Productive Organizer

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Introduction

This is part of a series where i talk about my GTD experience and  my setup.

Part 1 here talks about my plan and overview of my GTD system

Part 2 here talks about why i eventually chose iPod Touch 2G as my main to do list console

Part 3 here talks about why i choose Appigo ToDo for iPhone as my main task manager

Part 4 here talks about how to plan for big projects and smaller projects

Part 5 here talks about how to make use of Contexts, Tags to Execute your tasks

Part 6 here discuss about how you can review projects better using iThoughts mind mapping software

In today’s article i will talk more about execution of tasks and how you do that with the help of contexts and tags.

So what are Contexts and Tags?

In a sense, contexts and tags are categories that you assign to your tasks or projects so that you can better manage them. The problem for most people is that no one gives them a systematic way or methodology of grouping things. Because of this, alot of people i know feels categories dun work.

The worse i seen are color categories in MS Outlook. The problem with that is, whenever you look at that category color, you starting thinking:

What did i tie that color to?

and then,

What should i be doing for the category that this color is tied to?

That is just a waste of brain power i feel.You take 2 steps in your head to finally come to review what you need to do. Most of the time, u take so long to remember what that color is for haha.

How David Allen Categorize is based on primarily 3 kinds of actionable task that you will do:

Location Based

These are categorized as location restrictions that stops you from doing other tasks that happens when you are in this context. Some Examples:

• @Errands
• @Commuting
• @Office
• @Home

I usually have these contexts on my Appigo ToDo Context instead of Tags. Why i use context is because context on Appigo ToDo is because you can only select one context and not multiple. So essentially it means,

If i am at the office, i cannot be at home

I thought for location based categories these are the best. A note is that some people would include an @Anywhere category for tasks that you can do anywhere. I don’t have that in mine as if I don’t select a context to filter or i don’t assign one, it automatically means i can do it anywhere.

Mode,Chunk Based

This is abit more tricky. David Allen describes that there are tasks that when you are in that category you can be more productive doing them at one go. Mine would include:

• @Waiting For
• @To Contact
• @Online w Computer
• @Project A
• @Project B

Some people schedule themselves or have a mind trigger to let them know that they are in such a mode or schedule work chunks like these. They don’t belong to a certain location but if you are reviewing what you are waiting for to be done so that you can reach your objective, you might as well look at what other bottlenecks are there. Same as for online with computer. if you are online, might as well finish all you can do online.

On Appigo ToDo, I use Tags for these, more as a preference since I leave the location based categories as Context and those that i would need to select multiple categories as Tags. So it means that i can select @Waiting for and @To Contact to see bottle necks and people necessary to contact.

People Based

These are categories of stuff that you would want to review with a particular individual or group of individuals. Some common ones are

• @Boss
• @Project Team A
• @Colleague A
• @Wife

So as you can see, they are not location but adhoc meet ups or arranged meet ups with people(s). On Appigo ToDo I use Tags (similar to Mode/chunk based tasks) so that i can select multiple people I have agendas with.

Schedule and Execute

This flow chart illustrates how you can make a decision about what are the steps that can take place in your typical day to get things done.

Having contexts and tags are well and good but how successful you are at doing it or executing the tasks and completing them is a matter of your understanding of yourself and your categories. I learn the hard way that doing and execution is important, if not work just keeps pilling up while you put so much contexts and tags that you spare little time in doing the actual work.

i – Review Projects and Chunks/Modes of Focus for the day

It is always good to spend 10 minutes when you wake up to plan what you gonna do for the day. Most of our tasks vary in size/duration, location, who we met and complexity.

In Review Big Projects/Sub Projects, you take a look at your Areas of responsibility and identify urgent, important, high priority tasks to perform. These are normally the tasks that determines your success or fulfill your goals for the major projects or areas of responsibility.

Allocate and Plan Chunks/Modes of Focus so that you give yourself enough time to do them. Finishing them and checking them off goes a long way to fulfilling important goals and areas of responsibility.

Most of us belongs to office working people and for me I am in a line where i have much IT projects to fulfill. My tasks are big and they take up fair amount of time.These big projects also determines the success of my Area’s of Responsibility.

For this I rely on Google Calendar sync to my iPod Touch to perform the planning.

Fixing this means I focus fully on the task at hand.

ii – Filtering by Location Based Categories

When i enter the office i would switch my Filter for Appigo ToDo to @Office or @Site. Whats on my lists are all location constraint tasks.

I would then review my Chunks/Modes of Focus on my Calendar, then go to Appigo ToDo to further filter it by the Mode/Chunk based category to see what are the next actions.

iii – If I need to go to another location

When i leave my office to go on site or home, I switch to @Commuting on my Context and if i have the strength i will think or do them, If not i sleep!

Once I reach home, I will switch to @Home again , then filter further by Chunks/Modes of Focus and then performed the tasks.

iv – If I meet up with someone

Say if I see my boss or team, I switch to @Boss or @Vendor A to see if I have agendas to explain or review with him/her.

v – If I have spare time while doing on my main Chunks/Modes of Focus

If i have time or waiting for someone to get back to me for a short while , say 30 mins, I switch to my @Waiting For or @To Contact category to review and take action on these similar things.

vi – Review Again once task is done

Should i finish my major tasks for the day, I would go back to my calendar on iPod to Review what are my next focus area and then go about to perform them, thereby repeating the flow all over again.

This comprehensive workflow works for me, might not be for you. But you can use it as a reference to create one for yourself.

My tasks belongs in a shared project with my colleagues, do i duplicate the tasks to my local projects on my PDA or GTD software?

This happen to me as well since we keep Microsoft Project Plans and our schedules and tasks are on the plans.

I took an advice on David Allen’s GTD forum to not duplicate tasks on personal and shared project plans. I think its the right way as sooner or later duplicating so many tasks is going to make you go mad!

what you can do is to review the schedule. Use your Google Calendar or Live Calendar to plan out when you are suppose to do these big tasks based on your review of your Ms Project plans.

Only put tasks that are meant for yourself that you will take it out of your office based contexts e.g. @Office and @Site  and put them in your own Appigo ToDo list.

Some examples are:

• Brainstorm about the best format to store Time and Date (@Commuting)
• Inform vendor A that they are suppose to give us the set of test equipment (@To contact,@Waiting For)

Don’t put stuff like:

• Code module A after Engineer B makes an amendment to diagrams (@Project A,@Office)

This is doing double work since you would have to review your own Appigo ToDo list and your project Plans and they end up displaying the same thing. Only leave it to tasks that you would do out of the project plan context or as a reminder to do a task that you are able to even if you are available outside work context, such as

• @To Contact
• @Boss
• @Vendor A

That is if you like to take your work out even if its a saturday or sunday!

Working with Location Based Categories

Many would as me when they have tasks that can only be done on either Site or Office what should i do then? In that case, have a Context named @Site or Office. My advice here is that, try to limit to locations where you frequent more than a number of times per week. Either that or use Tags instead of Contexts for location based categories so that you can check both Site and Office.

This would depend on the robustness of the software you use. I don’t like to see my Appigo ToDo Context or Tags to fill with redundant Categories, So i understand them and generalize to a certain extend. So try not to have e.g.

• @Shopping Mall A
• @Shopping Mall B
• @Pet Shop A
• @Hardware Shop A

When you visit them like once per six months. Use @Errands tag should be good enough.

If you visit your in-law’s place and would like to read a book to not talk to your in-laws (i heard this is quite common lol) you can have categories like @in-laws as you are likely to be there alot of times per week.

Help I have too many people based categories!

What I used to do is for a sub project that was delegated to colleagues I would open a project and put tasks to the project and assigned it to them. I would then tag it with @delegate, @person’s name.

The delegate tag is to ensure that I can filter tasks to review all my delegated tasks

The person’s name tag is so that when I get hold of the guy or lady I am able to ask for updates obthe specific task.

Sound like a good plan but it can be quite problematic:

You can list down 5 person as contexts but when you have randomly 20 people that you need to make agenda to, your contexts will be very cluttered.

• Vendor A
• Vendor B
• Colleague A
• Colleague B
• Boss
• blah
• blah
• blah
• blah

If you had that much people listed for agendas you are most likely not going to review them in your weekly review.

What can be done? I can’t think about much except to group these people into groups dealing with a certain context. Accounts team,  logistics team. But I don’t think it’s gonna be helpful.

The most you can have as agenda contexts are you immediate working people e.g boss and subordinates.

Should i have both @Waiting For and @Delegate to X?

Purely I think you should, if you are doing it for reviewing purpose. You will gain a consolidated view of all tasks that were delegated and needs your attention to check back with.

However people have a tendancy to put tags for delegated tasks with @waiting for as well as delegate since if you review waiting for you want to see what is out of your control.

This make it seem that delegate and waiting for are 2 distinctly different actions but after much thought they are essentially the same.

Waiting for is delegating to others whether to colleagues partners or friends. So why should you have another delegate context

Thus based on this reasoning I should only have waiting for. We should not seperate delegation and waiting for since they mean roughly the same context.

Conclusion

Working with Contexts and Categories and how to make use of them is difficult. It all boils down to your understanding of how you work best and how to tag them to the 3 groups of categories and setting the right trigger for them.

As a Bonus, here are some articles that i found that would help you work with contexts much better:

• What is not a GTD Context?

I think that wraps up this GTD Series for the time being. I may have more ideas on GTD to expand this series so do let me know more areas that you would need information for.