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Tom_Hagen

Tom_Hagen

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After so many years of practicing GTD, after reading David Allen's book countless times, and thinking I understood everything, I realized I was making a mistake at the basic level.

This came to light after a conversation with Chat GPT, which made me realize that GTD is an "action-based" system (which I knew), but which consequently meant that my prior planning of a whole list of next actions (sequential, not parallel) in the project wasn't what David Allen recommended. I don't know why I didn't notice. However, GPT did provide me with the sources for these statements—including in the book, and indeed, they are—perhaps they weren't emphasized enough for me. GPT cites, among others, Kelly Forrister's quotes: "If you plan more than the next action, you're probably wasting time." from Q&A GTD Connect.

Am I the only "airhead" ;) here who missed this principle, or is anyone else here also mapping out the entire project?
 
Tom_Hagen said:
After so many years of practicing GTD, after reading David Allen's book countless times, and thinking I understood everything, I realized I was making a mistake at the basic level.

This came to light after a conversation with Chat GPT, which made me realize that GTD is an "action-based" system (which I knew), but which consequently meant that my prior planning of a whole list of next actions (sequential, not parallel) in the project wasn't what David Allen recommended. I don't know why I didn't notice. However, GPT did provide me with the sources for these statements—including in the book, and indeed, they are—perhaps they weren't emphasized enough for me. GPT cites, among others, Kelly Forrister's quotes: "If you plan more than the next action, you're probably wasting time." from Q&A GTD Connect.

Am I the only "airhead" ;) here who missed this principle, or is anyone else here also mapping out the entire project?
Click to expand...
What you’re describing is actually a perfect example of why GTD and Lean reach the same conclusion through two different doors: reality is simply too variable to justify planning a whole chain of future actions.

In Lean, anything that cannot be predicted with stability is classified as Muda (waste). And David Allen says the same thing in a different language: you only ever need to know the very next visible action. Everything beyond that is speculation.

The reason is brutally simple:
Real life will punch your beautiful plan in the face.

New information shows up. Dependencies shift. People don’t reply. Priorities change. Constraints appear out of nowhere. So the more you’ve pre-designed a “sequence”, the more you’ll have to re-design it… which is pure rework — the most expensive waste category in Lean.

Kelly Forrister’s line that GPT quoted — “If you plan more than the next action, you’re probably wasting time” — is exactly about this. It’s not that planning is bad; it’s that over-planning creates inventory you cannot execute yet, and that inventory decays very fast in knowledge work.

You’re absolutely not an “airhead”. You just uncovered the moment where GTD clicks at a deeper level: the project plan is not a choreography — it’s a commitment to keep deciding the next right move as reality unfolds.
 
I have been saying that ever since being on this forum. I never have anything but the very next action in the right context to move the project forward. You can do many actions at one sitting, stop and put the very next action on your list to pick it up the next time. Or just stop and enter the next action during your weekly review. That is why the review is so important (and necessary).
 
I came to GTD shortly before the book was first published, after a fairly long exposure to older “time management systems”. These did not work very well for me, but may have left me with a leaning towards “project planning.” I knew what David Allen said about just enough planning, but I resisted for a long time.
 
mcogilvie said:
I came to GTD shortly before the book was first published, after a fairly long exposure to older “time management systems”. These did not work very well for me, but may have left me with a leaning towards “project planning.” I knew what David Allen said about just enough planning, but I resisted for a long time.
Click to expand...
And how did this story end?
 
Tom_Hagen said:
And how did this story end?
Click to expand...
I resisted not just simple planning (desired project outcome plus next actions) but was inconsistent with processing all inboxes and with doing good weekly reviews. I tried for years to make OmniFocus work for me, and eventually gave up. In my defense, my life was and is fairly complicated. However, I would say that over-complication has been a large barrier, as it is to many people. I’ve been working on GTD for decades now. My email inbox is usually empty at the end of the day, I do a daily review every morning that takes less than five minutes, and my last weekly review was under a half hour. I think I’m actually a bit stubborn for taking so long to get where I am, and I still have more to work on. You have my respect for telling everyone on the forum about your recent moment of enlightenment- people need to hear such stories.
 
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