
A Beginner´s Guide to Getting Things Done - PeOe
https://blog.zenkit.com/a-beginners-guide-to-getting-things-done-3cc1a5123b98
======
jstewartmobile
This was mercifully shorter than the Cal Newport book. That's about all I can
say for it.

Ivan Sutherland had the secret, and it only took one paragraph to share it:

' _I used to hate washing dishes. I would delay as long as possible. Eyeing
the daunting pile of dishes, I would say to myself, “I 'll be here forever at
this dumb task.” The enormity of the task deterred me from starting. I still
dislike washing dishes, but I now get the dishes done promptly because I
learned a simple procedure for doing the job from my wife's uncle. The
procedure starts out “Wash first dish...” I have a similar procedure for
starting travel vouchers, it goes “Record first expense...”_'

edit: his rationale was equally short and sweet:

' _Each of my little procedures embodies two different aids to getting
started. By invoking a familiar procedure I reduce my need for courage. By
breaking the task into smaller tasks through emphasizing that only the first
dish need be washed or the first expense need be recorded, I reduce my
estimate of risk. Both mechanisms work. These sources of courage are sometimes
called “discipline,” especially when being taught to the young. Discipline
relies on a practiced use of routine subgoals to avoid defeat by fear. Its
highest form comes when the Lieutenant, charging up a heavily defended hill,
says, “Follow me men!”—and they do._ '

~~~
kaybe
There is a second step to this: 'You can stop if you want to.'

Just washing one plate does not mean I have to wash all of them. Stopping
after only half of them is acceptable and preferable to not starting. So I can
pick up and wash one without worrying about the full task.

~~~
swah
A similar trick works for avoiding sugary treats: don't strongly oppose this
desire - instead say to yourself you can eat it at a later time and move your
mind to something else.

(When you finally eat whatever it was you so much desired, you didn't really
fail, because you are only consuming 1 unit for those 3/5/whatever days,
instead of one every day...)

~~~
ryangittins
I use this trick when I want to buy something online which I don't absolutely
need. I'll add it to a wish list on Amazon (or even put it in my cart) and
then leave the site. When I come back a few days or weeks later, I often find
myself asking why I ever wanted that thing in the first place and remove it.

~~~
vog
The same approach works for unimportant tasks/ideas as well. Put them on a
list, and if after a few days you don't care about them anymore, just delete
them and be happy that you didn't waste your time on that.

------
submeta
I read David Allen's book in 2002 and immediately started implementing it. At
first it felt like godsend. Capturing every "open loop" (everything that is
not the way it should be = everything with a delta between current and desired
state) and deciding for each of them if there is any action that I need to
take and if so, what the very next step was - that practice alone released a
ton of energy and gave me a sense of control. Prior to that I felt
overwhelmed, had a sense of anxiety that there are things in my life that
should be different.

Over time I realized that what GTD was missing (or not stressing enough) was
the insight that in addition to knowing your commitments and deciding what we
need to do to make them move forward we need to constantly remind us that
resources are limited and priorities are not distributed equally but rather
very asymmetrically. Only a few activities will have a major impact on our
lives. The key is to focus on a few activities and deliberately ignore the
other "80%". And while we ignore the other activities we have to learn to deal
with the stress of not doing the other activities.

David Allen's method encourages people to keep lists of open issues. That's a
very good practice. But it lacks the advice to implement a filter: To ignore
80% of the potential issues before we let them onto our lists. And to endure
the stress that is caused by ignoring most of the things that want our
attention.

Tl;dr: GTD does not stress making decisions and setting priorities enough
(even though it mentions it in many chapters).

~~~
AhtiK
That's why I've combined GTD lists with Eisenhower Matrix (prioritizing over
Urgent-Important quadrants). Random but good video explaining it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT89OZ7TNwc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT89OZ7TNwc)

I did run a software product once that was combining GTD and Eisenhower
Matrix, which worked quite well. It's now discontinued but a short video in
case interested is still online,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22S_1Qjq2J0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22S_1Qjq2J0)

~~~
sp332
I independently developed a similar system in college, but it had a specific
ranking for tasks. I put each task into two lists: the first sorted only by
urgency/due date and the second sorted by importance. Then for each task I
multiplied the rankings from the two lists to get the final task order.

This worked well for me because things naturally rose in ranking as the due
dates got closer. That way I had plenty of time to work on really important
projects, without jeopardizing moderately important things that suddenly
became urgent at the last minute.

------
renegadesensei
I recently started making small handwritten TODO lists that I keep in my
pocket. It has significantly improved my productivity. Every morning while I'm
getting ready, I usually think of about seven or eight things I really want to
get done that day, and if I'm lucky, I'll actually do one or two. With this
method I find I'm getting about four or five things done.

I find that the act of actually handwriting the TODO lists helps solidify
exactly what needs to be done and in what order. Keeping it in my pocket is
also a nice mnemonic. I'm always feeling the paper when I reach for my wallet
or something so I don't forget. I keep a pen in my pocket too so I can add
stuff to the list and cross things off as I finish, which is really
satisfying. It's also useful for capturing various little thoughts,
observations, project ideas, and other things that float into my mind at
random points.

It works better than task management apps or calendar reminders on my phone.
It's a pain to configure those sorts of things and I actively try to avoid
staring at my phone too much. Sometimes the old-fashioned approaches are the
best.

~~~
lloeki
> pneumonic

mnemonic?

~~~
renegadesensei
Thanks!

------
donmatito
While I most probably don't follow the tactics of GTD (haven't read them and
don't want to) I aggressively follow a strategy that really works for me :
reducing cognitive load. I make a point to commit nothing except the task on
hand to my working memory.

When I say "I should remember to", I immediately stop and use a Messenger bot
I coded for that purpose

When my wife say "Can you remember to" I immediately ask her to put it into
our shared calendar, or I add it to the same bot

When a coworker says "can you do X", we add it as a trello card with the
appropriate priority

People start to get used to it, they probably assume that I have very bad
memory or that I'm weird, and we make it work :-) I feel very light since I
started enforcing these procedures

~~~
nikivi
"commit nothing except the task on hand to my working memory" is essentially
the summary of GTD done approach.

~~~
komali2
What character did you insert after "G" in "GxTD?" It's not rendering on my
browser, weirdly.

~~~
ajnin
I wondered the same thing. It shows up in Chromium but not Firefox. It is
apprently character 0x14, or ASCII for "Device control 4". First time I come
across this character !

------
ThomPete
GTD is the utopia of productivity. Everyone attempts to reach it but almost no
one (if any) ever will. Those who get the closest realize that you can't live
your life like that.

In my world GTD become a goal in itself rather than a way to better manage
your life.

With a few exception (calendar) I lived my life in a way that would make a GTD
enthusiast cringe.

I am always impressed by those who attempt to do it but never surprised when
they finally give up.

~~~
dogruck
You make the bizarre claim that nobody successfully follows GTD because you’ve
never done so, and you know many others who have also failed to do so.

That’s like a fat dude looking around at the donut shop and saying “nobody
ever sticks to their diets, haha!”

I’ve used GTD for years. I just shattered your claim.

~~~
d0mine
As a side note: diet doesn't work long term:

> After about five years, 41 percent of dieters gain back more weight than
> they lost. Long-term studies show dieters are more likely than non-dieters
> to become obese over the next one to 15 years.

> ... The study found that a single diet increased the odds of becoming
> overweight by a factor of two in men and three in women. Women who had gone
> on two or more diets during the study were five times as likely to become
> overweight.

More [earlier]:

> men with severe obesity have only one chance in 1,290 of reaching the normal
> weight range within a year; severely obese women have one chance in 677. A
> vast majority of those who beat the odds are likely to end up gaining the
> weight back over the next five years...

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/why-you-
ca...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/why-you-cant-lose-
weight-on-a-diet.html)

~~~
dogruck
You’re right — most people will fail to stick with diets, exercise, and
personal organization. Frankly, it feels hilarious that researchers had to
spend time proving that claim. Just look around!

On the other hand, there’s a powerful minority of people who _do_ stay
disciplined. They get a lot of stuff done.

Lastly, although it’s easy to fail, it _is_ possible to join that powerful
minority.

~~~
tudelo
It's not only possible, it's so much easier than most think. It's just a case
of just doing it, like cleaning your room or washing your dishes.

~~~
PeOe
"Just doing it" seems to be the solution to a lot of things. Whether it´s
trying new things or starting a business. I´ve learnt the hard way that
overthinking and then not doing is worse than just doing and then failing. Out
of failing you actually learn and get better. Out of overthinking comes ..
literally ..nothing.

Gary Vaynerchuk always preaches the "concept" of putting in the actual work.
Also a variation of "just doing it" but with the side-note of "actually go out
and do something"! Really important stuff because most of the people nowadays
don´t get that and think success will somehow come around the corner one day.

------
zimbatm
Every time I tried to do GTD it just makes me unhappy.

It is something related with encoding all the little things, put them into
boxes, organize. And ultimately becoming the robot executing the tasks that I
have set for myself. The list _becomes_ the things I have to do, it grows
larger and larger, there is never enough time.

Instead, let the brain do what it does best; forget. Put the really important
things in the calendar, like Tax and VAT returns. All the rest in not
important. Then pick two tasks for the day. It's all a bit fuzzy and that's
what I like the best; it leaves room for my creativity.

~~~
voiper1
Sounds like you'd like Zen to Done, a modified version of GTD.

The basics is here: [https://zenhabits.net/zen-to-done-ztd-the-ultimate-
simple-pr...](https://zenhabits.net/zen-to-done-ztd-the-ultimate-simple-
productivity-system/) (and there's a longer ebook version for sale, too).

------
joaorico
In theory, GTD is great.

In practice, it comes up short in several ways.

TLDR - For some years now, I use a system called Agile Results [1]. It's a
method (with less marketing behind it than GTD) which has been gaining
traction for a lot of good reasons. I couldn't be happier with it.

I won't get into the details, but its biggest edge against GTD is the
flexibility. With Agile Results, you can let go for a couple of hours or days,
and the system doesn't fall apart, it's more organic. It's oriented towards
Results in several domains of life, in a balanced way. The manner in which it
breaks down the hierarchy of projects, temporal horizons and relative
importance of tasks is the real key. It solves the same problems as GTD (eg,
your mind is for thinking not remembering [of course, you can still
incorporate spaced repetition for what you want to remember long term]). But
it solves them in a way which is more organic, focused and iterative. If you
only implement a portion of it, it has the proportional benefits - it's not
all or nothing. It also lets you integrate parts of other productivity
systems.

There's a book about it [1], and a 30 day program to getting started
incrementally [2].

I realize it sounds like hyperbole, but, after some years using it, I consider
the problem of productivity essentially solved.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Results-Agile-Way-
Personal/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Results-Agile-Way-
Personal/dp/0984548203)

[2]
[http://www.30daysofgettingresults.com/](http://www.30daysofgettingresults.com/)

[3][http://www.asianefficiency.com/agile-
results/](http://www.asianefficiency.com/agile-results/)

~~~
schtitt
So I just read through your [2].

The first part seemed good and reasonable, though towards the end (from day 10
onwards) I felt like the guy was kind of just trying to come up with stuff to
excite the reader, and which in my mind cluttered the simplicity of the rest,
i.e. the 3 things a week, 3 things a day, hotspots, monday vision and friday
reflection (+ dump your brain, but everyone says that).

Would you mind giving a more concrete telling of how you have implemented this
system in your life and which parts of this 30 days-thing you find to be
indispensable and which are just fluff?

------
PinkMilkshake
Has anyone low in conscientiousness had any success with GTD? It seems to me
like this system is amazing for people who are already very conscientious but
not well organised.

------
rconti
The hardest part for me is consulting my lists.

Does anyone ever get so bored (or motivated?) that they say "hey, I wonder
where I could find a huge list of tasks to choose from!"?

I email myself reminders. I put items in my google calendar. I've occasionally
used google todo lists. I use Remember The Milk. I have iCloud notes and text
files. I have Jira tickets.

I never look at these things. Or at least, I never consult them with proper
regularity.

Working with todo lists has reduced my mental burden, but I STILL have those
things hanging out in my head that I know I need to do, yet aren't written
down. Or maybe they are, but they also occupy space in my mind. Again, far
less than before I had a "system", but even with the "system", I don't find
much relief.

I have maybe 30-40 items in my RememberTheMilk list. Some have dates, many
don't. Many of the ones with dates I've been postponing for 6+ months. Which
means to consult the list (which I do only every 3-5 days) is a burden in and
of itself, because now I have to re-schedule a lot of things. I could leave
these items without a date, but then they'll be even LESS likely to get done,
because they're down somewhere at the bottom. And the list is too long for me
to regularly look over and feel I have a handle on. So I create calendar items
with reminders for things I really need to do, say, sometime this afternoon.
But maybe 2pm was a bad choice because I got involved in something, so I'll
ignore the alert. now I have to look back at the calendar and see there was a
think I was supposed to do in the past.

I don't know -- I'm getting better, I guess, but the difficulty still seems to
be the actual DOING.

~~~
dford
I'm the same exact way... Tasks and reminders are spread across multiple
services, but I never check them.

Have you tried offline notes?

It's not sexy and it doesn't sync with all of your devices, but for computer-
related tasks the only to-do list I've had consistent success with is large
post-it notes. It's always next to my keyboard so the effort required to
consult the list is next to none.

~~~
rconti
Yeah, I've bought and used notebooks, but my best results are with post-it
notes.

------
voiper1
NOTE: If you find GTD "too technical" or "too overwhelming" give a try to ZTD,
zen to done.

It's a modified version that keeps goals and main tasks for the day front and
center.

[https://zenhabits.net/zen-to-done-ztd-the-ultimate-simple-
pr...](https://zenhabits.net/zen-to-done-ztd-the-ultimate-simple-productivity-
system/)

------
komali2
>Lastly, if something might require action someday, but not now, it is added
to the someday list. These are things that you want to remember, but shouldn’t
be cluttering up your ‘next actions’ list. Things like ‘Learn Japanese’ or
‘write a book’ go here.

So let's take "learn Japanese" as the example, because that is a goal of mine
and I already am engaged in achieving this goal.

Before having any awareness of this GTD concept, I simply have been studying
flashcards daily (anki, 5 new words a day), and when I get a chance read and
do exercises from a Japanese grammar book I bought. Down the road, I know I
need to at some point engage in watching Japanese TV, listening to radio, and
finding Japanese speakers to engage with in conversations to improve my
reading ability.

I know these things because I already learned Chinese and I figured out the
smaller steps to break down, but how on earth would I break these into
"actions" (from the article - "Every project should have an "next action") if
I had no concept of how to learn a language?

For example, another goal I have is "become a dank ass motorcyclist - drag
knee!" Right now I just putt around in the Santa Cruz mountains and do what I
can, but what would I put for "next action" for this project? I guess schedule
a track day?

Basically, how do I learn to break large tasks I know nothing about into
"actionable items?"

~~~
majewsky
> how on earth would I break these into "actions" [...] if I had no concept of
> how to learn a language?

If you don't know how to break a larger task into actions, you are simply
unable to perform the task, regardless of whether you use GTD or not. What GTD
does is make you consciously aware of the process of breaking down larger
tasks into smaller actions.

> Right now I just putt around in the Santa Cruz mountains and do what I can,
> but what would I put for "next action" for this project? I guess schedule a
> track day?

It sounds like you think that the "next action" needs to be different from the
previous one. It is not. If you want to learn the piano, you can just perform
the action "practice the piano for 30 minutes" every day, unless you decide
that you want to take a different "next action" at some point.

~~~
komali2
So in the GTD system, an action can be a permanent, do-every-day thing? How
would you decide it's "done" then? (assuming lots of long-term goals require
"practice x for y/times per z" events)

~~~
Jtsummers
You may pick a piece you want to play of modest complexity and difficulty.
You're "done" when you can play it. But are you really? No, you just pick
another, harder, piece.

The practice is to get you to that skill level. If you simply enjoy playing,
you may never be done. But you know that each day you have allocated 30
minutes or so to practice.

------
agumonkey
tiny reminder that emacs org mode is somehow pretty suited to implement GTD
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=emacs+gtd&t=ffsb&atb=v84-7&ia=web](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=emacs+gtd&t=ffsb&atb=v84-7&ia=web)

~~~
cheshire_cat
Nicolas Petton (maintainer of Indium) wrote a great blog post about his org-
mode GTD workflow: [https://emacs.cafe/emacs/orgmode/gtd/2017/06/30/orgmode-
gtd....](https://emacs.cafe/emacs/orgmode/gtd/2017/06/30/orgmode-gtd.html)

------
kamaal
The guide being an ace with the GTD technique is some thing the book answers
quite well at the end of it.

Its a thing called 'Constancy of purpose', its simply a way of saying you can
be productive, only if you do work that is satisfying to you. Once you find
such work, and you get drowned by it, GTD helps you be organized and work
through it in sanity.

The problem for most people is working through boring drudgery day in and out,
until boredom becomes routine. Brain begins to largely see what it has
memorized as pointless to be played out on paper, and sooner than you realize
you drop out of GTD. So to an extent you need to be doing new, exciting and at
least satisfying stuff to get your GTD regimen going.

Once you are involved with such work. GTD is plainly simple. Just list out all
tasks in the order of urgency and goals. That is life, decade, yearly, monthly
and weekly goals. Then at weekly level, write down stuff and prioritize them.
Anything that can be addressed in 5 minutes, just do that right then. Other
stuff goes in the order of priority. You review your list every week, and
lastly the important concept of deadlines. Once you commit to a job, finish it
within a timeline or it becomes irrelevant after a while.

The other stuff to GTD is your regular discipline of being motivated, focused
etc.

~~~
PeOe
Great explanation! The part with the satisfying stuff is really important. No
system works properly if you don´t want to get stuff done.

Purpose combined with "actually doing stuff" is the point I guess. One without
the other equally results in nothing meaningful.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
There's no magic bullets for this sort of thing. Try something and see if it
works. If it doesn't work, try something else. Incrementally improve your
processes.

------
miguelrochefort
Getting Things Done is by far the most influential book I've read. It has
changed the way I think about everything.

However, I have never been able to find a good implementation of the system. I
know that David Allen (GTD) and Charles Simonyi (Intentional Software) were
working on something at some point, but I haven't heard anything since.

~~~
Azareus
The only implementation I have found worthwhile is paper, and to a certain
extent, plain markdown/org files in Dropbox. Everything else, like OmniFocus
and whatnot has had severe issues with the flexibility inherently required.

~~~
Jtsummers
Out of curiosity, what are your issues with OmniFocus?

I have some issues with it (primarily that it's hard to share information from
it with other people), but otherwise I find it to be a fantastic _personal_
tool for GTD (I'd use it for work, but my office is all Windows).

That said, I do like paper and org-mode at least as much. I definitely find
paper best for writing down my intentions and clarifying them before I enter
them into OmniFocus.

~~~
Azareus
I currently still use Omnifocus for part of my system because it is still
pretty great, and has excellent cross-device support, but my gripes are:

\- The context support is weak. It ideally would be replaced by a tagging
system, but I doubt that's coming at this point.

\- No support for making sequentially dependent tasks -- I can't mark task A
to be doable as soon as task B completes. (I guess I could, if I do a lot of
sub-projects with sequential dependency)

\- In addition to this, subprojects are janky. They're just kinda awful to
use, from the awkward indentation to the fact that the side-bar projects view
is not actually a full tree, and just works with folders. This would need to
be changed to also expand/be usable for sub-projects, not just for folders and
top-level projects.

\- The system maintenance tools are lacking. One of the core tenets of GTD is
to make sure that every project always has a next step, and OmniFocus has no
support for this whatsoever, aside from manual review. I realise that paper
also doesn't do this, but it seems like something a digital solution should
have.

\- No sharing information, as you said, aside from exporting things as
TaskPaper.

\- Support for deferments, but not for Tickler files, which are one of the
handiest things about a paper-based system.

\- Reference and storage, per nature of OmniFocus, has to be completely
separated, which adds jank. I realise this is massive scope-bloat, so it's
probably not fair to complain about.

Things I really like and will probably keep even after I drop OmniFocus:

\- The dedicated mail drop. I think even after I move away from OF, this is
going to be something I keep.

\- The "due" list view. OmniFocus pushes you towards using this a lot, even if
it's not completely in the spirit.

\- The good integration between my laptop and phone is going to be hard to
live without again.

I hope this shed some light on my gripes and issues with OmniFocus. :)

------
thibran
Write down ideas...

I'm very skeptical that this would work, because I have ideas about all kinds
of topics all the time. My list would be so crowded and mixed that it would be
hard to prioritize anything. At the end I would see on paper that there is too
much stuff going on in my head, something that I already know...

~~~
zentiggr
If lots of creative bits floating around in your head works for you, and
doesn't distract from accomplishing the day to day things, then all good.

The thing I've seen most about "GTD doesn't work!" feelings is the assumption
that 'doing GTD' is all or nothing. "record everything and become task robot"
is one extreme.

The core idea is "use something other than your mind to keep track of the core
things you want to be reminded of later, and the stress of 'what was that
thought again?' can go away."

If you get to a point of not worrying about what might have fallen between the
cracks, you've got enough of a system and I call that 'working'.

My "GTD" system doesn't look anything at all like DA explains it, but the
concepts were enough to push me in the right direction and find what works to
keep that worry at bay.

------
JepZ
While that advice is fine, I do not feel like I am getting things done. It
feels more like I am getting things out of my way. And while I have to admit
that getting things out of your way, is the first step towards getting things
done, I still feel like my mind ist creating ideas/projects at a much higher
rate than I can finish them.

This is probably because my mind loves great ideas and doesn't feel satisfied
by small ones. Yet small ones are the only ones I am able to finish within an
acceptable margin of time.

So the result is, I have a few large ideas I am working on from time to time
and a list of smaller ones I barely even touch, because the price of time to
finish one of them doesn't weight their value. And in the end I am getting
nothing "done" ;-)

At least I have fun working on my own ideas :-)

------
irundebian
I'm using zim [0] for implementing my task management. But I'm honestly not
very convinced of GTD. I know GTD for years and was pretty motivated in
implementing it, but later in combination with software tools like Redmine it
felt like a burden to me. Maintaining the system itself was kinda time
wasting. Now I at least have my zim desktop wiki, which centralizes all my
TODOs (adding dates to TODOs is possible).

[0] [http://zim-wiki.org/manual/Usage/Getting_Things_Done.html](http://zim-
wiki.org/manual/Usage/Getting_Things_Done.html)

------
wtallis
Off topic, but I'm often puzzled and peeved by the characters that get used as
apostrophes. The HN submission uses a standalone acute accent character
(U+00B4), which renders with way too much spacing around it. The article
itself uses a right single quotation mark (U+2019) in the page title and in
the article body, but uses a genuine apostrophe (U+0027) in the author's name.
The quotation mark at least renders more or less the same as an apostrophe
would. The accent character must have been introduced by the HN poster using a
misconfigured keyboard when they manually re-typed the title.

------
skate22
Seems like agile development for the individual. My only concern is that it
will only work as well as it does for our company. To be fair, i do not think
my company uses agile correctly (more rules than guidelines)

------
kinkrtyavimoodh
A trick I used to use while in college was that if I ever dreaded the
magnitude of the task that was in front of me (preparing for an exam, or
working on my thesis or whatever), I'd spend half an hour making a very
systematic time-table for it. So if it was preparing for an exam, I'd nicely
spread all the chapters of the book I had to read into whatever time I had
left. Even if the plan was a little unrealistic, the fact that I had made it
made me feel in control of the situation and worked wonders for my mental
state.

------
erikb
Instead of having twelve tasks now you have 15, because you also need to keep
track of the twelve tasks you are not doing. the problem is often more about
getting started than getting done.

~~~
PeOe
That is absolutely true. Wihtout actually getting started, nothing happens. No
system can "make you" more productive. You make yourself more productive by
implementing the system.

------
schuellerpa
What a great article! I wanted to read the book for a long time but never had
enough time. The article really seems to summarize it and makes it
understandable. Well done! I´ve also stumbled upon this one on the same blog.
It explains the implementation with Zenkit. I guess it would be worth a try.
[https://blog.zenkit.com/how-to-set-up-gtd-in-
zenkit-902fa696...](https://blog.zenkit.com/how-to-set-up-gtd-in-
zenkit-902fa6960f8)

------
stonelazy
I beg to differ from what author says. Am kind of reluctant to materialize all
my thoughts, it can be good to note down the ideas but with what author
suggests to take dump of my entire brain and its thought is bit over rated. My
point being, when we note down too many things our capacity to remember things
gets really bad. It's like am totally dependent on the notes for any action i
want to do next. Over the period i feel we will have very poor memory.

------
anotheryou
Most important for me:

\- remember nothing (clear head), write down everything (and with enough
detail to really remember e.g. some decision instead of just jotting down a
keyword)

I have yet to figure out how to handle too much to do though... Sure, just
drop the less important stuff, but at some point something will break or
someone else will depend on work I didn't do.

------
wyclif
As far as processing the inbox goes, I feel like GTD has too much overhead.
"Inbox Zero for Life" works better than anything I've ever tried:

[https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-
life.html](https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html)

------
polote
One thing that does increase my productivity is keeping track of what I do
during the day.

I didn't have productivity in mind when I started doing that, but the fact is,
as I want the data to be accurate, as soon as I hit the "Work" button I focus
on work and only on work.

Not sure I recommend it thought...

~~~
Nowyouknow
What do you use to keep track of your data?

~~~
polote
Atimelogger

------
GrumpyNl
To all the people with the little and big todo lists, live a little. Let life
surprise you.

~~~
PeOe
I guess that´s why many people don´t even start with trying to implement GTD
into their lives. They fear being "too organized". What many people don´t get
is that after "clearing your head" and really using GTD you have more space in
your mind to actually live and be creative.

~~~
bachmeier
Wish I could upvote this twice. The problem people have is all the stuff that
needs to be done - a mountain of email, Christmas shopping, personal projects,
and such. Ignoring it won't make it go away.

If you can't work because a dog is biting you in the leg, one response is "I'm
too busy to fight with a dog right now, and fighting with a dog isn't much
fun, so I'll just ignore it and focus on my work instead." Not sure that's the
best path to productivity.

------
Numberwang
The problem for me is habits, not projects. I've yet to find an acceptable
solution to keeping habits going.

~~~
spodek
Does [http://sidcha.com](http://sidcha.com) help?

------
ttflee
I just wish that I had finished reading the implementation of CFRunloop so I
could compare it with GTD.

------
tomerbd
I just use google inbox. It's brilliant UX is guiding me through GTD without
even knowing it.

------
BeetleB
I first encountered GTD in 2007. After about 8 years of trying, I finally
accepted that GTD didn't work for me.

I think _any_ workflow management has to be tailored to your personality. I
digged that from the start and did not fall into the trap of being 100% David
Allen compliant.

Some of my issues:

\- My lists grow long. Way too long. I recall he suggests looking at the
Someday/Maybe during the weekly review. That just overwhelmed me.

\- Not enough attention is paid upon "upkeep". I know you're supposed to clean
things out every week, but it was a lot of work, and mentally draining. David
Allen did not seriously address cognitive load.

\- I could never work out a system to handle "Waiting For" tasks. Managing it
all on paper was impossible. And software never seemed to get it right.

\- Although he talks about the 10000 ft view, etc - I felt he didn't give any
real advice on looking at the bigger picture. GTD is an _excellent_ way of
focusing on minor projects while neglecting major ones. One needs to
prioritize, and he just expects you to prioritize somehow.

Those are the ones I remember off the top of my head.

It definitely was not a waste of time, though. Some positives that came out of
it:

\- Not treating your Inbox as a TODO list

\- Getting a filing cabinet (this paid dividends _immediately_ )

\- Making me learn more about org-mode customization in my attempts to
implement GTD in it.

\- Self knowledge about what works for me and what doesn't.

GTD is the flow that everyone goes through before encountering what works for
them.

I later discovered the One Minute Todo List
([http://www.michaellinenberger.com/TheOneMinuteTo-DoList-
Eboo...](http://www.michaellinenberger.com/TheOneMinuteTo-DoList-Ebook.pdf)).
This filled in a lot of the gaps in GTD. His explanation of work stress in his
book was very relevant to me.

However, even that didn't fully work for me, and I continue on my quest.

Lately, the thing I'm realizing one thing: As long as I don't control my
inputs, nothing will work for me. Inputs are things like:

\- Work my boss gives me

\- RSS/Facebook/Twitter/News feeds

\- Email

\- Pretty much anything else that feeds into your TODO lists

Allowing a lot of stuff to get in to your inbox (GTD inbox, not email inbox)
will make managing it much harder. Take a deep look at what category of items
get in there, and start applying limits. I'm experimenting doing that with
email by making incoming email based on whitelist only: If the sender's
address is not in my whitelist, it will _not_ show up in my inbox, and the the
sender will get an email with instructions on how to get their quarantined
email into my inbox (i.e. prove there is a human behind the email) as well as
their email address in my whitelist.

~~~
Tempest1981
What's a good tool for managing the various lists/projects? I've tried Google
Docs, Apple Notes, and Txt files.

I'm good at making giant "inboxes". From there I move them into 20-30 separate
files, but it's tedious -- trying to find the right GDocs tab in Chrome.

Then it's hard to pick out the top must-do items from the 20-30 lists.

~~~
BeetleB
>What's a good tool for managing the various lists/projects? I've tried Google
Docs, Apple Notes, and Txt files.

Dunno, frankly. I use Org Mode. It's good enough. Others use TaskWarrior.

>Then it's hard to pick out the top must-do items from the 20-30 lists.

Which gets to my point of "If you don't limit inputs, nothing will work". I
mean, you _can_ make it work if you have huge lists, but your system will be
heavy on maintenance. So for me the challenge isn't "How do I handle so much
data?" but "How do I make sure my lists are not long?"

I'm debating switching to anti-TODO lists. Decide my focus for the next
month/year/whatever. Pick a few projects I want to do in them. Everything else
(incoming or in existing lists) go into a "Do not do" list. Once I'm done with
my current projects, I'll examine that "Do not do" list and decide on another
project. This way I don't spend too much time babysitting lists.

Yet another system to try.

~~~
Tempest1981
I think GTD has the concept of a "Maybe Someday" list.

Edit: or "Someday Maybe": [https://facilethings.com/blog/en/someday-
maybes](https://facilethings.com/blog/en/someday-maybes)

------
halayli
Here's how I get things done for tech related projects but it can be used for
any other project. It's just what works for me but I am sharing it in case it
can help someone else. Take what you want from it.

I maintain everything in notes, I use apple notes but you can use whatever as
long as it's very quick to access and modify. I tried many tools / sites but I
noticed that the moment the list is maintained on some service/site I start
maintaining it less. With notes, it's one click away and accessible from my
phone. I also avoided tools that require me to click to create a note, click
to delete, or anything slightly complicated. I just need to move lines of text
around with my keyboard.

Start by creating a new note for the project.

I define the begin/end boundaries of the project by creating a list of high
level tasks. If you can go directly to low level tasks why not. Tasks can
include define & create API endpoints, research tasks, modules to implement,
devops stuff, docs, marketing, etc... I spend a good time creating the list.
Sometimes days.

I start working on the tasks and while doing so I add/remove more detailed
tasks as things become clearer and group related tasks. For example, I might
have a group of tasks related to an HTTP API, and another group that lists the
modules I need to implement. If a module is big enough it might become a new
group and tasks related to it will be added.

    
    
      while more_tasks:
          new_tasks = execute_next_task()
          if new_tasks:
              add_tasks(new_tasks)
    
    

As I stumble on ideas while working on the project, I add them to a Backlog
group sorted by priority. These tasks might need more thinking and can either
get dropped or moved later to get implemented. What's important to me is to
get these ideas/thoughts out so that they don't distract me.

Let's say you're creating a new saas product. When the project is complete,
start creating new tasks related to running the business like 'research
keywords', 'create adwords campaign', etc.

I also have a list of various personal todos, and a list called 'Context
Switching' which I use to list the projects I am currently working on which
includes work and non-work related projects. It clears my mind and feels less
overwhelming when I can look at a note and know exactly what I am working on.
It also help me not feel 'lost' and maintain priority. The main goal of this
is not to keep tasks in my head.

What's important is to always know what you need to work on. If you don't
know, then spend time (hours/days) figuring this out.

I live by these notes. The notes are of course useless if not constantly
maintained.

------
novalis78
Sounds exactly like 'How to get what you want' by Raymond Hull, 1967. Just
that the system was reversed.

------
tomerbd
todo task: do GTD

------
gcb0
tl;dr go read your old TODO notes.

dont't know what I was expecting...

------
kapauldo
Here's the short version: make to do lists and folders and shut off your phone
and email for an hour so you don't get interrupted. It's like weight loss
techniques. They all work if you follow them.

~~~
RobertoG
Sure, but, in a more pessimistic view, what it's the meaning of 'they all
work' if average people can't follow it?

