Is it possible to sort areas somehow? They seem to be sorted alphabetically which I wouldn’t mind but when you add an area it can change the keyboard shortcuts for changing areas given they are based in the order and it takes some time getting used to it.
Is there any way to sort the areas so that the keyboard shortcuts stay stable without renaming the areas and doing weird tricks?
Unfortunately, apart from renaming there is no way to order areas.
Renaming can really be a benefit which obviates the need for manual sorting. Renaming in the UI is simple and intuitive.
A beneficial naming schema is:
#:Name of Area
where # is the associated Shift+# key needed to access that area. Having that # lets you order things however you want and gives you a visual reminder from anywhere in Everdo which # goes with which area.
A more advanced renaming scheme is to do:
Adding this visual back to David Allen’s most recent book helps with implementing the more recent GTD thinking until such integration is released in Everdo.
e.g.
2 Role: Mother
6 Goal: Climb Kilimanjaro
8 AoF: Social
(AoF=Area of Focus)
That’s fine but it adds a lot of visual clutter to the tag lists in the task/project rows, and it also breaks down if you want to use some Areas with @ to double as contexts, like it is mentioned in the documentation about tags.
For example I have an area Work that I want to use as a context but if I make it @Work it moves down to the contexts and doesn’t stay with the areas any longer.
It is a bit messy IMO
I guess at this level of granularity it’s more towards the personal preference than GTD orthodoxy. With phones being able to do everything, contexts aren’t as useful as when the original GTD book was published. I just use a series of physical contexts for things that can only be done in those places…@Barn, @Car or @Work. But @Work isn’t the area of focus concept, just stuff like “certain files are stored in the work building”, “auditorium for presentation only in the work building”.
For me I’d have the area “Work” be something like “Career” or “Profession” and maybe the work context you mentioned be “112 Main St Office”