A
Anonymous
Guest
A few weeks ago, Dave published a sort of checklist of stages of GTD mastery using karate belts as an analogy. The article was interesting, but I would divide the learning curve, at least as I have experienced it, a little differently.
Some aspects of GTD are simple to understand and use, and work by themselves without reference to any other part of the system. It's easy to get a calendar up and running for example, and it works even if you don't do anything else. It's only slightly harder to set up reference files, and they work by themselves as well. Ditto the trash can.
The "buckets" that are harder to get the hang of are the next action and projects buckets, both because it's hard to get used to how they are supposed to relate to each other, and neither really works unless you also implement the collection habit and the weekly review to make them live.
For me, at least, the breakthrough was the realization that the basic unit of the system is NOT the Next Action, but rather the Project. That is, you are not managing Next Actions, but managinig Projects. In other words, most of the "stuff" that you want to get done in life takes the form of a project, which you then break down into Next Actions, rather than the form of a Next Action, which you string together to form a Project. To me, at least, the GTD book was confusing because it introduced the Next Action as sort of the rule, and then defined a Project as sort of an exception to the rule -- i.e., if the Next Action does not complete the task by itself, then you have some other thing called a Project. A more natural way to think of it for me is to think of everything as a Project, and if the project can be completed in a single step, then it's just a single-step project.
At the top of the learning curve I would put the weekly review, since you can't really get the benefit of a weekly review unless you are already implementing all of the other elements of the system.
So to me, the natural progression is: stand-alone pieces of GTD, then NAs and Projects, then Weekly Review. That's as far as I've gotten in two months. What comes next, you veterans? What's the next milestone that I have to look forward to?
Some aspects of GTD are simple to understand and use, and work by themselves without reference to any other part of the system. It's easy to get a calendar up and running for example, and it works even if you don't do anything else. It's only slightly harder to set up reference files, and they work by themselves as well. Ditto the trash can.
The "buckets" that are harder to get the hang of are the next action and projects buckets, both because it's hard to get used to how they are supposed to relate to each other, and neither really works unless you also implement the collection habit and the weekly review to make them live.
For me, at least, the breakthrough was the realization that the basic unit of the system is NOT the Next Action, but rather the Project. That is, you are not managing Next Actions, but managinig Projects. In other words, most of the "stuff" that you want to get done in life takes the form of a project, which you then break down into Next Actions, rather than the form of a Next Action, which you string together to form a Project. To me, at least, the GTD book was confusing because it introduced the Next Action as sort of the rule, and then defined a Project as sort of an exception to the rule -- i.e., if the Next Action does not complete the task by itself, then you have some other thing called a Project. A more natural way to think of it for me is to think of everything as a Project, and if the project can be completed in a single step, then it's just a single-step project.
At the top of the learning curve I would put the weekly review, since you can't really get the benefit of a weekly review unless you are already implementing all of the other elements of the system.
So to me, the natural progression is: stand-alone pieces of GTD, then NAs and Projects, then Weekly Review. That's as far as I've gotten in two months. What comes next, you veterans? What's the next milestone that I have to look forward to?