A lot of photographers (myself especially) find it difficult to push through non “play with Photoshop/lighting/camera” tasks anyways, so adding the extra layer of “I have 10 minutes and a cell phone, what can I get done?” just didn’t work for me. We are a moody type, and are happy when the tasks we need to work on line up nicely with our creative interests for the day

Eric

But I am very new to GTD and this whole “context” business is making my brain feel like it’s melting! I actually started searching for context advice just now – thinking, ‘I need to get my head around this concept to make OmniFocus work for me’… but thanks to you, and comments from others, I’m gonna have a crack at tweaking the context system to suit my natural thought patterns.

Good article

This post was mentioned on Twitter by dmnguys: Why GTD contexts are too much work – http://is.gd/1zZ42...

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I don’t mean anything more spooky here by “creative types” other than those people who repeatedly do creative tasks. The management of creative tasks are different, as you’ve addressed, so I just mean that the level of management that’s appropriate for “corporate types” is different than for creative types. So I think we agree on the processes bit – just I think that over time it’s those processes that make you who you are.

I’ll have to work on my presentation of domains in the future. I now understand how that, combined with some of the ideas I’ve had about creative energy, is key to why some people have such a hard time with the GTD stuff.

@Vered: You don’t give yourself enough credit. You’re one of the most productive people I know, just by the sheer amount of posts and comments you manage to leave. We “theorists” can learn a lot from you.

@Duff: The driving question for contexts is whether they add value to your workflow compared to other techniques. GTD-ish techniques like putting all phone numbers in my cell phone make it such that if I feel like talking and have the time, I can consult my lists and get it done. A @calls context is thus superfluous, as I’ve ingrained that habit and almost always have my cell phone.

I need to talk more about the energy stuff to make it more helpful to those of us struggling with it. How does one provide the appropriate scaffolding techniques that look at energy rather than contexts? There’s a diamond there that I need to mine.

@John: You’re absolutely right that there are a lot of advantages to an online GTD system. The biggest draw for me is not having to copy handwritten stuff over and over again. The biggest drawback is the monkeying around with stuff – I have a tendency to solve non-problems of mine with software and webware. With paper, I get back to what I’m doing faster. But I have to copy stuff. Oh, the dilemma!

@Andre (again): Fewer is definitely better. There are diminishing returns with the more complex your system gets.

@Stuart: Thanks for commenting. One of things I hope readers get out of the stuff I do here is to help roll their own system, as Francis Wade would put it.

@Mike: Damn, another hot topic! My wife and I use a similar technique to queue projects. There’s a fuzzy category that I don’t care much for, but given our shared projects, she finds it useful enough that I withhold my qualms with the system. I definitely need to think more about this. Thanks so much for adding your insight here!

I find that for me it works best to be very ruthless about what I designate as active projects and only track next actions for those projects. I can embed the next action within any project on my Hold list but not have it clutter up the Next Actions. I usually keep it down to 5-10 next actions per domain, so context tagging doesn’t really add a lot of value.

For what it’s worth, I use Ecco Pro as my capture tool, along with the Hipster PDA when I’m off line.

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