Getting Things Done (GTD) - Cult or Awesome?

I need a reminder functionality at the minimum.

― Jeff, Tuesday, October 28, 2014 11:11 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They have reminder functionality within notes--is that not what you mean?

Huh, I never even noticed that. I suppose I could use it but I'd have to create a note per task.

And if it's just for keeping a list there are presumably better options even on windows/android.

― caek, Tuesday, October 28, 2014 12:14 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk man I've been hunting around for better options for 7 years--everything i've found winds up being too simplified to really deal with contexts cross referenced with next actions, let alone do an honest-to-goodness runway-to-50k feet GTD implementation; this hits a sweet spot for me.

at one point I had a couple hundred text files just for work, and everything was still silo'd between work and personal projects--but the friction of having to make sure things were consistent and accessible and updated across a few different platforms made the whole thing spin out of control eventually. i was keeping all my work related text files in one folder and all my personal stuff on Dropbox, but IT restrictions meant I couldn't install dropbox locally so I was constantly downloading a text file, capturing some banal item, and then reuploading the file, which made capture a real drag.

you make a damn fine point though about putting my life into one piece of software--i need to look into how people back up or export this stuff regularly. i see i can export all my notes as html; by the time they make it out of my inbox, my notes are mostly empty fields with titles & tags representing the task and its place in the system. maybe in case of some disaster i could export my notes as html regularly, then if needed run a python script or something to suck out the text into new text files.

Huh, I never even noticed that. I suppose I could use it but I'd have to create a note per task.

― Jeff, Tuesday, October 28, 2014 4:41 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that's what i'm doing now--i basically just use the title field of the note as the next action, and the body of the note for any reference material, then set the required reminder there.

yeah my impression is the mac 'ecosystem' for gtd is ... better? i mean i'm sure evernote do ok on mac, but i don't personally know anyone who uses it

Xpost Something to think about!

yeah my impression is the mac 'ecosystem' for gtd is ... better? i mean i'm sure evernote do ok on mac, but i don't personally know anyone who uses it

― caek, Tuesday, October 28, 2014 4:54 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i mean omnifocus really does seem like the holy grail here

this whole evernote structure i'm using is, i think, just trying to shoehorn omnifocus functionality into a different piece of software--it doesn't get there all the way, but it does enough for me to A) Use It and B) Seeeeeeriously consider moving to Mac soon just for OF.

nb its entirely possible i'm insane incapable adult

most people don't need to create a project in a task management software to clean their rooms

so the update to the EN web interface is making blood shoot out my nose with rage

A therapist just recommended I read GTD. I started looking through it and I felt a little like I was buying into some kind of tyrannical capitalist efficiency maximizer. Then again, I guess the whole reason I was there in the first place is to deal with shit that affects my efficiency, so maybe I'm just "throwing up barriers" or w/e.

honestly i've gotten the most out of this stuff in my not-work life

http://www.5by5.tv/b2w/97

i said this upthread but this show (after skipping through the first meandering 30 mins) is a good "this stuff can be really great without making you crazy" thing

doing some thinking about next actions this morning.

i remember seeing some of this stuff years ago and backing way the hell off. there was something just so artificial about the whole thing that i knew it was gonna be one of those "going to the gym" type things where you tihnk it's a good idea, and then you start, and then you fail, and then you give up.

but since then i've actually started doing some of these things on my own -- starting with the really easy/fun stuff (finding a pen i like; finding a notebook i like; writing notes all the time) and then expanded into some of the other stuff, completely ignorant of what "gtd" people were doing... and my system grew organically and is all my own, and is shockingly close to the pigpogpda at the top of the thread!

the language makes it so goddamn unattractive though... i mean, yeah, "moleskine hack?" no. just carry a notebook and develop a way to standardize your notes as you go. those little tape-post-it things are super useful too. i use them to track pages that i'm not done with, and any time i have spare time at work i flip to an "unfinished page" and tackle it. i only put stuff on a computer or phone if (A) it is a calendar appointment for (B) it needs to be followed up in e-mail or (C) i need to do computer-y stuff to it (e.g. excel calculations or whatever). every week i flip through all of the unfinished pages and write an update page, so i have a clear perspective on all of the shit i still have to do.

the point is: i made it up, so it works for me... @Hurting 2 I recommend you start by carrying a notebook everywhere and write as much down as possible and start carving out a system as you go.

i mean, yeah, "moleskine hack?" no.

otm

I've improved my productivity/remembering to do shit/general organization a lot in the last couple years by just using google calendar and iphone reminders a ton. Those have been a huge boon to my life.

I actually feel like what GTD is describing so far is not exactly my problem, i.e. inability to focus on an activity because too much worry about other things that need to be done. Maybe there's more to it than that. I do think I have learned to do that "thinking first" step a bit over the last few years.

I read something recently about how rather than "thinking positive" before starting a task (which can actually lead to bad results), you should think about the goal and then about all the things that can get away -- everything from external problems to negative thought processes that may hinder you. This is supposed to produce superior results by mentally preparing you for what it will actually take to achieve the goal, rather than empty "I can do this" affirmations. I don't know if this jibes with GTD, but I like thinking about things that way, find it really helpful.

E.g., I've been using it to get places on-time, replacing the old overly optimistic thought pattern (that led to being late most of the time) with, "K might throw a tantrum when I try to dress her, she might tell me she doesn't want the breakfast I made, she might refuse to go in the stroller, when I get to the school there might be a stroller line at the elevator, after I leave I might have a routine train traffic delay," etc., and then I plan contingencies in my mind -- "If she won't eat breakfast I'll just make a sandwich and she'll eat it on the way; I need to allow an extra five minutes for the possible elevator line" etc.

I was also assigned to read Power of Habit. First chapter is all about sucking people's brains out and turning them into memory-less freaks, super creepy yet the tone is very light. Weird book.

Also kind of unintentionally hilarious about how violence during our occupation of Iraq gets used to make this very banal point about changing habits. lol business books

yeuch

I read something recently about how rather than "thinking positive" before starting a task (which can actually lead to bad results), you should think about the goal and then about all the things that can get away -- everything from external problems to negative thought processes that may hinder you. This is supposed to produce superior results by mentally preparing you for what it will actually take to achieve the goal, rather than empty "I can do this" affirmations. I don't know if this jibes with GTD, but I like thinking about things that way, find it really helpful.

E.g., I've been using it to get places on-time, replacing the old overly optimistic thought pattern (that led to being late most of the time) with, "K might throw a tantrum when I try to dress her, she might tell me she doesn't want the breakfast I made, she might refuse to go in the stroller, when I get to the school there might be a stroller line at the elevator, after I leave I might have a routine train traffic delay," etc., and then I plan contingencies in my mind -- "If she won't eat breakfast I'll just make a sandwich and she'll eat it on the way; I need to allow an extra five minutes for the possible elevator line" etc.

thanks for this, i like this idea--i listened to a talk some guy gave recently where he talked about the kind of first question to ask when looking at a goal is "how are you gonna get there?" and the next question should be "what will you try if that doesn't work?"

I came up with a theory last week that you should get out of the habit of taking "timesaving" measures getting places (walking really fast, going to the exact spot on the train platform that gets you closest, etc.) because you need to save those for times when you are actually running late, and if you make them a habit then it's like you have no reserve.

But then the constant inefficiency would kill me slowly from the inside.

yeah I know, I haven't put it into practice yet. Although this morning I did leave 10 minutes early so I didn't have to walk so fast my glutes hurt.

shit is bad lately, cannot get shit done at work (although more efficient in other areas of my life -- keeping the house cleaner, getting out on time, getting to sleep earlier, practicing guitar regularly)

At work I'm finding myself falling into a classic pattern of avoiding looking at my to-do list because I dread how long it is and how old some of the material on it is.

Really trying to get better at breaking open the stuff that's stuck to get to the real task inside the list item.

Merlin has some old 43folders stuff on creating smarter actions that help get around this.

1. Print out your TODO list (alphabetically, if possible)
2. Read it over—beginning to end
3. Go back and circle each item that makes you cringe, or that causes you some kind of existential angst
4. Per cringe item, think honestly about why you’re freaked out about it. Seriously. What’s the hang-up? (Fear of failure? Dreading bad news? Angry you’re already way overdue?)
5. Now, again, per cringe item, add a new TODO that will a) make the loathsome task less cringe-worthy, or b) just get the damned thing done
6. Cross the original cringe items off your list
7. Work immediately on the new, cringe-busted TODO

I actually have one main project I am avoiding because it's a really miserable and futile project that nonetheless requires a lot of mental energy, but it still has to get done.

Several people I know have mentioned the "Eat That Frog" book as a way to deal with that sort of thing. I have deemed reading this book cringeworthy and thus it has not happened.

have not read but have also heard it recommended

Found "Getting Things Done Fast," a sort of GTD 'Basement Tapes' that's a recording of one of Allen's day-long seminars, on YouTube. Merlin:

Totally goes into every corner of the five phases, amounting to the kind of Intermediate GTD lessons -- heavy on the "hows" and "whys" -- that so many people crave in their GTD setup and practice.

Looking forward to getting through it on commutes in the next few days.

To avoid being overwhelmed by a single @work list of "next actions," I'd been breaking next actions down into 1-Now 2-Next 3-Soon 4-Later, then 5-Someday/Maybe. It turns out this was dumb.

The idea, ostensibly, was to build in something to deal with time sensitivity--but I found it meant stuff was falling through the cracks. Items marked "Soon" would wind up just living on the Soon list as I'd move other items to "Next," while also adding other items to "Soon."

I liked the idea of time sensitivity markers at first, thinking it'd help me make sure the "most important" stuff was getting done before moving on to "less important" stuff. I found instead that I was dealing with the "most urgent" every day, which in retrospect seems like an obvious outcome.

So now I'm back to simply @work | 1-Next Action, and get this--having run things relatively smoothly overall for the last month, my @work action list is actually shorter than its ever been. It was a comforting shock, after moving to my new tags, to see that I actually *have* been tearing through things with more control.

Gonna do a GTD ~annual review~ sometime this month, never done one of those before.

That Brian Tracy guy sounds like a straight up snake oil salesman. "I became a VP at 25 with these simple tricks!" Tastes like an MLM presentation. Mmmmmm.

One thing that's helping me with the procrastination bug is CBT materials, particularly from the REBT school (which is just alphabet soup if you're unfamiliar). I'm about to try this method out, it seems like a good way to organize all the crap I've got piled up. Here's some of my paraphrasing of what I'm working with (might not be 100% accurate):

1) Don't procrastinate. Analyze and weigh long-term consequences with short-term benefits of a particular course of action (cost/benefit analysis) and measure them against personally-chosen pleasure-seeking goals with a long life in mind. This requires you to do some soul searching to figure out what your personal goals are, and to have the courage to reject social and family-influenced goals if they don't line up to what you want, so it's probably not as quick and easy as it sounds ... took me a few years of serious work to get to this point, so it's not something you can just pick up right away and start with. The books I'm getting this from help guide you through this, so it's not like one of those one-off things where you're like, "so now what?"

2) Settle for imperfect. Basically, don't be impatient because it's an unrealistic demand that reality should conform to your own personal desires, and don't expect to do something well at first. Doing something at all is more important than doing it well in order to give yourself a shot at doing it well, and it takes a continual process of time, self-analysis, learning, testing, and trying again to make any progress at anything. Being the best and number one at something is a pointless goal if you understand that it's not necessary to have an enjoyable, fulfilling life, so it's a waste of time being hung up on being any good at something at first, or ever. Which I guess would alleviate the stress of trying to accomplish new or difficult tasks.

3) Break large tasks into smaller tasks. Say you have a 1,000 page book you want to read, read 10 pages a day and you can read three 1,000 page books a year, instead of killing yourself trying to rush through it, getting burned out and overwhelmed, and giving up and getting nothing done. This lets you accomplish goals gradually in more manageable bites that won't overwhelm you with the stress of taking on The Big Project set to your long-range goals in life. This one seems a little tough at first because it requires patience, planning, and long-range thinking, which is a discipline in and of itself. But it sounds pretty sensible so I'm going to give it a shot. I'm always bugging out about how much stuff there is that needs to get done, and I'm only thinking like, one day or one week into the future, and I think I can get more things done with a longer, more realistic range in mind regarding things I actually want to do with my life.

4) Study the feedback. Whenever you do something well or do something poorly, carefully study what went wrong, learn from it, develop a solution to overcome the mistake, stop yourself the next time you're about to make that mistake, apply the solution, wash, rinse, and repeat. This is another one that seems to require some real discipline and soul searching, I mean, if we make a mistake because our self-worth is tied up in our social standing which is tied up in our job, that's going to be some heavy shit to get through. But might as well get it over with sooner than later, I guess.

5) Reward and punish yourself. This seems like some some Behavioralist type stuff. It says that boredom and stress are inevitable in trying to accomplish anything, so accept that fact and learn to expect it as part of the human condition instead of unrealistically demanding that it shouldn't exist. Take frequent, regular breaks to avoid burnout, and reward yourself for any progress made even if it's not perfect or as well as you expected. Treats, doing something fun, self-praise, it trains you and helps keep your spirits up and avoids you hating/resenting your work. And if you don't do something that helps you accomplish something, punish yourself by denying yourself something pleasurable. When you let your bad behavior slide it's like you're implicitly saying that your bad behavior is acceptable behavior and gives you no reason to avoid it in the future. This seems like it requires a lot of self-discipline, analysis, and organization, but I think it's worth a shot.

6) Take risks. The pain of failure isn't as bad as you might imagine if you look at the evidence, while the pain of never trying is far greater re: not doing what you really want in life. This seems to be in line with the goal of having as much of an enjoyable and fulfilling life as possible, and not being the impressive VP at Widgetco at the age of 25 (which just seems like it'd put pressure on people, thus creating work anxiety).

I like this material because it gets in deep and provides some pretty sensible, testable solutions based in observable reality. My issue with GTD is that it stays pretty much on the surface (from the skimming I did, correct me if I'm wrong), so like, if I'm trying to accomplish stuff because I want to be approved by people and have a fancy sounding job title, and those goals are actually better accomplished in different ways (like, accepting myself no matter what job title I have and having a few quality love relationships and a career I get genuine personal pleasure from with lots of other nice things in between), then I'm wasting years of my life on stupid crap I'm putting in a bunch of differently-numbered folders. That Brian Tracy stuff needs to be burned in a fire. Stephen Covey is OK but he cribbed some of the best bits of this material without giving credit and turned it into garbage anyway.

I can also see why a lot of people don't like this cognitive therapy stuff because it takes seriously digging into your life, examining and challenging a lot of your own beliefs and the beliefs of family, friends, and society, choosing things for yourself, and working your ass off to make any of it work. It gets pretty complicated, but it's the best and most realistic I've found so far. The book I got the above stuff from is from the 1960s and it's funny seeing all these new books (like the Power of Habit) poorly rehashing things refined and done better over a half century ago. This stuff is like a forgotten treasure.

Allen sort of poses the initiating question as "for what purposes am I on the planet?" Ideally, the tasks you execute come out of projects you choose to embark on, and projects should include angles of attack on longer term goals you set, and the goals you set should be steps on the path to your more ~ultimate~ purpose 'life goals.' The book starts at the ground level of task management because Allen argues when you're overwhelmed by your circumstances you can't get the perspective you need to think clearly about the rest of your world,

There's encouragement to understand and consistently revisit your higher level goals to be sure that you're making progress on them. That's also the vantage point where you're best equipped to recognize if that Project is something that actually still aligns with who you want to be.

It does sound like there's a level of more critical self-examination essential to CBT that isn't here.

yeah, GTD has some good ideas as far as organizing tasks go. I never had much of a problem with task management, though, so I'm probably dismissing it off-hand for people who find it helpful. One of my jobs was coordinating and executing projects for a corporation, and some weeks I'd have up to 140 "action items" in a week on shifting deadlines and priorities, and if I screwed up on a single one of them, the legal department would hand my ass to me. I was able to manage it with a single legal pad and a pen and get everything done before deadline. Like, I actually enjoy having huge, complex projects to work on because it's fun for me to create systems and execute things under time pressure, so maybe I'm being a little unfair/myopic about this stuff. I have my own built-in modular GTD-type system I've been developing since I was a kid, but I only use it if I'm working for someone else... for some reason it never works when it comes to my personal life.

My criticism comes from my own personal experience, too, where if I'm finding it hard to get shit done, it's because it's more about having a mental block than lacking tools to organize, so probably more myopia there. CBT/REBT has a lot of great tools, though, that can really complement GTD and other systems like that, and it's way more honest/effective/tested than a lot of the business/marketing guru crap out there, so I think it's a better alternative to your Tracys and Coveys and whatnot.

Merlin Mann has sorta made his career on the notion of 'solving the right problem' w/r/t productivity, namely that if you're not accomplishing stuff, and you're focused on fixing your tools and systems to get better then you're probably ignoring or avoiding a deeper barrier. "You don't need a distraction-free kitchen, because you understand how a kitchen works. If you need a distraction-free writing environment, with tags and contexts and bells and whistles, it may be that you don't yet know how your writing works."

wait, this is the same guy from You Look Nice Today? i miss that show.

Yeah, same guy! He does a bunch of podcasts now, incl Back to Work (which I quote all the time itt). Roderick on the Line is good too--neither have the madcap bonkers of YLNT, but I like them both a lot.

claims that one doesn't need a distraction free kitchen are clearly from someone who has never cooked before

just bought this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering/dp/1607747308

about 1/3 through it, pretty hyped. i've def had fantasies of my place burning down and starting over.

ps i hate how self-helpy/methody/lifehack type shit always have to have a personal story of someone 'getting it' in each chapter. just get to the fucking goods will you.

the ~case study~ allen keeps going back to in GTD books is like the guy who has to take over his ailing mother's plant nursery business and its kind of endlessly grim

xp bought that on sight for me and significant other, thanks goole.

You're going to have many happy evenings together holding each item in your hands and asking yourselves 'does this bring me joy?'.

I alternate between the left and the right one every week

hey, hope it helps mattresslessness. i hope it helps me too, for that matter

just bought this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering/dp/1607747308

― goole, Monday, December 22, 2014 6:29 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haw just received mine today, usually not into shit like this but was seduced by the word "magic" in the title, also i have almost no possessions aside from a lot of clothes

...and a lot of books lol

one (1) computer

most importantly