Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Defining GTD contexts with what's available

David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) approach is a popular method for organizing your lists and tasks. This week’s tip, shared by kyle.faber, suggests a unique way to frame GTD contexts in Remember The Milk, as tools instead of locations.

So using RTM to accomplish my personal GTD implementation (as is the way) leads me to find that my contexts are sometimes (always) defined by the tools I have at my disposal in certain situations vs where I am or what I am doing. Examples of this include websites that don’t work in mobile, downloads I need to accomplish or phone calls I need to make when I’m in a noisy environment. So I add context indicators to my tasks that qualify them as tools necessary (or optional) to accomplish a task.

• PC
• Wifi (generic for all internet)
• iPad
• Mobile
• Desk
• Alone
• Etc.

So I then create Smart Lists that look for Next Actions that can be accomplished using the tools I have at my disposal. Here’s a generic example:

Work: tag:na AND (tag:PC OR tag:ipad OR tag:mobile OR tag:wifi OR tag:desk) AND (location:Work OR isLocated:false)

When I’m at work, I have access to a PC & my iPad & my desk & internet, so a lot of tasks show up. But when I’m commuting on the train, I have fewer tools at my disposal:

Train: tag:na AND (tag:ipad OR tag:mobile) AND timeEstimate:“< 35” AND isLocated:false

I want to open my PC, I don’t have Wi-Fi for my iPad and I don’t have a desk. I also only ride the train for 35 minutes, so I don’t want to see tasks that will take an hour, even if I can do them from my mobile phone (like watch a long Netflix video). I also don’t want to see any contexts that are location dependent because I don’t have a location that matters.

This approach allows me to very quickly figure out how to be productive in new locations and situations because I just look at the tools around me and bang out a quick Smart List with what I’ve got.

• Work From Home (same as work, but the location is changed)
• Airplane
• Remote Desk (another company office, not my HQ)
• Hotel

Thanks for sharing this tip, kyle.faber! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we’ll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.