GTD Refresh: Contexts and Calendar

In my first post in this series, I discussed the steps I had begun to take in putting my GTD arrangement back in club. I started by outlining my life at the moment (especially my Areas of Focus") and sketching out a vision of myself in three-5 years.

The next step in my render to an orthodox GTD system is to reset all my lists, the physical cadre of GTD. Longtime readers of this blog know that I've never been very fond of the idea of contexts, merely for my GTD refresh I decided that I demand to bring contexts back into my setup.

Contexts are catchy. For people with conspicuously defined jobs and boundaries between their various roles/areas of focus, contexts make sense because you lot're clearly "at work" or "at home" or "at your figurer" or wherever.

That's not me, though. I am a college professor at two different colleges, with admission to a variety of computers, part spaces, and other civilities over the class of the day when I am teaching. When I'm not teaching, I'thou working at home every bit a freelance writer. The boundary between "@home" and "@work", "@calculator" and "@errands" can be very sparse sometimes, oftentimes amounting to little more my attitude.

Especially since, no matter where I am, I am effectively using the same computer. Away from my firm I employ LogMeIn to access my abode computer; at home, I employ a netbook on the wireless network to pull files from and save them back to the same estimator. And so whether I'1000 in my office at the university, on the shared computer in the department office at the community college, on a public terminal in a library or classroom, or at home at my desk or on my sofa, if I'm looking at a estimator, I'one thousand always @computer. And if I'm non looking at a computer, I'thou just "out".

Then it makes more than sense for me to take simply a few contexts, based more on type of task rather than the location. There are things I tin can practice on a computer — pay bills, write, grade papers, store, contact friends and business associates, watch videos, etc. In that location are phone calls I have to make. There's everything else I do at domicile — laundry, maintenance, filing — and there'southward everything else I do away from habitation — shopping, doctor's appointments, lunch with family, dating, and then on.

And so I've got three contexts:

• @calculator
• @phone, and
• @out.

Find I don't have @home — near everything I ever do at home is on a weekly schedule, and everything that isn't requires using a computer, making a telephone phone call, or taking a trip out of the house. For example, to deal with a fidgety heater, I demand to call the landlord or file an online service ticket.

Context lists don't stand up alone; they work in concert with the calendar. That'south why I don't need a separate @home context — almost everything I'd put on an @habitation list is tied to a particular day or date and properly belongs on my calendar. I don't think I'd quite understood that before — I saw the agenda as essentially a dissimilar kind of "task infinite" than context lists, and overloaded my chore lists with stuff that should have gone into my calendar. Most task management software doesn't aid with this mindset, either, since you can date tasks and have them appear aslope your agenda on the twenty-four hours they're due.

But your calendar and context lists should complement each other. Since everything needs not merely a place to get done merely a time, working the calendar specially hard seems warranted. Specially because I thrive best when things are scheduled for particular times, pinning tasks to specific time-slots seems similar a more constructive way for me to maintain my productivity.

In the  past, this might have represented a slight deviation from "orthodox" GTD. My understanding on reading Getting Things Done was that the agenda should exist used onlyfor things that have to be washed at a specific time. Either I misunderstood or Allen has come up around to seeing the value of the calendar every bit a location for tasks, because in Making It All Work he definitely advocates pinning things to the calendar — even allowing that if they don't get washed on the solar day they're scheduled, they should be moved to the next day.

This might seem like a lot of thought to put into what are really the about basic and directly-forward elements of GTD, but I think it'due south merited. First of all, after several years of familiarity with GTD principles, I'grand in a much amend position to empathize the "organization for a arrangement" aspect of GTD — the way GTD provides principles for assembling a arrangement, rather than a system in and of itself.

Secondly, I recall the big takeaway of GTD is that consciousness creates productivity. Using context lists in the past never worked forme because I hadn't really been conscious of why I was using those detail contexts, and how to keep them all organized and available. Which is to say, instead of paying attention to my tasks, I was paying attention to the fashion my tasks were organized. If I'm going to brand contexts work for me, I need to understand and accept (and trust) that they really are functioning according to my particular needs.

Which is really the point of this serial. I know that people like to read near other people's systems — I certainly know I practise — but it would be hardly worth writing near if you couldn't see the process I'm going through to decide how to put that system together. I certainly don't expect anyone to trim their contexts down to the three I'one thousand using; what I hope, though, is that you'll be inspired to follow some of the reasoning I'm using to determine what an melancholia set of contexts might look like for your life.

Next time (most likely): Balancing software and paper.

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/gtd-refresh-contexts-and-calendar.html

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