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Ability to tag contexts Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
For me, tags are very useful, especially, if I can access the tags via spotlight.

I might have a NA: call Mike re: give update on permit process
and I might tag this &mike &call and &permit

If Mike happened to call me, I could search for &mike and find all the related tasks.
 
I have projects where I need to get equipment ready for the project. I keep a task list/check list of all the things I need to make sure I have before the project. My problem is when I am going through one of the check lists (about 50 items) I need to only focus on those items. I can't be filtering out with my head, items that aren't relavent.

I also will have more than one project of the same type happening, each project in a different state.

If I were able to tag items, it would create less contexts for me to deal with, and allow me to focus on what I need to be doing.

Let me know if you would like an example. It may be easier for me to email you an kGTD file than spend the time typing it out here.
 
Another reason for tags...

Let's say I'm working with a vendor, and have reported 5 different problems we are having through email. I have those emails in a waiting for response list.

Suddenly, the vendor shows up to talk about the issues. Of course they don't have a list of the issues with them and I need to see all things related to that vendor... those emails I sent with those issues, and a couple other things that have popped up which I haven't reported to the vendor yet.

If tagging were available, I could choose the vendor name, and see all actions I need to do in relation to that vendor.

¢¢
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpiralOcean
My problem is when I am going through one of the check lists (about 50 items) I need to only focus on those items. I can't be filtering out with my head, items that aren't relevant.
Exactly. Just to add more here, the example I would use is this:

My kGTD file has all of the things I know I need to do. I use the Start and End dates sometimes, but what I REALLY want to be able to do is to create a "Today's Priorities" list, without removing the contexts.

Every morning I go through my kGTD file and create this list separately, on paper, which I carry around with me during the day. It would be great to be able to go through my list of actions and tag them as "Today" or "Hot" or whatever works, but without taking them out of context or project.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by realtyler
It would be great to be able to go through my list of actions and tag them as "Today" or "Hot" or whatever works, but without taking them out of context or project.
Ah, the user defined Next Actions list re-emerges...

I'd requested this as part of Kinkless ages ago. There was some discussion about whether it was 'true' GTD. But given that OF will have a wider focus, maybe you guys will consider it. And maybe tagging is the technique to do it. If tagging is part of OF, then people who want to do it, will, I guess.
 
I visited this forum to make a suggestion about tag support, only to find that tags are much on people's minds. Great news -- I hope it's an Omni priority.

This is a long thread; I'll briefly weigh in on some of the issues I see:

(1) Tags, not hierarchies: there's no reason to expect the pattern of context tags people associate with their actions to reconcile into a tree structure. Trees suck for organizing just about everything: observe that, five minutes after anyone re-implements the tree to organize his stuff, he re-invents the symlink. In the end, people want to filter actions according to set operations on contexts, which activity strictly generalizes the activity of "browsing" a tree. Speaking of which...

(2) Set ops on contexts: if I "select" four contexts, should the result be the union or the intersection? As some have noted, the answer is "yes." I'm seeing a radio button in the context selection panel...

(3) Project tags, not just action tags: people want "sub-projects," i.e., they want to associate multiple semantic categories with an atomic GTD project. But they don't really want a hierarchy, for the reasons laid out in (1). Just let us tag projects in exactly the same way we tag actions (except project tags are not GTD "contexts"). Then, when we're in GTD planning/reviewing mode, we use tag filtering to control project display; when were in GTD doing mode, we use tag filtering to control action display (via contexts).

A reminder to the GTD initiates: David says "flat organizational paradigm (= tags) YES, any other more complicated paradigm (= trees) NO."

I'll pay twice the price for an OmniFocus with action tags AND project tags...
 
Perhaps I got completely lost, so please bear with me.

Are some of the requests (e.g. Tagging) based on experiences with Kinkless GTD?

The reason I ask this is because I have not used kGTD for a while, and after trying numerous GTD programs I’m able to face some of the scenarios that have been mentioned. At least I think I do.

While I’m looking forward to OmniFocus and initially loved kGTD, my choice for a GTD program has been ThinkingRock.
While I agree that multiple contexts may occur simultaneously (e.g., @Work + @Calls) I think users can be ‘creative’ with the software. I’m not sure how this would apply to OmniFocus, but with ThinkingRock, for example, here’s a scenario:

1. I have an Action Topic, which I use in the traditional sense of a Project. For example, I would define an Action Topic as “Research European Market” or “Purchase 10 laptops” or “Do valuation for company XYZ.” Those would be my BIG projects (made up for this example). In addition, I also define people I interact with as Action Topics. This would be similar to tagging and having multiple contexts (as we’ll see), but since the software does not offer that choice I found a way to make it work for me.

2. I have Action Context, which is the traditional context (e.g., @Home, @Work, @Phone, @Computer, etc.). I also define people I interact with as Action Contexts. If I’m understanding things correctly, in essence now I’m able to use multiple contexts, or more specifically 2 contexts. In this case, my multiple context relates to people. Let’s say that Joe is in charge of everything related to administrative issues. Let’s also say that I need to meet with him and the accountant, Pete. I can select Joe as my Action Topic and @Pete as my Action Context. In the same manner I could have an Action Topic “Home” and combine that with my Action Contexts @Phone, @Email, etc.

For now let’s say that I need to meet with the expert in European Markets, and he’s SpiralOcean. My Action Context would be “@SpiralOcean”, and my Action Topic would be “Research European Market.” The specific action I need to take is “Meet with expert.”
In ThinkingRock I can simply choose from a pull-down menu “Context” and from a pull-down menu “Topic”, and I will only see the specific items that meet the criteria (i.e., Action items that deal with SpiralOcean and Research European Market).
This filtering only works for Context and Topic, and the only choices are one item or all.
There is also additional filtering available (e.g., done, inactive, delegated, scheduled, etc.).

If I had to meet with both michelle and SpiralOcean this approach would not work, but there are still some options.

3. I can view notes for my specific actions. I could write a note saying “Include michelle in the meeting with SpiralOcean” for instance. Or if I delegated the task to someone else, I would see that information as well.

4. There’s also the use of color. I can easily identify some tasks based on the color I picked for the Project. If I deal with someone only for a particular project I could “color” them with the same color as the project.

One benefit has already been mentioned. I’m able to look at less information, with the advantage that I can select the relevant information for the task at hand. If I have a meeting with michelle I can print or view only the specific items that involve her. If the meeting is regarding a particular project, I can select those items related to the project and to michelle. If the meeting is not exclusively with michelle, I can select the whole project and it will include items I need to address with michelle, SpiralOcean, and so on.

And one of the great advantages, IMO, is that although I rambled on and on and should be sleeping instead, setting this up within the program is very easy and requires little work. After the initial setup of Contexts and Projects a lot of the work is minimized and accomplished by mere clicks of the mouse.

My guess is that with OmniFocus things could be even easier/faster. Ideally I want to minimize the time I spend with the GTD software, and maximize the time I spend actually getting things done :)

As a side note, I doubt I would use tagging in a serious manner, as it may involve spending more time setting up my tasks. Perhaps replicating -a la DevonThink- a task to a different context or contexts?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpiralOcean
Just thought of another reason for tagging contexts...

Let's say I have projects that involve showing john a project proposal A and also calling him to ask a question about project B.

projectA
-show john proposal: @work, @agendas, @john

projectB
-call John about moving forward: @work, @john, @calls

Now let's say I have a meeting with John. If the system were on a pda, I could select
@john

for my context

and see
-show john proposal
-call john about moving forward
This is the most concise and useful depiction of the value of multiple contexts per task. I am completely in favor of OF employing this scheme. The beauty of it is that anyone who insists on 1 context per task is completely free to do so without altering the app at all, including choosing an option or preference. Simply stop assigning contexts after the first one.

-gb
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonmcauliffe
A reminder to the GTD initiates: David says "flat organizational paradigm (= tags) YES, any other more complicated paradigm (= trees) NO."
+1 Forget GTD, trees are just too inelegant and tip the scales towards planning your life and away from doing your life...
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Nahasapeemapetilon
Perhaps I got completely lost, so please bear with me.

Are some of the requests (e.g. Tagging) based on experiences with Kinkless GTD?

The reason I ask this is because I have not used kGTD for a while, and after trying numerous GTD programs I’m able to face some of the scenarios that have been mentioned. At least I think I do.

While I’m looking forward to OmniFocus and initially loved kGTD, my choice for a GTD program has been ThinkingRock.
While I agree that multiple contexts may occur simultaneously (e.g., @Work + @Calls) I think users can be ‘creative’ with the software. I’m not sure how this would apply to OmniFocus, but with ThinkingRock, for example, here’s a scenario:

1. I have an Action Topic, which I use in the traditional sense of a Project. For example, I would define an Action Topic as “Research European Market” or “Purchase 10 laptops” or “Do valuation for company XYZ.” Those would be my BIG projects (made up for this example). In addition, I also define people I interact with as Action Topics. This would be similar to tagging and having multiple contexts (as we’ll see), but since the software does not offer that choice I found a way to make it work for me.

2. I have Action Context, which is the traditional context (e.g., @Home, @Work, @Phone, @Computer, etc.). I also define people I interact with as Action Contexts. If I’m understanding things correctly, in essence now I’m able to use multiple contexts, or more specifically 2 contexts. In this case, my multiple context relates to people. Let’s say that Joe is in charge of everything related to administrative issues. Let’s also say that I need to meet with him and the accountant, Pete. I can select Joe as my Action Topic and @Pete as my Action Context. In the same manner I could have an Action Topic “Home” and combine that with my Action Contexts @Phone, @Email, etc.

For now let’s say that I need to meet with the expert in European Markets, and he’s SpiralOcean. My Action Context would be “@SpiralOcean”, and my Action Topic would be “Research European Market.” The specific action I need to take is “Meet with expert.”
In ThinkingRock I can simply choose from a pull-down menu “Context” and from a pull-down menu “Topic”, and I will only see the specific items that meet the criteria (i.e., Action items that deal with SpiralOcean and Research European Market).
This filtering only works for Context and Topic, and the only choices are one item or all.
There is also additional filtering available (e.g., done, inactive, delegated, scheduled, etc.).

If I had to meet with both michelle and SpiralOcean this approach would not work, but there are still some options.

3. I can view notes for my specific actions. I could write a note saying “Include michelle in the meeting with SpiralOcean” for instance. Or if I delegated the task to someone else, I would see that information as well.

4. There’s also the use of color. I can easily identify some tasks based on the color I picked for the Project. If I deal with someone only for a particular project I could “color” them with the same color as the project.

One benefit has already been mentioned. I’m able to look at less information, with the advantage that I can select the relevant information for the task at hand. If I have a meeting with michelle I can print or view only the specific items that involve her. If the meeting is regarding a particular project, I can select those items related to the project and to michelle. If the meeting is not exclusively with michelle, I can select the whole project and it will include items I need to address with michelle, SpiralOcean, and so on.

And one of the great advantages, IMO, is that although I rambled on and on and should be sleeping instead, setting this up within the program is very easy and requires little work. After the initial setup of Contexts and Projects a lot of the work is minimized and accomplished by mere clicks of the mouse.

My guess is that with OmniFocus things could be even easier/faster. Ideally I want to minimize the time I spend with the GTD software, and maximize the time I spend actually getting things done :)

As a side note, I doubt I would use tagging in a serious manner, as it may involve spending more time setting up my tasks. Perhaps replicating -a la DevonThink- a task to a different context or contexts?
What's interesting about this scenario is that in an app that allows multiple contexts per task, one can simply stop entering more than one context and use the software as Bob would, leaving the rest of us multiple contexters fat and happy.

On the other hand, if OF stopped at one context, EVERYONE would be FORCED to use the program the same way Bob is using ThinkingRock above.

My humble opinion only of course (and no offense to Bob, just using his example)

-gb
 
 


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