I used to love GTD. Do, delegate, defer, drop. Lists. @someday/maybe. 43 Folders.
I still respect it. There is something to be said about being deliberate about your tasks.
But I quit it. My life is vastly, vastly better. Because I’m free.
The end product of GTD is itself a problem. Instead of spending time doing important stuff, you become a slave to your lists. It’s on the list, do it. Even though there’s the “Drop” release valve, you don’t want to “drop” things because hey, you’re not a quitter, are you?
Systems make the man. Except they don’t, not at all.
They make the man imprison himself with trivial tasks Being able to focus on what matters isn’t going to be possible if you have a list that bosses you around.
While you’re putting things on a list, it’s likely enough that you’ll put more things on your list. Inertia. You’ve got list-building momentum. So you put something that has no real relevance, and isn’t part of what you want to do. Because hey, you’re building a list.
Then you have to deal with the mental overhead and guilt of having a barely relevant item on your to do list. Do you drop it? Do you need to do it? Why are there 18 things on this list? I’ll never get done.
What you need to be doing is reading, writing and getting better. But that doesn’t happen. Because the endless list of trivia beacons.
What GTD doesn’t acknowledge well is that the really important stuff gets done. Automatically. You get your contracts and pitches out, because they matter. You can wait on the TPS report.
We think that we’re cheating when we drop things, so we do stuff that doesn’t matter. We make our own work. GTD has a severe activity bias. Activity and productivity are different things. Being productive is more than just a long list of things to do.
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