For people who have very few physical contexts (work or home, computer or non-computer) but want to take advantage of the advantages that contexts offer, we can overlay time and energy constraints (contexts.) This is in line with the natural planning method’s “4 criteria.”

So now items would have multiple, but non-overlapping, contexts.

Location -work -computer -out

Time -short (greater than 2 min, less than 15) -med (15 min - 1 hr) -long (greater than an hour)

Energy -high (I can do anything) -med (I can do anything which isn’t too taxing) -low (I can barely stay awake)

So now an item might have a contexts:

Process today’s email: @computer med low Outline report: @desk (i.e. computer plus materials) long high

Obviously, generating and managing context lists of multiple, orthogonal contexts isn’t going to be very practical by hand. This type of system would best be served by some sort of computer automation (I’m trying to get it done using Mori notebook.) With the right tool, I think it could be pretty powerful. For example, you could be sitting at your computer having just finished preparing for a big meeting in 20 min: “Ok, I’ve got a lot of energy (latent anxiety for the upcoming presentation) but not a lot of time: computer high short.” It would most likely be suited by smart folders or dynamically generated lists, like the filtered lists of many media database programs.