context - with child

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I use GTD Outlook Add-In. I'm trying to determine how to access NAs that I can do in each context while I am with my daughter.

I am a mom and I have my own law practice that I run from my home office. I need to be able to tell at a glance what I can accomplish when my daughter and I are on our own (most errands, some phone calls, etc.), without looking at all the things I can't do, and that have to fit into the hours when her nanny is here. I considered creating a separate context, but that's not sufficient, since most of the things I *can* do with her I don't *need* to do with her, and I do still need to do them @home, @office, etc. If I could assign multiple actions using the add-in (@home and @daughter) that would work, though I'm not sure this is possible. If it is, can you enlighten me? If you have different/better ideas, I'm open to those as well.

Any tips?

Thanks.
 
Current System?

I don't know the GTD Outlook add-in at all. Some electronic systems can handle multiple tags, but I'm not sure whether it can.

When you are with your daughter, are you generally at the computer, or do you print out a To-Do list?

If you're printing out your To-Do list, then perhaps you could use a highlighter to mark NA's that can be done with your daughter there. That way, you can take a quick look at your "@Phone" list and then only pay attention to the highlighted actions.
 
I can either take a quick look at my computer (very quick - before all the books get pulled off the shelves and the toilet paper off the roll), or I can look at my Palm which I sync to Outlook. It would be overly burdensome to print often enough to feel that I have a close to current list; even more so to have to review it and highlight it. I'd like to do the equivalent of highlighting the list in a digital way and on the front end, when I'm processing my NAs in the first place.
 
I don't know about the Outlook add-in, but Outlook itself easily handles multiple categories. So you could assign the @daughter context wherever it applies, then create a custom view that shows just the @daughter tasks, further sorted by context. If you wanted to avoid cluttering your categories, you could do essentially the same thing by creating "daughter" as a contact instead.

Katherine
 
Life Balance

Have you looked at Life Balance from Llamagraphics? The time invested to set the system up is high initially but it sounds like it would work for you.

Basically, you can have "Places" (context) that includes other "Places." For instance, you can have NAs that can be done with your daughter (@child); and NAs like phone calls that can be done with your daughter around (@callchild); set up Life Balance to include @callchild in @child AND @callchild in your regular @call.

What the above does is allow you to see the NA under @callchild when you check @call (during your regular work hours) and when you are with your daughter @child context.

The above assumed there are calls you can NOT do when you're with your daughter, hence the separate @callchild and @call. If that's not the case and you can do @call NAs when you're with your daughter, then don't create the @callchild, just include the @call place in your @child place. Hope that wasn't too confusing. The software allows you to make it as complicated or as simple as you need to.

Life Balance also does this balancing areas in your life but don't let that initimidate or turn you off. You can turn that feature off initially while you get to know the software.
 
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