Why do project tasks inherit that project's area of focus?
Tara
via web
In the knowledge base I found this quote:
"It is assumed (rightfully so!) that if a Project belongs to a specific area, then all the tasks should too."
I can think of a thousand reasons why this shouldn't be. A very basic example being the need to run an errand to get supplies before being able to complete the next task at home. Both tasks are in a "home" related project, but both tasks are not to be done at home.
It would seem that AoF are not as flexible (and not as useful) as Contexts in OmniFocus. If AoF are not meant to be used as Contexts for a task, then what are they for? And what can I use as a Context (please don't say Tags)?
I'm afraid this issue will keep me from fully adopting Nirvana despite loving it so far.
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2 Posted by Chris on 27 Aug, 2010 11:59 PM
Hi Tara,
I"m kind of new myself, but "Area of Focus" is not the same thing as the "Tag", which you would use for the type of context you're referring to. It's confusing because often people use "Work" and "Home" as example of both "Area of Focus" and "Contexts".
Nirvana has a "tag" feature, which is where they expect you to put things like "errands", "phone", "computer", "home", etc.
The "Area of Focus" is really for those people who are wanting to separate their personal tasks from their work tasks. It's easier to distinguish from the contexts if you use "Personal" and "Professional" as examples of areas of focus.
So once you get that figured out, you'll see that yes, all tasks of a particular project should have the same area of focus. If you're doing a "personal" project, then all tasks under that will be related to something in your personal life. The categories you're referring to (such as "errand") are contexts, and they're done with tagging. And of course, different tasks within the same project can have different contexts, as you point out.
Hope that makes sense!
3 Posted by Chris on 28 Aug, 2010 12:01 AM
lol...I missed where you said "please don't say tags". But um, yeah, the answer is tags ;)
(why don't you want to use tags for context?)
4 Posted by Proximo on 28 Aug, 2010 04:31 AM
Areas of Focus are used for Location based context or a specific responsibility.
Tags are used for resource context just like many GTD applications do.
Here is an example of my AoF.
Home
Personal
Family
Work
Business
Self Defense
Health
As you can see that some of my AoF are location based while others focus on a particular responsibility.
Tags are used for your resource context such as:
Call
Internet
Computer
Office
Errand
Chore
Read
In your example, my Home project would be in my "Home" AoF but I would have task associated with the correct tags (context), such as Errand in this case.
hope that makes sense.
5 Posted by Tara on 29 Aug, 2010 03:17 PM
Thanks all for your insights on this topic. I may find a way to make this work for me. I'm going to give it a try this week.
To explain my aversion to tags, they are fine for large decentralized social networks. But for an individual, the entries are likely to be more consistent and structured categories with defined entries (created quickly on-the-fly) are more appropriate.
Personally, the AoF as described is less useful for me and the prominence in the UI didn't seem warranted for what it did. Again, that's just me and now I understand how others are using it.
Thanks again for your help understanding this.
Best regards,
Tara
David McLaughlin closed this discussion on 02 Feb, 2011 06:06 PM.