My experiments with GTD

I was bitten by the productivity bug two years back. By which I don’t mean that i suddenly became a zen master who has a “mind like water”; I just fell into the rabbit hole of reading and watching videos on productivity religiously while not making any lasting changes to my habits.

Oh, I did try to implement what i saw but nothing lasted for more than 2 weeks and I have been at the same space mentally work-wise as i was in 2018.

Which is why, after countless videos which have referenced GTD, I finally picked up the book to see what it’s about. That, and the fact that Shreyas Doshi — someone who posts fantastic threads on Twitter about Product Management — recommended it for improving self-execution

There are plenty of good concise videos which explain the entire workflow but I still believe its worth reading the book. It does a good job in opening up your thinking on what, for example, a project is, and what kind of lists we may want to maintain.

Beware — A lot of it may not necessarily be applicable for your context — The focus on paper documentation for example is something that doesn't matter to me at all as the only time i used the printer at office was for printing out air tickets before I traveled

So, for context on how the system works, here’s my interpretation of GTD:

Collect — The first step towards getting to stress free productivity is to just write down everything that pops into your mind in a single inbox. I think implementing this alone would be a great start to someone who’s inundated with ad hoc tasks through the day and yet spends 10 minutes before a crucial meeting thinking about how to rearrange the living room for a better work from home flow

Organize — Periodically, go through your inboxes — email, handwritten notes, the sticky notes on the system, paper mail etc. This is the step that I am struggling to make a habit now. At the end of a 10 hour day I just want to slam the laptop shut and binge watch Schitt’s creek (fantastic show btw) but I am trying to implement a 10 minute wind down where I close the loops on whatever has accumulated on my inboxes.

You can find the official version of the workflow here — I am listing down some of the more important points that may help you get started if you are thinking of travelling this path

Action items that can be done in 2 min are to be dealt with immediately — The single most important tip in the book. I am still struggling to get this habit down but just being aware of it helps tremendously in getting small tasks done and dusted

Any item that requires more than a single step to complete is a Project and goes in your project list (Buying a phone for example may be a project because you would need to research various options and then find out the best deal before you order a phone)

Action items left after applying the 2 min go into their Next Actions Context list.

Reference items to be filed appropriately (The system outlined in the book was another point where I benefited from the book)

So, some of my initial thoughts from my experiment so far:

Don’t worry about the tool — I spent a week playing around with various tools — no tool is perfect. But then all you really need are a list manager and a folder system. Any tool that does this should work

Don’t worry about tagging all Next action tasks to a project. I believe the reason we have the projects list is to give you the peace of mind that you are not missing on something critical and you can periodically review the list to ensure there is a Next Action task to move the project forward. Having said that, I got too hooked up into trying to integrate the Next Action lists vertically with Projects by having tags/labels but this just ended up making the implementation that much harder. I use To Do — and keyword search is quite sufficient IMO to list out all the tasks associated with a particular project (if at all I need to have a view)

Keep your personal and work project and action items list together — Initially, I created two separate systems — One for work (restricted to Microsoft To Do and Outlook because that’s all my organization allows) and one for personal. Ended up playing with a bunch of apps for my personal lists while never really ticking them off.

Since i can access my office account on mobile, I then tried putting in the personal projects list also with my work setup and my personal Next Actions in the same context lists. This has also helped removing some friction in my workflow — deciding which app to open when something strikes me, or having to maintain 2 systems (1 is hard enough)

I do have 2 reference systems — Google keep and drive for personal reference lists, recipes, kettlebell workout plans, guitar songs I’d like to learn, scan copies of my license etc. and work reference files on my work laptop of course. But projects and Next actions in the same system definitely helps

And by being forced to opt for the To Do (again, more than sufficient for implementation), I put to rest my endless search for an app that is more suited for the system and the accompanying FOMO.

If I have to work in a place that doesn't allow mobile access, I would probably just use my notebook for implementing GTD.

Anyway, these are early days yet. I still haven’t done the whole “spend a day collecting all your open loops and setting up your system” part that David Allen recommends you start with but any system is better than none at all right?

Give the book a read if you haven’t and you feel overwhelmed with work.