Comments on: ~Adding a Personal Touch to Contexts

By: Paul Haroutunian

Paul Haroutunian — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 20:26:49 +0000

Thanks

By: John Kendrick

John Kendrick — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:56:26 +0000

Ivan – Good question and the answer is, it depends. If I regularly meet with the person at least once per week, then I assign the task to that person’s context. I do this because before my regular meetings, I print out that person’s context list and use it for my notes during the meeting. If it is not someone who I regularly meet with, e.g. Project Managers fall into this category often, then I assign it to the waiting context and check in with them at the end of the week when I review my waiting context. I do include their name at the end of the task text.

It would be great if OmniFocus had the ability to assign more than one context to a task. Then I could assign waiting and the personal context and have the best of both worlds. So the way I am handling waiting now is somewhat of a compromise, but it works for me. Hope that helps, and thanks for reading. John

By: Ivan

Ivan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:26:02 +0000

Hi John,

What is the difference between Waiting context and Personal context in you system?
If you delegate some task to John Doe (and want to keep tracking about this task), you put this task to “John Doe” context or to the “Waiting” context with prefix “John Doe:” (eg “John Doe: do something with software”) ?
How do you deicide what context to use – Personal or Waiting?

How do you divide tasks you want to discuss with “John Doe” (eg agenda tasks which you should do when you’ll meet John Doe) and task you are waiting from John Doe (tasks delegated to him)?
Having two different John Doe context (“active” for agenda task and “on hold” for waiting tasks) looks overcomplicated.

Thanks!

By: David

David — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:31:24 +0000

Great! Thanks.

By: John Kendrick

John Kendrick — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:24:47 +0000

Hi David – yes. Change to context mode and set the view bar to group by completed, sort by completed, and filter by completed. The group by completed is what provides the headings, “Completed Yesterday”, etc. that you see in this post. Hope that helps and thanks for reading, John.

By: David

David — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:03:46 +0000

Hi John,

Great post. Can you explain how you sort by past time (Copleted yesterday, etc.)

By: The Omni Mouth » Short webby round-up

The Omni Mouth » Short webby round-up — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:44:22 +0000

[...] From John Kendrick’s blog, a post on using people as contexts in OmniFocus. (As for me, I only have one personal context in my OmniFocus document, titled “Clive [...]

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:52:29 +0000

Hi John,
I’m like your idea of using people as contexts, especially for quickly gathering agenda topics. But I’m curious if you specify their context status to be “on hold” or active? It seems that “on hold” may be the right answer because typically you can’t move the project forward if the next action is to discuss or wait-for something from the person.

Thanks
-Alex

By: Marcel

Marcel — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:30:25 +0000

Looking forward to it. TIA

Marcel

By: John Kendrick

John Kendrick — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:16:19 +0000

Marcel – That is the topic of the next post, which I have already started working on. I’m hoping to have it posted within the week. Thanks for reading, John