There’s a great deal of discussion on the internet if the traditional ‘context’ is dead due to the ubiquity of mobile phones (read computers) and internet. Contexts such as ‘computer’, ‘online’ and ‘phone’ seem to have lost their relevance. Add to this all those other abstract contexts such as ’think’, ‘energy’ – which just dilute the traditional concept of a context further. When I moved from Things to Omnifocus I was quick to create perspectives which filtered my tasks to show how Things showed them – in Today, Next, Scheduled & Someday views. My workflow was to use Today and Next perspectives to find stuff to do and Scheduled and Someday to plan. My workflow was simple – get done with what’s in Today and move on to Next to find tasks.
However, in practice selecting tasks from the Next perspective was not as easy I thought it would be. I had this perspective setup to reflect all the available next actions grouped by context and though this was good, it was not scaling upto my needs. I wanted a different view of my data to match my workflow. If for example, I was at work – I wanted to see not only the tasks I could do only at office but also those I could do at office like calls/online work/think (if I had the time) without browsing through all the other contexts which I cannot get to (from work) but now seem to clutter my next perspective. So, I decided to create new perspectives to show this exact data.
But, before that I wanted to check if I had the right contexts in place for all the tasks. When I stepped back and looked at all my contexts I realized I was spending 90% of my time either at work or home where I had access to internet/computer & phone. Also, I had tasks such as ’find points to update resume’ which technically needed me to be online but which I “preferred” doing at home. (I changed the context of this task from ‘online’ to ’mac’ – my main computer at home. Any other tasks I could do only on my mac were also tagged with ‘mac’). So, I did an audit of the database correcting the contexts and added a new context under the traditional ‘online’ context – ‘computer’. If I just needed any computer connected to the internet to do the task (which required heavy lifting such as wordpress theme edits, working on spreadsheets or which were not convenient to be done on a touch device), they would be tagged with ‘computer’. If it was something I could do anywhere with internet (even on my phone or iPad), they would be tagged online.
Now I had these contexts:
home
work
errands
– grocery store
– medical store
– hardware store
online
– amazon/flipkart
– computer
mac (tasks related to my personal data and those which do not require an internet connection are tagged)
phone
agendas (family & boss)
write
think
waiting for
omnifocus
templates
If you are familiar with perspectives in Omnifocus then you know that we can create perspectives by selecting only some contexts – to show tasks falling under those contexts only. And, with contexts sorted out, I now created three new perspectives – Core: home, Core: office & Anywhere using that method.
Core: Home:
Contexts selected:
home, mac, online, agendas (family), write, think, omnifocus (omnifocus ideas tagged so)
Filters selected:
Context filter – remaining
Grouping – Context
Sorting – Project
Availability Filter – available
Status Filter – any status
Estimated Time Filter – Any duration
Core: Work:
Contexts selected:
work, online, agendas (boss), write, think
Filters selected:
Context filter – remaining
Grouping – Context
Sorting – Project
Availability Filter – available
Status Filter – any status
Estimated Time Filter – Any duration
Anywhere:
Contexts selected:
online (I would ignore the computer sub context here), phone & think
Filters selected:
Context filter – remaining
Grouping – Context
Sorting – Project
Availability Filter – available
Status Filter – any status
Estimated Time Filter – Any duration
Now, I could view what had to be done today, what I can accomplish in office, at home, or browse ‘anywhere’ context while standing in a queue.
As our commitments increase, as our workflow changes, to meet the changed reality of our life, we may need to view our data in a different perspective. I think his is where Omnifocus shines – flexibility.
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