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Context headaches

I'm having a lot of trouble these days with contexts and wondering if anyone can help.

Basically, I'm finding it very artificial to work out of contexts. I sit there staring at my "Calls" list or my "Internet" list and lose sight of the reason for doing the actions that are on it. I'm finding that I work more effectively in "project" mode than in "context" mode. For me, the latter seems to divorce actions from their original environment, so that they don't make a lot of sense. When I make a call, my next thought isn't, "Yippee, let me see what other calls I can make." Rather, it's "what else do I need to do to push this project forward." If I think of the next action for a project, I'm more motivated to jump to that right away. But if next actions for that project are scattered among other context lists, then I have to rummage around through all my lists until I find them.

Also, multiple context lists encourage me to accumulate more to-dos than I might if I had only one list. This means a lot of less urgent items get mixed in with high priority stuff. Most often, I end up shuffling through all my context lists to find the items that need to be done sooner rather than later. But this would be easier if I just had one to-do list. Right?

At the moment, my contexts are: Calls, Email, Internet, Work (i.e., day job), Errands, Home, Office, and Mac (Mac specific stuff at home).

I'm thinking of reducing these to: Road, Home, Both. (In other words, things done only away from home, things done only at home, and things that can be done in both places).

Does this sound feasible? Or I am missing a crucial aspect of GTD? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

SteveC's picture

...and another thing

I've been thinking about this over the weekend.

One advantage of the context system, for me, concerns phone calls. There's a certain sort of phone call I don't like making. For example, phoning someone I don't know (or don't know well) in the village with my 'chair of the village hall committee' hat on. However, once I've forced myself to make one call like that, making others isn't as bad, as long as I make them immediately.

Having an @phone context on a 5x3, preferable with numbers on it, as well as any prompts about the project, is invaluable when doing this.

Helps me, anyway

S

 
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