Vitalist Preview #1: Contexts as Tags
March 12th, 2007 / 21 CommentsWe are getting ever so close to releasing our next update to Vitalist, so we thought it was about time to start letting you in on the major new features.
After using Vitalist for the last few months and seeing your feedback, we have gained a different perspective on “contexts” and exactly what their real purpose is. Why should you be limited to “labeling” an action with only one context? What if you have an action that you are doing at @work and on the @computer, or at @home and on the @phone. So we thought, why not treat contexts more like tags?
Here is a screenshot of the new contexts in action (click to enlarge):
Now we understand that this is a big change of how we currently handle contexts, but we feel this makes the software much more powerful. There are no more constraints when it comes to contexts.
And another benefit of handling contexts like tags is that they are much more universal. Now any of your actions on any of your lists can be tagged, and quickly/easily filtered.
In the next few days we will preview more of our new features, so stay tuned.
Looks great, can’t wait to see more previews.. Any ETA on the release?
excellent improvement !
Isn’t it possible to have the contexts after the action? Your way makes is a bit ‘restless’ to look at. If that is English
Erwin, yes, that will actually be an optional setting. You can have the contexts either in front of or behind the action.
Mateo,
We are planning on the last week of March for the release.
@ Matt: Cheers, that’s good news!
Looking forward to the new hotness!
Guys, it’s great to see Vitalist develop. I’m more and more convinced that this is the GTD solution that suits me best.
Keep up the good work,
Jochen
@ Jochen,
I agree. I have been an RTM user till I ‘found’ Vitalist (Thanks to Lifehacker!!) and like you, Vitalist, suits my GTD needs better. Also the thing that works for me is the way the actions integrate with my Google Calendar. Visible and there. RTM - I found a bit clunky and clicky (!) to use with GCal.
Thats an excellent improvement . Was actually wondering about it just theother day when I was trying to sketch the data structure for your GTD.
However, heres a query /feedback ….on the Inbox page where there is a dialogue box for a new Action…..when I type in a Action say Meet with boss and a date say 16th Mar 2007, and hit the icon that lookslike a save button, it should automatically save this entry, clear the box and allow for a fresh axtion to be entered. I find it does’nt do that for me , and further the biggest frustration is the overall loading / reaction time . I am on a broadband network in Singapore .
Sweet!
[…] Contexts as Tags could be interesting. I might use it; I’ll definitely want to play with it a bit. Some folks use “location” contexts like @home and @work. Others use more of an activity based approach like @phone or @email. This could certainly be an interesting way to blend those. […]
[…] Contexts as Tags - Completely revamping their original implementation of contexts, they’re now available as tag-like data, assigned to each of your Next Actions. Practically, this will give the user the ability to assign an action multiple contexts and (ostensibly) better sorting/viewing of actions. Personally, I’d love to see some tag intersection goodness… […]
Thank you for this! I do have a few things that can either be done in my home office or my work office, so I’m excited about this!
[…] Ability to specify your own contexts for everything (and soon, you’ll be able to specify multiple contexts) […]
Yeah, this tool is far better than Nozbe… Hoorah!
Actually, I’m using the Context view for picking stuff to do, instead of the Dashboard, I hope this feature won’t mess up the nice layout of that view.
Also the thing that bothers me most, is that Waiting for items are displayed in Context view. The idea of contexts is that you don’t wanna see things that you can’t do anything about, so…doesn’t seem very reasonable…
Awesome idea. I was struggling with this in the beginning. Which context is right for me? I ended up putting things like Email-work, Email-home, Email-either. So if I could email from home or office, I used either. Having multiple tags will let me remove the extra contexts. Great idea!
[…] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! The Vitalist folks said they’d have the new features out by the end of March, and they did just that. Barely! New and improved features were rolled out earlier today (this afternoon I think?). This update includes many new features and enhancements. To read about the major changes, please see the past few articles on this blog: Contexts as Tags, Sub-Projects, Quick Add/Edit, and Priority. We think you will find that these features make Vitalist both more powerful and more adaptable to different productivity styles. […]