The purpose of GTD

Nick Dulfill who works at the firm Gyronix, creator of the add-in for Mind Jet Mind Manager has a written a post on his blog “Beyond Crayons” which I found very interesting simply because it explained so easily my view of GTD.

One of the problems I have when I try to explain colleagues and friends why I use GTD as a method is that they do not understand the power of the decission i have made not to prioritize certain items. My productivity has increased, but not as much as I had antipated, but slowly I’ve realized that when I’m not in the work zone I am a lot more relaxed.

Here is an excerpt from Nicks post:

Since adopting GTD, I have learned to live with a to-do list that could keep me occupied for the next two to five years. I luxuriate in thinking that this is a bad thing and that I am failing to make significant progress each week, but in reality it’s not like that. By taking action, I am taking decisions – deciding to do one task in a hundred and leave the other 99 unattended. Instead of beating myself up for failing to also complete the other 99 actions, I can tell myself that I chose not to do them. If they were truly important, I would have done them. Actions speak louder than words.

The existence of the list gives you a baseline to evaluate whether it was better to do that one thing than to not do 99 others. Without the list as an anchor, you will just go wherever the wind takes you.

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Be sure to subscribe to his feed if your into GTD and mind mapping, he has some really interesting posts!