How to Handle My Endless Stream of Ideas

[Matt_M]

Hello everyone! I took a break for a while from using GTD. I've recently started using it again but have run into some trouble with the system. So, I write everything down on my capture list, so that I can clarify what I have captured, and I'm immediately stuck. Not because I don't know how to clarify the items, but because there is... so many of them. Like how I am supposed to clarify all of them if I have tons and tons of different ideas? It helps me a little bit to separate important vs non-important items, but there's still so many. I just don't know how to clarify them all. I will sit for hours trying to clarify everything, but then I've spent so much time just clarifying items on my capture list. That, by the time I start some of the next-actions, I'm already burnt out from clarifying. I refer to my areas of focus and write some of my ideas down on my someday/maybe list, but there's still so many. Another similar problem that I'm having is that I'm always thinking of so... many... ideas. Like could I do this, or this, or possibly that. I have tons of ideas that I write down. I mean here's a question. What if you thought every thought that there is to think? Then how would you clarify anything? You would spend the rest of your life just clarifying and not even doing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I am at my breaking point with GTD and am going to quit it again if I can't figure out how to handle all of my ideas. Do any of you have an endless number of ideas of things that you want to do or that could be important?

Reading your post carefully, it sounds like you are in the system setup stage. You are setting up and using your system for the first time (again). Since it's the first time, you have an avalanche of stuff to clarify. That's pretty normal, especially for the first mind sweep or so. However, as you continue to use the system, it should be dramatically less since you're no longer trying to address a backlog that's been accruing in your mind for quite some time.

Ideally, the vast majority of things captured should be reference, archived, trashed, someday/maybe, 2-minute tasks, etc. before even getting onto your lists. However, if you find it helps, you could create separate lists for truly pie-in-the-sky ideas or what have you so that your primary lists are not as long.

Getting the system setup is a commitment in and of itself. Doing that itself is value-added work. You should feel empowered to set aside some specific time for just getting things setup and doing a full mind sweep. This is why the book recommends using a weekend, for example, to get the system setup just as its own thing. Only start doing the work clarified in it later on.

However, if you have a system setup and did a full mind sweep or so and still are generating an overwhelming amount of captured inputs then you are likely over-capturing. As others have noted, you need to carefully identify if something is important and worthwhile when you are both capturing and clarifying it. Especially during capturing, you need to really consider if the item is something you are truly committed to doing, if ever at all. GTD explicitly calls this out since people often capture stuff they have absolutely no interest in ever committing to. Not everything that you think of should be captured. Like you said, it'd be impossible to ever stop/be done since humans have something like tens of thousands of thoughts every single day.

For example, you may think of/capture "write the great American novel" but unless you are truly, honestly, deeply committed to doing that then it shouldn't end up on any of your lists. Even someday/maybe items need a commitment that the idea is something you might or would ever be committed to doing.

Hope that helps.

 

[fooddude]

All you can do is all you can do. Is every thought important? And is every thought actionable? Your weekly review should have a mind dump where you write everything that has your attention. I would say when you clarify, you will find lots of "trash" to be discarded.

 

[andyv]

Seconding @Matt_M. In the "setup" phase you will have a big backlog of things in your head that need to get sorted out.
This can take a while even after you've processed all your physical and digital "stuff".
So that's normal and I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Others in this thread have also made great points: in the beginning you should lean towards capturing too much, even if you trash most of it.
Over time you will become much more efficient here, especially as you get a handle on the big picture, and what truly matters to you.
With practice, it will get easier and easier to make decisions about what things mean.

@GreatNatez If you are comfortable sharing, it might be helpful to hear some examples of what kind of things you are capturing.
It might be that what you're actually doing is journaling or mind-mapping.

This is a separate activity, but it ties in really well with the system. For example, David mentions in GTD Fast that he once thought he was clear but then spent 3 hours journaling and it cleared up a lot for him.

That doesn't mean all that text needs to be captured in a system! (It can just stay in a notebook and you never need to look at it again.) But all that writing is often necessary to move our own thinking forward on a subject. So that may be the case here, that you writing your ideas down is helping you develop a mental model about things that are important to you.

Now, you may come up with things that need to go in your system while your are journaling. So it's very useful to keep a capture tool handy (GTD inbox / pocket notebook, your app, etc.) while journaling because then if anything actually needs to go in the system, I can capture it immediately.
(This also works great for audio journaling! It's best to do it with a capture tool so you can make note of the important insights immediately.)

But most of my journaling does not produce anything that goes in the system: often just 1 or 2 inbox items per hour of journaling!
The main value seems to be that it advances my own thinking and understanding of the world.
It gets my own head clear, and that is its main value.

Actually, in GTD terms, what I am doing by journaling is that I capture everything on my mind (for a full hour), and then trash almost all of it!
(Separate the wheat from the chaff! Digging for gold! etc.)

Hope this helps.