For me, as a computer engineer, I spent most of my working time (and much of my playing time) at the computer. The most difficult set of contexts for me has to do with my work on a computer. OmniFocus allows you to only show the “Available” contexts (i.e., those with an available action), so you automatically get a list of all the places you need to go. In this case, I find it most useful to have a context called “Errands” and a child context for each place that I might need to stop off (e.g., “Home Depot”, “Starbucks”, “Target”). When I think about contexts for places, it nearly always has to do with running errands.

I’ve found that having a context for a person with whom I don’t have a routine meeting just leads to my ignoring those tasks because I’m never in that context. Instead, I’d put that sort of task in my “Office” or “Home” context (or wherever I’m likely to find that person). There are lots of people with whom I may need to talk, if I have to go out of my way to find them, it doesn’t work to make a specific context for that person. The important principle is that you only really have a context for that person if you already have a routine meeting with them. For couples, this may be your weekly date night. For people in a corporate environment, this may be your weekly one-on-one with your boss. There are some people with whom I routinely have meetings of one kind or another. The best way I’ve found to identify your contexts is to ask yourself: “What situations to I routinely get into where I can do some things, but not others?” I’ve found this gives me a number of different kinds of contexts right off the bat. Then, just when things feel perfect, something changes in my life and it’s back to the drawing board. So I’ve fiddled and tweaked and adjusted until finally I think I’ve got them just right. I’ve had contexts which always feel incomplete: like I need to see it along with another context to really make a decision. I’ve had contexts which always seem to have way too many things in them. I’ve had contexts which I never seemed to look at. One of the things I’ve struggled with over the years with my GTD setup is choosing the right contexts. * Of course, you should still use the normal steps to choose an action in the moment, but I find it helpful to know that things are roughly in order of importance when scanning the list. Explicitly identifying and sorting your areas of focus can help you get clarity on whether you’re spending your time where you really want to.During your weekly review, the folders serve as reminders to do a quick mind dump for missing projects in that area of your life.By sorting your projects by importance, your tasks will also be sorted by importance when you see then in a specific context.* By default, OmniFocus will order tasks in the context view according to their order in the project view.Then, I order those folders by their relative importance to me. But, what folders? I’ve found it most useful to create a new folder for each Area of Focus (i.e., the 20 thousand foot level described in GTD), and to organize my projects within each one.

FoldersĪs my projects list has grown, I’ve found it increasingly necessary to break things down using folders. When I mention this, I frequently get a question like: “Oh, how do you set it up?” Unfortunately, it’s rather difficult to answer that question in a simple conversation, so over the next few days/weeks, I’ll share some of the particular things I do which make things work well for me. I’ve been using OmniFocus for GTD since OmniFocus was released as a limited Alpha version, and I’ve spent a lot of time tweaking and tuning my system until it’s pretty much just right for me. However, OmniFocus is not a simple product, and many people have trouble figuring out use it to best effect. As I mentioned previously, I use OmniFocus extensively to keep myself organized using the Getting Things Done method by David Allen.

Omnifocus gtd