TOPIC: Associate more than one context to a single action

jfontana wrote:
I am surprised you both latched on to my alternate technological solution. It was not my main suggestion. I also never actually see it getting added as I think it would be overcomplicating things.

The main suggestion is proper use of the action screens. I wrote how in my original reply.

I do not agree that there needs to be yet another contextual field for actions. The word context - "The circumstances in which an event occurs; a setting"is already including location.

If the context you can do something is only the computer at my work, then @Computer-Work is the context. Action screen setup is how you see all the general @Computer and specific @Computer-Whatever items together.

If you need help setting up the action screens, let me know.

Hi,

Yes, please do show me how you use the action screens to take care of the type of situation I was mentioning. I haven't been able to find any information about the proper use of the action screen in your original reply. Do you mean a message you posted before your previous message?

I insist on the main point of my answer to you: how would having an additional category similar to context (as i.e. Location) make ThinkingRock less usable, less powerful or less simple for you to use? I think I have tried to explain why I think it could make TR more of all those things. You have dismissed the idea but I don't find the arguments or the alternatives you provided all that convincing.

jfontana wrote:
It makes it less usable because it's another field that can get in the way. Keeping things simpler is almost always best.

In my first reply in this thread I gave a quick synopsis of the action screen setup, but I realize now it was too quick. Here is a more thorough description.

First let's add a new action screen tab by going to Tools, Options, and selecting Action Screens. Then you click the Plus sign to add a new tab/view and rename it to, let's say Shopping. You may want to move it up in the list to where you would like it (select it and click the up button).

Now you click Ok, and if you were on the actions screen already you need to go to another place like Collect Thoughts, and then switch back to the Actions screen. Now your new tab appears.

Click on your new tab, it should be showing every action even completed ones because it has no filter. Click on the small button with the picture of a funnel on it that has the caption 'Edit Filters'.

You want to click the checkbox under Use for Done, Status, and Context. Done should be set to 'To Do', and Status should be set to 'DoASAP'.

For Context we will choose Edit Multiple in the list, and a new popup appears called Context. Select each context you want to add, such as @Shopping-Mall01, @Shopping-Drugstore, etc, and click the button with the > sign. When you are done click Ok. Make sure that Context is set on Multiple. Click OK on the 'Selection Filters' screen.

Now your new tab should only show things with any of your shopping contexts.

For further customization you may choose to check the 'show' box in the filter editing for the context, so that you can filter on the fly by selecting one of the pre-selected contexts. Also you may want to click on the columns button to choose different columns to display, I prefer Icon, Done, Description, Action Date, Context, Priority, and Topic myself.

The action screen I have set up most like this is my @Work screen. Though they are all under the one context, my multiple selection is for topic and I choose all topics related to work (Work-ClientName).

I hope this helps, it has really helped me having tabs like this to narrow my focus.

Thanks Purpleflux!

The information you provided on the use of the actions screens will be indeed very useful. I was not aware of all these possibilities and I can already see many possible applications that will make my life easier.

Alas, all this doesn't really solve the problem I mentioned in my initial message. I did a little test and, even though doing what you suggest could simplify things a little bit by reducing the number of relevant contexts that would show up on the screen, the basic problem I was trying to address still remains unsolved.

What I did was to create an action tab connected to one of the locations associated to my work. Of course, by reducing the contexts that are related to that location, I managed to get a lot less elements in the list that appears on that new Action tab. The problem is that they are still way too many.

All the actions connected to contexts like @phone, @computer, @errand, @shopping (which I can assure you in my current life they are a lot) still showed up and I had to sort through them one by one to determine whether they were actions that I could take in that particular location.

The only solution (as was suggested in previous postings) would be to create multiple contexts of the type @computer_locationA, @computer_locationB, @computer_laptop-anyLocation, @errand_locationA, @errand_locationB, etc.

Frankly, that to me complicates things (and still wouldn't be the right solution in some of the scenarios I presented) much more than simply adding a category which we could call 'location' and which people could use creatively to do other kinds of sortings.

jfontana wrote:
Well I had written out a nice long reply but the forum thought I wasn't logged in (yet still showed a log out button)... anyway here is a quick recap since the original reply is lost.

I'm glad to have helped with your action screens, they are really nice.

Yes you need to have a unique context for each, well, unique context you have. It just depends on how fine-grained you want to get. I only have one @Errands context but if I lived far away from separate shopping areas I'd probably have one for each also.

Now that you understand how to accomplish what you need with the program as it already exists, you should be able to present your case better for a location field if you still think it would be better. I can see some advantages and disadvantages of it, and as long as it can be completely disabled I am fine with it being added.

I feel your pain (about losing everything you wrote). This has happened to me a couple of times and it is very annoying. Now I always write it in a text editor and paste it to the forum when I'm finished. If some of the TR people are peeking into this forum, this is perhaps something that should be fixed. Isn't there some way to auto-save postings? Perhaps this is a strategy to prevent long postings :-) but in case it is not, perhaps the time restriction for postings should be extended.

Anyway, purpleflux, thanks for your answer (and for your other longer answer that never saw the light). I will try to learn to live with what TR has now (which is quite a lot). With your tip I will live a little better than before. I just tried to make a case for the extra category because one of the functions of these forums is to provide suggestions for improvements. I think that would be an improvement. If the rest of TR users do not think so, oh well, I'll have to live with that :-)