Getting Nothing Done

I think I'm breaking up with GTD.

I've had good luck with David Allen's Getting Things Done in the year I've been following its (fairly rigid) set of instructions (suggestions? guidelines?) for stress-free productivity.

I've had good luck. For the most part. And then I'll spend two weeks, maybe three, avoiding the mass of work I know I need to do. Completely avoiding, knowingly avoiding, sometimes even enjoying the avoiding. And then for one reason or another, I'm back on the plan. Once I'm back on, I'm ticking to-do items off the list faster than seems possible.

The most popular complaint about David Allen's teachings is my biggest complaint, too.

GTD's enormity makes it fragile.

I know a thousand people have made this same point a thousand different ways. And for anyone reading Allen's book with an ounce of skepticism will inevitably come to the same conclusion: following all the guidelines would eat up half your waking hours. It's true. My version of GTD is pretty significantly stripped down, and it has been from the start. Still, I feel it could do with a bit more pruning.

When all your productivity – in life, work, recreation, etc. – gets tied up in one system, one unfinished task can end up log jamming everything. For example, a minor remodeling project that I spent more time avoiding than I care to admit ended up totally derailing me. But it wasn't just the task itself. It was the thought of tasking the whole thing out, project-izing it, analyzing it. What I really needed was to just get things started.

The problem for me is that some things just shouldn't be over-thought. And it's precisely those tasks that end up slipping through the cracks and causing havoc that brings the whole thing down. Even if they require 20 steps to complete them, they don't need to be flow-charted. They don't need to be brainstormed. The just need done. So I'm officially going lax on the whole GTD thing. I'll likely even stop calling it GTD.

But about that bath water...

That doesn't mean I still didn't learn a lot from my Getting Things Done experiment. I certainly never was before, but I'm officially a list person now. My relationship to the lists is what's likely to change. What needs planning will get it. What doesn't won't.

And admittedly, it might turn out that I'm breaking up with GTD in name only. It could be that little bit of perceived freedom's all I need.

We'll see.