ianfh10
Registered
At the risk of rehashing old ground, I was wondering if anyone had success organising their context list by some other means other than place or tool?
I love contexts for my next actions. It was that one big 'aha!' moment for me while reading the book; I cou;ldn't believe something so simple and elegant was so uncommon. They work well for my personal life - home, computer, garden, phone, errands suit my needs. I know some people approach their next actions by project, or use tags or such to see actions in both context and project. Tagging is too much overhead for me. I also don't want to see action by project because I'd have to re-review all actions to find something I can do given context/time/energy/priority.
However, when it comes to work, I'm struggling to make them work for me, because my contexts and tools are ambiguous or somewhat amorphous. For context, I'm an analyst (not quite a software developer) in healthcare IT where I'm on a team responsible for the maintenance and build of an EPR (electronic patient record). There's an element of corporate work to this, with the usual meetings, administrative work, Teams, email etc etc, combined with elements of deep, focused work in both our software and in terms of writing training materials for end users.
I have tried splitting my context lists out by tool or website (email, Teams, software environment 1, software environment 2, online knowledge base tool, end user ticketing system, etc etc) which is okay, but I feel could be better (it doesn't feel as frictionless as my personal context lists), I think mainly because there aren't hard edges to these tools/contexts - they're all done at computer (home or office doesn't make a difference) and they're not that different from one another that it really makes a difference. I tried a 'computer' list but the 80+ items repulsed me.
For context I'm using MS To Do as my list manager - I'm not a fan of tagging, adding priority tags, due dates etc because I know that kind of maintenance is off-putting to me.
I know there's been a lot of discussion recently around context lists in our digital age, and that some don't even use them. I think i'd still find them useful, but would love to see if others have managed to somehow further categorise their context lists in new or interesting ways. I think time and energy would be useful aspects to factor in, but struggling to conceptualise what this would look like.
I know GTD is supposed to be 'whatever works for you to get it off your mind, but if you're using context lists that take into account time, energy, priority or some other criteria, or are making amorphous contexts somehow more concrete, I'd really appreciate a look into some practical examples.
I love contexts for my next actions. It was that one big 'aha!' moment for me while reading the book; I cou;ldn't believe something so simple and elegant was so uncommon. They work well for my personal life - home, computer, garden, phone, errands suit my needs. I know some people approach their next actions by project, or use tags or such to see actions in both context and project. Tagging is too much overhead for me. I also don't want to see action by project because I'd have to re-review all actions to find something I can do given context/time/energy/priority.
However, when it comes to work, I'm struggling to make them work for me, because my contexts and tools are ambiguous or somewhat amorphous. For context, I'm an analyst (not quite a software developer) in healthcare IT where I'm on a team responsible for the maintenance and build of an EPR (electronic patient record). There's an element of corporate work to this, with the usual meetings, administrative work, Teams, email etc etc, combined with elements of deep, focused work in both our software and in terms of writing training materials for end users.
I have tried splitting my context lists out by tool or website (email, Teams, software environment 1, software environment 2, online knowledge base tool, end user ticketing system, etc etc) which is okay, but I feel could be better (it doesn't feel as frictionless as my personal context lists), I think mainly because there aren't hard edges to these tools/contexts - they're all done at computer (home or office doesn't make a difference) and they're not that different from one another that it really makes a difference. I tried a 'computer' list but the 80+ items repulsed me.
For context I'm using MS To Do as my list manager - I'm not a fan of tagging, adding priority tags, due dates etc because I know that kind of maintenance is off-putting to me.
I know there's been a lot of discussion recently around context lists in our digital age, and that some don't even use them. I think i'd still find them useful, but would love to see if others have managed to somehow further categorise their context lists in new or interesting ways. I think time and energy would be useful aspects to factor in, but struggling to conceptualise what this would look like.
I know GTD is supposed to be 'whatever works for you to get it off your mind, but if you're using context lists that take into account time, energy, priority or some other criteria, or are making amorphous contexts somehow more concrete, I'd really appreciate a look into some practical examples.
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