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The key takeaway I got from GTD was just in capturing the thought, and therefore stopping it from cropping back up in thinking, and causing stress about stuff NOT getting done. This, in an of itself, helped me greatly.

Then, one random morning, as I was thinking in the shower (as one does), I had a sudden revelation: As someone who frequently suffered from intrusive thoughts over past pain (as many of us do), could this "mind like water" approach be applied to these thoughts as well?

I started writing out all the things that bothered me on a continually recurring basis. All the bad things I had done. All the bad things that had happened. This wasn't anything special; I just journaled the events, with an attempt to identify why these memories stuck with me, and still caused me pain, and what, if anything, I had learned from the experience. Within weeks, I was mostly finished. It's a Word doc, weighing in at about 25 pages, last I checked.

The difference was nearly miraculous. There's very little else that has changed my life so profoundly, and none so quickly. It's been, probably, 8-10 years ago now. I almost never have intrusive thoughts now. I still do things I regret, of course, but, with experience, I make smaller mistakes now, and my maturity in handling them has caught up to their magnitude, and there's no longer a huge gap between the action and reaction. To use a computer analogy, I cleaned out all my old core files, and now I use a garbage collected language anyway, so I'm not wasting all that disk space any more.

I'm relating this in the off chance that someone like me could see it, and benefit from this as well.

Thank you for this. I thought about how I handled my intrusive thoughts (also about eight years ago) and I realized I wrote songs about it.

I have never been as prolific as a songwriter since I became generally happy, but reading your comment gave me strength in remembering how much pain I used to be in and how things turned out not so bad after all.

That's why I've combined GTD lists with Eisenhower Matrix (prioritizing over Urgent-Important quadrants). Random but good video explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT89OZ7TNwc

I did run a software product once that was combining GTD and Eisenhower Matrix, which worked quite well. It's now discontinued but a short video in case interested is still online, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22S_1Qjq2J0

During one of the most productive times of my life, I organized my tasks this way in Outlook 2007, of all places, using custom fields and its form designer.

I independently developed a similar system in college, but it had a specific ranking for tasks. I put each task into two lists: the first sorted only by urgency/due date and the second sorted by importance. Then for each task I multiplied the rankings from the two lists to get the final task order.

This worked well for me because things naturally rose in ranking as the due dates got closer. That way I had plenty of time to work on really important projects, without jeopardizing moderately important things that suddenly became urgent at the last minute.

I do the same thing in Trello. Trello is amazing for GTD lists, and i use an eisenhower matrix on them. It's amazing how little I actually do and am happy, and I don't have to look at "not urgent, not important" since it is on a different board. I also do not use "urgent, not important", those go into the calendar and I do them or lose them. They aren't important.

Hey, thanks for your comment. I also think so. GTD is more keeping track and less actually defining priorities or what to do first. Nonetheless, it´s a very efficient system if you already know where you´re headed and know where your priorities lie.

My favourite author, Tim Ferris, has brought the 80/20 analysis to my attention. It´s really great for determining how to set priorities and deciding what to focus on. It´s simply, asking youself "What 20% of sources are resulting in 80% or my desired outcomes & happiness?".

I do agree that GTD helps to start learning to keep track of all the moving parts in our lives. That's the micromanagement part. Many people I know do not have a clue how to tackle this part of their lives (some of them are excellent at getting results, at macro managing their lives, but if you look at the details of their lives: there is a total mess)

Re 80/20 (Preto Principle): There is also a book from Richard Koch named "The 80/20 principle" that'll help to see how some activities will have a huge leverage and others will contribute almost nothing to our big goals. Be it that we read a book (and try to focus on the nuggets instead of reading every chapter) or trying to do every item on our lists vs selecting only one or two for a day and blocking a huge amount of time to get this activity done.

Also Peter Drucker has written a great book about this topic: "The Effective Executive".

I keep reminding myself that in life things are not distributed equally. Wealth, intelligence, insightful books, the contribution of activities to my goals, etc

Cool! Thanks for the book recommendations. I will make sure to get my hands on them and check them out.

As per the inequal distribution - that´s very true! Personally, I find it to be a huge motivator for myself. To strive to get a bigger piece of the cake, specifically because of the unequal distribution. Of course, with topics like the wealth gap it isn´t such a pleasant fact. I guess it really depends on the angle you look at it.

+1 for “The Effective Executive”. Excellent reading for managers and individual contributors alike.

I had the same issue. This is why I now prefer a kanban board.

As much as I dislike overhyped "lean" in software, in the TPS spirit I think it's a great way to prioritize and avoid planning waste.

With GTD I found I spend too much time writing task lists that would become outdated soon. WIP limits bring focus.

I've found something similar. Kanban boards have probably made me more effective, but more than that, they've made work a lot more enjoyable by helping me limit the number of open projects at once.

Do you use any particular kanban implementation?

Trello is great. Lightweight (compared to Jira + Addon), super fast (also via keyboard shortcuts) and fun to use

Trello's the best I've found

kanbanflow

What do you mean by "WIP" in this context? Work in progress? If that's the case, what does "WIP limits" mean?

WIP = work in progress.

Generally, in process management/improvement texts like on Lean or Theory of Constraints, you want to limit your work in progress to prevent backlogs and problems.

I have 100 books I want to read, that's probably an underestimate. I have 10 open right now at home (I cannot read one book straight through most of the time). I will not open another book until I have finished one of those 10.

Since I can only read one book at a time (the actual act of reading) and I only have about 2 hours a day to read, if I let my list grow larger I'd never finish. Many of these take approximately 1 hour/chapter and have 10-20 chapters. So I've got around 100-200 hours of work ahead of me, spread over 50-100 days. Adding another book to the queue means another 10 hours, or 5 days, to clear the list.

(Until I wrote this I actually hadn't put this much thought into my reading, but this is approximately what I do.)

In order to keep moving on any project you have to limit the amount of concurrent activities that you are doing so that progress can continue.

Too late to edit, and just reread.

Addendum:

> if I let my list grow larger I'd never finish

I'd never finish any books. As there's always something new to read the task of reading will never be done. But if I start new books without considering the number currently being read, then the odds of getting back to and finishing any other book is pretty low.

I used GTD religiously for a while, but I ran into the same issue of having difficulty deciding what to do right now. After trying a bunch of different approaches to how to set up 'contexts', I eventually came across Mark Forster's 'AutoFocus', which after a bunch of adjustments turned into this:

http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-final-...

Key paragraph that explains why this worked better for me than GTD did:

> There are three main requirements which have to be kept in balance. These are urgency, importance and psychological readiness. Traditional time management systems have tended to concentrate on the first two of these. The neglect of psychological readiness is probably the reason that most people don’t find time management systems particularly effective or congenial.The most distinctive feature of FVP is the way that its algorithm is primarily based on psychological readiness - this then opens the way to keeping urgency and importance in the best achievable balance.

I still use a rudimentary GTD approach for collecting stuff (various inboxes) and keeping track of a project as a whole, but I've so far this 'AutoFocus' (or rather the unfortunately named 'Final Version') approach has been the only one that didn't fall apart quickly.

I actually disagree. By being explicit about all of your decisions to do things, and how much time it will take, you learn over time about the tradeoffs and stop doing worthless things. If you capture, review, plan, and think about where you're going long-term, you will stop doing things that have no value to you. (At least it worked for me.)

Whether it works for everyone, I don't know, but the first step is to get control of all the necessary information. Then you can decide if you need something more.

Try to review all your lists (or one list in a given context) every time you sit down to do work and choose the one that is the right one at a given time, energy level, context.

Personally, I find that overwhelming. Also I don't wait to be in a context (at phone, at computer, ...) Rather, I define my context, sit down and focus on one project single mindedly for hours and days to get this project done.

Of course I have my groceries list, my errands list, my "talk to dev team" list, Trello and JIRA and whatnot: all sorts of lists. But when I want to get work done, I ignore all these lists, get in tunnel-view-mode and forget about everything else.

When I have the time or when all the C-Prio tasks can't wait no more, I will turn to them and batch process them to get as many of them done das possible.

> review all your lists (or one list in a given context) every time you sit down to do work

That's the opposite of GTD. One of the goals of GTD is that you get to a point that you don't make decisions about what to do while you're working.

> when I want to get work done, I ignore all these lists, get in tunnel-view-mode and forget about everything else.

The ability to do that is the benefit of GTD.

You always have to decide. Say you are in the context "at office" and have a list with twenty action items on a list called @office. Which one will you do? You have to choose. Based upon your energy level, time available, etc.

David Allen (DA) outlines a process where you sit down (way before you start implementing a project), brainstorm / think through / clarify / define the endgame, and finally come up with "atomic" action items for that project. This is a fantastic advice.

Then these items are kept in various lists (that represent contexts; for instance "tasks I can do while I am at a phone" or "tasks I can do while I am at a computer / online / doing errands / ...".

Now you have a bunch of unrelated items distributed horizontally across various lists. As if "talk to my boss" [on the list: at agendas] or "draft the architecture for the platform" [on the list: at computer] is as important as "talk to neighbour re his barking dog at night" [on the list: at agendas] - And since DA recommends not to organise lists by priority you always have to review your lists to choose an action item. That means you'll have super important items buried in lists with trivial action items.

My issue with GTD is that it wants us to capture everything. Why does it want that? For inner peace! - DA thinks that whatever is nagging on me (internally or externally) needs to be captured / clarified / put on a list (to be dealt with asap or someday/maybe). As if my resources are unlimited. Why not take a decision way before and learn to clear things in advance, internally or externally (by saying the magic word: "no"), decide, that I don't want to follow up on that thing. Instead of having various lists with endless "open loops" that I want to close asap / someday/maybe. And by doing that, loosing focus.

I believe (like Peter Drucker in his book "The Effective Executive") that in order to accomplish anything of significance we need to focus our resources, "close the door", block as many hours as possible to work single mindedly on very few tasks. This is not what GTD says. It wants us to tackle everything that lands on my lists (sooner or later). And that is an illusion, that we can do a myriad of things and get significant results in our lives.

> DA recommends not to organise lists by priority

I agree with his advice. You are either going to complete a task or not complete it. If you define one task to be important and another to be trivial, they shouldn't be on the same list, or if they are, you should put the important task on the top. Things that have to get done should really go on your calendar.

> Why not take a decision way before and learn to clear things in advance, internally or externally (by saying the magic word: "no"), decide, that I don't want to follow up on that thing. Instead of having various lists with endless "open loops" that I want to close asap / someday/maybe.

But that's what you're doing with GTD. You capture everything that requires a decision, then at the end of the day or week, you make a decision about it. One of the motivations for GTD is that anything that needs a decision with either be floating around inside your brain, or inside a trusted system, and if you put it in a trusted system (where you know it will be reviewed soon enough) you free your brain to do work.

I usually have a project that is about ~30 tasks total, to be done mostly sequentially, with a deadline in a month. Maybe a week of work all together.

I never got that sort of thing to work with GTD, viewing only some number of "next actions" hides the fact that all those actions need to be done by some date.

I agree there isn't an emphasis on priorities in GTD. I keep my project list in rank order of importance, which he says is unnecessary but it is helpful to me.

GTD is bottom up. You have to collect everything you have already committed to and know your commitments and actions. Then you keep moving up the idea is to get to a place where your goals and life choices are driving all the decisions on what you commit to in the future.

If you implemented GTD you only captured and identified what you were already agreeing to do.

This is where the 50K foot view stuff comes in.

http://gettingthingsdone.com/2011/01/the-6-horizons-of-focus...

BTW i don't follow GTD strictly any more because it lacks a proper way to manage projects in my mind BUT it was designed around committing to the things you have to and the things that align with you.

> But it lacks the advice to implement a filter: To ignore 80% of the potential issues before we let them onto our lists.

Is there a problem with just capturing, moving on, then filtering later? I find my anxiety much reduced and my focus much increased if I just org-capture random idea, then get back to the task at hand. Version control of my org files and feeling free to archive, even going so far as setting status to DEFERRED or CANCELLED, but it's still written down (and no longer cluttering my mind) keeps me saner.