Does GTD Make Your Brain Lazy?
One of the key elements of GTD is capturing what’s on your radar – offloading what’s on your head so you’re no longer thinking of stuff, but about the stuff. It’s a great bit of advice and it’s something I encourage people to do regardless of what system, workflow or methodology takes your fancy. If there is something that wants my attention I’ll jot it down somewhere so I don’t have to carry the weight of the memory around. It sounds like a sensible, even smart way of keeping track of everything, making sure you don’t forget things, etc. But recently something occurred to me that puts mind sweeping into doubt.
The brain is often compared to a muscle and if you’re not giving all the parts of it a good, regular workout it’s going to become lazy and weak. A top chess player needs to keep his mind focused on strategies and gameplay in the same way a jogger needs regular training to keep themselves at a physical peak. With that in mind, if you’re not having to remember stuff at particular times and occasions because you’ve got a diary or a to-do list instead, then surely the recollection and retrieving side of your brain is going to suffer?
On a related point, I think this presents an arguably negative side of the internet age, particularly when it comes to learning. With knowledge at your fingertips why do you need to remember it? Rather than having to make sure something you’ve learned at school stays lodged in your brain, you can relax and let is slip knowing it’s only a Google search away.
This is by no means a post on why we shouldn’t be doing mind sweeps, because the benefits are too great for that. However, it does make me think that maybe some form of brain exercise could be necessary to fill the gap that gets left when your brain is no longer forced to carry around as much mental weight as it used to. Of course, it could all be unrelated and just be a natural part of aging and no longer being in regular education. What are your thoughts on this topic?
9 Comments
Hi James, I actually think that GTD has improved my brain function. I find I am a lot more creative when I have my GTD system up to date – when every second thought isn’t “I must remember this” or “Don’t forget that”. My subconscious seem to be better at problem solving and coming up with new ideas (which I promptly forget, but that is another issue).
The point of getting things to do out of our head and on lists for quick reference is to not lose track or forget, and keep making progress. Putting everything back in your head might be a way to give it exercise, but it is at the risk of failing, and not making that progress.
If you have projects in development, actually carrying out those projects will give your brain plenty of useful exercise.
Steering clear of GTD, or whatever it is you want to call it, just to keep your brain in shape seems like the wrong choice of exercise. Just choose mind challenging projects to work on and you get the best of both worlds!
Thanks for the comments. Charles, I certainly wouldn’t suggest going back to trying to track and remember everything in ones head. However, it might be worthwhile to adopt some form of brain training into our lives in the same way we go to the gym.
You make an interesting point about working on mind challenging projects. if the work is broken down to next actions how challenging can that be? Perhaps I’m focusing on the wrong thing here. Could next actions could make our brains lazy by taking away much of the thinking and difficulties of our work?
Rich, I would agree that GTD has helped with the whole creativity side of my mind because it has been freed up from having to track everything. However, it still leaves the recall/recollection side that doesn’t get the same workout anymore.
Very interesting point (also, a great title).
What I want to add to the discussion is that your brain power, just like almost all skills, is highly contextual, or in other words, highly specialized. This means that keeping tasks in your head only increases your skill at keeping tasks in your head. Just like playing chess increases your skill at chess, practicing calculations makes you better at calculating, etc. The flipside of this is that playing chess does not make you more intelligent and neither does solving math problems or any other type of brain exercise (with perhaps the exception of learning a language or a musical instrument).
I guess it can also be likened to exercise. No matter how many pull-ups I do, my legs won’t get stronger, I’ll just be able to do more and more pull-ups.
Actually now you mention it, when I was trying to learn Spanish, the discipline of learning vocab on the bus every morning did seem to improve my short-term memory generally.
I suppose like any muscle you only have limited training time, and it is impossible to train for the 100m and the marathon! That on the bus vocab learning time is now my creative thinking time.
This is an interesting way to look at the possible downside to all the efficiency and low-stress environment created by solid GTD usage. It is worth wondering if using GTD for five years, and then cutting off usage of it, will then be a struggle compared to those who never used it in the first place.
I think very few people use GTD fully, but for those that do, they would probably want to maintain it. I’m sure the brain would recuperate but having a physical system running for a long time, and then giving it up, could leave a person regularly unfulfilled.
I would suggest that a lot has to do with where you need to focus your mind. I need to plan and problem solve more than remember facts, although facts play an important role in both. Before GTD I would struggle with keeping all the facts organized in my head, which took away the ability to allow the imagination to run outside of the box and find creative ways to solve issues. My brain knew where and how it could retrieve the detailed information if necessary so it allowed a greater freedom of thought in the directions I needed to get my work completed. Playing the keyboard; working on crossword puzzles and reading still keep my brain active enough to avoid going stagnant.
Well, I think that a conscious person will always take care of his/her brain because even if you write down or classify things, that doesn’t mean that your brain isn’t thinking. It’s thinking, but not at those stuff. Writing down of the tasks, getting them out of your mind is meant to make your brain function more quickly. It’s harder to think of something, when you have your mind full of other things!
I find that GTD does just the opposite for my memory. If I do not have 50-100 things on my mind at any one time, it is free to think and be creative.
Also, if I need to remember something I have room because I’m not having to remember all those other things. GTD for me is like a thumb drive for a PC. I store all the information on it and it frees up my computer memory (brain). Just like a PC, if you free up resources, it will work better and faster for you.