The Importance of Context

Ever since reading Getting Things Done by David Allen many years ago, I have thought often about contexts. Allen describes contexts as one of the constraining factors for what you can get done at the current moment. If you have a task that involves setting up the desk in your home office, you can only do that when you are at home. Therefore, the context for this task is home. Contexts allow you to filter down your task list to only what can be done then and there. It is a way to focus and simplify, allowing you to be present within the moment.

Contexts are easiest to explain with physical location, and this is one of the ways Allen leans on in the original book to describe them. Leaning heavily on physical location to exemplify contexts has led to what I believe is people prematurely dismissing contexts. Often cited is our ability to work anywhere with many devices, meaning that context is part of a bygone era (I mean, Allen uses @internet as a context in the original book, so I get it that the concept feels outdated at first glance). However, I have always had an inkling that thinking in contexts is not only important but may also be one of the more important parts of the system (possibly only trumped by the idea of getting everything out of your head). When it comes to the consideration of contexts in the modern era, you just have to be a bit creative.

Contexts themselves are highly personal. Perhaps energy level is a useful context for you, or Mental States, or devices (iPhone, laptop). The tried-and-true physical place is still useful as well. The more you consider what contexts you have throughout your life, the more you can remain focused and simplify the moment. The ability to work anywhere, instead of making contexts less useful, actually makes them more useful. Not only do they allow you to see only what can actually get done in the moment, but they also help bind the moment. The goal of real productivity is to be able to work in a way that allows for maximum enjoyment of life (not productivity for productivity’s sake). The magic of Allen’s system is in its simple tenets—get things off your mind by offloading tasks into a trusted system, and only see what needs to get done when you can actually act on it (i.e., within the correct context). We can also add to the system: bind work where it belongs—in focused moments of intentional effort. When I am playing with my son at night, that is the only thing I want to be concentrating on, but when I sit in my office, on the computer without anyone else home, I want to see the tasks that are best accomplished in this specific context. On top of all that, well-considered contexts allow you to decide to use them deliberately in order to set yourself in the right mindset to work on something that needs to get done.

Give it a shot. Consider the physical location, your devices, the mindset that is best, the energy level needed, where you find yourself getting needed tasks completed the best or with the least effort. Get creative and experiment. A context is whatever you would like it to be that is unique to your life. I believe this to be an extremely useful and underutilized tool.

One more thing: don’t get too rigid about it. Just as each of us will have unique contexts, these contexts will change, be added to, and fall away as our lives change – from the changes that occur day to day, all the way through changes that occur over decades as well as over our lifetimes.