That's ok, the thought has occured to me as well.
If you can relate to the situation(s) I'm describing, is there anything in particular that has helped you when implementing GTD?
Random thoughts, from the ADHD point of view, so I'll be talking about me, because it's not my place to diagnose you. And only a few of them are tied directly to GTD.
- I believe, based on the book Driven to Distraction and other things, that one problem is that the ADHD brain fights tooth and nail against doing things that are not rewarding--or, to use a different word, things that do not provide stimulation to the brain. Emergencies are stimulating, so the task that has become an emergency is suddenly interesting to your brain, while for weeks or months it wasn't.
- This may mean that while the organizational elements of GTD are great, the "mind like water" might, conceivably, actually be a problem.
- For me, I seem to be able to swap "stimulating" with "rewarding". I struggle to find some way, any way, to make those inherently unstimulating tasks rewarding.
- For example, when I couldn't get myself to reliably write fiction--a personal goal of mine--I spent some time figuring out why I did regularly daydream fictional scenarios, and why I didn't actually write. I figured out what rewarding elements the daydreaming had that the writing lacked, and I added it to the writing, and I'm writing, regularly.
- The book "Organizing from the inside out" is the only book I can immediately think of that addresses the question of changing tasks to include what YOU find rewarding. Not what you
should find rewarding. Not what your coworkers or your mother or the average person finds rewarding. What YOU find rewarding. It only talks about organizing and housekeeping tasks, but it still could be interesting as an example of analyzing one's own preferences and rewards--maybe the mindset could be applied to other things.
- I've found that I get infinitely more done when I minimize the number of things I'm doing simultaneously--when I minimize Work In Progress, to use the Kanban term. It may be impossible to entirely keep myself from task switching, but if I'm switching between three projects instead of sixty, I'm far more likely to get something done on even the more boring of the three.
- So I keep my GTD lists small. Very small. Smaller than those of anyone else I've ever heard of. See "minimize the number of things" a few items down. I have lots of Someday/Maybe and very very little in my current lists.
- But the organizational elements of GTD, IF you can force yourself to keep up with them, should absolutely be valuable. If you can easily tell what you need to do, you're one step ahead of the distractions. You don't want to see that cool project that you want or even need to do someday, when your current "boring" task should be to force yourself to start your taxes.
- I mentioned your current "boring" task. I try to make those short lists include a little bit of high-priority boring and a little bit of interesting, even if the interesting isn't a high priority.
- I find "done" to be rewarding. For some reason, my brain tries to keep me from getting to "done"--it points to other tasks, it pulls harder and harder the closer I get to finishing a tidy completed unit of work. But if I resist and get to done, I experience that as rewarding. And each "done" seems to be making the other "dones" easier.
- By "done" I don't necessarily mean entire big projects. I mean finishing the bite that you've chosen. Get that one load of laundry finished from collected from the hampers to washed to folded and put away. Get that bug fix finished from initial investigation to coded and tested and documented and delivered. (Or out for peer review, or whatever "done" is within your power.) Get that nearly-done memo DONE instead of putting it aside to edit later.
- Returning to the tax example, find those scattered tax documents, put them in a folder, put the folder somewhere you can remember, and write yourself a GTD project where you instruct yourself to figure out which ones are missing. Then congratulate yourself on the first step of the do-my-taxes project being DONE.
- You might discover that you don't find "done" to be rewarding. But give it a try; there seems to be science that our brains do enjoy "done", and that they find unclosed loops to be a strain.
- There are the usual ADHD bags of tricks, most of them stimulating things. Caffeine, or prescribed stimulants. Sensory stimulants--music, fidget toys, the loud noise of a coffeehouse around you, walking while on a phone meeting.
- If I'm going to sit myself down to do something boring, I set myself up with what I need--a Coke, a carb-based snack, loud music, maybe a fidget toy if the task is one, like reading or paying attention to online training, that doesn't require my hands. I bought a foot-based fidget toy for tasks that do require my hands; I don't yet know if it works.
- Some people find visual or tactile things to be rewarding--they might be more likely to keep practicing GTD if they're using a beautiful leather-bound notebook and a fountain pen to do it with. That's not me, but it's the sort of thing to discover about yourself, and again I point to Organizing from the Inside Out.
So my summary is:
- Find the reward.
- Limit work in progress.
- Pursue "done".