In an earlier article on this blog, we discussed how using the scheduling capabilities within OnePlace to determine what you should work on today is a powerful way to help you focus and gain increased productivity. Another way to focus within OnePlace, which ties in nicely with scheduling your work, are contexts.

Contexts is a concept that has been popularized by the "Getting Things Done" philosophy from David Allen. The main idea behind them is to identify the things you can do now, given your current location and situation, and filter out the things you can't do now. Maximizing your productivity relies on your ability to focus.

Here's an example. Suppose you need to mail some letters. This is a task you probably can't do while sitting at your desk in the office. In that situation, when you go searching for the next thing to work on, you shouldn't even consider this task. It shouldn't be on your radar. However, if you are running around town doing errands, then dropping your letters in the mail is probably something you can do in that situation, however filing last month's sales reports isn't.

Contexts are a personal thing. The contexts that work for you may not work for the person sitting in the next cubical. While it's likely there's some overlap in contexts for people on the same team, to be really effective across all facets of life, contexts are something that each person must be able to define in terms of how they think and act. For that reason, OnePlace allows a user to define his own set of contexts, and then apply these contexts to tasks that are assigned to him.

OnePlace is keenly aware of the power of contexts, and has first-class support for them. To start with, contexts are defined in OnePlace on the Contexts tab under the Account page.

OnePlace allows you to define your contexts in a hierarchical fashion, which is important when you want to focus on a single facet of life. For example, you could create "Home" and "Work" contexts at the top of the hierarchy, and then flesh out each of those contexts with suitable sub-contexts, such as "Home/Inside Chores", "Home/Outside Chores", "Work/Desk" and "Work/Research".

If you're curious about using contexts, but don't quite know how to get started, OnePlace can help you there as well. Simply click the "Add default contexts" link on the Contexts tab, and OnePlace will put a pre-canned set of useful contexts into your personal account for you to use. Start with this set, and morph it over time into a finely-tuned set that works really well for you.

Having a great set of contexts is only half the battle - you need to use them to see any benefit. You do this by assigning a context to a task that is assigned to you.

Once you have applied contexts to all your assigned work, now the real power of contexts shines through. On the "Scheduled Tasks" section of your Home page, there is a "Context" drop down control which has all your contexts listed in it. Choose one of your contexts from this list, and the list of scheduled tasks is automatically filtered to only show you the scheduled tasks that have that particular context assigned to it. If you are using hierarchical contexts, then you'll also see all scheduled tasks that have any of the sub-contexts for the selected context. So, using the example contexts shown above, if you choose the "Home/Inside" context, scheduled tasks with the "Home/Inside", "Home/Inside/Desk" and "Home/Inside/Chores" contexts will be listed. This is extremely useful for allowing you to focus on a certain facet of life.

Wala, you are now focused on just the things you can do given your current context!

But that is not the end of it. You don't stop working when you leave your office do you? Did you know you can access your tasks from your mobile device? You can set your current context via the mobile interface as well. This ability to focus on a particular context while mobile assures that you will maximize your time and get more done. Because that is what is most important anyway, is it not?

So if you haven't been using contexts to help you focus and get more work done, what are you waiting for? Create and use your own set of contexts, and watch your productivity soar!