![]() If the sole purpose of assigning a context to an action/to-do is to define, at any single point in time, ‘what you can do,’ then I reckon it’s a wasted effort. ![]() In some circles, it might be considered a productivity blasphemy, punishable by a lecture on fountain pens, label makers or ‘fun’ filing! all occur on the same device, what is the benefit of specifying a context at all? David Allen is Wrong (When it Comes to Contexts) In the digital age, a different question needs to be asked: When do I not have all the tools that are needed to do my work?The original logic of GTD contexts has stopped making sense. My team is a swipe away and my calendar goes wherever I go. I don’t need a filing cabinet as everything is stored electronically. My phone is my office and it lives in my pocket. Everything has become connected and interconnected. It therefore made sense to only read those tasks marked as Smart thinking! If you needed to type a memo, you physically had to be at the office. In the pre-digital world, adding a context therefore made a lot of sense. He physically needed to be at the office in order to work. Apps didn’t exist and so his to-do list was on paper. When David Allen wrote Getting Things Done®, the Encyclopaedia Britannica was at its peak and reaching all times sales. Who here still uses an encyclopaedia when looking up information? By organising our to-do’s by context, we ensure that we review only those actions that are actually available to us at any given time. It’s hard to make a phone call without a telephone or buy a box of nails without being at a hardware store. In this quote, David Allen rightly suggests that one cannot complete a to-do if they don’t have the necessary tools at hand. – David Allen, Getting Things Done®, p.49 – These are the first factors that limit your choices about what you can do in the moment Most require a specific location (at home, at your office) or having some productivity tool at hand, such as a phone or a computer. or They provide a way of assigning detail to an action/to-do to further define where and/or how a task will get done. According to David Allen, a context can be a place (I.e. Yet are the benefits of contexts over-stated in the digital age? What are GTD Contexts?Ĭontexts are hugely popular. ‘Contexts’ is a central theme in GTD and feature strongly in most high powered apps on the market. To the uninitiated, many of these features may sound like Spanish (or Swahili.) Yet most are based on the hugely popular to-do list methodology called Getting Things Done® (GTD), by David Allen. ![]() Each app promises something bigger and better. Hundreds of to-do apps wrestle in a competitive market. Search for ‘ to-do list app‘ in Google and it’s likely you’ll fall, like Alice, down a deep, dark rabbit hole. ![]()
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