Areas of focus - love them
Hi,
I read somewhere that you may nix the areas of Focus in the next implementation. That would be a shame! I've been trying the program for a few days now and I love it - especially the Areas of Focus. You click "Work" and everything - Next, Projects, Scheduled, gets filtered instantly. I can focus exactly on what's needed for work. Then when I get home or I take a break at work, I can click "Personal" AoF and everything magically gets filtered accordingly. Would one be able to do the same thing with tags (filter across all categories - Next/Today/etc)??
Comments are currently closed for this discussion. You can start a new one.
2 Posted by Proximo on 10 Aug, 2010 02:50 PM
@Alex,
I am not totally sure if Areas of Focus will be changed to a tag based version.
I do LOVE Areas of Focus as it works today, but Elbert did mention that we will not loose any functionality if the change takes place.
I hate having a bunch of tags across the top of the UI, so I am nervous on what will happen to AoF.
Maybe Elbert can give us an update on the direction.
I would hate to see a long list of tags on the top of my UI that clutter things up.
3 Posted by Alex on 10 Aug, 2010 03:17 PM
Proximo,
Exactly my concern. Let's hope Elbert has a good implementation in mind that doesn't clutter the view.
Incidentally, that's one weird aspect of having a web app - any changes to the GUI/app take on a lot more weight because we can't choose to stay behind with what we like. Everybody, like it or not, has to upgrade when changes are made! Great for the developer (no need to support multiple version of software but scary for users!).
4 Posted by Keith on 10 Aug, 2010 07:22 PM
Like I said in my first post, I'm confused about areas of focus vs tags since they seem like the same thing to me except with a different UI for filtering them, so I'd be fine with something more unified.
You'd just need to be able to select multiple tags at once, and maybe have a "sticky tags" list in the left nav, or something.
5 Posted by Proximo on 10 Aug, 2010 10:04 PM
@Keith
Areas of Focus are like UBER Tags that filter all your list based on that Area.
David Allen teaches that context are location based and resourced based. A location would be something like "Work" while a resource is "@email".
Areas of Focus simply allow you to have a Master Context to filter the entire UI at the same time. One example of this would be having an area for "Home" and one for "Work".
When you are at work, you don't care to see anything related to Home, so you change your focus to "Work". Now every list in the left Navi is filtered with task and project only related to the Area of Focus you choose.
While filtered by "Work" area, I can then focus my tags/context to filter our task based on the resource I need to do them. You can then further filter by Time and Energy to really get down to the stuff you should be doing at the moment.
If Areas of Focus are changed into the tag area, it CAN work in the same way, but they will be special tags that filter the entire UI and allow you to further filter by a resource tag. This is kinda the idea that Elbert was proposing to change too.
The Area Tags will have a special color and badge that distinguishes them from other tags. Not sure how multiple Areas will be handled correctly with this idea and this is why I am asking Elbert to jump in and give us an idea of how it will work.
Elbert may have decided to no do this, but if he does, I am sure it will be done in a great way.
The important thing here is that you should be able to filter by an Area of Focus or Location one way or the other and you should also be able to filter by a resource.
Here are my current Areas of Focus:
Work
Personal
Business
Family
Finance
Health
Home
Self Defense
My context (tags) are:
agenda
call
chore
computer
email
errand
home
internet
office
read
I hope this helps clarify a little.
6 Posted by Alex on 11 Aug, 2010 01:52 PM
Proximo's explanation is so good that it should be a sticky or part of a wiki for the use of AoF vs tags.
It is precisely that feature of AoF that I like so much. Right now I just have a "Work" and a "Personal" Areas of Focus and it's very powerful. As someone else said, I arrive at work, click on /Focus/Work and boom all the open loops from "Personal" melt way. At home, I can do the opposite, click "Personal" and I can just focus on those tasks without the distractions/worries of my work responsibilities.
So, I am really hoping that whatever is the direction that Elrand has in mind, the AoF remain a special feature of the UI. From his post on the API, I think that's his plan.
7 Posted by Keith on 11 Aug, 2010 05:53 PM
Obviously this is a powerful feature and the capability should stay. I was just saying that tags and AoF are basically "the same thing" and the UI just gives you different ways of filtering them, AoF letting you focus on a "tag" for the whole UI at once, whereas tags filter "one screen at at time".
I can have an AoF named "finances" and tag something with "finances" and the task assigned to both says "finances finances".
8 Posted by Proximo on 11 Aug, 2010 07:48 PM
@Keith
You are correct. The only thing I do differently is that I try to keep my AoF realted to a Location or specific area of my life and use tags for only my resources.
I don't have any overlap except for my Home AoF and my Home Tag, but I use these in a combination where I don't have both selected for any one task.
9 Posted by Karl Jolly on 12 Aug, 2010 03:55 PM
I too really like the focus functionality.
I have recently expanded my focus areas to utilise a principle from 7 Habits which is one of roles.
I know have a focus set up for each of my roles in life i.e Father, Husband, Team Leader, Friend etc etc.
This allows me to consider my tasks in each of these roles and make decisions about what is the most important next action I could take that would have the biggest impact on that role/relationship.
I'm finding it really works for me and is just another way of following the sound principles of 7 habits in the Nirvana/GTD process.
:-)
10 Posted by Dean on 12 Aug, 2010 04:09 PM
I too like the focus idea of combining the roles with the GTD... Very good Idea....
Thanks!
11 Posted by Proximo on 12 Aug, 2010 04:16 PM
@Karl,
Can you be my friend? I don't know of any friends that would put me in a focus group. :-)
12 Posted by MarcinGTD on 12 Aug, 2010 06:52 PM
I have asked the devs over the twitter about it and they reponded that there are no plans for removing areas and that they were misunderstood.
Checkout nirvanahq's twitter to the question and anwser
13 Posted by Alex on 13 Aug, 2010 02:54 AM
Marcin,
That's great news.
But I'm twitter challenged. I couldn't find the twitter you mentioned.
14 Posted by MarcinGTD on 13 Aug, 2010 07:43 AM
http://twitter.com/Slith_hideout/status/20535567005 here you go
"@Slith_hideout ah, people misunderstand. we are simply adopting #tag notation for the quickentry field. to do #home would be nice no?"
David McLaughlin closed this discussion on 02 Feb, 2011 05:40 PM.