Like Buddhist communities or UNIX programming, the GTD organization system has a modular structure. It means it is integrated by a series of elements completely independent between them, so a failure or misconception in one of them does not affectthe excellence of the others. In fact, once you make it work, you find that GTD is quite a simple thing. Someone once defined it as “the glorification of common sense“, and I think it is a good definition as long as one admits that common sense is not as common as it seems.
David Allen himself is the first to admit this. He shows such a genuine belief in all his methods because they have all been tested by experience and proven to be the most effective. Besides, in his book he remarks that the application of any of its “tricks”, even without adopting the whole system, will have benefiting effects on your personal productivity and the reduction of your stress. This is great news, because, on a first impression, GTD can seem intimidating, even unlikeable; the extreme proliferation of gurus and support has done a lot to make this system popular, but it has also surrounded it with an artificial hallo of complexity. In my case, and even among people that I consider very intelligent and who were literally drowning in their own mess, I have seen several “no thanks” cases, -mumbled in the polite tone one uses to decline an invitation to a nuclear physics seminar-, due to this intimidating look GTD has before you know it better.
I myself was one of those poor creatures once -I still am, sometimes: more than 30 years of malpractice are not that easy to erase. But another advantage of GTD is that it is very easy to go back to track in case you slip away-. A year and a half ago, I was sailing an heterogeneous sea of notes, objects to classify, sketches of projects, undefined excerpts, pizza, etc. My self-made organizational methods usually crumbled after weeks or months, and then I moved to try a different thing, because, deep under, I was convinced that it could not be so complicated to keep track of everything. Then GTD came. It took me some time, but now I am beginning to see the light and would like to share some of those independent “modules” with people who maybe are not in the mood for implementing the whole system, or even reading 361 pages of an alleged “miracle” that might or might not work for them, but are nevertheless interested in punctual, on-the-go tricks to improve their personal organization.
(By the way, in case you become more interested in GTD, I encourage you to buy and read the book in the first place, instead of trying to figure out the whole “Frankenstein” by yourself from web excerpts. In my case, it was one of my best money and time investments ever).
So let’s see some simple patches then:
a) Contextual lists
First dose of common sense: lists are the core of the system. We all need a place to write down things. You have been using them all your life, but nobody told you that the best way to classify lists is by contexts: according to the location (home, office, street) or the device (computer, telephone) required to complete the task. Maybe because of an education too focused on abstraction, we have a tendency to do hierarchical lists, lists divided by projects… That’s not practical. The book remarks that any change of context implies an energy cost (maybe as a drawback of brain’s versatile plasticity: the system must reinvent itself), so it is a good idea to have all things that can be done in the same context together (in fact it is impossible to have them done at once, but having all the homogeneous tasks together gives a nice sensation of control, more similar to a orchestra conductor than to a poor lad attacked from twenty-five different angles). The number of contexts varies for each person, profession, etc, and, for broad contexts, you can also use subdivisions (computer tasks can be divided into on-line and off-line tasks, etc).
b) The jewel of the crown: the someday/maybe list
One of Allen’s most important intuitions is that what stresses us is not what we are doing, but what we are not. The sensation of control depends to a large extent on having at sight everything that you COULD be doing, even though most of it must wait its turn -or even forever-. Regarded from such perspective, what was clutter turns into wealth, a list of pendant things becomes a patrimony, burdens turn into encyclopedias of possibilities. In addition, Allen smartly remarks that human mind is of a peculiar nature: the more it feels its productions (ideas) are being taken in consideration, the more ideas it will produce. Once you get into the habit of having a someday/maybe list, amazing things start to happen.
c) Weekly adjustment
In order to ensure its reliability, the system, any system, must be periodically revised. Otherwise lists become less and less representative of your world, you stop relying on them, they stop being useful, the whole system crumbles. Almost ritually, Allen recommends a revision of all your “open fronts” once a week.
So there you have it. Keep as many separate lists as locations or devices exist in your life, create a new list for those things you would love to do if the gods are willing, revise and refresh all of them weekly or at least periodically, and there you have your productivity boat. Maybe it is not a battleship yet, but it is perfectly suitable to sail across the seas of mess.
The next improvements in sight could be: optimizing what you put into those lists (project planning and the way to “slice” everything into manageable tasks), and what you get out of them (output management and filing system). I’ll discuss them in my next post. One more time: this is only a GTD summary to help you breathe. If you get interested about the technique I strongly recommend you read the book…
What self-made experiments have you tried to improve your personal productivity? What did you learn from them? Have you reached organizational nirvana with a different technique? What works best for you?
Related posts:
The GTD First Aid kit (Part 3)
The GTD First Aid Kit (and 4)
The GTD First Aid Kit (Part 2)
Reach for the moon, but start with your (two) shoelaces
Flowing with the workflow