@Joe — Ever settle down to do a particular task, and have 3 more little things pop into your mind that you just can’t forget to do today? What do you do then? If you do them right then, there might be adverse consequences (this is how I get sidetracked on my way out the door). If instead of doing them right then, you process them onto your context lists — even though you’re technically in the right context already — then you can do the task you were about to do, decks cleared. I don’t want to have to switch into processing-mode and process my inbox every single time I finish a task, just to handle those little things that popped into my mind at the beginning of it. Writing them onto the context lists means that I can just look at the list and pick something to do next.