Admin note: While I was away for 2 days, the spam filter has killed a comment titled “@errands”.
If you are the poster, I’d be very happy if you resubmitted that comment. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience! - Rolf

You have been tag for The Personal Development List. (See my site for details), I would love for you to participate.

Excellent post! This was so helpful. I really like GTD, but despite its simple structure, I kept getting hung up on the NAs and contexts. This was so helpful. Many thanks!

Thanks for this write up. I was looking for a better understanding of context. Well…I actually was looking
for a list of possible contexts I could use.

I too was getting hung up on this part. Thanks for the reboot.

This is so well done it is essentially a white paper on contexts. I grabbed a copy of this immediately. Getting across the essence of what contexts are to my coaching clients goes well in the moment, but it is easy for people to wander away from the concept inadvertently making it into something that is less helpful. This will be a great reference for them to come back to again and again.

This post is a superb reference. Your last section is one that I will come back to myself when I end up with the inevitable “context conflict”. Thank you very much for this.

This is a very well done writeup on contexts. I’ve run into some of these issues, but hadn’t thought through the solutions as well as you’ve listed here.

The @agenda context was, for some reason, particularly bugging me as I kept confusing them with @email and @phone. This clarifies, not just that, but much more.

Thanks!

I’ve been trying to get head around gtd for months and my contexts are where I always fall down. This article is concise and covers every problem I came across. Thankyou so much!!!

This page is now part of my “read often list”.
it’s important not to loose focus over time.
 thanks

Hi,

I liked a lot your post. I agree with all your recommendations but the singular events one. Following David’s definition of a context, Greece is a location where I need to be if I want to visit the Parthenon. I do plan my vacations with its own context for things that I want to do when I am at that particular place (some of them are impossible otherwise).

Keep up getting things done!

I’m a late comer to this page as the last previous comment was a year and a half ago! Never mind, I come to it by way of a Google search for information on GDT Contexts.

I reviewed the first couple of pages of hits and this is far and away the best description of contexts I have found. Great work.

I love GTD and like the last poster, I am very late to this party.

Much time and thought has been put into my NA lists. These work for me and these are the result of several iterations. Your mileage may vary. Since I travel frequently for work, I have an @airplane, which ended up duplicating next actions I could be doing elsewhere, so the lists were not working. Finally, I defined them based on available resources, for example my computer. I also want to keep the number of NA lists reasonable.

So, here are mine

@Office @Home: The obvious ones, but I record next actions there that can ONLY be done in that context.

@Computer: This works for when I am on the airplane, sitting in a hotel room, coffee shop, etc.

@Computer w/o Internet Access: Important distinction.

Next, I combined all your People/Roles/Providers into one NA
@Agenda: When I am with my co-worker Eddy, I have a running list of things we need to discuss, etc. You might think this section would become crowded and messy, but it has not been a problem for the two years I have been using it.

@Errands: I have recently deleted or moved this one. Moved is more accurate. Since I always have my Blackberry, I create an errands list in Outlook as a note.

The last one is personal and may not apply to everyone. My parents are in their 70s and live 5 hours away, so I created an @Mom’s House to remind me of all the things I need to do for them while there.

That’s it. I do like your @idle time idea. I’ll have to give it a think. The issue before with @airplane was where does “process inbox” go? Office, Airplane, Home? No, the only time I can do it is when I have access to my computer and I don’t need internet access.

Hope this helps.

Randy

Thanks a lot for sharing your set of contexts with us! Funny enough, I’ve also got a @Parents, just to remember what to bring there or back to our home.

Thank you for a very helpful post.

However, even after reading your post, I still have problems with context for my reading assigments. So I guess that is the only “not-a-real-context” I have on my list! My problem is, that I read at home, at work, at coffee shops etc. So there is not one context for reading. Some times I need to read in front of the computer (notes), but that is fairly rare.

I try to keep it simple, and only have very few (real) context on my list. That works for me.

Hanne,

when you say you read at home, at work, at coffee shops etc: do you carry something to read with you, all of the time? And what triggers your reading there, usually? Do you plan to do it, in advance?

Rolf

Thank you very much for this article. I’m currently set up OmniFocus, and am struggling to figure out which contexts work for me. While I appreciate the suggestions you’ve provide, few of them work for me because I work at my home office, and mostly on my computer or on the phone. So, @Office or @Home or @Computer contexts aren’t really applicable. Likewise, People, Roles and service providers don’t really apply, and some of the other context categories seem interesting (e.g., time spans) but not totally useful or relevant.

I’m therefore wondering if you might have other ideas or suggestions for other contexts that might be better suited for someone who works at a home office, mostly doing work on the computer and phone… Thanks!

Also, I’ve noticed that you disapprove of using contexts like @Urgent, @Important, or @A/@B/@C. But I read this article that seems to strike a good compromise between using the contexts that you suggest, and integrating an ABC priority system for triaging flagged items:

http://www.asianefficiency.com/task-management/omnifocus-abc-priorities/

I’m wondering what you make of the ideas contained in the article, and am wondering if there might be a better system or way to build from what the authors have outlined in the article. Thanks!

Interesting. I’m pretty much at the same place as you, having just converted from Windows to Mac. I also work in a similar way - at home or at client’s offices and mainly on the computer with little paperwork involved.

I set up contexts in my previous system, which had only one level of context available and a limit to the number I could set up (unless I paid more). I used this article to review what I do and what contexts were involved in my work and then set out the ones I thought I would use. Worked for a time but I found I was using the same one over and over and in the end didn’t bother.

I see the difference with Omnifocus as the ability to set contexts hierarchically so I can add say a People context and then add all the people who I interact with beneath this, and easily add more as they come along. I think this will help a lot compared with what I have been doing as the breakdown will be more granular.

For your problem I suggest that, rather than get others to give you what they do for contexts, analyze the work you do based on this article and develop a list of contexts that work for you - everyone works in different ways so hoping someone else is working in the way you want to work is probably not going to fly.

Thanks for the link. That looks a good site. I read the article but doubt I will follow it. For me the downside is losing the context of the work in the perspective.

What I will probably do is use the flag feature to identify the things I should be working on at the weekly review and then filter based on the flag for working in context during the week. Anything new coming along during the week either gets a flag if I need to do it in the week or gets no flag and will get reviewed at the next weekly review.

My posting just sums up various types of contexts that I have encountered. I’m not using all of them myself: as Tony Garland has pointed out in the comments, you need to invest some time into figuring out what contexts apply to *your* work.

@jdog: If I understood correctly, you said you mostly work from home, using your computer and your phone. I guess you need to consider whom you can get on the phone on which days at which times, so one of the things I’d try is to set up some agenda-type contexts for specific people (@Dave, etc.) and collect issues there so you have them ready when you get the chance to talk to the respective person.

One additional approach that works for me, currently, is to have my *customers* as contexts (in addition to agenda contexts for specific people), like e.g. @ACME. I’ve found that my customers are sort of a context, because mentally, I’m “with them”. So if my project list contains ProjA, ProjB and ProjC at ACME, all of the corresponding next actions go to the @ACME list. It felt a bit strange to me at the beginning, because I thought that I might mistake a project for a context, but now I’m sure that it’s really the *customer*.

With respect to “priorities”: they have been left out of GTD deliberately, and I’m thankful for that. I strive to weed out the bad stuff from my system deliberately and regularly. Using the Eisenhower Matrix (or Covey’s equivalent), as mentioned in the posting that you recommended, is what I do on a regular basis, but only during the reviews of my system. Personally, I do not see added value for me in prioritizing things that survived this purging.

With respect to electronics: I’ve abandoned them long ago in favor of PostIts sticked to loose leaf dividers. I’m writing the contexts above the PostIts and just discard each PostIt when I’ve finished all items on it. I prefer that to using the whole divider for one context. So far it works.

Hi,

Great little article! Thanks.

I wanted to share my thoughts briefly (or not!).

I find it helpful to remember that a Context is not an Action. An Action is a verb - a ‘doing word’ (if you remember from elementary school). A Context is a Constraint or Condition which when true means you are able to ‘do’ the action.

E.g. Reading is something you do - an action. The Context might be @Library, @Home, @Office (if reading work related books/articles), @Vacation (for your once-a-year thriller novel), or @Train/Bus.

I also wanted to point out that an Action also has attributes that help determine the Context, and consequently which ‘Context-based’ Next Action list the action in question is added to (or categorised with). As mentioned in the example above, @Vacation Context would be applied to the action of ‘read novel XYZ’ in your inbox - this is the ‘Process’ step of moving that action into the Context-based Next-Action list ‘@Vacation’ from your ‘Inbox’.

One last thing, I think it is very useful to learn and understand the difference between ‘tagging’ an action with a contextual category and ‘filing’ an action into a hierarchical ‘folder-type’ task structure, such as the folders and sub-folders in Outlook, for example. Hierarchical information storage systems do not fit well with the true nature of ‘stuff’. It is much more of a mesh (and mess!) than your directory/folder structure.
Hierarchy, when analysed closely, is actually a representation of a 1 dimensional attribute: ‘location’ - i.e. location within the hierarchy. To understand what I mean, goto your PC and look at the ‘filepath’ of any file in the ‘Address Bar’ (or equivalent in Mac/Linux etc.). It is a 1-dimensional ‘line of characters’. The window through which you view it simply creates ‘branches’ whenever that ‘path’ differs between items (or files/[sub-]directories).

E.g. 1: “C:\Programs\ApplicationX\Filename.exe” is a 1D string which is an attribute.
E.g. 2: “Tasks\@Library\Read book XYZ” could be a representation in Outlook of your Context-based Next-Action list called “@Library” with the action item “Read book XYZ” if you manage Next Action lists using sub-folders under Tasks (hierarchical). It would be here if 1) you didn’t own it, AND 2) didn’t know anyone who did, AND 3) your knew or guessed the library would have it, AND 4) you really want to read it…

In my thinking, the most useful system would allow you to ‘tag’ (add) as many Contexts (‘categories’) to an action list item as necessary, and would allow you to view or sort actions by Context (category). Therefore, I think a better way of using Outlook is to create Contexts using Categories, then applying all relevant Categories to your items (tasks/emails/appointments/note etc.). When you view each folder, you can Group- and Sort-by Category…and there is your Context-based Next-Action list.

But that is just me and my logical brain…what do you all think?

@sonorman - thoughtful comment.

I started using a system they gave the ability to tag contexts and I could add as many as I wanted (the downside was you could only sort on 1 context). I’ve now moved to another system that uses a hierarchical context environment. Still setting this up but think it is better. Tagging does not give enough structure I find. I overcome the problem of the 1 dimensional aspect of the hierarchy by duplicating some of the contexts under different main context, for instance I have context for @people with sub contexts of all the different people I need to link tasks to so I can raise them next time we talk. Then I’ll also have an @waiting context with sub contexts of the same people as these tasks are waiting on specific input from the person.

Still working on this but seems OK so far

Hi sonorman and Tony,

thanks for your in-depth comments! Since I don’t maintain my lists electronically, I really long for a way to mark an action as actionable in multiple contexts. I can’t help to admit that I can’t figure out a way how to do that on paper.

I’ve described my workaround (involving a stacking order of contexts) here as well, but it’s only a poor substitute, admittedly.

The answer to that question lies in Punch Cards…lookup the first IBM systems :-) (hint: the information world before the PC)

(Careful, though. Too many holes and you end up with ‘lace cards’ ;-))