GTD's value and ROI
- Thread starter nunodonato
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CJSullivan
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I'm guessing "zealous" might be a more accurate characterization (albeit slightly pejorative) than "religious."
Folke
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Another thing that matters perhaps more than anything else for how "valuable" GTD is for a given individual, is his/her background and personality. Let me illustrate with a pair of extremes:
A person who saw a need for "orderly task management" early on and has practiced it for years and years, using lists of actions and projects and all the rest of it, dealing effectively with mail, phone calls and interruptions, perhaps using both his/her own methods and various "public" methods such as DIT, will not necessarily notice much difference at all when they come across GTD, likely not nearly as much as a person who has lived his or her whole life in a total chaos, with boxes of "stuff" piled up all over the office, with a mailbox at the street that you can no longer even see because it is buried in old unopened letters (this person had never thought about actually dealing with mail until he read the GTD book: he had always thought the mailbox was some decoration and found the idea absolutely brilliant that you can actually open your mail and deal with it.;-))
So who benefits more from GTD, and what specifically do they benefit?
Well, I'd say the "chaotic" person, if he/she really adopts the whole message, has made an enormous improvement. The "already orderly" person is more likely to have just "trimmed" a few aspects of his/her practices, in some cases perhaps to a significant degree. And all this is totally unrelated to their profession. There are "orderly" and "chaotic" people in all walks of life, and all kinds of mixed varieties - orderly in some ways, not so orderly in others, too orderly in some ways ...
A person who saw a need for "orderly task management" early on and has practiced it for years and years, using lists of actions and projects and all the rest of it, dealing effectively with mail, phone calls and interruptions, perhaps using both his/her own methods and various "public" methods such as DIT, will not necessarily notice much difference at all when they come across GTD, likely not nearly as much as a person who has lived his or her whole life in a total chaos, with boxes of "stuff" piled up all over the office, with a mailbox at the street that you can no longer even see because it is buried in old unopened letters (this person had never thought about actually dealing with mail until he read the GTD book: he had always thought the mailbox was some decoration and found the idea absolutely brilliant that you can actually open your mail and deal with it.;-))
So who benefits more from GTD, and what specifically do they benefit?
Well, I'd say the "chaotic" person, if he/she really adopts the whole message, has made an enormous improvement. The "already orderly" person is more likely to have just "trimmed" a few aspects of his/her practices, in some cases perhaps to a significant degree. And all this is totally unrelated to their profession. There are "orderly" and "chaotic" people in all walks of life, and all kinds of mixed varieties - orderly in some ways, not so orderly in others, too orderly in some ways ...
TesTeq
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Oogiem said:
Any real life example? To focus the search I would like to know if anybody had any life quality metrics gathered before GTD. Number of bills not paid on time? And what about other factors that may influence these metrics?
I think it's not possible to calculate ROI of GTD in a real life. You have to believe...
Oogiem
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Sure, prior to GTD I finished at most 12 new books a year, completed fewer than 100 scrapbook pages, managed fewer than 25 breeding ewes and our farm produced on average 2000 lbs DM/acre per year. Now I average 64 books a year, average 1000 scrapbook pages a year, manage 55-65 breeding ewes and the farm produces on average 4800 lbs dm/acre. Is it all due to GTD, no, OTOH I know without GTD I could have never kept focus long enough to reach those goals.TesTeq said:
bcmyers2112
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This particular "zealot" was simply trying to make the point that anyone can benefit from GTD, and that managing complexity isn't limited to the lives of so-called "knowledge workers."
Folke
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I totally agree that the whole approach with "knowledge workers" versus "operational workers" is a dead end.
But I do think there are factors that might contribute to a person's ability to absorb and benefit from GTD. Although everyone can benefit (more or less) from it, I think it is wrong to assume that everyone will do so equally. (For example, I have even heard people say they read it and rejected it.) Some people are probably more likely than others to benefit from it. What the influencing factors might be I do not know, but (as I have already said in this thread) I think the person's background and experience with other methodologies may play a part, and the person's personality, and probably also how the person perceives the level of complexity and "overwhelm" in his/her life.
But I do think there are factors that might contribute to a person's ability to absorb and benefit from GTD. Although everyone can benefit (more or less) from it, I think it is wrong to assume that everyone will do so equally. (For example, I have even heard people say they read it and rejected it.) Some people are probably more likely than others to benefit from it. What the influencing factors might be I do not know, but (as I have already said in this thread) I think the person's background and experience with other methodologies may play a part, and the person's personality, and probably also how the person perceives the level of complexity and "overwhelm" in his/her life.