Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
Context headaches
mdl | Aug 25 2006
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! 7 Comments
POSTED IN:
 Thanks for all the helpful...Submitted by mdl on August 30, 2006 - 10:14am.
Thanks for all the helpful advice everyone! After assessing my GTD habits, I realized that part of my problem was that I wasn't looking at all of my lists each day. Now, just to be on the safe side, I check all my lists first thing in the morning to see if anything absolutely needs to be done today. Contexts seem to be about finding the right balance between essential divisions (i.e., things you can only do in one place/enviroment) and functional divisions (i.e., different modes of work). One potential value is that contexts remind you of the various "modes of work" you should be engaged in each day. Two other solutions I think I've found (thanks to many comments here): 1) Clustering contexts. I can keep distinct contexts but then cluster them for different work environments. So my work cluster is (calls, email, internet, anywhere, work). And my home cluster is (calls, email, internet, anywhere, office, mac, home). Or my Mac cluster is (internet, email, mac). And my road cluster is (calls, anywhere, errands). 2) I've rethought my 3x5 implementation. Rather than using standard context lists, I now have project cards with next actions that can than be sorted by context. Reference info and brainstorming goes on the back of each project card. Meanwhile, a list of actions is on the front of the card, and the current next action gets a checkbox. (If there's more than one next action, I use a circle and "open" a new card for the second next action.) The advantage of the project card approach is that after I complete a task I can either remain in that context or transition easily to the project. If I stay within the context, I put the project card in a "recycle" section of my hipster and/or index card file. Then, whenever I get to it, I can assign a new next action to the project and sort the card in the appropriate context. Having the project cards immediately handy allows me to do project planning on the fly. For reviews, I can quickly sort the deck of cards by project. After much experimentation and vacillating, I think this is the best system for me. » POSTED IN:
|
|
| EXPLORE 43Folders | THE GOOD STUFF |
