[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

Hopefully there will be a way to name the perspective at some point?

Yes, definitely.

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

It's the mental filtering I want to get away from. If I am constantly mental filtering, I go numb to the entire list.

My agenda contexts are pretty small, usually just a few items, so I guess I haven't experienced this problem. (Maybe I will later!)

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

I don't track if someone is on the phone or not. But if I have a need to talk to a vendor about their product. I have it in a calls context. They show up on a surprise visit. I'm not going to think... hmm... I'll go to calls to see if there is anything to talk about. I might think... is there anything to talk to this vendor about, and go to the vendor tag I have set up, that would show me things I need to email, call about, problems I'm having with their product, and talk about in person. But if they don't show up for a surprise visit, when I am going through my calls context, I'll call them about that item.

I wouldn't want to look in more than one place either, and that's one reason I try to keep my context list as simple as possible. For one-off contacts related to a single action (like "Make an appointment with the dentist"), I use a generic Phone or Email context. But for items related to a relationship where I might encounter the person in multiple contexts, I always use a separate agenda context for that person (like Agenda:Jane or Agenda:Bob). When I talk with someone (whatever the physical context), I can get at everything I need to talk to them about by selecting their agenda context.

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

The preceding item is an extremely simple example to show a point. If a person is in a job, where there are 10 vendors for 20 different products you are supporting, and that's just working with the vendors. Then there are coworkers. Using one Agendas context for everything becomes more work than it is worth.

Are you saying it's a lot of work to create separate agendas for each person (too much work during planning time), or a lot of work to put all their items in a single agenda context and then have to sort through it later (too much work when acting on those actions)?

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

I haven't been using agendas because with agendas I would need my list mobile to make good use of it. Currently, I can't take my OF list into most meetings, because it is on my desktop computer. If someday the iPhone has OF on it, then Agendas would become useful because the list would become mobile.

Most of my agenda items aren't related to meetings, they're just things I need to talk with someone about (often in email, sometimes on the phone or IM or in person). But when I do want to take my agendas to a meeting (without taking my laptop), I find printing them to work pretty well.

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

When the situation changes drastically, I can't sit there for 10 min and tell the person in front of me, hold on let me check my agendas, no that's not where it is, let me check my emails, no... hmm... no where is that task item.... ahh here it is... but I know there was another one somewhere... hang on.

Right, that's exactly why I put all those actions into an agenda context for that person, and don't list them in other contexts. When I act in other contexts (like email), I also scan my agenda items. But just because that's working for me (at least at the moment) doesn't mean that it will work for everyone.

[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

The focus is working beautifully. Thanks for the suggestion. I was able to get rid of half of my contexts.

Excellent! I'm glad that's working for you.

[SpiralOcean]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

Are you saying it's a lot of work to create separate agendas for each person (too much work during planning time), or a lot of work to put all their items in a single agenda context and then have to sort through it later (too much work when acting on those actions)?

It is a lot of work to put all their items in a single agenda context and then sort through it later. Too much work when acting on those actions is what I am saying.

Putting all the items in a single agenda item breaks the reason why we use contexts.

If I have 20 individual agenda contexts (10 Vendors, 3 for bosses, 7 for co-workers), then every day I need to scan them to see who I need to talk to for the day. It's not using contexts for what contexts are intended for...

When breaking apart tasks that all deal with one person, but fall into different ways of contacting them I separate out into contexts.

My preferred method of contacting a person is email. So anything I can send in an email I will put into an email context.
For items where talking to a person is more appropriate, I place them in the calls context.
For items that need that face to face contact, I put them in Agendas.

My daily routine is going through the contexts and processing. Processing all calls, processing emails, processing computer...

If I am waiting in an airport, and have a cell phone with me, I want to see the tasks I can complete with the cell phone. If all of my tasks for contacting a person are in agendas, then it takes a lot of mental effort and time to go through my agendas, and for each item think...
can I can do this on the phone or does in need to be an email or in person.

It's very akin to working from the inbox.
We don't do it.
It's inefficient.
And a person ends up skipping items to do because they are in the wrong context.

I can't email this item because I don't have an internet.
so you skip down to the next item.
I can't complete this item because I really need to talk to this person face to face.
so you skip down to the next item.

The next day, what happens...
the same process, start at the top and skip over things that can't really be done right now. A person ends up touching every task more than once.

When we process the inbox, we put items in the correct context as an actionable item so that when we process the context we don't have to think the thought...
is this something I can do right now.

The goal of GTD is to do the thinking first, then crank through the contexts of actionable items without thinking the thoughts...
can I do this now,
do I have the correct tools,
is the person around.

That thinking was done during the weekly review or processing of the inbox. All I should have to do when I look at my calls context is make calls...
Hey Jill... I'm calling about blah blah...
Hey Jack... do you have the blah blah...

The tagging comes into play when I need to break the contexts.

Tagging allows the list to become flexible and gives me the ability to change my direction instantly.

When I processed my inbox, i wrote the things that need to happen with Bob in my emails, calls and agendas. Suddenly, Bob is in front of me... I can break the contexts and see everything that I need to talk to Bob about. This saves me time and helps me crank through my items.

When I did my weekly review, I wrote all the things that I need to be working on, but some of them are simple enough for an intern to do, so I tag those items as intern.

On Monday, the secretary comes up to me and says... I have a community service worker here for the day, is there anything you have for him to do?

I can filter by my intern tag and give them a list of things to do. I've just saved myself time and our volunteer felt like we had something for them to do instead of making up some menial task to keep them busy.

[SpiralOcean]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

I wouldn't want to look in more than one place either, and that's one reason I try to keep my context list as simple as possible. For one-off contacts related to a single action (like "Make an appointment with the dentist"), I use a generic Phone or Email context. But for items related to a relationship where I might encounter the person in multiple contexts, I always use a separate agenda context for that person (like Agenda:Jane or Agenda:Bob). When I talk with someone (whatever the physical context), I can get at everything I need to talk to them about by selecting their agenda context.

I agree with keeping a context list as simple as possible. If you are processing items in a context, and you get to a task and think... I can't really do that now... then you probably need another context.

This is why some people have an Internet & Computer context. There are times when you may have a computer available, but unable to connect to the internet. Flying on an airplane is a good example. When you use a context, you don't want to see things that you have no chance of accomplishing because you don't have the correct tool, person or time available at your disposal.

[kmarkley]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

Rather than duplicating all your contexts for work and home, have you thought about using folders in your project list and focusing on one folder or the other? That's how I have my projects organized (into top-level folders like Omni, Family, and Personal), and I find this a lot more convenient than duplicating contexts.

In addition focusing on folders, you can also create perspectives which group arbitrary collections of projects or contexts. Between the two, you have a lot of flexibility in how you group your actions. (Maybe perspectives should also save the current search, which would help you remember which tags you've used for what given your current approach of putting tags in your notes?)

Originally Posted by Ken Case

(Maybe perspectives should also save the current search, which would help you remember which tags you've used for what given your current approach of putting tags in your notes?)

I love this method, which to me seems to be the big way the OF distinguishes itself from the competition (and, I assume, the reason for the name). I had an impassioned exchange with a ninja last week when it was suggested that this functionality might go away.

The big problem is that focusing on folders is not yet remembered in perspectives (but I understand it will in the future). Once you can quickly call up both an arbitrary list of contexts and an arbitrary list of projects/folders, then it will be really killer.

I would love it if Perpectives also saved the search field. I made a feature request to that effect a few days ago.

[kmarkley]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

I've been putting all these in my "Agenda:Person" contexts, because my needs are relatively simple: I don't need to track whether my contact is on the phone or in person or whatever. (I just do a little mental filtering when I look at those agenda items, i.e. skipping past a compensation discussion unless I'm in a one-on-one meeting.) What other contexts are you using for actions associated with a person?

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

I agree with keeping a context list as simple as possible. If you are processing items in a context, and you get to a task and think... I can't really do that now... then you probably need another context.

This is why some people have an Internet & Computer context. There are times when you may have a computer available, but unable to connect to the internet. Flying on an airplane is a good example. When you use a context, you don't want to see things that you have no chance of accomplishing because you don't have the correct tool, person or time available at your disposal.

The thing is, relationships with people are a lot messier than just whether or not they are 'available at you disposal'. There are things you delegate to other people and things that are delegated to you. Sometimes you have to speak in person, but sometimes not. You can email someone in the middle of the night, but not call. So if you put an email you need to write into an @agenda category, then it doesn't appear when you are at you computer at 2am. But on the other hand if you put the same task in an @Internet context, then you have to hunt for it if the person calls you. If you try to break out every possible combination of person and mode of communication, then you are back down the road of byzantine hierarchical contexts. You can search across contexts for the person provided you put the same and unique name in the note field of every action. (Bob, B. Smith, Bob S., etc. won't cut it.)

It seems to me that interaction with other people is an important aspect that is largely independent of either context or projects. This is why I think it would really great to have a dedicated 'contacts' field for each item that links to the AddressBook. Because there are many projects and actions that do not involve others, there would be no cause to clutter up the UI -- just access to the field via a new inspector and maybe a small flag indicating that it is non-empty.

This would be obviously useful w/r/t/ Mail hooks, but would also be great in other ways. For instance using a cmd-keystroke to open the contact in AddressBook would obviate the need to do a manual lookup for every action in your @Phone list. This field could also serve as the basis for building a delegation workflow, either baked into OF or one you rolled yourself via AppleScript. Connection to the AddressBook would eliminate the problem of consistent naming and free one up from worrying about formatting the note field 'just right' to accommodate a custom AppleScript. It would be especially cool if this field had the same sort of inheritance as default contexts or flags. You could, for instance, assign team members to a project. Then when you had an action "Update team on project progress", you'd be a keystroke away from creating an email to all team members.

I am generally opposed to weighing OF down with a lot of features (such as the OF->Mail->Mail->OF delegation feature requested elsewhere). I really like how lean and spare it is now. But this seems to me a small addition that would make a big difference.

I am sending this in as an 'official' feature request. If you like the idea, please do so as well.

[curt.clifton]

Contacts are a good idea.

I would also like (non-displayed) fields for URLs, Mail message IDs, arbitrary deep links into OmniOutliner documents, and probably a bunch of other things that I haven't thought of. Others will think of other things. I'm hoping that arbitrary meta-data will solve this. That is, for any OF item, I'd like to be able to associate a "label-data pair. Examples include: (Contact, Fred), (URL, http://www.omnigroup.com), (Mail, obscurecodingformessageidhere), and (Priority, 4). This gives a huge amount of power for developing OF extensions, because scripts can associate arbitrary data with OF items. Even without scripting this would be incredibly powerful. The inspectors could include a little two-column table for editing this sort of data, and searches could be tuned to just search on a particular piece of meta-data. For example, I could create a search that says "show my all available actions where the contact is 'Fred'".

[SpiralOcean]

Originally Posted by kmarkley

The thing is, relationships with people are a lot messier than just whether or not they are 'available at you disposal'.

Such a negative statement... I absolutely agree, but I also put a lot of resistance to associating GTD or OF with making people 'available at your disposal'. Although I understand the meaning behind the statement, I would like to make clear that having a list of things to talk about with someone is no way abusive, it's just smart.

Originally Posted by kmarkley

It seems to me that interaction with other people is an important aspect that is largely independent of either context or projects. This is why I think it would really great to have a dedicated 'contacts' field for each item that links to the AddressBook.

A hard link to the address book is a terrific idea.

I wonder what Leopards todo application is going to look like? It appears to be accessible from Mail.

OF may be waiting to see how that plays out, or may already have a developer copy and just can't say anything about anything that has anything to do with Leopard.

Originally Posted by kmarkley

...but would also be great in other ways. For instance using a cmd-keystroke to open the contact in AddressBook would obviate the need to do a manual lookup for every action in your @Phone list.

Not to mention once OF is on the iPhone... and you need to call or email someone, you could do it by tapping a button on the phone and it calls the person associated with the task.

Maybe this is why mail's todo list with leopard is in mail... because eMail is on the iPhone.

[kmarkley]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

Contacts are a good idea.

I would also like (non-displayed) fields for URLs, Mail message IDs, arbitrary deep links into OmniOutliner documents, and probably a bunch of other things that I haven't thought of. Others will think of other things. I'm hoping that arbitrary meta-data will solve this. That is, for any OF item, I'd like to be able to associate a "label-data pair. Examples include: (Contact, Fred), (URL, http://www.omnigroup.com), (Mail, obscurecodingformessageidhere), and (Priority, 4). This gives a huge amount of power for developing OF extensions, because scripts can associate arbitrary data with OF items. Even without scripting this would be incredibly powerful. The inspectors could include a little two-column table for editing this sort of data, and searches could be tuned to just search on a particular piece of meta-data. For example, I could create a search that says "show my all available actions where the contact is 'Fred'".

That does sound quite powerful. I only suggest that maybe the contacts meta-data not be part of this arbitrary system (although perhaps built onto it).

I want to type "Fred" and have the field auto-complete to "Fred Smythe" and create a link to the Address book just like Mail's 'To:' field. Your suggestion of an arbitrary meta-data of (Contact, Fred) sounds like I would have to teach it to find and link up to the AddressBook entry myself. Which I'd rather not.

[curt.clifton]

Originally Posted by kmarkley

I only suggest that maybe the contacts meta-data not be part of this arbitrary system (although perhaps built onto it).

I want to type "Fred" and have the field auto-complete to "Fred Smythe" and create a link to the Address book just like Mail's 'To:' field. Your suggestion of an arbitrary meta-data of (Contact, Fred) sounds like I would have to teach it to find and link up to the AddressBook entry myself. Which I'd rather not.

That makes sense to me. Certain metadata pairs could be built-in. Contacts is a likely one. Perhaps URLs would be another.