Context-Switching Hooks: Tape it to Your…

One of the biggest problems I’ve had with GTD to date has been with reminders geared toward switching contexts. Like, if I know I need to bring something home from the office when I leave, or when I need to stop by location X when on my lunch hour. Things like this generally appear clearly on my next action or other context-sensitive lists, but it’s setting up my current context so that when I leave it, I’ll know what needs to be done (as well as what needs to be taken with me).

I’ve got an idea (which admittedly borrows from one of The David’s suggestions) for how to deal with this; one that I haven’t fully implemented yet and was looking for some feedback on…

When I sit down at my desk at work, for instance, there are only a handful of contexts I can transition to directly: driving, home and possibly errands. etc. And I know that when I leave my work “context”, I’ll be taking certain things with me (wallet/hipster, keys, cell phone, etc.). So, with that in mind, a hypothetical:

I’m at work, it’s 2:00pm (long before I’ll be leaving for the day). My wife calls me and asks me to bring home some item from the office, say some 401(k) forms or something. How does that fit into the normal project/task management schema of GTD? I can add it to my list of things to do while at work, maybe even make it a project (“get forms” and “put forms in backpack” being the primary actionable steps). But if I’m knee-deep in a project all day and flat out don’t remember to get the forms, I’m up a creek.

So, knowing myself and my mind as untrustworthy, I “put it in front of my door”, so to speak. But, in this case, “the door” can vary depending on the target context. In this case, I know I’m going to need to have my car keys with me to simply get home, so that’d be a prime location for a small paper reminder saying something like “401(k) forms”. Alternately, if I needed to go to the server room to reboot something (or, as in some cases, kick something), what would I bring with me? In this case, it would be a little screwdriver I keep with me when I anticipate having to pull a computer apart.

The idea, boiled down, is this: if you have business in other contexts, mark what those other contexts would require with reminders. Going to the breakroom? Need to remember to grab a couple paper plates for the hundred screws you’ll be removing from the computer you’re going to fix? Tape “paper plate” to the 3 $1 bills in your wallet. Need to remember to call your bookie on the way home from work? Tape a note to your car keys (or, if you think of it early enough, your steering wheel) that says “settle debt with mob”. You get the idea.

Again, this isn’t something I’ve been able to practice in full (as it’s a fairly new idea), but I’m curious to hear thoughts. Also, how do you folks handle these situations?

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