general • • •

GTD - Getting Things Done

GTD has been somewhat of a cult. I’m now a new member. After using the methodology for a while, I’m at the point where most people get frustrated:

“I know how the process work, but my contexts don’t help. I still think about todo lists and now I’m obsessed about a perfect GTD system.”

Chances are that you are here because you are looking for a perfect GTD implementation or ways to improve your own GTD system. That is a waste of time and frustrated lots of folks. So stop.

Though here are some of the things I noticed after using gtd that I can rant about.

How to do more: do less

When you first pick a tool for a todo system, specifically GTD, the first thing the tool shows you how to do is to “add tasks quickly to your inbox.” Sure, but then we filling these tasks into their projects and contexts without doing the very important step: Planning. The natural planning model requires you to:

  1. Have a vision of your outcome
  2. Brainstorm
  3. Determine next actions

I just jumped to the last step and start listing the things that I could, and should be doing. It feels great but I have never answered a very important questions: Why did I want to do these things? What’s the desired outcome here?

The first trick to getting more done is knowing what not to do.

Look at your list of actions now, or you list of projects. Can there any of these projects or actions be discarded since they add absolutely no value to your purposes in life? Here is an example:

1

Read Steve Jobs Biography

Why did you want to read it? What did you want out of reading this? Does knowing more about Jobs do any good to you?

If your answer is “meh, I can do without” then get rid of it. Don’t care. No matter how noble the act might be, why do something you have no invested outcome?

Context has changed, don’t over complicate them

At the beginning, I often find myself at odds with my contexts. I had contexts such as 

1

@home
, 
1

@phone
, 
1

@computer
, 
1

@web
. Well, if these contexts overlap, then I enter limbo zone when I need to file a task to a context:

1

Chat with John about the upcoming picnic

I can do this via web, on my computer, should be done at home or I can call him. So which context? I can put them in all of my contexts and this task will taunt me in every context. Oh god!

My solution? Less context:

Now I have:

  1. 1

    @home
  2. 1

    @work
  3. 1

    @Onroad

When I’m at home or work, I have access too all devices, the internet, and a computer. 

1

@OnRoad
means when I’m out and about. Things become very simple. The task above will just fall into the 
1

@home
 context.

I might have over a hundred things on my 

1

@home
list, but that’s much more manageable than 10 different contexts all overlapping. And the effort of filling them into the right contexts were so hard. With just 3 contexts, that’s simple.