The cult of Getting Things Done: an introduction to GTD
This is one of a series of posts on my mission to improve my productivity using Getting Things Done (GTD). Read the full series here.
GTD and me
When I started this blog, I chose the name Mission Creep because I have a lot of pride in my productivity (I am an efficient doer) and a tendency to take on far more than I can do. The blog was yet another addition to my list of way too many things at once.
But I really like doing things.
I like tracking those things and ticking them off so nothing gets forgotten. I have always been an obsessively organised person and am a natural lister. Like all good Virgos (if you believe that sort of thing) I make lists galore. I have lists of my lists. I constantly add to, rewrite, re-categorise and re-prioritise my lists.
And I get things done.
So much so my wife says I’m like the Terminator: I will not stop.
BUT. Here’s the thing. There’s always too much to do.
Which means there’s always something not getting done.
Which means I sometimes doubt whether I am necessarily doing the right thing right now.
It’s that occasional nagging worry that there just might be something horribly important lurking unread in my email inbox. Or the fear that, by doing the urgent thing that’s just landed on my desk, I am breaking some agreement I have made elsewhere (but what was it, and with who? No time to stop and think…)
GTD vs DAD
Having discovered David Allen’s Getting Things Done (ironically enough, I was introduced to GTD through my blog network so this blog may yet pay its way in terms of impact on my productivity), I have found ways to fine tune my instinctive listing habits into something a little more sophisticated that promises to solve these problems. And so far, it’s working.
What is Getting Things Done?
Getting Things Done is a tonic for the chronically overwhelmed.
It’s an antidote to 2st Century information overload.
It’s a book first and foremost.
It’s also these blogs:
And it’s a bit of a cult.
The main reason for the cultishness is that it’s a pretty badly written book, bloated with redundant quotations, repetition, hyperbole, repetition of hyperbole, and a deeply irritating, evangelical tone. In many respects it reminded me of Carr’s Easy Way to Give up Smoking - which I also hated reading, but which worked.
Allen’s book works, and alongside the philosophising (about ‘zen’ and ‘a mind like water’ and the ‘ready state of the martial artist’) it’s chock full of practical solutions to the everyday minutiae of managing your increasing, changing workload. So it’s a cult because it deserves to be.
But if you’re too busy actually getting things done to read Getting Things Done or wade through the blogs of the cult it spawned, start here, with Wikipedia’s entry:
“GTD rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them externally. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks.”
Something that Terminators don’t have to worry about, but a real problem for us humans.
As Wikipedia goes on to summarise, Allen suggests you achieve this by:
- collecting everything that’s on your mind (personal and professional) into a system of paper or electonic lists
- doing the thinking up front about what the next action is for each bit of work that you need to progress
- sorting your actions by context of when/where you can do them
- reviewing it all regularly, so you can make informed choices about what to do and feel comfortable with what you’re not doing at any given moment
I will go into more detail on how all this works (at least, how all this works for me) in subsequent posts in this series, which will be:
- The best bits from GTD: my top 5 takes from David Allen’s book
- What, where and when: defining your GTD to-do list contexts
- My GTD system: Getting Things Done with Remember The Milk and Windows Mobile 5
Do let me know via comments if there’s anything else you’d like to see in this series.
I suppose having slagged off his writing style I should at least let David Allen have the last word on what GTD is all about. Here are my favourite two sentences from his book, which for me summarise the biggest thing I was doing wrong before:
“I suggest that you use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them. You want to be adding value as you think about projects and people, not simply reminding yourself they exist.”
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Comments
Great details and take on David Allen’s GTD. His system sure has changed my tolerance level for multitasking dozens of projects at a time. And getting, and keeping everything in a trusted system really does relieve a great deal of stress.
application that allows me to view my entire GTD at work on my Win machine, at home on my Macs and even on my cell phone. And another app lets me call in tasks to my GTD without any writing or typing, great for those thoughts that hit me while driving.
I’ve written about my experiences with GTD at http://johnkendrick.wordpress.com/how-to-gtd/ John
[...] second link is a GTD related link from Mission Creep titles An Introduction to GTD. His wife does compare him to the Terminator but it is a good read [...]
[...] The cult of Getting Things Done: an introduction to GTD By Neil Williams Having discovered David Allen’s Getting Things Done (ironically enough, I was introduced to GTD through my blog network so this blog may yet pay its way in terms of impact on my productivity), I have found ways to fine tune my … [...]
For implementing GTD you can use this web-based application:
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
A mobile version and iCal are available too.
Thanks for the comments one and all. Dan: got your email re GTDagenda and wil respond. Looks like a good app on the face of it, but I am pretty happy with RTM, for reasons that will be revealed later in this series. But willing to give yours a road test. Likewise taskwriter.com
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Hello, I'm Neil Williams. I'm a government web geek, a dad, a husband, a grower of veg, a keeper of hens and a lapsed comedy writer, roughly in that order. 
[...] The cult of GTD – Getting Things Done I'm not a fan of self-help books and the description of "Getting Things Done" doesn't do much for me. That said I am not that good at time management and could seriously do with more hours in the day. Or do I? I seem to have a process of focussing on what needs doing, doing it, and letting the rest work itself out. Maybe there's a self-help book in it I should be writing? (tags: gtd timemanagement) [...]