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Quote:
Originally Posted by SpiralOcean View Post
<snip>I guess the other possible downside is whether this would be transferable to the iPhone, as that is probably the device you would have on a chance meeting with your boss. There is a search function on the OF iPhone, perspectives are in an experimental mode and only work with contexts, but it should work.
<snip>
That's a critical consideration. I'm currently managing this in a FileMaker database, and scripting the transfer of dated items into iCal. My main reason for moving to OF is the iPhone client. If that breaks, I would probably be better off sticking to my homegrown tool.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dp1 View Post
That's an interesting idea. Since I'm just starting, and have no legacy overhead to convert, let's extend it a bit. What if I had no sub-contexts, but populated the note with whatever variables were appropriate? I would have one large context called Work, and could populate the note not only with sub-context tags, but with project tags, and anything else that might be helpful. &Boss, &Project X, &networking, etc. Do you see any downside to this approach?
I think this could end up biting you further down.

You can create nested contexts.
Work
-email
-computer
-agendas
-waiting for
Home
-email
-computer

This is how I separate my home from my work stuff. While not pristine GTD, work isn't paying me to do personal stuff and I'm not going to do work on personal time.

Contexts should be broken down to:
locations
tools you need
things you have access to (agendas: boss)

Projects should be organized by projects in the projects tab.

You can use folders in the projects tab to help separate projects.

If you need to focus on one project then use the focus command to only see that project, and only that projects actions will be in the contexts.

You can also focus on a folder and only see projects within that folder.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpiralOcean View Post
I think this could end up biting you further down. <snip>
I see your point. In the effort to extend OF's features, I would end up crippling some other capabilities. Thanks for the insight.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dp1 View Post
I see your point, I think. Upcoming deadlines can be viewed across contexts. This requires me to put firm deadlines on actions that might not otherwise require them. But I would still miss the action if the action were in the Office context and the chance encounter with my boss occurred before the deadline was looming. Or am I missing something?
Yeah, that's why I suggested putting it in the Agenda : Boss context. You run into your boss in the hallway, you fish out your iPhone and check that list. You go into a meeting with your boss, you check the list on your Mac or your iPhone. Your boss calls you up, you check the list if you think he'll let you do some of the talking :-) And when you make your daily review of upcoming due items and you see "Ask boss about XYZ" is due tomorrow and you haven't seen him around, or it's the weekend, or you can't otherwise go have a FtF right now, you fire off that email or fax or telephone or whatever else you can do to make contact.

As for due dates on actions that might not otherwise need them, you would only have to put on one this action if there's some date by which you needed to ask the boss, right? I try to avoid unnecessary due dates (*) but am not averse to using them for safety net reminders (such as this) in reasonable numbers.

(*) Actually, I put them on quite a number of things where they are unnecessary so long I'm pretty sure I'm likely to finish them by the due date -- what I dislike is seeing overdue actions which weren't really truly due, as that dilutes the effectiveness of seeing the warning. I'm using them more for the side effect of the "due soon" notification. So, (even) if I'm confident I'll have actually done the task before due date, I may put on the due date as a safety net, or just as an extra reminder to be sure to get this task done if I'm not going to get everything done. I'm asking OmniFocus to nudge me about it if I haven't done anything about it after a reasonable period of time.
 
Thanks to all who responded. Helped clarify my thinking on a number of points.
 
It seems that the best place to start is getting the most you can out of contexts before starting a tagging system. I found this link to be very helpful:
http://www.evomend.net/en/what-not-gtd-context

He describes "the intersection problem" as mentioned with some solutions, too.

Already mentioned for this case are, I think, a couple of very good solutions -
1 - you need to answer "what is the tool that is absolutely necessary to the task?". In this case "Agenda: Boss" would likely work best with this,
2 - You could follow up with a separate task with a due date for later such as "Email boss if we haven't spoken about ..." with a context of email.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kourosh View Post
Already mentioned for this case are, I think, a couple of very good solutions -
1 - you need to answer "what is the tool that is absolutely necessary to the task?". In this case "Agenda: Boss" would likely work best with this,
2 - You could follow up with a separate task with a due date for later such as "Email boss if we haven't spoken about ..." with a context of email.
This is what I meant, if it was unclear. I didn't think it all the way through and wrote about it even less clearly. But I was thinking of this, with a note on the original action so that if you caught him before the second action appeared, to remind you to get rid of the second action. (I'm big on start dates so if I didn't think I was going to use the second action, I'd give it a start date a few days before it's due date.)
 
Regarding this workaround on the iPhone: the search function on iPhone does NOT search the notes field at this time. I haven't tried setting up a search perspective on the Mac and seeing if this works on the iPhone, but because of the search limitation, I suspect this will be problematic.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by gspencer View Post
Regarding this workaround on the iPhone: the search function on iPhone does NOT search the notes field at this time. I haven't tried setting up a search perspective on the Mac and seeing if this works on the iPhone, but because of the search limitation, I suspect this will be problematic.
You're correct -- the search function doesn't search the notes field in the iPhone app, and if you do succeed in setting up a perspective that does a search (*), it won't work on the iPhone either.

(*) There seem to be some bugs that make this harder than it should be at the moment. I find that a window with a search active can't be saved as a new perspective, though if you save it without the search, you can then save it as the same perspective with the search. Send in a bug report with Help->Send Feedback if you find this inconvenient and maybe it will get fixed sooner.
 
 


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