[Lizard]

Phil,

People above seem to be describing 2 approaches:
1) Every area of responsibility is a folder, which may contain some projects. So when you assign the action's project, you're also implicitly assigning its area of responsibility. (The project is inside a folder.)
Example:
A of R: Pet Owner
Project: Build fence so Fido can play outside

When you create the 'buy fence posts' action, you'll put it in the 'Build fence' project, which implicitly puts it in your 'Pet Owner' area of responsibility.

The 'Pet Owner' folder might also have a project named 'Misc. Pet Chores'. When you create the action 'Buy Dog Food', you can put it in 'Misc. Pet Chores' and it will be in your 'Pet Owner' area of responsibility.

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The other approach suggested is that the project IS the area of responsibility. If taking care of your pet is just a lot of independent actions, rather than larger projects, 'Pet Owner' might simply be a single action list, and when you create the action 'Buy Dog Food', you stick it straight in 'Pet Owner'.

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As with many aspects of GTD, it depends on what your life is like -- lots of smaller roles, or a few large roles. You might also take a step back and ask why you want to track what area of responsibility each action goes to. If you want to figure out whether all your time is going to taking care of the dog your kids promised they'd handle themselves, it might be worth it. But on a day-to-day basis, you buy dog food because you need to buy dog food, not because it's in the Area of Responsibility you're focused on this week.

[rmathes]

Great discussion, enjoyed reading this. I've been wondering if my approach made sense, I use the folders approach. Like one of the responders above, what I like about it is if I see no next available actions for one of these folders during my weekly review (which doesn't always happen weekly, I must admit), then that's a signal that this is an area of my life that needs a bit more attention.

Hadn't thought about mirroring this in my reference databases (a combo of Evernote and Devonthink Pro).

As a side note, I find it interesting that some use Curio. I bought a license a couple of years ago. VERY interesting piece of software, but after using it for a bit it seemed like a jack of all trades, master of none. Would do mind maps, for example, but not all that well. Same with outlining, etc... So I always found myself moving to more dedicated apps, like NovaMind Pro for mindmaps, Notebook for outlines, etc....

Have also been intruiged by Tinderbox, but that has a REALLY daunting learning curve.

[DrJJWMac]

Originally Posted by rmathes

As a side note, I find it interesting that some use Curio. I bought a license a couple of years ago. VERY interesting piece of software, but after using it for a bit it seemed like a jack of all trades, master of none. Would do mind maps, for example, but not all that well. Same with outlining, etc... So I always found myself moving to more dedicated apps, like NovaMind Pro for mindmaps, Notebook for outlines, etc....

Interesting ... I find NovaMind a bit too over-the-top stylish and Notebook a bit too constraining. By comparison, the advantage of Curio for me is its tremendous versatility to put almost anything I might want together on one page. Agreeably, it is therefore not a strict mind-mapping tool or outlining tool or (quote your favorite does-one-dedicated-thing-well) tool. Curio still does master the basics of these options rather nicely. The new UI is also a great step forward.

WRT this thread, I find that using Idea Spaces in Curio for broad overviews (a Kanban-type board and a weekly calendar) and Omnifocus for specific project + task management has made for a very productive toolset.

--
JJW

[rmathes]

I'll have to check out the new Curio UI. I've heard good things about it, but didn't care at all for the old one. Thanks for that heads up.

For me, it was one of those tools that sounded great on paper but I could never fully figure out how to use it. Had that same issue with Bento.