Areas vs. Contexts
Kar Yung Tom
via web
Hey guys,
I do not wish to spend too much time on this topic, because it is only going to be a waste of time, but what is the difference between Areas and Contexts? How do you decide whether it is more beneficial to use "Work" as an Area as opposed to using "@work" as a Context?
Thanks!
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2 Posted by Terminado on 01 Jun, 2010 10:02 PM
Hi Kar,
This is a personal decision and theoretically, you could use both Work (AofF) and Work (Context). The former is a key area of your life that you are responsible for or focus on, the latter designates "place".
This allows you to filter by both AofF and/or Context. For example, you might be at home (context) and want to see your work (AofF) tasks. Or running errands (context) and want to see your Home (AofF) tasks.
I hope this helps.
3 Posted by Proximo on 02 Jun, 2010 03:02 PM
I use Areas to divide the "Areas" in my life.
Work, Personal, Business, etc.
Areas can also be used for specific focus such as "Blog" for a blog you maintain or "Church" if you are active with activities there.
David Allen explained that Context are to be used for Location or resource. Areas takes care of the location filter at a Global scale and tags can be used for your resource context.
My tags/context are:
email
call
errand
internet
office
home
So what I do is separate my Location (Areas) to match where I currently am. At work, I don't care to see anything related to Personal, Business, Blog or Church. I only want to see the things I need to do at Work.
Once I switch to my "Work" Area, I can start filtering by the resource I need to complete task. If my email is down, I can filter by @call to see what I can be working on related to that resource.
I can be in my car or in someone's office waiting on them to arrive and can filter by @call to get things done in that context.
I always try to keep things simple because it allows me to focus on getting things done. This is how I use Areas vs. Context and I hope it's helpful.
Areas = Location or Focus
Context = Resources
I am hoping Nirvana adds Time and Energy to the task details to prevent us from having to use tags for this purpose. This is a different issue but I mention it because I know many people are using tags for time and energy. Some use tags for priorities as well, but I don't follow the priority model from traditional productivity systems and keep to the GTD way. :-)
4 Posted by Kar Yung Tom on 02 Jun, 2010 04:40 PM
Hmmm, I think the confusion for me, Proximo comes from the fact that almost everything I do regarding work has to take place in the office. I am a QA Specialist at Nokia that mainly sits at his computer all day testing various phones. Most of my time is spent running test cases on the PC.
If I have a Work area, I feel most, if not all, of my tasks will have @office as their context. I am not a manager of any kind, so making calls and such are outside of my realm of responsibilities. Knowing all this, what would be the most efficient method of doing all this? I think Work as an Area is great because using @work, I will still see the other contexts which might de-focus me. Maybe just have Work as an Area with no context for any Work-related tasks.
Side note: I never believed in priorities because what eventually happens is that you will put everything on "high". Using a tip I got from the best-selling book , Re-Work, I now prioritize my Today list by changing the order of the tasks. That way, there's no brain cramp when choosing between many tasks that have "high" priority.
Thanks for the response, guys and Proximo, I am just another ToodleDo convert. I know you have been using time & energy since forever on ToodleDo, but I have declined to do so, because I am not sure the effort required is going to make that big of a difference to me, but it seems to be the case for you.
5 Posted by Proximo on 02 Jun, 2010 06:05 PM
@Kar,
You bring up a great point. You should only use the context that make sense for you and your environment.
If you spend most of your time on the computer where you have access to the Internet and phone to do 90% of your task, there is no need to brake down the task into context that are not useful to you.
The idea of a context is to help you sort out what to work on but this does not mean you MUST create context for the sake of having them.
If you don't think time and energy is that useful for your type of work, you should not bother using it either. You implement what makes sense for you and keep it simple.
I am not currently using time and energy with Nirvana because I don't like using tags for everything. Some call this flexibility, I call it a mess. I tried using some tags for time and energy and was not very happy with it.
I use Areas for Location/Focus and tags for my resource context as it makes sense for what I do and require.
If you are never in a situation where you will make calls outside your office, there is no need for the @call context.
I use the @Office context for things I need to do physically at the office. Sometimes I work from home, so I will be in my "Work" Area, but I know there are some task that I must do at the office and can't do while I remote in from the house. One example is replace back-up tapes. I MUST be at the office to actually do this, so it's not a task I can tackle when working from home.
GTD is simple and too many people over think it and over complicate it. They spend more time figure out ways to tweak their system at a granular level rather than getting things done. :-)
Use what you need and nothing more.
I do wish Time and Energy where done differently in Nirvana because I consider them extremely important to me, but I just don't like using a bunch of tags for my task when I feel this information belongs in the task itself.
6 Posted by Michael Littleton on 08 Jun, 2010 08:20 PM
Interesting, Proximo.
I have always considered context to be both geographical and task-type. i.e. @work being things that can only be done "at work", calls being just calls that be done anywhere, @pc being done at a computer wherever.
I have always given Areas of Focus a more emotional (right word?) meaning. I can't really use the areas section of Nirvana for this, but here is how I've used this. My AoF are things like:
employee
husband
father
giver
son
coworker
...etc
In previous systems I have used, I use this as a gauge to measure if I am balancing myself appropriately. Every few weekly reviews, I would filter all my tasks by my various AoF to make sure that I haven't been focusing too much on being an employee and not enough on being a husband or father. Not that everything has to be equal, but it's been enlightening at times.
The reason I can't put it to use in Nirvana is that tasks can only be assigned one AoF, but tasks such as "Research beach house rentals for summer vacation" can have many AoF like: husband, father, and (my favorite) ME.
7 Posted by Proximo on 09 Jun, 2010 03:05 AM
We may do things differently but the important thing is to be
productive.
I have always kept things simple and to the basics and it has always
given me amazing results.
I am teaching many people where I work about GTD and they all
understand my setup very quickly and they are able to implement it for
themselves just as easily.
With time they all adjust things here and there but I always encourage
them to keep it simple.
Sometimes I find that someone gets comfortable with GTD and they try
to improve on the simplicity with more control and they end up with a
complicated mess instead.
I stear them back to simplicity and they usually feel much better
about the process once again.
Not that this holds true for everyone but the majority of them keep it
simple.
I would go crazy trying to think of so many areas, context, combo
tags, etc.
A few people operate better with chaos so I always tell them to do
what works.
:-)
8 Posted by Michael Littleton on 09 Jun, 2010 03:37 PM
An excellent point, Proximo. I should say that I agree that simple is best. I am just the kind of person that traditionally has spent way too much time at work, with too little spent on other aspects of my life. My use of AoF has allowed me to quantify that and has helped me say no when necessary.
I should also say that I read Making It All Work and started to get overwhelmed by the sudden extra layers of "simplicity". I believe that I will find that your viewpoint of DA's extra mileage from GTD is probably bogus for me. Thanks for helping to put the kibosh on it for me before I got in over my head.
9 Posted by Proximo on 09 Jun, 2010 05:26 PM
I hope David Allen never reads this but I have said it before. I think "Making it All Work" was simply a project to make another book and more money.
I think David Allen is over complicating the simple system he started for the sake of making more material about it.
I also believe the original book could have been 1/4 the size and covered everything without having to use fancy words or having a degree in philosophy.
:-)
I am starting to think that the individuals that picked up a GTD summary from someone who read the book and took the meat out of it, is better off than those who read the entire book. As long as the summary they read was correct. I have read some blogs where they explain GTD incorrectly and this is also why it may still be good to read the book after all. :-)
10 Posted by fjgirante on 14 Sep, 2010 01:31 PM
I agree with the Proximo implementation of Contexts and Areas – I use a similar configuration. But lately I find myself depend almost entirely on AoR and not using Contexts at all, because Nirvana implemented it as tags, which are note productive (you have to write it). If only we could select it or click it, something similar to AoR…
Context are no tags, we need a more efficient way of setting it
11 Posted by bearister2746 on 14 Sep, 2010 01:34 PM
Hi,
Sometimes I'm out of the office and only able to check email a few times each day. I should be able to get back to you fairly soon, but if you need my attention immediately, you can reach me here:
http://awayfind.com/edarmstrong
Be sure to store this link with my contact information in case of an emergency.
Ed Armstrong
--
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David McLaughlin closed this discussion on 01 Feb, 2011 04:22 PM.