Is there a way to have different areas within the same project? Maybe it’s just because I am new to GTDNext but I can’t see a way to do this.
For example, I have a To Do List as a project and a number of items beneath it that I need to do. If I set the area for the To Do List as household then all of the items below it are set to household as well. If I want a few of those items to be something else, say errands, there does not seem to be a way to change those few items from household to errands. Is there a way to do this that I am missing or if not is it possible to add this feature to future versions?Currently I am not using any areas and am just using tags instead.
Hi Auroa - Great question! The Areas feature is not the same as context and it sounds like you may be using them as context.
Instead, here is what I would suggest. Change your areas to be the your “Areas of Focus” in your life. I for example use the following. Work, Personal, Family, Household.
Then you would use tags for context or other attributes. So for example, create tags that say, “Errand, Phone, Office. House” These would be your contexts. Contexts usually refer to the physical spot you need to be in to do that item, or the tool(s) needed to do it.
Then you will be able to filter your projects just using tags.
And, @AuroraYK, yet another way of describing the difference would be to say that the Area of Focus (also called Area of Responsibility in GTD) identifies the purpose of doing the task whereas a context identifies a situational requirement (a location, tool, mood, particular person to assist you etc) for being able to do the task. No matter what purpose the different tasks have (work, private etc) they can still often require the same context, e.g. for you to be out (errand) or with a person or having a computer at hand etc.
GTDNext has yet another feature you can use for Areas of Responsibility, and groups of related AoRs, and for goals - the project hierarchy. If you prefer, you can put your areas (or groups of AoRs) as top containers in the project hierarchy and have the various projects (and/or individual AoRs) sorted neatly under each such heading. That is my preferred approach, but I still think it is useful to also have the “area tags” for quick filtering. (For example, in my own GTDNext setup I have five top containers but only two area tags and ten AoRs.)
It does not ever really happen to me that actions in a project can belong to different areas, because they belong to a given project and that project belongs to a given AoR, which belongs to a defined group of AoRs.
Thanks @Folke and @James for your replies. I will be playing around with it to see what will work for me. I am new to the concepts within GTD, but I look forward to learning all about it. Next step . . . read the book!
This threw me off as well and I’m familiar with GTD. I had assumed areas meant context because in one of the tutorial videos the guy actually says that, so nice to have that information corrected. It would also be nice to actually have a context for actions, to be more familiar for GTD users, but I guess I can work with tags and will try that.
Yes Tags=Context+. Tags are Contexts, with the added flexibility of being whatever else you want them to be. We really don’t see the need to have two separate concepts. Tags AND Context is just two things to manage when you really only need one to handle both uses. Hope that make sense!
