GTD: I'm still a fan

tags: gtd

I’ve been applying the GTD methodology with various degrees of success for more than a decade. The main reason I’ve stuck with it is because it’s the only thing I’ve found that works. All the alternatives have failed me. A secondary reason is because it reduces my workload when I use GTD. Sometimes when my workload is manageable I fall off the wagon, but when things get really busy, I go back to GTD so I have enough time in my schedule to get my work done.

I’ve read a lot of weird arguments against GTD over the years. The most common is something like “I don’t have time to manage Todo lists” or “Todo lists don’t work for me”. I agree that Todo lists don’t work, but that has more or less no relationship to GTD. A lot of people view everything in the time management genre as “Use a Todo list”.

Maybe it’s surprising to hear me say I don’t use a Todo list (at least not the traditional Todo list where you dump everything you need to do in one big list). The central parts of my system are:

• A note in an app that serves as an inbox. If something comes to me and I can’t deal with it at that moment, I put it down as an item on the list.
• My email inbox.
• A regular - daily, if possible - review of my inbox. I make decisions on everything. The decision could be to schedule a revisit in the future, or that there’s nothing that needs to be done.
• A list of all active projects.
• A list of inactive and possible projects for the future.
• A list of the tasks I need to do in each major area of my life. Teaching, research, home, etc.
• My goals. This is a list I make once a year. Sometimes I update it quarterly or have goals for individual quarters.
• A weekly review, mainly to decide which projects should be active, which projects should not, and what I need to do over the next week. My choice of active projects is made in light of my annual or quarterly goals. This review takes 20-30 minutes.

There’s not a lot to this system. Once you get it in motion, life becomes easy because you know where everything is and you know you have a comprehensive list to consult when you want to review your projects. Things don’t stay on your mind because you dump them in the inbox, and you know you’ll review the inbox within a day.

20 September 2021