Context for IT Professionals

Jonathan Wilson

Jonathan Wilson

0
Hello All,
I've been using the basics of GTD in my personal life for some time now and have found it really helps with my relationship with my Significant Other, my kids, and keeping track of the little things I have to do around the house. But I'm about to change roles at work and I need to expand my use of GTD there into a more dynamic format. I currently work for an IT Service Desk and as a Tier 1 (Initial Contact Call Taker) I have not had much need to have Work contexts setup in my GTD OneNote Notebook. But I'm about to advance into a role where in addition to taking the calls, I have to write Knowledge Articles and Procedures to help other Tier 1 Call Takers troubleshoot problems. I was wondering if there are any Service Desk role people out there and what ways they organize their contexts for training things with the role of a Service Desk Call Taker.
I'm thinking I would need to subdivide the typical "@Computer" or "@Office" contexts into sub-parts, like maybe each of the applications we support...

Anyone have some general ideas of even specific examples they would like to share with me on this?

Thanks,
Jonathan
 
Check out the @computer thread here, it has my way of doing subdivisions. Seems like by app makes perfect sense for you as well even though it's support not working in the app.
 
Hi Jonathan. When I was doing lots of GTD courses at Google, many of the engineers would have multiple @Computer lists, like @Email, @Coding, @Bug Testing, @[name of software], etc., to help with the brain space they would be in and volume.

Just be careful your lists don't get unwieldy. I've had lots of creative types get over their head, creating a complex system of lists and criteria to go on the lists that they can't maintain sick in bed with the flu (always the bar to aim for).

Hope that helps.
 
I work as a software engineer, and part of that is dealing with support calls. So, there is a similarity between our roles in that we both have a customer facing aspect as well as having other work to do.

Since everything I do at work except some meetings is at my desk, my GTD contexts revolve around mental contexts. For the software development, I have a context for each software system. This is because it takes time and energy to switch from one system to another. Also, it takes time to open the files, download the latest from source control, etc. Since systems come and go over time, my context list is fluid.

The support calls either get 'done' as they arrive or get thrown into my inbox eventually ending up on a system's context list.

If your work is anything like mine, one system (maybe for you one document) will take up most of the day, leaving an hour or two for other tasks. In my role, it is these other tasks for which GTD is the most valuable.
 
@JonathanWilson, @kelstarrising: I think of @Email, @Coding, @BugTesting more as projects (or as super-projects, with subprojects for important bugs or coding tasks)

I was one of those folk who tried creating such a system, got too complicated, and then fell back. I now use just @Computer (anythinng on my main computer), @Online (since I am often disconnected), and @SmartPhone (because some stuff can be done on my iPhone).

Sure, I would like to have orthogonal categries for
+ context - place or work situation
+ context - time (at weekend, etc.)
+ topic

I used to read my email using GNU EMACS gnus newsreader - with different priority lists at work and at home.

This worked great, but the current generation of computer tools (Outlook, OneNote) do not seem to be able to support it well.
 
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