A Few Concerns

[Tom_Hagen]

I'd like to share a few concerns I have about GTD, and I'll be happy to read your comments.

Lately, I've had the impression that the term GTD has become increasingly blurred among many website/blog/video authors. A list of projects with a few items to accomplish is enough, and they're using the term GTD loosely. I'm afraid that soon I'll see a simple To-Do list without verbs and then be labeled GTD.

I don't question that people are different and that completely different approaches may work for them. But we can't lump everything into one category called GTD.

For example, we recently saw a video I commented on, which I'm not sure fully covered the GTD methodology. (Again: I'm not criticizing other approaches, but I am questioning the methodology's terminology.)

Or I read this website:

Getting Things Done with BuJo

I have seen more than a few mentions of GTD in BuJo U that suggest I am not alone in my GTD history, as well as questions about how BuJo might work with GTD, so I thought I might contribute something about this.

bulletjournal.com

GTD x BuJo Part II: Tactics

I wrote before about how I use BuJo as a means of following Getting Things Done (GTD) practices, but I thought I'd expand a bit more on some of the specific tactics I use to combine the two productivity methods.

bulletjournal.com

I can understand the author preferring Commitments to Projects.
But I don't see any criteria like time or priority being used here.
The Daily Log as a list of what I've done is perfectly fine, but if I were to use the BUJO method exactly (thankfully, the author doesn't mention this), it would be a list of tasks to be completed on a given day—something Allen wanted to avoid.

In summary: I'm increasingly seeing the intersection of various approaches (often: GTD, Deep Work, BUJO), which may work, perhaps even work better in synergy, but my question is, is it still GTD? And what determines whether we're still moving within the GTD realm? Are there any boundary criteria here?

All comments are welcome...

 

[gtdstudente]

I'd like to share a few concerns I have about GTD, and I'll be happy to read your comments.

Lately, I've had the impression that the term GTD has become increasingly blurred among many website/blog/video authors. A list of projects with a few items to accomplish is enough, and they're using the term GTD loosely. I'm afraid that soon I'll see a simple To-Do list without verbs and then be labeled GTD.

I don't question that people are different and that completely different approaches may work for them. But we can't lump everything into one category called GTD.

For example, we recently saw a video I commented on, which I'm not sure fully covered the GTD methodology. (Again: I'm not criticizing other approaches, but I am questioning the methodology's terminology.)

Or I read this website:

Getting Things Done with BuJo

I have seen more than a few mentions of GTD in BuJo U that suggest I am not alone in my GTD history, as well as questions about how BuJo might work with GTD, so I thought I might contribute something about this.

bulletjournal.com

GTD x BuJo Part II: Tactics

I wrote before about how I use BuJo as a means of following Getting Things Done (GTD) practices, but I thought I'd expand a bit more on some of the specific tactics I use to combine the two productivity methods.

bulletjournal.com

I can understand the author preferring Commitments to Projects.
But I don't see any criteria like time or priority being used here.
The Daily Log as a list of what I've done is perfectly fine, but if I were to use the BUJO method exactly (thankfully, the author doesn't mention this), it would be a list of tasks to be completed on a given day—something Allen wanted to avoid.

In summary: I'm increasingly seeing the intersection of various approaches (often: GTD, Deep Work, BUJO), which may work, perhaps even work better in synergy, but my question is, is it still GTD? And what determines whether we're still moving within the GTD realm? Are there any boundary criteria here?

All comments are welcome...

@Tom_Hagen

Thank you for your post

For years on this end, Commitments can mean anything through Next Actions and/or Projects, etc. 'Lists'

If interested, if there is more than One Item for a Verb, then all items are listed under an infinite Verb in either Contexts and/or Projects, etc. 'Lists'

Common infinite Verb guardrails used on this end to appropriately Decrease GTD deliberation(s) and appropriately Increase GTD creativity:

E M P T Y . . . F I L L
E m p t y - O U T . . . FULL-F i l l . . . Find - I T . . . Find - 'O U T' . . . F I N I S H [Complete] . . . F I X [Replace] . . . F U S S [Prepare], ect.​

In pursuit of GTD elegance for Mind Like Water clarity ?

Great way to start the week . . . thank you very much

As you see GTD fit. . . .

 

[Roger]

Some people get pretty excited about labels. Is a tomato a fruit? Is Bob Dylan's last album folk music? Is Pluto a planet?

I can't really bring myself to care. Changing the label on a box doesn't change what's inside the box. If our biggest problem is that people are using the term 'GTD' too-loosely, then I think we're all doing pretty well.

If someone doesn't like that I'm calling something GTD, then sure, fine, whatever, I'll call it something else.

I might care a lot more if I held the trademark on the term, of course. But I don't.

 

[gtdstudente]

Some people get pretty excited about labels. Is a tomato a fruit? Is Bob Dylan's last album folk music? Is Pluto a planet?

I can't really bring myself to care. Changing the label on a box doesn't change what's inside the box. If our biggest problem is that people are using the term 'GTD' too-loosely, then I think we're all doing pretty well.

If someone doesn't like that I'm calling something GTD, then sure, fine, whatever, I'll call it something else.

I might care a lot more if I held the trademark on the term, of course. But I don't.

@Roger

Good GTD observation(s)

Thank you very much

 

[Tom_Hagen]

Some people get pretty excited about labels. Is a tomato a fruit? Is Bob Dylan's last album folk music? Is Pluto a planet?

[...]

I disagree with this approach. Note that I'm talking about materials that claim to be self-help guides. Do you think that authors promoting simple to-do lists like "Mom, Brother's Birthday, or Tires" as GTD is a good thing? Things get complicated when you mix different systems, taking elements from each, and selling them as a finished product under the GTD banner. Of course, all in the role of a GTD expert.

I understand that the forum members here know the methodology quite well and are able to separate the wheat from the chaff. However, let's remember that there are still people who are just starting their GTD journey and who won't necessarily pick up a book (the aversion to reading is a fact). Do we really want them to learn distorted theories that don't work or don't work as well as they should?

The issue I'm raising has nothing to do with labels. Moreover, I would like to timidly note that I did not ask whether such an approach means labeling, but rather a set of criteria that determine the fact that we can talk about GTD.

 

[Roger]

I can see I may have initially-misunderstood your point here, so I'll try again.

This is about marketing, more or less, which isn't something I have a lot expertise with, but as we're all consumers of marketing to some degree, it bears some reflection.

There's a spectrum of ways that promoting something as 'GTD' could be viewed. Over on one side we have something like Appellation d'origine Contrôlée, like labelling a bottle as Champagne. There are strict formal rules around such a claim and people who try to fudge it are going to be facing, at the least, a steep fine. On the other side we have pure puffery like XTREME!! which means very little and I can't imagine a successful class action lawsuit alleging that those Doritos were not, in fact, your honour, at all XTREME!!.

Between those two poles we have everything else, and GTD is in there somewhere, and I imagine we all have differing opinions as to just how it should be viewed. On balance, personally, I'm inclined to think it's closer to the Doritos side than the Champagne side. If I owned the trademark on GTD then I might feel differently.

Mostly this reminds me of all those breakfast cereals that are marketed as "part of a complete breakfast." The operative word there, of course, being part. It seems to me to be a small step from there to describing any particular list-manager as "part of a complete GTD system."

Sure, some people will probably find that sort of subtlety misleading. Caveat emptor, and all that. At this point I'm just happy that my breakfast cereal is not literally poisonous and my list-manager is not selling all my personal data to a foreign nation. Other people may have higher standards.

 

[Cpu_Modern]

The use of the idiom "getting things done" was first, then a few American authors used it as a title for a book on, well, getting things done. It is natural to think of "getting things done" in the general sense of that idiom, which is broadly used by speakers of the english language. So I would say that any use of "getting things done" will receive it's meaning from the context it's used in.

You see what I did there?

Now if we use the term "getting things done" in a setting, where it is understood to mean the exact methodology developed and taught by David Allen, for something else, then that is just bad communications.

If the need is felt to clarify, I would suggest to use the term "David Allen's Getting Things Done" instead. This pattern is observed in other realms as well e.g. "Sid Meier's Civilization" and that should suffice.

 

[programmer01135]

What makes GTD such a useful framework is that it is just that - a framework. One of my peers' system is just a legal pad with a bunch of scribbles all over it, which would drive me insane. I have to put everything into OmniFocus, which drives my wife insane. My boss uses Outlook Tasks. One of my junior developers uses a bullet journal with all sorts of highlighting and pretty text and decorations all over the place. At the end of the day, however, we are all using the GTD methodology in our own way.

The same goes for other methodologies for getting focused work done - whether you're using Pomodoro, "Deep Work", Time Boxing, or a combination of all of them.

As for what defines a boundary criteria, I think that would be whether you're performing the key actions of GTD in some fashion: Capturing, clarifying, organizing, reflecting / reviewing, and engaging / doing the work. If you're doing those things, regardless of what each step looks like for you, you're following the GTD methodology.

 

[gtdstudente]

I'd like to share a few concerns I have about GTD, and I'll be happy to read your comments.

Lately, I've had the impression that the term GTD has become increasingly blurred among many website/blog/video authors. A list of projects with a few items to accomplish is enough, and they're using the term GTD loosely. I'm afraid that soon I'll see a simple To-Do list without verbs and then be labeled GTD.

I don't question that people are different and that completely different approaches may work for them. But we can't lump everything into one category called GTD.

For example, we recently saw a video I commented on, which I'm not sure fully covered the GTD methodology. (Again: I'm not criticizing other approaches, but I am questioning the methodology's terminology.)

Or I read this website:

Getting Things Done with BuJo

I have seen more than a few mentions of GTD in BuJo U that suggest I am not alone in my GTD history, as well as questions about how BuJo might work with GTD, so I thought I might contribute something about this.

bulletjournal.com

GTD x BuJo Part II: Tactics

I wrote before about how I use BuJo as a means of following Getting Things Done (GTD) practices, but I thought I'd expand a bit more on some of the specific tactics I use to combine the two productivity methods.

bulletjournal.com

I can understand the author preferring Commitments to Projects.
But I don't see any criteria like time or priority being used here.
The Daily Log as a list of what I've done is perfectly fine, but if I were to use the BUJO method exactly (thankfully, the author doesn't mention this), it would be a list of tasks to be completed on a given day—something Allen wanted to avoid.

In summary: I'm increasingly seeing the intersection of various approaches (often: GTD, Deep Work, BUJO), which may work, perhaps even work better in synergy, but my question is, is it still GTD? And what determines whether we're still moving within the GTD realm? Are there any boundary criteria here?

All comments are welcome...

@Tom_Hagen

Perhaps we are still in the "Wild West" days of Personal Productivity via the internet ?

Meanwhile, perhaps best to simply be at peace and sit in the best productivity saddle available for Mind Like Water ?

GTD giddy-up

Again, thank you for your post . . . all GTD good

 

[mcogilvie]

When GTD was a new thing, say within the first few years after the book came out, there were already many “explanation” of GTD and “implementations” which appeared to me to be often incomplete and misleading, and sometimes just fundamentally wrong. I don’t see any reason why things should be better now, as incomplete and inaccurate information is passed on and on. I suspect you are right that it’s worse. On the other hand, I am not the GTD police. I am fairly sure that those empowered to protect David Allen’s intellectual property are kept busy enough with actual infringement without worrying too much about the people who write about things like combining GTD with Bullet Journals, good, bad or ugly. It’s like people who are sure that astrology is a science: I wish they would change their minds, but I don’t know how to make that happen.

 

[Tom_Hagen]

I can see I may have initially-misunderstood your point here, so I'll try again.
[...]

We still don't understand each other. I'm not interested in marketing or some artificial categorization. What I wanted to discuss in this thread is whether there are basic criteria for considering something as GTD.

Of course, it's easiest to conduct a thought experiment in extreme situations. Is a "ready-made" to-do list like: new wardrobe, kids at school, parents, DIY store saved in Excel GTD? Everyone will agree that unless it's a digital inbox for things, but a to-do list, it's not GTD. Is the Important / Urgent / Not Important / Not Urgent matrix GTD? Of course, not everyone knows what it is.

GTD consists of certain structures and—and I emphasize—processes, and if they don't exist, then we can't talk about GTD.

If someone only uses the two-minute rule, they're using a GTD feature, but that's far from the entire philosophy of this method.

If someone doesn't use the "Computer" context, it doesn't mean they're not using GTD. So some things are a must-have and others aren't.

I thought there would be some suggestions here about what could be classified as GTD must-haves, but for now, we're just revolving around labels and marketing terms

 

[Tom_Hagen]

The use of the idiom "getting things done" was first, then a few American authors used it as a title for a book on, well, getting things done. It is natural to think of "getting things done" in the general sense of that idiom, which is broadly used by speakers of the english language. So I would say that any use of "getting things done" will receive it's meaning from the context it's used in.

You see what I did there?

[...]

Sorry, but I'm not interested in the history of this concept, its multiple uses, etc.
This doesn't answer my question.

 

[Tom_Hagen]

When GTD was a new thing, say within the first few years after the book came out, there were already many “explanation” of GTD and “implementations” which appeared to me to be often incomplete and misleading, and sometimes just fundamentally wrong. I don’t see any reason why things should be better now, as incomplete and inaccurate information is passed on and on. I suspect you are right that it’s worse. On the other hand, I am not the GTD police. I am fairly sure that those empowered to protect David Allen’s intellectual property are kept busy enough with actual infringement without worrying too much about the people who write about things like combining GTD with Bullet Journals, good, bad or ugly. It’s like people who are sure that astrology is a science: I wish they would change their minds, but I don’t know how to make that happen.

Yes, I realize that much of the material will be misleading. I don't mean to accuse anyone of this. My post here is an attempt to define for myself what elements are necessary to speak of GTD, what elements are acceptable (e.g., time blocking), and what elements contradict GTD.

I'm aiming for a purely theoretical discussion.

 

[Cpu_Modern]

Sorry, but I'm not interested in the history of this concept, its multiple uses, etc.
This doesn't answer my question.

It doesn't? I thought it did.

Let it put me this way then: the question you are asking is a question about a specific technical term, Getting Things Done, and how we should use that term. You claim to have observed two kinds of use of said term. One use is to it to mean what David Allen specifies as Getting Things Done. The other kind of use is for things that are not exactly the same as what David Allen specified.

Now you are asking if the second kind of use is as valid as the first one.

To which I answered, it depends on the situation in which we use the term. It can be valid. It also can be misleading and therefore arguably not so much valid.

 

[Roger]

What I wanted to discuss in this thread is whether there are basic criteria for considering something as GTD.

Short answer: No.

Long answer is, well, likely to get long indeed, and off into the deep weeds, so I don't blame anyone for skipping over this one if they've got better things to do.

To give everyone some idea of what I'm talking about here, a question like "Is a to-do list in Excel GTD?" is, to me, the same sort of questions as "Is a banjo country music?"

Some country music has banjo in it, sure. Some country music does not. Some banjo music is country music, some isn't. It's neither necessary nor sufficient, which is quite enough.

This tends to leave us in a bit of a "I'll just know it when I see it!" approach, which has got a bit of a bad rap over the years, but I think that might be undeserved.

If I round up a hundred random people and force them to listen to some songs, there's going to be a high degree of consensus for certain songs about whether it's country music or not. Some other songs are going to be more borderline. It's certainly not an untenable situation for these folks to have meaningful conversations about country music. It might be a problem in theory, but it all works out in practice.

In practice, someone here can describe how they do their Weekly Reviews and we'll all reach a pretty congruous consensus about what parts of it are most-consistent with GTD and which parts are less-consistent. There'll always be some outliers and edge-cases and differences of opinions, but that's both not a problem and likely an essential part of the conversation.

On a theoretical level this goes as far back as philosophical theories of ontology, which have been wrestled with by the likes of Plato and Aristotle. The rabbit hole just keeps going.

 

[Tom_Hagen]

It doesn't? I thought it did.

[...]

No. I'm not asking if the second way of using it is accurate. I'm saying it isn't. I have a picture of what I think is critical for GTD, but I wanted to ask others. In other words, I'm asking about the boundary (critical) criteria.

 

[Tom_Hagen]

Short answer: No.

Long answer is, well, likely to get long indeed, and off into the deep weeds, so I don't blame anyone for skipping over this one if they've got better things to do.

[...]

You've given me a bit of an ego boost with that ontology

Honestly, that's already a concrete answer. As far as I understand it, there are two problems:
* blurred boundaries
* various combinations of elements, where the absence of one isn't necessarily critical, but in certain combinations it is

I can agree with that. If someone collects, organizes, explains, etc., everything and doesn't conduct weekly reviews, we can say they're not utilizing the full potential of GTD, but we can't say it's not GTD. It's even possible that someone leads a life where a monthly review is enough for them.

So we could ask the question a bit differently: what elements, if missing in large numbers, significantly weaken the GTD paradigm, or, more perversely, which solutions are definitely not GTD?

 

[Roger]

At this level I would expect we're looking at:

* All the buckets around the 'outside' of the GTD Clarification Workflow -- Someday/Maybe, Calendar, Projects list, etc etc.

* The contents of those buckets, mostly notably Next Actions and Projects, but probably all the rest too.

* A series of documents for the various Horizons, from Projects up to Purpose.


As for the workflows themselves, as processes... I can see it going either way. They can probably be summarized on a single page or two, so sure, why not. Allows us to include processes like the Weekly Review and other reviews, which is probably a good idea.


I think that's about it, really. I generally wouldn't include intangibles like 'habits' or 'mindsets' but there's probably a case to be made by the non-Materialists for their inclusion.


My rubric for thinking about this sort of thing is: If someone said they were going to show me "their GTD system" and then they showed me all this stuff, would I be thinking "Where's the rest of it? What about that other thing?" With the elements described above, I'd probably be thinking, Yep, that's all of it.

 

[devon.marie]

You can absolutely use a bullet journal as your list manager, reference material, and project management platform for your GTD practice. I do and have done this for, I think at this point, 11 years now? They're definitely not mutually exclusive. And reading through the articles you linked, it seems clear to me the author is very much practicing GTD in his bullet journal.

But I don't see any criteria like time or priority being used here.

What's really needed for GTD practice is using the 5 Stages of GTD. How people do that is up to them; David only suggests perhaps using time or priority to help make that decision, but it's not a requirement. But the author of those posts clearly uses the 5 Stages of GTD within his bullet journal, so I have zero concerns, myself.

(The irony of this post is that there's no system more misrepresented on the internet than bullet journaling, in my opinion)

 

[gtdstudente]

I'd like to share a few concerns I have about GTD, and I'll be happy to read your comments.

Lately, I've had the impression that the term GTD has become increasingly blurred among many website/blog/video authors. A list of projects with a few items to accomplish is enough, and they're using the term GTD loosely. I'm afraid that soon I'll see a simple To-Do list without verbs and then be labeled GTD.

I don't question that people are different and that completely different approaches may work for them. But we can't lump everything into one category called GTD.

For example, we recently saw a video I commented on, which I'm not sure fully covered the GTD methodology. (Again: I'm not criticizing other approaches, but I am questioning the methodology's terminology.)

Or I read this website:

Getting Things Done with BuJo

I have seen more than a few mentions of GTD in BuJo U that suggest I am not alone in my GTD history, as well as questions about how BuJo might work with GTD, so I thought I might contribute something about this.

bulletjournal.com

GTD x BuJo Part II: Tactics

I wrote before about how I use BuJo as a means of following Getting Things Done (GTD) practices, but I thought I'd expand a bit more on some of the specific tactics I use to combine the two productivity methods.

bulletjournal.com

I can understand the author preferring Commitments to Projects.
But I don't see any criteria like time or priority being used here.
The Daily Log as a list of what I've done is perfectly fine, but if I were to use the BUJO method exactly (thankfully, the author doesn't mention this), it would be a list of tasks to be completed on a given day—something Allen wanted to avoid.

In summary: I'm increasingly seeing the intersection of various approaches (often: GTD, Deep Work, BUJO), which may work, perhaps even work better in synergy, but my question is, is it still GTD? And what determines whether we're still moving within the GTD realm? Are there any boundary criteria here?

All comments are welcome...

@Tom_Hagen

Again, thank you for this post and engagement

Aside from GTD's purpose: "Mind Like Water", GTD's workflow model is what makes GTD . . . GTD ?

GTD
1. Capture
2. Clarify
3. Organize
4. Reflect
5. Engage



As you see GTD fit. . . .