as tags.
I believe people find tags useful; so, I'm not downplaying the importance, but in my own experience, the need for tags or multiple contexts seems a bit overblown.

I really think if you are careful about what you are doing, you could find one context to assign. Let's take an example mentioned often about Jack and phone call. Yes, you could put the item in both Jack and phone call, but if I really think about this, I should be putting it in under Jack since w/o Jack, the task will not take place. So, it's not a random phone call, but a call to a specific person. Now some of you might say what if it involves multiple people. I then would ask who is the key person in the topic (let's say Jack), and I would put it there since once again, w/o Jack, it doesn't happen. Also, OF allows you to select multiple contexts, I could easily select Jack, Mary, and Tracey, and if multiple tasks are assigned to each one, they would all show up. If there is a task that must need Tracey present, this covers it, etc. etc.

Also, we shouldn't use contexts so literally. I use contexts for multiple areas such as people, life areas, places, etc.

So, between contexts and flags and now the view due or flag, I don't really miss anything when it comes to getting things done.

YMMV.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian View Post
My 'phone' context doesn't have any subcontexts - it's only used for calls to relatively anonymous folks, businesses, etcetera. Things I'm extremely unlikely to accomplish in person.
@Brian thanks for clearing this up. This has been a sticking point for me in my GTD setup. I have long called for the ability to assign tags and multiple contexts in OF, but now I see it's just my understanding of the program and concepts of GTD that needed to change.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sirvivian View Post
@Brian thanks for clearing this up. This has been a sticking point for me in my GTD setup. I have long called for the ability to assign tags and multiple contexts in OF, but now I see it's just my understanding of the program and concepts of GTD that needed to change.
sirvivian: (et al) This issue isn't so much between whether OF should have multiple contexts per Action as it is whether OF should offer the ability to Tag an Action to begin with. People are confusing the two concepts. Contexts are NOT Tags! Contexts are meant to provide the user the ability to identify the "context" of how to complete an Action. Tags, on the other hand, are meant to do nothing more than categorize an Action. I'm fine with not being able to assign multiple Contexts to an Action. What I'm not fine with is not having any ability to Tag an item, let alone assign multiple Tags, which I should be able to do as well.

In this regard I almost look at "Projects" as being a Tag with more functionality (Parallel vs Sequential). In reality a Project is simply a way to categorize a bunch of Actions with the difference being to drive to an ultimate goal (completing the Project). Tags categorize Actions too but don't necessarily have an ultimate goal or a need to be setup in a hierarchy.

Since I'm in my trial period still until OF offers this capability my $80 is staying in my pocket.
 
Let me preface this by saying I haven't gone back and read the whole thread - too many pages :)

I've just been playing, and I think I've found a workaround, that does enough of what I need to do to achieve something similar to multiple contexts.

1. I added multiple tags to the notes field such as @something @somethingelse @somethingelseentirely - these represent the various resources I need to complete an action.

2. I use the search box to filter on the situations where I need multiple resources e.g. say I want to filter for all tasks that require @something, and all tasks that require using @somethingelse, then I just search for '@something @somethingelse' and lo and behold, only those tasks with those two tags in the notes come up.

What I need to figure out now is where I draw the line with the OF contexts, and those in my notes. But for the time being, this is a suitable workaround for me.
 
I'm new to OF and the software proved to be very powerful and flexible but faceted classification is very simply a must in the digital world when knowledge is to be organized properly in relation with the particular way people think about their organized information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faceted_classification

The reason why faceted classification is so convenient is because it aligns very strongly with how human beings think about and organize information.

As somebody already mentioned, and in a strict faceted sense, disjointed contexts are a real problem and are cleanly addressed under the canonical faceted model (but will cause problems in OF because of a lack of an implementation of the faceted model) but overlapping facets are also extremely convenient from a human standpoint.

An example would be:

walk fido at park - Dog, Fido, Park, Exercise.

Taken in isolation, those contexts (Dog, Fido, Park, Exercise) might not actually yield the required preconditions for me to be able to walk my dog at the park.

For example if I so happen to drive by the "Park" and the Park context pops up my "walk the dog at park" action item, it is completely useless if I my dog is at home. It's a reminder I can't currently accomplish.

Or if decide to go for a workout at the gym and Exercise pops "walk the dog at park", I'm absolutely not interested in walking my dog at the park. It again acts as a reminder I can't currently accomplish.

Those are all overlapping contexts/facets I might be interested in being able to tag/filter against (I don't actually have a dog to walk but the point is the same nonetheless) :-P). This added capability would absolutely not hinder the use of single contexts for single context/facet proponents but it would add significant power to the currently implemented single facet model under OF.

It creates an interesting paradigm shift though. Instead of working with hierarchies of organized tasks in relation to a single context, the hierarchical organization is somewhat flatter, making way for on the fly faceted meta data searches based on multiple contexts. I think that both can coexist in harmony :).

Situations can always be described in either strict hierarchical terms via static nested single facet/contexts (as we are more familiar with when working with folders, for example, under multiple OSes) but it is also possible, and sometimes very desirable, to use multiple facets (that may even be considered to reside on different semantic levels in more traditional knowledge hierarchies. Think of google searches) to corner just the right context*s* relevant to perform a given task.

I think that faceted classification, for serious knowledge organization and to prevent triggering against insufficient overall context, is unavoidable.

Or put differently, a single context is insufficient to describe accurately our multi contextual (multi faceted) reality.

omniinmo

Last edited by omniinmo; 2009-07-30 at 08:11 PM..
 
 


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