ThinkingRock Forum

Sage, I've wondered why contexts never seemed to work for me. I tend to skip them, while feeling they *should* be useful. Then I read your post. THANK YOU!

What a wonderful thread this is. I seldom have time to think much about how I want to organise my projects, and when I do, I tend to get lost in the fun of organising! I have picked up ideas from or been inspired by each and everyone of these posts. Thanks everyone.

I'll add mine in a few days - got a huge urgent project to work on and very little time to play with TR2

Hey cool Martie, I'm glad you found it helpful.

I just redesigned my topics/contexts when I found myself creating some super-projects including 'Production' and 'Marketing' and I realized that's what topics are for.

So topics are the "what this is."
Contexts are the "what of it?"

I noticed that some of my contexts could be described by the other contexts. For example Research & Gathering could be a Focused Task or it could be On-going or it could be a Commitment. But a Commitment can't be a Consider Dropping, because that would mean the context has changed. (So my contexts are turning out to be based on a priority model. If you want to seperate home and work, then the physical places model would make a lot of sense too. For me, it's about where I want to keep my ambitions focused.)

I haven't decided on the names of the ones with / marks:

New Topics: Art/Production, Marketing, Finances, Assignments, Research & Development, Assignments, Personal

New Contexts: On-going, Commitments, Depends upon_____, Consider Dropping, Simple Tasks, Notebook/Ideas/Goals/Sketchbook, Focused Tasks, Philosophy/Inspiration/Compass/Direction.

(and yes I'm getting a few tasks done too. )
-sage

1) Do you mainly use TR for work, personal, or both?

Both

2) Do you use just one data file or do you separate them?

One data file. I think this falls into the original GTD thory better - while you are at the phone you need to know all the calls you need to make. I know that doesn't mean you can make all of them, but I can do some work stuff at home, and vice versa.

3) What are you contexts? If the list is too long then some primary examples would suffice.

Work (desk)
Wet lab (I am a scientist)
Home
Errands
Calls
Mac (I tend to use this for non-work stuff where I need my computer)
Read/review
Agendas (Don't use this much, but am trying to implement it)
Waiting for

4) What are your topics? For example do you use general topics like Work and Personal or do you have specific topics like Work - ClientName.

Personal topics include - Home, Kids, Hobby, Bookcrossing
Work topics include -organisation, training, study, Phd (with subtopics of each experiment, and one for admin). All of the Phd topics have a grey background so I can pick them out easily.

5) Are your projects highly hierarchical such as Work->Clients->ClientName->ProjectName->Subproject or is it more flat? If it is more flat do you organize it some other way, perhaps with topics, or do you just not need the extra logical levels?

Mostly hierarchical, although this often means I have more than one do ASAP in each top level project

6) What screen do you spend the most time in?

Actions

7) What options do you use for the review actions screen? Specifically do you like to only see ASAP items mainly or do you see everything but rely on sorting or colorization to differentiate?

ASAP and scheduled within two days. I also differentiate by colour, as I have about 65 Do ASAPs at the moment

Do you leave TR open all the time? If so do you minimize it?

Open and minimised.

9) Do you use another system or program to record thoughts and then import them into TR? If so, what system(s)?

No

10) Do you use the iCal synchronization? If so, with what program(s)?

No - I don't like that you can't modify things in iCal. I prefer to work in the screen where you can tick things off.

11) How do you deal with things which could be done "whenever"? Are they ASAP, inactive, scheduled, etc.?[/quote]

They are Do ASAP at the moment. i had them scheduled, but that just ended up effectively beign a form of procrastination.

1) Do you mainly use TR for work, personal, or both?
Both

2) Do you use just one data file or do you separate them?
One data file

3) What are you contexts? If the list is too long then some primary examples would suffice.
Work
Desk
Home
Out and About
Calls
Anywhere


4) What are your topics?
Business
Personal
Sooner (than other tasks)
Life Threat (my boss will chew my ass if I don't do it)

5) Are your projects highly hierarchical such as Work->Clients->ClientName->ProjectName->Subproject or is it more flat?

Usually one, max 2 level for the very complex projects. I have just decided that slicing and dicing isn't really worth, so all the extra tagging and classification does not add an ounce to getting things done.

6) What screen do you spend the most time in?
Do ASAP in v. 2.0

7) What options do you use for the review actions screen? Specifically do you like to only see ...
I live in ASAP (actually on paper), I check shceduled and delegated items twice a day.

8) Do you leave TR open all the time? If so do you minimize it?
Yep. Yep.

9) Do you use another system or program to record thoughts and then import them into TR? If so, what system(s)?
Pocket notebook, TXT file, email but seldom.

10) Do you use the iCal synchronization? If so, with what program(s)?
Lotus Notes.

11) How do you deal with things which could be done "whenever"? Are they ASAP, inactive, scheduled, etc.?

ASAP. Unless I have already a good workload in which case they'll go into inactive.

What I am missing most is having a setting to set something inactive until a certain date after which it becomes active.

Good idea. Maybe we could add a Start date for Do ASAP and inactive actions with a process in the background to switch the inactive to do ASAP when the start date is reached.

_________________
Claire
ThinkingRock Analyst and Tester

I would say this could combine nicely with the tickler functionality.

Along these same lines, I was thinking this morning that it would be nice to have ASAP tasks that repeat by done date. Something like "Read a chapter of my book." It's not a scheduled task, because it doesn't matter what day I do it, but I'd like it to return to my ASAP list a week after I check it off.

I have a lot of repeating ASAP tasks that are currently masquerading as scheduled tasks, like "water the plants" and "review my flashcards."

For me too there are some recurrent tasks, I'd like to do in the week, but I do not want to affect to any given time:

I don't know when I will have time to do it, but I need to clean up the house, etc. and don't want to let it all for Saturday...

Chewing over it, I think I got how I could do it (inspiring from another post)
- get a new Tab Week@home
- get an priority option WeekObj
- set the tab to print only WeekObj Scheduled tasks (but without showing them) at context home [I have also weekly objectives for the work now], but do not show the Action date [I put them all for Saturday]

Then when I have such an action as "water the flower", I put it as recurrent, for each Saturday, with the priority WeekObj, context home, and it will show in this tab.

This only work for things having to be done once a week!

Patco

1) Do you mainly use TR for work, personal, or both?
Work and personal life are blended for me, so both.

2) Do you use just one data file or do you separate them?
Work and personal life are blended for me, so just one.

3) What are you contexts? If the list is too long then some primary examples would suffice.
Calls, Car Errands, Email, @Computer, Home, <school>, <other>, Walking Errands

4) What are your topics? For example do you use general topics like Work and Personal or do you have specific topics like Work - ClientName.
Fairly general topics that attempt to break down into categories what I spend my time and life energy on: Administration, Computer, Education/Self-improvement, Family, Finances, Friends, House, Leisure/Travel, Personal Care, Photography, Spirituality, Writing, <dog>, <church>, <school>
However I often forget to assign a topic to my projects and actions. I almost never use the topics for sorting or filtering actions, so I'm probably not making the best use of the Topic field.

5) Are your projects highly hierarchical such as Work->Clients->ClientName->ProjectName->Subproject or is it more flat? If it is more flat do you organize it some other way, perhaps with topics, or do you just not need the extra logical levels?
Somewhat hierarchical. So far I've never had a need to go more than two levels deep though. An example: top level project "Settle Into House"; some subprojects include "Get shelves built in garage" and "Get curtains" with several actions within those projects.

6) What screen do you spend the most time in?
Actions. I use this screen almost exclusively. I sometimes find myself wanting to do a brain-dump in Collect Thoughts first (e.g., when I come back from a few days away from my computer when I've just been jotting notes to myself on a piece of paper), but usually I want to jump right to putting my thoughts into projects and actions. It's one less step, so it's quicker.

7) What options do you use for the review actions screen? Specifically do you like to only see ASAP items mainly or do you see everything but rely on sorting or colorization to differentiate?
I usually view all actions that are still "To Do." I used to sort by Action Date, as I had relatively few ASAP actions. But now that I have so many of them, I'm finding that isn't a great way to focus my energies on the ones that are most important. I have yet to develop a new way to use TR to take advantage of the new features (Priority, Due Date). To be honest, I've been cheating by using a separate file, a Word document, as my "Today" to-do list. Each evening before I go to bed, I copy actions from TR into today.doc that I decide I want to do the next day, and I take that list with me for the day and try to get as many of those things done as I can. I wish I could use TR to do this, have a checkbox that I can turn on and off with each action saying "this is one I'm going to focus on right now" for example, and print out a list of those checked items. I could probably use Priority to accomplish this, but it seems like too much work. A really quick way to review my Actions list and tick the ones that I want to address now would be very handy.

8) Do you leave TR open all the time? If so do you minimize it?
Yes, as soon as I run it once in a Windows session, I leave it on until I shut down. I ought to have it start at Startup time, but I haven't done that yet. No, I don't minimize it. I cycle through it and all the other applications that I have up and running at the same time. I always run all my apps in maximized window mode, so it's irrelevant to me whether ones that are not the foreground app are minimized or not. I rarely minimize any apps.

9) Do you use another system or program to record thoughts and then import them into TR? If so, what system(s)?
Sometimes I take notes on paper when I'm away from my computer (I like to use my Moleskine for that, but sometimes I forget to bring it with me, so any scrap of paper or the back of an envelope will do).
Before I discovered TR, I used to often take a mini tape recorder with me in the car so I could record thoughts to myself as they occur to me. Then I would dump them into a Word document I got back to the computer, ideally every evening before going to bed (a habit I learned from GTD). If I were still doing the tape recorder thing now (which I intend to get back to), I would dump my taped notes into Collect Thoughts.

10) Do you use the iCal synchronization? If so, with what program(s)?
No.
But I do use Calendarscope as my calendar program, and I do wish there was some easy way to tie it together with TR. As it is now I just copy/paste back and forth between the two. In some ways, I prefer that level of control rather than automatically having ALL my scheduled tasks from TR in my Calendar. That might clutter it too much. I'm OK with checking both programs every day to see what is on my schedule for the day.

11) How do you deal with things which could be done "whenever"? Are they ASAP, inactive, scheduled, etc.?
I usually start out with them as inactive, but then if I see they've been sitting around for a while and I really want to do them soon, I reassign them to ASAP or schedule them for a particular time. I'm not entirely satisfied with the way I'm doing this, but at least it's better than my old system in which these things would never get reviewed and never got done.

By the way, for all of you who have a smiley instead of 8) in your reply, I just learned that you can check the box to "Disable Smilies in this post" and it will allow 8) to come through as is instead of converting it to a smiley with glasses. I am glad to find out that it doesn't leave the checkbox checked for the next time you post, in case you forgot that you'd disabled smilies.

My understanding is that in your daily review you would decide what things you definitely want to do today and then change them from ASAP to scheduled for today. This moves them from next actions to your "hard landscape". Granted, I usually only go that route on things that are definitely for today, and not things that would be nice to get done today. I personally have started using the priority field and my actions are sorted by that field, which I have found helps me focus a bit more than before.



If you can just remember to set the topic for your projects, when you add an action to the project directly it will assume the topic of the project. I have found this very handy.




You might consider trying out jott.com as it is a free service where you get your message translated and emailed to yourself.

Sage & Martie
"Contexts" is a GTD term for where the action can be performed. You can use it in whatever way it works for you but you'll find that most GTDers will understand Context as a 'where'. Contexts like @home and @work let you sort out what you can do where you are right now, then you don't have to look at 'mow the lawn' while you're at work since it's something you can only do while you're at home.


Here's my answers:
1. Do you mainly use TR for work, personal, or both?
Both.

2. Do you use just one data file or do you separate them?
Separate - due to security concerns (paranoia) of my employers there's no moving files in and out, however since I can't do any work stuff at home it's not that big a deal.

3. What are you contexts? If the list is too long then some primary examples would suffice.
for personal: @home w/ kids, @home w/o kids, @home (w/ or w/o kids), errands, talk to husband, phone, @computer, other
for work: phone, talk to ___, @computer network 1, @computer network 2, etc.

4. What are your topics? For example do you use general topics like Work and Personal or do you have specific topics like Work - ClientName.
5. Are your projects highly hierarchical such as Work->Clients->ClientName->ProjectName->Subproject or is it more flat? If it is more flat do you organize it some other way, perhaps with topics, or do you just not need the extra logical levels?
Haven't fully sorted this out yet - my topics are mostly my major goals/priorities:
Home: Improve, Home: Organize, Home: Maintain, Organize Life, Self-Care, etc. but then I also have a topic called "Urgent" and one that's "Very Urgent" so that those things show up in red.

My projects are very hierarchical and the top level is currently basically a mimic of my topics - Organize Our House, Maintain & Improve Garden, etc.

I find this duplication sloppy but haven't figured out exactly how I want to do this stuff yet.


6. What screen do you spend the most time in?
Review Actions, followed closely by Projects

7. What options do you use for the review actions screen? Specifically do you like to only see ASAP items mainly or do you see everything but rely on sorting or colorization to differentiate?
I look at do ASAP and scheduled up to today, then I sort by context and time.

8. Do you leave TR open all the time? If so do you minimize it?
At home I don't have the computer on all the time so TR is opened and checked daily to weekly, depending on how much computer time I get. If a palm-pilot TR version is ever created I will buy a palm-pilot and have TR running all the time.

At work it is open and sometimes minimized.


9. Do you use another system or program to record thoughts and then import them into TR? If so, what system(s)?
Random scraps of paper - but I'm trying to get in the habit of having the paper scraps be less random - like actually using the planner I carry around.

10. Do you use the iCal synchronization? If so, with what program(s)?
no, don't have iCal at work and don't keep computer on at home

11. How do you deal with things which could be done "whenever"? Are they ASAP, inactive, scheduled, etc.?
Usually ASAP but I don't like this screen to get too full so I sometimes I choose to move stuff I'm just not going to get around to to inactive and put the whole project in the future projects page.

This is definitely the most useful therad I've found here so far. May I suggest to make it sticky?

I'm using TR 2.0e since a short while, and haven't red the book yet, so some answers may still change.

1) Do you mainly use TR for work, personal, or both?
both.

2) Do you use just one data file or do you separate them?
one data file, on a webdav-server.

3) What are you contexts? If the list is too long then some primary examples would suffice.

@home
@work
@shopping
@on the way
@computer
@waiting for

4) What are your topics? For example do you use general topics like [i]Work[/i] and Personal or do you have specific topics like [i]Work - ClientName[/i].

more general topics like "work", "university", "personal", "official".

5) Are your projects highly hierarchical such as [i]Work->Clients->ClientName->ProjectName->Subproject[/i] or is it more flat? If it is more flat do you organize it some other way, perhaps with topics, or do you just not need the extra logical levels?

more flat. they're mosty 2 levels, seldom 3.

6) What screen do you spend the most time in?

actions, then projects.

7) What options do you use for the review actions screen? Specifically do you like to only see ASAP items mainly or do you see everything but rely on sorting or colorization to differentiate?

I modified the do asap-tab to also see all the scheduled items, which are due until tomorrow. Each topic is colored differently. Then I use priorities like "have to be done now", "should be done", "nice to have been done" ect. to sort them.

8) Do you leave TR open all the time? If so do you minimize it?

open and minimized most of the time.

9) Do you use another system or program to record thoughts and then import them into TR? If so, what system(s)?

When I'm on the way, I write them down an a piece of paper.

10) Do you use the iCal synchronization? If so, with what program(s)?

Yes, Sunbird. Since I've used that before, I have 2 calendars at the moment, and sync them with my mobile phone.

11) How do you deal with things which could be done "whenever"? Are they ASAP, inactive, scheduled, etc.?[/quote]

inactive.

1) Do you mainly use TR for work, personal, or both?

Both. I find that stuff that I'm doing at home very often requires action during office hours, so I change the context to "@work" and the rest just happens.

2) Do you use just one data file or do you separate them?
Just one. Separating them would hamper a lot of "set-and-forget" capabilities like changing the context to make the item come up at a more appropriate time.

3) What are you contexts? If the list is too long then some primary examples would suffice.
@work, @home, @work or home. I find that too much partitioning can result in missed items. I'd rather have something in front of my eyes, and chose to ignore it, than miss something that is in a list that I don't happen to be looking at right now.

4) What are your topics? For example do you use general topics like Work and Personal or do you have specific topics like Work - ClientName.

Admin
Adhoc Tasks
GTD Process
Project work
Personal

However, I don't as yet see any value in the topics. I have a to-do list and I work through it, the categorisation is largely irrelevant to me.

5) Are your projects highly hierarchical such as Work->Clients->ClientName->ProjectName->Subproject or is it more flat? If it is more flat do you organize it some other way, perhaps with topics, or do you just not need the extra logical levels?
Hierarchical. I use the hierarchy to organise the sequence of actions. Actions that must happen sequentially are collected in a sub-project, and sequences that can run in parallel are in separate sub-projects at the same level.

6) What screen do you spend the most time in?
Actions

7) What options do you use for the review actions screen? Specifically do you like to only see ASAP items mainly or do you see everything but rely on sorting or colorization to differentiate?
I like to see everything that requires action from me now. So the screen includes all active tasks filtered on Action Date and Start Date <= today. The screen is sorted on priority, so that the more important stuff is at the top.

8) Do you leave TR open all the time? If so do you minimize it?
Yes, and yes. A minimise to tray option might be nice.

9) Do you use another system or program to record thoughts and then import them into TR? If so, what system(s)?
Not usually. If a heavy brain dump is required, then I use Freemind and export to text.

10) Do you use the iCal synchronization? If so, with what program(s)? I used to use it with Outlook, very good, except that my Outlook synchronises with my phone and all the tasks created on the phone start with the prefix "Thinking Rock:" at which point you run out of screen, so you have to open the task and scroll to see what it is.

11) How do you deal with things which could be done "whenever"? Are they ASAP, inactive, scheduled, etc.?
ASAP. The priority decides when.

1) Do you mainly use TR for work, personal, or both? Both

2) Do you use just one data file or do you separate them? Only one

3) What are you contexts? If the list is too long then some primary examples would suffice. Pretty much the standard Computer, Calls, Home, Errands, Agendas, Read/Review, Anywhere, ClientLoc, Office

4) What are your topics? For example do you use general topics like Work and Personal or do you have specific topics like Work - ClientName. Work and Personal are sufficient

5) Are your projects highly hierarchical such as Work->Clients->ClientName->ProjectName->Subproject or is it more flat? If it is more flat do you organize it some other way, perhaps with topics, or do you just not need the extra logical levels? As flat as possible.

6) What screen do you spend the most time in? Projects or Review

7) What options do you use for the review actions screen? Specifically do you like to only see ASAP items mainly or do you see everything but rely on sorting or colorization to differentiate? I use the following tabs: Today, NA, Calendar, Waiting for, Done. I am experimenting with using different sort criteria, but try and keep the spirit of GTD.

8) Do you leave TR open all the time? If so do you minimize it? Open

9) Do you use another system or program to record thoughts and then import them into TR? If so, what system(s)? No, not after the autohotkey script !

10) Do you use the iCal synchronization? If so, with what program(s)? No - but I would like to be able to. My current situation does not permit iCal synch.

11) How do you deal with things which could be done "whenever"? Are they ASAP, inactive, scheduled, etc.? Try to keep them as Future items and catch them in the weekly review. When it seems time to do the action, they get put on to the ASAP list or scheduled depending on the level of commitment I make to the action. Actions that have been on the ASAP list for 'a long time' sometimes get moved to the future items list or just plain deleted. If I haven't done something after 3 weeks, either I need to think about it again or am never going to do it.

A personal comment: I really like TR - the implementation in Java is a wise choice, since it permits me to switch between M$ and Linux - a shared data file is all you need. I like how the program allows for 'true GTD' without being too fundamentalist in it's approach. The reports and the review action screen are really powerful once you find out what fits you best.