Saving Time by staying within contexts
Recently I started implementing David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system, as described in his best-selling book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
This system appealed to me for many reasons, but one was his use of labeling tasks with “contexts” — the location in which the task needs to be done (i.e. office, home, car). I had already been using a similar system, but it was “in my head”, exactly the wrong place it needed to be.
My contexts need to be more specific, as “office” and “home” didn’t categorize my tasks well enough to be useful. I already knew, basically, what I need to do at home — starting with the three Ds — Duds (laundry), Dinner, and Dishes.
I own a website development firm. I do have an office out of the home, but the nature of my work is so virtual that most of my work tasks could be done either from home or the office. I do use home and office contexts, but since I use my GTD system within Evernote, I can apply multiple contexts to a single task.
Maybe I’m being really anal here, but for the amount of time it takes to launch a program, get going, get focused, it’s usually easier for me to do similar tasks in one program before switching gears and moving on to another program. The days I feel most inefficient are the days I jump from one task to another.
For example, Quickbooks is kind of a memory hog and takes a bit of time to load up. I apply the Quickbooks context to all of my bills that need to be paid, invoicing, statement reconciliations, etc. When I fire up Quickbooks to do something time-urgent, I’ll just take 30 minutes to an hour afterwards to finish off all the rest of my Quickbook tasks. I’m in the right mindset anyway. It makes me feel great to knock off all of those little tasks, and I’ve saved time by not having to constantly wait for Quickbooks to load, find the invoice or reconciliation screens, etc.
Here is a breakdown of my GTD contexts:
- @home (housecleaning chores, organizing, kids’ projects, cooking, etc.)
- @car (errands to run, podcasts to listen to, notes to record)
- @laptop ( I have certain programs installed on here that aren’t on my tablet)
- @tablet (I have certain programs installed on my tablet pc that aren’t on my laptop)
- @Dreamweaver
- @Quicken
- @Quickbooks
- @webjobs (a web application that I am seriously modifying for a bunch of clients)
- @phone
- @offline (most of my work needs to be done online, so offline are things I can do on my tablet while waiting in doctor’s office, as a passenger in a car, etc.)
- @office (these are mostly just filing related tasks, big copy or faxing jobs, etc.)
- @with kids (I save any tasks that the kids can help with for this context — like baking — as they are constantly seeking my undivided attention.)
- @people (insert names here of husband, parents, kids, employees, partners) (things I need to discuss with or give to certain people, includes helping kids with school projects, etc.)
I may have too many contexts, and I definitely have too many “Next Actions”, but this is Month 1 of my implementation of GTD. I assume I will tweak it until it fits.
What contexts do you use?
Stumble it!
February 1st, 2007 at 4:13 pm
I’ve been using GTD since October 2006 and I’ve created a lot of projects and next actions (and someday/maybe), but I have deliberately kept my number of contexts very limited. So far I haven’t felt the need to refine my contexts further. I do a lot of work at my computer and at home, so @home usually entails a lot of next actions that are actually work related.
I use the following contexts: @anywhere, @calls, @computer, @errands, @home, @office, @people, @work for my own next actions.
And @work (waiting for), @home (waiting for) for tasks I’m waiting for other people to complete.