TOPIC: Associate more than one context to a single action

I've been using TR for a few days now and one of the limitations I find with the current setup is that I'm not able to classify actions/tasks into more than one context.

I don't need to tell people here about the usefulness of the context concept. The ability to create as many concepts as you want is one of the factors that made me decide to adopt ThinkingRock as my main GTD system. I had tried Nozbe and other applications (web and non-web) and they have a few pre-established contexts that you cannot modify or extend. That for me was a big limitation.

Sometimes, though, even if you can create as many contexts as you want, there are tasks that you can perform in more than one context. Not being able to select a particular context and see all the relevant tasks for that context (if you chose a different context when you created the task that would be relevant) is very limiting.

What I do now to get by is to select 'none' as the context (which defeats the purpose of contexts) or to create as many tasks as contexts where those tasks could be performed. The solution is obviously not elegant and it will soon become not sustainable if I keep on increasing the number of tasks and projects at the current rate.

This "problem", I guess, has to do with the structure of the database that is used in TR. So here goes my question for the developers: would it be very difficult to add this feature to TR with a simple modification of the database structure?

I think adding the possibility to associate more than one context to the same task would greatly improve the usability of TR.

Josep M.

+1

That is the main improvement I would like to see in TR too.

There is the data structure problem but also the selection and display of many contexts everywhere, including in reports.

Do you have many combination of contexts that are possible? Otherwise maybe you could create a new context for each combination?

>There is the data structure problem but also the selection and display >of many contexts everywhere, including in reports.

Mmm. Too bad. As for the many contexts, I don't think people would use more than two (three at most). That would be manageable in most reports.

>Do you have many combination of contexts that are possible? >Otherwise maybe you could create a new context for each >combination?

Well as I said in another thread, I work in 3 different locations. In these three different locations I can do different things: calls, computer related work, errands or even shopping. Granted, there are calls that I can do from anywhere, so with a @telephone context there would be enough. But certain calls or certain computer work I can only do in one of the 3 locations. Same for errands. So I would have to create quite a few different context combinations. For instance:

@locationA_telephone, @locationA_computer, @locationA_errand,
@locationB_telephone, @locationB_computer, @locationB_errand,
@locationC_telephone, @locationC_computer, @locationC_errand,

It is a solution but it makes things a bit messy.

With respect to 'errands', I should perhaps clarify. I don't really have a context called 'errands'. What I have is a context which I call 'street' which is basically associated to a list of tasks (mainly shopping and errands) which I can do while I'm in the street. This in fact illustrates even better the problem of not having a more flexible system of contexts.

The problem is that I cannot do all the same errands or shopping in all the locations. There are some errands or shopping which I can only do in the different work locations but there other 'street' related tasks that I can only do when I'm close to home, which is a different location from locations A,B and C.

So, creating context combinations for all of those possibilities would increase the messiness of the system.

Perhaps there is a better solution, though. One that might not be that hard to implement.

In http://www.rememberthemilk.com, which is probably one of the most popular on-line GTD systems, there is a category 'location' which is independent of contexts and which makes things much easier in this respect. This additional category is not only intuitive but it provides a lot of flexibility without creating the data structure problems involved in allowing more than one context to be associated with the same task. It wouldn't create any problems for reports, either, since it is an optional field that can be included or excluded in the reports.

Adding a 'location' category would allow you to manage contexts in the same way you do now, but you would have the extra category location which you could use in case you needed to narrow down the specific contexts.

Probably not many people work in 3 different locations as me, but I think there are a lot of people that work at least at home besides in their work place. Surely being able to narrow down contexts by location would be a feature that a lot of people could benefit from.

What do you think? I think even David Allen would approve :-)

Josep M.

I have 5 contexts for each mall or shopping area where I do my shopping and 4 for all the computers I can used: any computer, the Mac downstairs, the Mac in the office and the Windows machine in the office. In total , I have 19 contexts.

Have you thought of using Topic to enter your location?

But we will consider your suggestion of course.

claire wrote:You just beat me to the idea. This is actually what I use for location and effectively to separate work from home related contexts.