I suspect that part of the angst over Contexts comes from those with long NA lists. Lists whose length makes selecting the next NA feel like a task unto itself. Now it is probably (almost certainly?) the case that some of these NAs are there due to problems with Review or Organization; but let's overlook that for now.

In my case, the angst over Contexts comes from the conventional approach just not feeling right. I know part of this comes from 20+ years of Franklin/Covey-itis, but the other part comes from being a geek.

I make my living in front of a computer. 90% of my NAs require a computer. 80% of my phone calls are either from a desk phone at work (which sits right next to my work computer) or via VOIP (at home). Contexts like @Calls and @Computer just don't work for me. In fact, I only need two place contexts, home and work. In looking at the older threads on this subject, I can see that I am not alone in this regard.

The problem with Contexts and GTD is that DA's target audience is/was executives and managers. That meant that his methodology has to work for the no-tech or low-tech person (as many executives/managers are), and that in turn forced a single attribute when tagging an NA's Context.

To twist the words of miklb, how could any paper-based GTD system realistically cross-reference two or more contexts? Of course, it is trivial for an application to cross-reference as many contexts as you might choose to throw at it. The real limitation is with the user, how many contexts can a user handle?

Any geek with programming skills can roll their own task app that supports NA tagging (a la del.icio.us), but do you really want yet another component in your GTD workflow? Therefore, I take Unstuffed's point, why do ALL of the GTD enabling apps out there fail to include NA tagging?

That said, just how many tags does a NA need? Obviously, as many as it takes to yield a list that is actionable where you are "at" (including the non-physical aspects of the word). @errand, @person (agenda) and @place are already GTD canon. Unstuffed lists energy level and time available. For those of us in cubeville, I would add undisturbed (task that can only be efficiently done when undisturbed).

For arguement's sake, let's say that you don't want to write your own task app, but you do want to add more dimensions to Context with an existing app. How do you do this?

Using myself as an example, I will consider the case of the geek that makes their living in front of a computer. You have computers at home and at work, and a notebook computer as well. Now, you could use Context as your place attribute; but I'm going to suggest that you use it and either Energy Available or Time Available to create a compound Context. I'm going with Time Available.

Therefore, I'll create Contexts for @errands (shopping lists are on my PDA), people (where face time is required to clear NAs), and for whatever time increments make the most sense by location. For example, my "at work" Contexts will be @W10m, @W30m and @W60m. It is understood that each time context includes an "or less". Anything taking more than an hour probably needs special handling (an undisturbed workplace or whatever), and just gets an @W61.

What about Energy Level and my "Undisturbed" context? I will tack a (HE) or (LE) to the end of the NAs. HE = High Energy (and almost certainly "Undisturbed" as well) and LE = Low Energy. If I find that I only need the "Undisturbed", I would use (Und).

With the above contexts, I now have context filtered NA lists that are short enough to quickly pick out what I should do next given all the constraints that are meaningful to me. Again, I think this approach only works if you have a few location based contexts.

Note that this approach might even work for a paper-based GTD system, but I suspect that many people on paper-based systems do so because they have more than a few @place Contexts. Too many locations, and compound contexts will yield too many contexts to be useful.