GTD Workbook
Ten or more years ago: I got David Allen's Getting Things Done book. Comically I never finished reading it and that's because it's a compact and instantly useful process.
New Years week 2024: The bookstore had the new GTD workbook and was attracted to the concise "10 Moves to Stress-Free Productivity" and committed to rebooting my GTD practice.
... in fact the most relaxing environment in the world is the most information rich environment in the world, it's all around us, it's called nature... It's not really information overload, it's that inside of [it all] is information that is potentially meaningful...
Distributed Cognition and critical points
There are five parts of the GTD process and the first key habit is getting things off your mind by writing it all down:
- anything that has your attention
- everything that's not where it permanently belongs
It's important that you collect every single thing. Leaving things out creates a nagging suspicion of lurking surprises but making a complete pile lets your mind see the true size as something you can handle.
The second key idea is that you must regularly clarify this inbox of cryptic things:
- why does it have my attention?
- is it actionable?
- what would be the next physical action step?
Truly these can be hard questions to answer but as long as you avoid them there will be a mental drag.
You can't Do a project, only Next Actions
A big revelation I've had going through the GTD Workbook is prioritizing my task tracker by Next Actions and not by abstract project objectives. Too many of my tasks were not doable actions.
The History of Thought
I've always been fascinated by the relationship with the invisible to the visible because I figured if you somehow got control of that, things we can't see that are effecting things we can see.. and if we could somehow tap into that, figure out how that works, "get a hold of that magic", I could be really lazy and just move things by thinking about it...
And then I read Spengler's The Decline of the West and I got into the history of thought. We didn't call it "paradigms" back then in the 60s but it was like "Wow fascinating! The way we think effects everything we do".
Footnotes
- David Allen | The Mind Is For Having Ideas, Not Holding Them - Do Lectures - YouTube
- The Getting Things Done Workbook: 10 Moves to Stress-Free Productivity