Contexts by Time

F

furashgf

0
Most of the context lists I've seen are place based (e.g., @phone, @work).

How do you/should you handle personal/work. for example, I've got both work and personal calls to make. Currently, they're all in @Calls. However, I usually don't make personal calls during normal work hours, and vice versa. Is there any reason I couldn't/shouldn't do @PersonalCalls @WorkCalls, or @BusinessHourCalls and @AnyCalls or something?
 
I have contexts "@Office - Phone" and "@Home - Phone", which work well enough for me to separate the calls. I use the Office/Home as temporal divisions, not call purpose divisions. That is, calls I need to make during business hours go into the Office context.

If my employer was stingy about personal phone calls, I'd add a new context "@Home - DaytimePhone" or "@Office - PersonalPhone". This would mean I still have the temporal separation, and only one context to look at.

What I have done in the past is scheduled times to make calls, at which point they disappear from contexts and turn into appointments in my calendar.
 
How many calls do you have? If it's just a few, then the extra overhead might not be worth it, and just a slightly bigger chance you might miss one.
 
Another way of thinking about contexts

I struggled with the same thing trying to get my two systems for work and rest of life happening, see my other post in this forum.

I worked through a few iterations but at the end of the day I left them on the one @Calls list.

My logic was this:
Think of the "context" as having the phone in your hand rather than a specific physical place either office or home which is how I would normally think about a context.

This way the phone can be in your hand at the office, at your home or a mobile phone if you're out n about somewhere.

Then you simply look at one list of calls and in the moment decide which one you will make depending on what is imporatant right there and then, irrespective of where physically you happen to be.

Secondly but importantly, if you need to make a call on a specific day and / or time that call is moved off your @Calls list and goes on to the calendar.
 
If you have some calls that you intend to make from home and some calls that you need to make from work, then that looks like two totally different contexts to me, even though they both require a phone.

I personally put all my work calls on a general @work action list because I have access to a phone all the time I am at work (the context is not different for calls vs. other work actions).

I also put home phone calls on a general @Home list for the same reason.

In fact, many people have a cell phone these days and therefore may almost never be out of reach of a phone, so any @phone context becomes almost meaningless in that case.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top