Two Weeks ago we work on a definition of Contexts, and it’s important to cover the definition again:
Context refers to all those physical places or tools, such as software and specific equipment, or people with whom you need to interact, to accomplish an action
Remember the important thing is to Accomplish the Action, you can cut the pie, make it smaller, divided, re-organized, make it small lists or a new big one, but if you don’t Accomplish the Actions, nothing else matters. We were working into make a list of the Places, Tools and People you deal often with, in order to begin working on contexts today. I hope you did. Otherwise, lets look on the definition of these again.
From the old post:
Places: This are the physical locations you need to be in order to accomplish an action. This is the first kind of Context people understand, and actually the one I ask you to set at the beginning of this series, @Home, @Office and @Errands.
Tools: These are the tools, such as software, or specific equipment you need to accomplish an action. For example, if you have a laptop and a desktop computer, there may be certain actions that can be accomplished only on one or the other, but not in both; this situation creates two separate contexts: @Laptop and @Desktop. Think now on this, you may need internet access to accomplish certain actions, but you are not connected all the time, so internet might be a tool context for you.
People: This can be an individual, or a group of individuals, that you need to make decisions or have conversations with to accomplish actions. The “people” context is also referred to as Agendas in the GTD and people tend to understand this without much trouble.
If you spend sometime working into those categories, Places, Tools and People you may be able to create a really complete list of Context. I particularly try to keep my context to around 10 actions. The reason is simple, more than 10 actions, make me go and look somewhere else. When I notice that I am getting over 10 items, I quickly revise the action inside and evaluate. Sometimes, it’s just put a little time in the context, like for example right now is a context I had call @Home_Stuff to Fix. It had around twenty actions, so instead of create a new one, I decide to clean the list this sunday. Other times, this happen on my @Mac list, if clean up soon isn’t possible, then I work on create a new Context to reduce the number of items on the list, and make the context more Manageable.
The number or Context you should have, vary, really on what you do, what places, tools and people you interact in the day to day.
Mine had change, evolve, and progress over the years.
My advice is play with it, move them around, until you find a mix that it is right for you.
The important thing this week is to create the context, work with them, and begin populating. Find your number, again mine is around 10, one of the reasons is that the screen on my iPhone, as well as my previous PDAs usually had 10 items, when you have more you need to scroll, that means I usually don’t, but your number may vary.
After you feel you have a complete list, then let me show you the Sub-Contexts. Remember you can drag and drop the contexts you already created here.
OmniFocus allow you to have context inside other contexts, or sub-contexts, so you can have Office, and Office_Mail Room, Office_Warehouse or Office_Accounting Building., that way if you click Office you will see everything inside, all the actions including Mail Room Actions, Warehouse Actions and Accounting Building Actions, but if you click an specific one, like Warehouse, you will only see now the Actions that are in that context.
This is something that differentiate OmniFocus with others, it’s not the only one that can do this, but it can create a difference in how you manage your Contexts, just remember, keep it simple.
This Sub-Context can really be use to your benefit, and over time I will get into more detail and useful examples, like Grocery Shopping, Errands, Computer, and more.
Until now, enjoy Contexts, and Play with your OmniFocus… but more importantly, remember to begin accomplishing actions.
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