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Context is King

So I thought it might be interesting to do a greatest-hits of the techniques introduced in the GTD system, with an eye towards describing methods that could be adopted independently of the rest of the practices. To kick off this series, I’m going to start with the idea of grouping items by context.

Lists lie at the heart of the GTD system; among others, practitioners maintain lists of their potential (i.e., not-yet-committed-to) projects, their active projects, and - for each active project - the next physical action that must be taken to advance towards completion.

The next actions list is sort of like a to-do list on steroids; the rules of the system ensure that only real next actions can be placed on it, so at any given time you should be able to do anything on the list and you’ll be moving one of your projects along.

Here’s the nifty insight that I want to focus on at the moment: the GTDer is encouraged to group the items on their next actions list by context. If something can only be done at the office, you put it under an ‘office’ heading on the list. If something can only be done online, you put it under an ‘online’ heading. If the action is a phone call, you put it under a ‘calls’ heading. That way, you’re maintaining a single list of next actions at all times - but you can review whatever portion is relevant to the context you’re in when you need it. Stuck in traffic? Pull out the list, scan the ‘calls’ subsection and start yakking. Got a few free minutes at home? Check for entries in the ‘home’ subsection.

Contextual grouping of next actions is one of those brilliant-but-obvious-in-hindsight things that you wish you’d been doing forever; once you start, I guarantee you’ll never go back.