Using GTD contexts propperly
I’m digging myself a bit deeper into GTD partly to organize, and partly to be able to show you guys more on this subject. While trying various apps, I have run into the problem of contexts. For me, contexts seem to have no use, they don’t help me in organization, or productivity.
That was a bit of an overstatement, but since I do all my work at the computer, I don’t really have any use for other contexts than @computer, perhaps maybe @home.I could create hundreds of sub-contexts like @email, @photoshop, @office, but would these really mean anything?
If you read David Allen’s book, the point of contexts is to focus your work. The proper use for them would be that if you are in one context, you are unable to do work in the other. This reflects the true meaning of contexts, since it helps you focus only on what you can do at the moment.
So how do we resolve this problem? Well, I have one half-solution, a sort of solution and also some thoughts on why creating a lot of contexts nevertheless may actually be the way forward for some people.
<--adsense#old-->
Narrow them down
If you are someone who does a lot of work with the same properties, maybe at the same place, I suggest you just use 1-3 contexts, don’t try to sub-categorize your work, since there won’t be any real GTD meaning behind it. If you guest blog someplace there isn’t really a difference between @myblog and @guestblog. You use the same tools, same methods for getting things done, so what’s the point?
View contexts differently
As I have done in my Separating work from play with user identities article, you can separate the types of work you do not want to do at the same time as another. When I am blogging I do not want to do my other job, or anything music related like playing guitar, or composing.
If you have work that you can strictly categorize like this, you can use contexts like I am trying to, @music, @blog, @otherjob. This is working for me so far, but keep in mind that for me these are very unrelated things. So having @blog and @otherblog would not really be the same, even if they are very different.
Using contexts as tags
I am sure that hardcore GTD enthusiasts will try and delete my blog of the face of the Earth for this, but if you really are at a loss, you could use contexts as tags. This goes against GTD a bit, so it may not work for many of you, but if you can’t use contexts properly, then why not try to use it to add some meaning to items? The point here would be not to hassle yourself too much on tags. The point of having few contexts is quick organization. With tags the same should happen, or productivity will go down. Don’t think for hours on the correct tags, just quickly tag them and be done with it.
In the end you may have a hundred contexts, but since you don’t use them anyway, you can now use them for a different type of organization.
Bookmark • Explore • Socialize • Comment
I gave up on contexts. They make almost no sense for my work. If I did more traveling that might be different, but I found I was just loosing things on stray context next action lists when I could do any of the actions most of the time.
Daniel, you hit on a key GTD element that took me a while to figure out. That is; don’t take GTD too literally. GTD is all about a few basic concepts (keep your mind like water, put your stuff in a trusted place, identify the next action for things). For GTD to be effective for anyone, you simply need to embrace those basic concepts and adapt them to how you work. David Allen offers a good starter set of ways to implement these concepts, but as you noted, they may not work for everyone. Make GTD work for you, not the other way around.