I've been using time as my primary filter for about 6 weeks now, thought I’d feed back on how it's gone.
Why try?
Contexts are a way to filter down your full list of NAs by the “hardest” filter available. Historically it might be a tool (@computer @email) or a location (@office @home). If you didn’t have that tool with you, well, ignore that whole list. It was a nice, clean-edged way of filtering down your options. As long as you reached that tool or location some point during the working week, you could ignore it until then. This meant that instead of choosing from ~80-100 possible NAs and being overwhelmed, you might only have 30 to choose from. Much better.
My job has changed in the last 5 years. I’m CEO of an SME of about 40 staff spread over a few cities. I don't have a traditional office, I work from home or a co-working space. My laptop is with me ubiquitously and all our company tools and documents are cloud-based. 95% of stuff on my NA lists are done from a laptop. My @computer list ended up with 90% of my NAs on it. That made it hard to pick a task, because I was scanning through 70 to 80 Next Actions looking for something to do each time. I found myself not even wanting to go trawling through my @computer list. I then tried to break up my @computer list by using more discrete tools (@Word, @Excel) or activities (@mindmap, @Review). But this didn’t really work.
In GTD the classic decision-making process is context > time > energy > biggest pay off. You filter first by context, ignoring what you can’t do right now. Then you look at your remaining list(s) and pick one, factoring in time, energy and importance.
What I was doing was very different. With contexts being nothing more than categories rather than hard limiters, I was essentially filtering by mood – I was asking myself what do I feel like doing next? I was able to do any Next Action, I was just picking one over another based on little more than preference for that kind of task at that moment. This is a very poor way of choosing, for two reasons.
Firstly, if I was relaxed about doing any kind of task, which I often am, then this doesn’t filter things down at all. I’m able to do any of my contexts, and therefore I’m back to picking from my full list. Secondly, this won’t necessarily surface the most important thing I could be doing. If I decide that doing some online R&D is what I feel like doing now, but in my @emails list there’s a Next Action that would be beneficial if I did it now, then I won’t see it, even though its a valid option.
The reality is that this is a completely arbitrary way to separate my tasks. I could achieve the same outcome by simply putting them in alphabetical order and choosing one based on their first letter.
Filtering by time
Almost on a whim I saw another post by someone on the GTD Forum and decided to start trying to filter by time. I split my tasks down into 4 types – 5 mins or under, 15 mins, 30 mins and 60 mins+. Instead of trying to accurately predict the task, I just estimate it to the nearest round segment. I could just as easily have chosen "short, medium, long or very long", but that felt too woolly.
I’ve since done 6 weekly reviews in a row on this basis. I set up Omnifocus so it would filter first by time, and then give me the usual view of Contexts and Next Actions. This has worked outstandingly well. I was shocked because I had always been suspicious about how practical it was to try and predict your work based on time. However, as the weeks went by, it became apparent that this was really working well for me. Going into my NAs felt far less intimidating because I was back to having my working environment filter my tasks down for me.
What I realised is that, in my job, windows of time are a more meaningful limitation than tool or activity. I have all my tools and can do any activity from any location, more or less. However, if I have 25 minutes til my next meeting, that’s a real limit on what I can do. If I can’t do 30 minute tasks or above, don’t even show them to me. This works both ways too. If I have a free afternoon (which is rare) then I can go straight to my 1hr+ tasks, since I know it might be a week or more before I get another chance. Again, the filter is helping me pick.
I have so many meetings in a working week that I'm constantly in these weird windows of time, as DA calls them. 20 minutes here, 40 there, then 10, then 90, and so on. They’re part of the hard landscape in a way that contexts used to be for me but aren’t any more.
How accurate can you be judging time?
My biggest worry going in was about judging how long things took. This turned out to be a total non-issue. Firstly, you already judge time anyway. I overlooked this fact, but when you choose what you’re going to do next, you factor in how long it will take, so I was already fairly adept at judging how long it would take. All I’m doing is asking myself the question up front and recording the results of that thinking in my trusted system – classic GTD behaviour. And of course the more I did it, the better I got.
Secondly, if you’re wrong, it probably only matters if you hugely underestimate. If I thought an NA would take 30 minutes and it takes 15 minutes – great! Lucky me.
The main risk is that you thought it would be quick and it took a long time. This just didn’t happen much. Since I know that my tasks do not, in fact, take precisely 15 minutes, its just an approximation, I avoid trying to do things like fit a 15 minute task in a 17 minute window. I do occasionally get it wrong, but the impact is not all that severe if you think about it, and its hugely outweighed by the benefits.
Final thoughts
I actually learnt a huge amount about myself and GTD doing this, but this post is long enough without my ruminations on the various aspects of GTD that this shone a light on.
The main thing is that this isn’t an argument in favour of using time as a primary filter per se. Rather its an argument that you should use your "hardest" filter first. My previous job had very hard context filters – I had a desktop Mac that was based in one office, our company finance office was somewhere else that I had to go regularly, and we had 3 other buildings where I needed to do bits of work. So my @computer, @building1, @building2 type contexts worked great. And if these work for you, you probably don't need to worry about it.
But I know from the comments online that many people have the same issue as I do in my current job. People are inventing contexts that are essentially arbitrary and recognising that they’re not getting the same payoff they used to. If it isn't working for you, maybe trial out using time.
Why try?
Contexts are a way to filter down your full list of NAs by the “hardest” filter available. Historically it might be a tool (@computer @email) or a location (@office @home). If you didn’t have that tool with you, well, ignore that whole list. It was a nice, clean-edged way of filtering down your options. As long as you reached that tool or location some point during the working week, you could ignore it until then. This meant that instead of choosing from ~80-100 possible NAs and being overwhelmed, you might only have 30 to choose from. Much better.
My job has changed in the last 5 years. I’m CEO of an SME of about 40 staff spread over a few cities. I don't have a traditional office, I work from home or a co-working space. My laptop is with me ubiquitously and all our company tools and documents are cloud-based. 95% of stuff on my NA lists are done from a laptop. My @computer list ended up with 90% of my NAs on it. That made it hard to pick a task, because I was scanning through 70 to 80 Next Actions looking for something to do each time. I found myself not even wanting to go trawling through my @computer list. I then tried to break up my @computer list by using more discrete tools (@Word, @Excel) or activities (@mindmap, @Review). But this didn’t really work.
In GTD the classic decision-making process is context > time > energy > biggest pay off. You filter first by context, ignoring what you can’t do right now. Then you look at your remaining list(s) and pick one, factoring in time, energy and importance.
What I was doing was very different. With contexts being nothing more than categories rather than hard limiters, I was essentially filtering by mood – I was asking myself what do I feel like doing next? I was able to do any Next Action, I was just picking one over another based on little more than preference for that kind of task at that moment. This is a very poor way of choosing, for two reasons.
Firstly, if I was relaxed about doing any kind of task, which I often am, then this doesn’t filter things down at all. I’m able to do any of my contexts, and therefore I’m back to picking from my full list. Secondly, this won’t necessarily surface the most important thing I could be doing. If I decide that doing some online R&D is what I feel like doing now, but in my @emails list there’s a Next Action that would be beneficial if I did it now, then I won’t see it, even though its a valid option.
The reality is that this is a completely arbitrary way to separate my tasks. I could achieve the same outcome by simply putting them in alphabetical order and choosing one based on their first letter.
Filtering by time
Almost on a whim I saw another post by someone on the GTD Forum and decided to start trying to filter by time. I split my tasks down into 4 types – 5 mins or under, 15 mins, 30 mins and 60 mins+. Instead of trying to accurately predict the task, I just estimate it to the nearest round segment. I could just as easily have chosen "short, medium, long or very long", but that felt too woolly.
I’ve since done 6 weekly reviews in a row on this basis. I set up Omnifocus so it would filter first by time, and then give me the usual view of Contexts and Next Actions. This has worked outstandingly well. I was shocked because I had always been suspicious about how practical it was to try and predict your work based on time. However, as the weeks went by, it became apparent that this was really working well for me. Going into my NAs felt far less intimidating because I was back to having my working environment filter my tasks down for me.
What I realised is that, in my job, windows of time are a more meaningful limitation than tool or activity. I have all my tools and can do any activity from any location, more or less. However, if I have 25 minutes til my next meeting, that’s a real limit on what I can do. If I can’t do 30 minute tasks or above, don’t even show them to me. This works both ways too. If I have a free afternoon (which is rare) then I can go straight to my 1hr+ tasks, since I know it might be a week or more before I get another chance. Again, the filter is helping me pick.
I have so many meetings in a working week that I'm constantly in these weird windows of time, as DA calls them. 20 minutes here, 40 there, then 10, then 90, and so on. They’re part of the hard landscape in a way that contexts used to be for me but aren’t any more.
How accurate can you be judging time?
My biggest worry going in was about judging how long things took. This turned out to be a total non-issue. Firstly, you already judge time anyway. I overlooked this fact, but when you choose what you’re going to do next, you factor in how long it will take, so I was already fairly adept at judging how long it would take. All I’m doing is asking myself the question up front and recording the results of that thinking in my trusted system – classic GTD behaviour. And of course the more I did it, the better I got.
Secondly, if you’re wrong, it probably only matters if you hugely underestimate. If I thought an NA would take 30 minutes and it takes 15 minutes – great! Lucky me.
The main risk is that you thought it would be quick and it took a long time. This just didn’t happen much. Since I know that my tasks do not, in fact, take precisely 15 minutes, its just an approximation, I avoid trying to do things like fit a 15 minute task in a 17 minute window. I do occasionally get it wrong, but the impact is not all that severe if you think about it, and its hugely outweighed by the benefits.
Final thoughts
I actually learnt a huge amount about myself and GTD doing this, but this post is long enough without my ruminations on the various aspects of GTD that this shone a light on.
The main thing is that this isn’t an argument in favour of using time as a primary filter per se. Rather its an argument that you should use your "hardest" filter first. My previous job had very hard context filters – I had a desktop Mac that was based in one office, our company finance office was somewhere else that I had to go regularly, and we had 3 other buildings where I needed to do bits of work. So my @computer, @building1, @building2 type contexts worked great. And if these work for you, you probably don't need to worry about it.
But I know from the comments online that many people have the same issue as I do in my current job. People are inventing contexts that are essentially arbitrary and recognising that they’re not getting the same payoff they used to. If it isn't working for you, maybe trial out using time.
