GTD: Slay the leviathan context

September 14, 2010

I got an email from a coworker, who flatteringly suspected I might be able to help come up with meaningful GTD contexts for his OmniFocus. If you’re like us, nearly all of your work seems to want to go in some leviathan-context called “Computer” or “Online” or something equally unhelpful. Here’s my response.

I think this came from my official GTD coaching session a while back. This context arrangement (in addition to the standard Home, Errands, et cetera) pretty seriously improved the way I work. I hope it yields some usefulness for you. :D

• Mac — Should probably change this; it really means Mac or iPad or iPhone. Nothing goes directly in here, only in the subcontexts. The subcontexts are arranged roughly by ascending cognitive expense.
  • Maintenance — Mindless stuff like shuffling files around, paying bills, and fixing little problems on sites.
  • Study — Research, Googlin’, finding out stuffs I need to find out.
  • Commu — Contacting people by email or chat.
  • Planning — Thinking pretty seriously about stuff, outlining, drafting ideas, and so on.
  • Writing — Production writing tasks for things that need to be written well.
  • Design — Grafflin’ & Photochoppin’.
  • Code — Coding tasks that are likely to require a warmed-up brain.
  • Translation — Making things that are in Japanese not be in Japanese anymore.
• Input — Videos; music; articles that won’t go in Instapaper.
• Output — Informal blog posts and such that don’t require intense thought.