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After many years of GTD, it's clear to me that the poison in any GTD system is items that are low priority and hard to turn into concrete actions. If you use GT

by drcode 12y ago

After many years of GTD, it's clear to me that the poison in any GTD system is items that are low priority and hard to turn into concrete actions. If you use GTD, items such as "Plan a better way to arrange the living room furniture" and "Look into what's involved to mend a chair leg" will slowly creep into your "Next Action" list, roost there indefinitely, and slowly drain your list of oxygen. Right now I'm trying Mark Forster's "Ultimate Time Management System", which seems to offer some relief to this problem.

w1ntermute 12y ago
The key is to break down each todo into clearly actionable tasks. You can do this in Wunderlist with subtasks, for example. In my case, the more I break something down and make it concrete, the less likely I am to procrastinate.
visakanv 12y ago
"look into" is insufficiently actionable. How do you measure look into? "Google 'mend chair leg', write down best 3 posts, follow instructions..." those are actionable. "Look into", "manage", "take care of", "think about"... all pretty vague
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  The problem I experienced with "measuring 'look into'" is that you're not in a position to do so at that moment. "Google 'mend chair leg'" may be a proper task, but it does not capture what to do with it. "Write down best 3 posts" is not something you should commit yourself to before Googling; it's the vague act of "looking into" that generates such actions. You can't tell in advance if you'll need to read blogposts, watch videos, browse a subreddit, etc. In the end I created my own terms like RESEARCH and BRAINSTORM with well-defined actions attached. RESEARCH means "spend a block of time BFSing on Google until you feel satisfied", while BRAINSTORM means "spend time in front of a whiteboard/piece of paper and dump your problem until you're able to identify specific courses of actions, which then will become your actionable items". But in the end, I still feel that some problems are not well-suited for GTD - mostly those requiring to improvise as you go along.
  - visakanv 12y ago
    Ah, absolutely. I think what's important is recognizing when a task is vague (intentionally or otherwise). It could be "Google 'mend chair leg' for 25 mins and list out next actions', and then those actions become new tasks. I think we're definitely in agreement here. If there's a misfit between a problem and GTD, the challenge is to figure out how to frame the problem properly. To zoom out a little- GTD won't create an inspiring work of art, but GTD will manage the artist's schedule, and free her up to read more, meet other artists more, get inspired more, etc.

by drcode 12y ago

w1ntermute 12y ago

The key is to break down each todo into clearly actionable tasks. You can do this in Wunderlist with subtasks, for example. In my case, the more I break something down and make it concrete, the less likely I am to procrastinate.

visakanv 12y ago

"look into" is insufficiently actionable. How do you measure look into? "Google 'mend chair leg', write down best 3 posts, follow instructions..." those are actionable. "Look into", "manage", "take care of", "think about"... all pretty vague

TeMPOraL 12y ago
The problem I experienced with "measuring 'look into'" is that you're not in a position to do so at that moment. "Google 'mend chair leg'" may be a proper task, but it does not capture what to do with it. "Write down best 3 posts" is not something you should commit yourself to before Googling; it's the vague act of "looking into" that generates such actions. You can't tell in advance if you'll need to read blogposts, watch videos, browse a subreddit, etc. In the end I created my own terms like RESEARCH and BRAINSTORM with well-defined actions attached. RESEARCH means "spend a block of time BFSing on Google until you feel satisfied", while BRAINSTORM means "spend time in front of a whiteboard/piece of paper and dump your problem until you're able to identify specific courses of actions, which then will become your actionable items". But in the end, I still feel that some problems are not well-suited for GTD - mostly those requiring to improvise as you go along.
- visakanv 12y ago
  Ah, absolutely. I think what's important is recognizing when a task is vague (intentionally or otherwise). It could be "Google 'mend chair leg' for 25 mins and list out next actions', and then those actions become new tasks. I think we're definitely in agreement here. If there's a misfit between a problem and GTD, the challenge is to figure out how to frame the problem properly. To zoom out a little- GTD won't create an inspiring work of art, but GTD will manage the artist's schedule, and free her up to read more, meet other artists more, get inspired more, etc.