Minor light bulb today in the middle of a meeting – great place for getting some serious thinking done!
GTD includes thinking up front about things as they arrive. OK, the outcome is obviously the lighthouse we are steering towards; but stage planning has to be one of the core components of thinking up front also.
I was considering how I mentally deal with new stuff as it shows up. It goes straight onto a tasks list, and later I will nail down the NA. But what are the natural stages involved in getting the project done? I still default to the old instinctive thought pattern that “it will all get done in the end, probably close to the time when it is due”.
But, this is a burdensome way of thinking. It’s like saying I have stored everything in a big bag in the attic, and before the year is out, I will have it all sorted. This way of thinking causes the project to cast a long shadow over my thinking.
If I break down the task into natural stages from the beginning, then that big dark bag of the unknown will not exist, and instead I will have a collection of smaller, defined, “single scene” sections listed on my Palm.
I realised that I had been implementing GTD in an incomplete manner, and that I was just shoving up heaps of future work like snow in front of a snow plough, thus creating a shadowy, uninviting, and uninspiring future.
It has been said that most people resist planning their work. So, while developing the discipline of thinking up front, I must also deal with my resistance to planning if I am to get the maximum mental benefits from GTD.
Dave
GTD includes thinking up front about things as they arrive. OK, the outcome is obviously the lighthouse we are steering towards; but stage planning has to be one of the core components of thinking up front also.
I was considering how I mentally deal with new stuff as it shows up. It goes straight onto a tasks list, and later I will nail down the NA. But what are the natural stages involved in getting the project done? I still default to the old instinctive thought pattern that “it will all get done in the end, probably close to the time when it is due”.
But, this is a burdensome way of thinking. It’s like saying I have stored everything in a big bag in the attic, and before the year is out, I will have it all sorted. This way of thinking causes the project to cast a long shadow over my thinking.
If I break down the task into natural stages from the beginning, then that big dark bag of the unknown will not exist, and instead I will have a collection of smaller, defined, “single scene” sections listed on my Palm.
I realised that I had been implementing GTD in an incomplete manner, and that I was just shoving up heaps of future work like snow in front of a snow plough, thus creating a shadowy, uninviting, and uninspiring future.
It has been said that most people resist planning their work. So, while developing the discipline of thinking up front, I must also deal with my resistance to planning if I am to get the maximum mental benefits from GTD.
Dave