While completing my weekly review last week I made a fairly radical change (for me) to the way my lists are managed. As I reviewed my @office list, which had extended to over four pages and was not pleasant to work from, I made the decision to change things up and split the contexts. It's not something I would normally do. The @office has been working well for me for a couple of years so this was a pretty big step, but it was worth it. My workload has been steadily increasing over the past 6 months and one office list just isn't quite cutting it anymore. So I now have 3:
- @office
- @websites
- @minutes
These are the contexts that make the most sense given what I have on my plate right now, but I am giving myself the freedom to change them up as things shift around, and return to just one list if things calm down. I already feel much more comfortable and more engaged with my lists and managed to get an action done yesterday afternoon that had been on the list for rather too long!
It took my review to get me thinking at that higher level for long enough to realise that I needed to make the change. The review is such an important part of my GTD journey; it gives me the chance to hold back the world for an hour every week and check that everything is on track. I often find I am my most productive in the hours after the review, secure in the knowledge that what I am doing is what I should be doing, and what I am not doing can wait.
