Why you suck at Getting Things Done

If you’re a creative type and interested in productivity, you might have tried David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. Supposedly, it works great. But for some reason, hackers, artists, and other creative don’t seem to gel with the process. Why doesn’t it work?

- You don’t need GTD! David Allen designed this system for individuals who need to do 50 different tasks in any one day and are constantly interrupted by meetings and phone calls. If you know what you need to do and can work on it for multiple hours at a time, there’s no reason to spend extra energy on GTD.

- You might not have worked with it long enough. For people I know, it’s taken at least a year to master the process of thinking analytically while you input tasks, and then switch to thinking intuitively when you choose which ones to do.

- Most likely, you’re doing something wrong. Are you organizing tasks by context? Do you have a good reference system? Is your weekly review timely and consistent? Are all of your inboxes (including the one in your brain) at zero? GTD is almost all-or-nothing, and missing any one of these components could ruin your experience with the system.

There are plenty of jobs that can be done well without GTD. If you can manage without it, there’s probably no reason to make the switch.