I've been thinking about this again, and I think I'm getting there. Almost. I've just posted something on the David forum about this, so I'll slice and dice some of that as I go. Don't say you weren't warned.

Context refers basically to tools available, time available, and energy level. But the context lists used in the book GTD, and those used by most of us, are solely tools-based: we've got @Phone, @Online, and so on, even though most of us have all our tools to hand all our waking hours. And while @Computer and @Phone may be useful for someone who travels a lot, for home businesses or geeks what we can and can't do doesn't whittle down our choices.

In those cases, because the issue of tools doesn't arise, we have to modify our contexts according to time available, perhaps, or energy. We'll continue to have @Car or @InTown context lists, of course, for those occasions when we're not actually wired in to the system, but we may need to slice our contexts a little differently.

For instance, my alertness ebbs and flows during the day. If I have context lists for @Mindless, @Creative, @Physical, @Talkative, for example, I can do the creative work when I'm at my sparkiest, and do the data entry when I'm dopey. The @Physical might be best for those somnolent afternoon times, and the @Talkative for when I'm feeling sociable and outgoing.

Or, if your time is chopped up, you might have lists of @5Mins, @15Mins, @1Hour, @Forever, of things that will take about that length of time, so you can easily find one to slot into whichever window you're in.

I'd be interested to hear whether anyone's doing anything like this, because I haven't seen any comments along these lines yet. We all (me included, because I don't use this system yet) seem to be wombling along with the @Phone and @Computer contexts straight from GTD, yet it's such a sensible idea, methinks.

So, does anyone use these other factors explicitly in their context lists? That is, do you have any context lists other than the tools-based ones?