This is a guest-post from Kevin Samuel: (UPDATE: Pics added at the end!)

Kevin Samuel is a Web ergonomist, freelancing in Nice, in the south of France. He has been interested in life hacking for 5 years, especially in GTD-like methods. After working on the Spoxt project for the Google Android Developer Challenge, he ended up programming phones for fun and created the In Context app to make design and organizing a better match.

When learning to introduce GTD-like methods in your everyday life, there are really two stages. First, you rely on The Plan, applying step by step arbitrary practices, and it seems to work in some odd ways. Then, you begin to create your own pace, with your personal hacks, and finally end up with your vision of Productivity workflow practice.

That’s why there are hundreds of variants for GTD, God, there is even Zen To Done that urges you to do less in order to do… more. Nevertheless if you study closely all of them, it’s a bit like religion : everybody has their personal faith, but the underlying ideas share a strong common base. In our case, it’s :

• Collect
• Do
• Review

And if you did your homework quite seriously, you’ll notice that the key to achieve efficiency in each of these concept is to perform them in the proper context. Now I’m not going to advocate the best way to do so, plenty of other articles are waiting for you here for that purpose. I’m going to talk about tools, tools that let you do the job, in context.

Electronic  failure

Most of us just can’t use some electronic devices because, let’s face it, they can be complicated and slow. Time to switch it up, set it up, write the damn thing, set parameters, wait for loading, processing, bugging, etc. That’s why paper is used a lot when it comes to organize, and it definitely rules in the In-basket area. I personally can’t live without my Moleskine.

But with services like Gmail, Remember the Milk, or the latest PDA’s to-do software, things have improved. It takes less time than before, it can be accessible from anywhere, and you’ve got the computer power and flexibility. But again, there are many different GTD applications (see Comparison of GTD Software) to choose from, and any one of them stuck you with they way to see things. And the worst is that they lack context handling.

Then is born In Context

When my Palm died, I replaced it with a brand new HTC magic featuring the Android operating system, a little Google jewel trying to kick the iPhone’s butt. One great thing with Android, it that it’s free, and completely hackable. So I did, and started to create a software application that finally did what I needed to do the job. Not less, not more.

In Context, its little name, is a free to-do list app for the Android system that intends to let you organize what you have to do… then get out of your way ! Here is what it does:

• Very quick feeding : actually you just type, and it creates a new entry. Only the title is mandatory, no settings, no options, no “are you sure”…. Well, you can add stuff, but you don’t have to.
• Things are part of a context, and this context is not limited. It means that a task, can have sub tasks, that can have sub-tasks, etc. With no limits. And it’s still fast, even if you keep going deeper in the details of what you want to do.
• Time is a context, but your context is now. So you can filter very quickly by time, but if you look at a task, it will display the closest due date of the most urgent of its subtasks, what ever the depth. The information is brought to you, you don’t have to look for it.
• Did I mention it’s fast ? I hate when it takes more than 10 seconds to check something in my system.

But really that’s all. Nothing in In Context pushes you to digress from what you want to do, to how to  represent it in your system – you can just make it the way you want. Actually it’s so flexible that some of my friends use it for something completely different than organizing: storing cooking recipes (geez, I’m French after all) or  notes about their car maintenance. Still, it’s good enough to plan a whole wedding, as my just-married Algerian friend did at the beginning of the month.

It’s just the beginning

A context is more than that : it’s “when”and “what”and “where” as well.  In Context is going to evolve and I am working to add tags, so context will be transversal as well. It will be possible to link a tag to a place, and since Android phone comes with a GPS, you’ll be able to filter tasks with a geographical context. Will you have to ? No. Will it take more time to do the simple stuff ? No again. Adding features without scattering the software if the very top priority, because GTD is about getting things done, not taking hours to prepare to do things.

Still, electronics will never beat paper on spontaneity. But it can catch up. Guess what, new generation phones almost all feature hi-res camera, so why not let you attach anything to a task, like a taken-on-the-fly picture ? Sketch, shoot, plan. That’s something I plan for this winter.

Other features I am really looking forward are recurrent tasks, so it’s easy to handle routines, and checklists, because routines are a lot about doing always the same thing step by step.

And of course, there is synchronization with laptops, web services, interaction with the contact list (hey, people can be a context !). But that’s a lot of work, and my to-do-list is pretty full, so we’ll have to wait.

Again, the best GTD methods and tools remain your own. I took this statement very seriously to create In Context, and I hope some of you will feel like this is a nice way TO DO.

Oh, by the way, to install the free app, you just need to visit the Android market with your Android phone. Nothing to download or install manually. Nothing complicated, same goes for the updates.

Now it’s time for me to convince Stephen to make some use of it, since he’s a damn old school paper guy.

Ksamuel, www.e-vidence.net

Editor’s note: You need to access the Android Market site with your Android device to be able to access the application.

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