Contexts for Projects?

[crcossel]

Ok I have a little challege.

I am a photographer and I have multiple types of projects going on. I like to have ongoing lists of those projects so I know where I am at.

For example
albums
workflow
orders
slideshows
proofing
uploads

Now these cannot be actions in and of themselves because there are to many actions to get 1 album done. I am all digital and What I would like to have is contexts for my projects. Does anyone know of any software (mac preferred) that will let you do this?

Candice

 

[Todd V]

re: Candice

You can give the GTD mac program I designed a try.

If that doesn't work for you, I would suggest you try the following link to see comparisons of others:

Hope that helps.

 

[drivers]

Project areas

I'm not currently very organized very well in GTD but at one point I had the projects organized into categories I called areas. (Areas that I used, which are specific to my job: Backups, Customers, Documentation, Ensuring uptime/monitoring, System administration, Storage management, Personal) That way instead of having one disorganized list of projects I could drill down to the proper area much more easily. Also I could be more strategic about what to do about any given area. I think any program that can do outlines would work for this. MS Word in Outline view worked well for me at first. I also tried switching to another outlining program (My Life Organized) that is supposed to be more GTD centric, and also allows me to put more notes about any given project without cluttering up the outline. I put next actions, waiting fors, etc in the outline as items under the projects. I think this is probably against the principles of GTD because you're supposed to keep your next actions in their own separate lists organized by context. That's when things started falling apart for me. I separated the outline out into a single Projects list, and another list of the same projects where I would outline the various steps of the project as a Projects Support organization, and then made a separate list of next actions. And, I also had paper folders to keep in sync with it, as well as trying to organize my emails into the same folders somehow. Because to be honest, email tends to be my most up to date system. I need to keep threads of emails together so I can use them to reply with, but see all the details of the conversation. If I move a thread out of the inbox any new messages that come in are not in the thread anymore, not to mention they are out of sight out of mind. I'm thinking of maybe making outlook folders organized into Areas and Projects as my one and only system. But a hierarchy of folders in outlook doesn't make a very good outlining program.

 

[Cpu_Modern]

albums
workflow
orders
slideshows
proofing
uploads

This seem to be workflow states or status bt not contexts in the GTD sense. You can write this states into the project name ie albums ARCHITEX, albums BIRDS, albums SHOW THE SHOW, orders DR. HAIRSPRINKLE, proofing T-SKIRT PROJECT and so on. No need for a special software toll IMHO.

 

[pixlz]

Contexts for Projects?

I also tried switching to another outlining program (My Life Organized) that is supposed to be more GTD centric, and also allows me to put more notes about any given project without cluttering up the outline. I put next actions, waiting fors, etc in the outline as items under the projects. I think this is probably against the principles of GTD because you're supposed to keep your next actions in their own separate lists organized by context.

That's when things started falling apart for me. I separated the outline out into a single Projects list, and another list of the same projects where I would outline the various steps of the project as a Projects Support organization, and then made a separate list of next actions.

Hi Drivers

The beauty of My Life Organized (MLO) is that you can put all of the NAs and Waiting Fors in the outline as you originally did and then view each context list using the product. I don't have it loaded up at the moment otherwise I would describe how it is done.

Hopefully someone out there is a regular user and can give more information. I did like it when I tried it but went back to my original mindmap.

Sharon