GTD: Keep it simple
Here is a clip from David Allen talking about what I preach here all the time. Too many people over complicate GTD. The core structure has proven over time, that it's a good blend of being complex enough to do the job but simple enough to make it work.
There's an interesting phenomenon which was explained to me once as a key cybernetic principle: in order to create simplicity amidst complexity, your system must be equally complex. The corollary to that would be that if you're trying to manage something very complex with too simple a system, it will over-complexify it! And that's just what I've seen over these many years as a coach and educator. People's lives are way more sophisticated, intricate, and multifaceted than the systems they are using to manage them. A calendar and to-do list pale as puny weapons against that kind of universe. In some ways their incompleteness and insufficiency just make the situation worse.
On the other hand, the system (and lists therein) can't get too complicated. For many who step into GTD and taste the transformative power of its BFO's (Blinding Flashes of the Obvious), they swing on the pendulum too far in the other direction. They over-classify. This seems particularly to afflict the technophiles, who often try to create too many lists with too many subsets and connectors and relationships. They find themselves getting hung up with only a partial implementation of the method and rationalizing that they found a way that "works better for them." Though that in itself, if true, would actually still be GTD (as GTD is an approach, not really a system), the reality is, from our experience in working with many of these folks after the fact, they just get themselves detoured because of the burden of their complexities.
GTD requires some important thinking on the front end (meaning, outcome and action determinations especially). But if you have to think too much before you can put something on a list ("will this task require a '3' or '6' level of energy on a scale of 10 to accomplish it?") you're likely to run into quicksand in trying to work it. Your system has to be easy enough (and complete enough) that you will be motivated to work it even when you have the flu. The system is only as good as what you're willing to maintain when you don't feel like it. It's fine to let your "inner geek" create a system for yourself on a rainy Saturday, but it had better be tested and continue to work amidst the firehose-gushing realities of Monday mid-mornings as well.
I think David Allen is reading my post. LOL
Just kidding.
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David McLaughlin closed this discussion on 01 Feb, 2011 04:04 PM.