Enough With Stuff – GTD thoughts

At first glance, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes when I started to read David Allen’s summary of what is Getting Things Done. It seemed like the standard plug used by product evangelists everywhere: “Here’s a life changing concept that I will summarize in the most glowing fashion without giving you any real clue of what it is about! Would you also like a set of Japanese kitchen knives while you are here?”

Plus, it made me fairly uncomfortable that you were required to cough up your home address and proceed through an online checkout system for a free PDF. As someone who regularly deals with e-mail lists, I know how why he’s asking you to pass over that information, but that’s exactly why I wasn’t going to hand it over.

Anyways, I finally did find a much better definition of what GTD is from doing several FAQ searches, and the concept, while insulting obvious, seems surprisingly effective. The discussion of what “stuff” is and how it negatively impacts a productive workflow really resonated with me, such as phrases like “you find yourself putting out fires” as a description of handling to do’s. I regularly find myself in such situations and tend to just handle my most immediate, pressing concerns. And indeed, it really does create an ever-present worry that taxes your mind – it always seems like there’s one more thing I have to do, with only a vague assurance that I’ll get to it “sometime”. I would definitely describe my day-to-day activities as being poorly organized.

Because of these descriptions reading similarly to what I am experiencing, I looked deeper into some of the mechanics of the system. I’ve always used lists to organize my deadlines so this also was a naturally appealing aspect of GTD, though I wish I had been able to learn more about how to assign these different lists based on importance or immediate relevancy. Lists are only as powerful as their ability to categorize tasks based on importance, and while I was able to get a brief summary of some of the different list names (“Projects”, “Next Action”, “Pending”, etc.) I found the explanations insufficient. However, I will most likely submit to Allen’s Orwellian demands and provide my address after all, because I am intrigued enough and very tired of “stuff”.