Getting Things Done
fleeting- External reference: https://forum.gettingthingsdone.com/threads/someday-maybe-projects-vs-actions.16126/
The final objective is to have a clear mind so that you can focus 100% on what you are doing right now.
To do this, you have to may quiet the little voices in your head that say:
- I need to do X, Y or Z…
or
- Why I am doing this anyway?
or
- Should I do something else?
or
- Is it my role to do this?
…
GTD is a method (and not only a suggested implementation) trying to help us being 100% focused on what we are doing. To do so, it
- explains the limitation of our brain to keep track of our commitments, hence the need to build a second brain, which is a trusted system that does it for us,
- presents the properties of such a system,
- easily available and pleasant to use, otherwise, our brain will resist using it. By itself, this property shows that there is no one size fits all system but each person should build per own system,
- allowing to capture what comes to our mind, so that our brain stops thinking about it and we have a clear mind,
- allowing to present us what are our options, so that we can assess whether
we feel confident not doing what we are not doing,
- but making sure it does not show us the options we don’t have right now, using contexts, time and energy.
- it allows us to get a cognitive reload of all our commitments so that we can make an educated decision,
- provides a framework to thing the commitment so that we can be appropriately engaged
- based on several horizons of commitment, so that we can review them when it is appropriate,
- takes into account the fact our tendency to fall of the wagon and then provides a mean to get back on it : the weekly review,
- provides an onboarding process, based on a mind sweep,
It is clearly stated that gtd won’t solve the problem for you. It simply provides a framework so that you can solve your problem.
The method does not make things easy, but gives a way to show you your commitments so that you can more easily make intuitive judgements about what you are doing and should be doing.
5 steps of gtd
- External reference: https://facilethings.com/blog/en/basics-workflow
- capture what has your attention, what is not on cruise control
- decide specifically what those things mean
- organise the results of that in appropriate places
- you need to take a step back and review and reflect on the whole gestalt of your inventory
- you then engage meaningfully
— https://gettingthingsdone.libsyn.com/ep-53-an-overview-of-gtd (around minute 25)
When you walk into your kitchen and your kitchen is out of control. So what’s the first thing you do?
- You start gathering everything probably not where it belongs, right? It’s the food on the table, it’s the dirty cups that got here or whatever. You gather them all together and ask where they go. What is this mean?
- Is this food, it should go in the fridge. And then you decide what it means. That is a dirty cup? No it’s a clean cup.
- Then you put dirty cups where dirty cups go and clean cups where clean cups go.
- you step back and look at the whole gestalt and say
- now that the time to cook
Sounds dumb and silly, but this is the five stages you go through.
— https://gettingthingsdone.libsyn.com/ep-53-an-overview-of-gtd
I’ll give you the secret. It’s pretty simple.
- get anything that’s potentially meaningful for you out of your head and around your environment collected into one place
- sooner or later decide what exactly those things mean to you in terms of outcome and action
- organize the results in appropriate categories so you can step back and reflect or review your multiple horizons of commitment at any point in time
- and trust your heart or intuitive judgement calls about what you do at any point in time
That’s the whole game
— https://gettingthingsdone.libsyn.com/ep-53-an-overview-of-gtd
- capture things that catch our attention,
- mitigated by the two minutes rule,
- clarify what they mean (horizons of focus),
- organize the results (gtd contexts),
- reflect on it frequently (power of habit) so that you get the gestalt of what you have to do,
- engage with stuffs in your lists (the rest goes to the maybe list or is simply trashed)
To my mind, clearly separating those steps should help remove yak shaving and procrastination
reflect
linked to the weekly review,
organize
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— gtd book
clarify
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— gtd book
capture every single thing what has your attention so that you can see what really has your attention
capture every single thing what has your attention
In gtd, first step of the gtd in 5 stages.
misconceptions about gtd
planning will magically happen with gtd
The book makes it clear that planning techniques are out of the scope of the technique. The purpose of the technique is for you to feel confident not doing what you are not doing. Thank to the gtd, you can realize that you don’t feel confident not doing a planning and can look for planning techniques, that’s all.
gtd should help me with procrastination
The whole purpose of gtd is to help you realize what you are not doing, so that you can feel confident not doing what you are not doing.
If you feel confident not doing what you are not doing and afterwards have regrets that you did not do that, you should look for techniques to handle procrastination. But as far as I can tell, the book never claimed to help with that.
gtd has a heavy process,
gtd focuses on the how, not on the why,
gtd is not another list based organization method
The method is very open about what your system should look like, as long as it follows some principles. I did not see anywhere a necessity of using lists.
I think that people believe that because most of the routines of gtd are about processing subsets of your actions. And the most obvious way to process a set of element is to look at them one by one (hence making a list out of them).
But, be intellectually honest, what productivity system would not ask you to process the actions? I don’t think sensible to believe that the system will be productive by itself and your brain is required at some point to process the elements. And because our brain can do only one think at a time, in all systems of all methods, I expect to see formation of lists to feed your brain.
Also, remember that gtd won’t solve the problem for you. It simply provides a framework so that you can solve your problem.
what gtd gives me
gtd helps getting full awareness of your commitments
I think that part of the gtd is about being fully aware of your commitments and values so that you make sure that you don’t do what you are not supposed to do.
This is fully compliant with my values. I guess this is why I like doing gtd so much.
someday/maybe
Someday/Maybe. For anything on that list, you have made no commitment to do it. The only commitment is to review the list regularly to see if you want to delete or activate any item.
— https://forum.gettingthingsdone.com/threads/someday-maybe-projects-vs-actions.16126/
The main thing to observe is whether your system gets stuff off your mind.
— https://forum.gettingthingsdone.com/threads/someday-maybe-projects-vs-actions.16126/
This is not a question of bells going off or little notification boxes. The question is “How would you like this to enter your conscious awareness?”
— https://forum.gettingthingsdone.com/threads/someday-maybe-projects-vs-actions.16126/
If you can’t do the NA right now (if context/energy/time is OK) then it’s not a NA.
If you can’t do the NA because other NA’s are more important right now, then that’s a choice you have made.
The reason we use GTD to keep things out of our heads is so that we can use our heads to make these kinds of decisions
— https://forum.gettingthingsdone.com/threads/someday-maybe-projects-vs-actions.16126/
Notes linking here
- #NoEstimate
- 7 habits of highly effective people
- Ad Hoc Work vs. Doing Defined Work
- all commitments have deadline
- applying a method is making an effort
- appropriately engaged
- avoir des propensions naturelles, c’est pas positif
- avoir l’intuition de faire les choses bien vs être convaincu de faire les choses bien
- be clear about your commitments
- be clear about your non commitments
- being committed vs spending all one’s time
- brain is an onion
- build a second brain
- capture and forget antipattern
- capture, clarify, organize at the same time antipattern
- Ce qui est dit d’autre (blog)
- CKMS tragedy
- cognitive resistance
- committed entity
- construire son système de croyances de façon rationnelle
- context ninja
- counter intuitive names
- definition of done
- don’t put fake deadlines in a gtd system
- don’t take other people expectations personnaly
- décharge mentale
- each day starts the day before
- expectation vs commitment
- fall of the wagon
- feel confident not doing what you are not doing
- GesTalD
- gestalt
- Get Stuff Done: Design Your Workflow and Double Your Productivity class, at Parisoma - YouTube
- gtd == du planning à fenêtre glissante
- gtd == stop the voices in your head to focus on the task at hand
- gtd and dichotomy of control
- gtd and holacracy
- gtd and local optimisation vs global optimisation
- gtd and reticular system vs availability in cognitive psychology
- gtd and scrum
- gtd and scrum don’t fix your problem, but give you a framework to see your problem so that it is easier for you to fix it
- gtd and stoicism
- gtd and tranquility
- gtd best practices
- gtd et théorie de l’engagement
- gtd is about regularly refreshing your mind about the tasks that matter
- gtd is controlled procrastination
- gtd m’incite à réflechir sur mes engagements
- gtd method is not the gtd trusted system
- gtd steps are universal?
- gtd trigger list
- gtd vision
- gtd, c’est interroger ton «Système 1» avec un outil qui évite autant que possible des biais liés à la procrastination
- gtd, scrum, pkms and nudge
- gtd, visualisation, estimation et zettelkasten
- gtd: principles vs specification
- guided serendipity
- horizons de focus
- horizons of git commit
- how do I capture stuff?
- how to become the person you want to be
- How to Future-Proof Your Business in a Fast-Changing World. A Chat with Brian Robertson
- how to stop procrastinating on your taxes (…and everything else)
- if you are not committed, don’t put the task if your gtd system
- Il y a deux dimensions de maybe
- impulsivité et procrastination
- in basket
- in gtd, and zettelkasten, people that need a system are not necessarily people that look for one
- inbox zero
- inefficient meetings
- inégalité dans les couples hétérosexuels, charge mentale et gtd (blog)
- is not doing vs not having to do
- it is ok to fall of the wagon in gtd
- jeu de deviner l’objectif
- learning gtd is like learning a martial art
- lâcher prise
- make efforts now to ease the life of your future self
- maybe list
- mental state separation principle
- mesurer la two minutes rule montre qu’il est difficile d’estimer
- method
- method is a tool, not a toolbox
- mind like water
- mind sweep
- minimizing decision fatigue
- my implementation of gtd sucks
- My opinion (blog)
- naive interpretation fallacy
- natural planning
- negative visualisation and reflection
- next action
- open loop
- org-roam makes difficult having twice the same note
- outcome and action thinking
- pièce cognitive
- power of habit
- productivity method and straw man fallacy
- productivity system and stoicism
- productivity workflow
- projects are not containers (gtd)
- promises reduce your future choices
- Q&A with David Allen, inventor of GTD®
- quickly capture to let the idea go away
- raison d’utiliser un second brain
- rapid refocusing
- rejet de la gtd, un phénomène « oui mais » ?
- Remembrance Agent: A continuously running automated information retrieval system
- renegociate your engagements
- reticular system
- réciproque de la substitution de questions
- say yes to something is saying no to something else
- second brain and reticular system
- sleep on it
- sprint goal
- Start working less to produce more, strange approach to prioritisation · Tomas Vik
- system 1 and system 2 succession
- taking a look at your next action list is more about being aware than finding something to do
- there is magic in the mundane
- three fold nature of work
- Three principles distilled from Getting Things Done · Tomas Vik
- Tiago Forte
- TODO, NEXT, DONE fallacy
- too complicated method fallacy
- trusted system != trusted software
- tu regardes ta liste non pas pour trouver un truc à faire, mais pour voir ce que tu pourrais faire
- two minutes rule
- use edna instead of the repeater pattern (blog)
- use the gtd system to find out what are your options
- weekly review
- What I love about org-roam
- what is GTD
- why is it hard to let go?
- you have to define what done means and what doing looks like
- Zen To Done: The Simple Productivity E-Book : zen habits
- zettelkasten and junk notes
- zettelkasten and long living projects
- zettelkasten and reticular system
- zettelkasten sandbox et gtd
- zettelkasten teaches humility and nuance