Thinking about GTD
- Thread starter dadalus
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mcogilvie
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cwoodgold;106261 said:
I think basically any list-based system will work from the gathering stage through the initial glow of successful actions. The question is what to do when the glow sputters out. (I am familiar with Foster's search for a great list traversal algorithm.)
TesTeq
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Processing step of the Workflow!
From the individual perspective it may be silly. But from the conceptual perspective GTD has one huge advantage - the Processing step of the Workflow. You can have many unclarified items on the Autofocus lists. For some people it may work because they have natural ability of converting problem into action. But there are many people that must learn it.
mark1968;106257 said:
From the individual perspective it may be silly. But from the conceptual perspective GTD has one huge advantage - the Processing step of the Workflow. You can have many unclarified items on the Autofocus lists. For some people it may work because they have natural ability of converting problem into action. But there are many people that must learn it.
Capturing ideas
I read through this post David Allen's Universalism and I think this person totally misses the point of GTD. For me GTD is about capturing all my ideas, big and small. Buy toilet paper is a small widget-like task, but it is still important. Since I have a place to put all of my ideas, I find I have more time to focus on the "deep work" this person claims is lacking from following GTD. Since I have a trusted system, I can forget about buying toilet paper and focus all of my attention on the hard problems. Just as an example, there was one time there was a nasty bug causing random crashes in our software. For over a week several people tried to find the cause and failed. They finally asked me because even though I knew nothing about this particular code, I'm good at debugging. I set aside my next action lists and spent 8 hours working on this one bug and I finally figured it out. I don't know if GTD was the reason, but I knew I could put everything else on hold because I had a trusted system to go back to the next day and pickup where I left off.
You also don't know when you will a eureka moment. Sometimes I'm in bed reading a fiction book and a solution to a problem that has eluded me just hits me like a bolt of lightening. I put my book down and pickup my iPhone to capture this idea, then and there. Without a trusted system, these ideas can get lost. I can also pickup my book and finish my pleasure reading knowing the idea is safely captured.
I read through this post David Allen's Universalism and I think this person totally misses the point of GTD. For me GTD is about capturing all my ideas, big and small. Buy toilet paper is a small widget-like task, but it is still important. Since I have a place to put all of my ideas, I find I have more time to focus on the "deep work" this person claims is lacking from following GTD. Since I have a trusted system, I can forget about buying toilet paper and focus all of my attention on the hard problems. Just as an example, there was one time there was a nasty bug causing random crashes in our software. For over a week several people tried to find the cause and failed. They finally asked me because even though I knew nothing about this particular code, I'm good at debugging. I set aside my next action lists and spent 8 hours working on this one bug and I finally figured it out. I don't know if GTD was the reason, but I knew I could put everything else on hold because I had a trusted system to go back to the next day and pickup where I left off.
You also don't know when you will a eureka moment. Sometimes I'm in bed reading a fiction book and a solution to a problem that has eluded me just hits me like a bolt of lightening. I put my book down and pickup my iPhone to capture this idea, then and there. Without a trusted system, these ideas can get lost. I can also pickup my book and finish my pleasure reading knowing the idea is safely captured.