Organize IT

Now that all the new  years festivities are behind us I’ve noticed many people discussing their new years resolutions, updating their to-do lists and generally getting organized for a good 2009. For me, I’ve found it a good opportunity to revisit GTD. Over the last several months, opinion on the classic productivity methodology seems to have turned negative and it’s ironically encouraged me to take another look at it. I’m currently working my way through one of David Allen’s other book, Ready For Anything, and I think it covers many points GTD didn’t discuss so well. As a result certain elements that didn’t really make sense now do and I want to cover them in this post.

Several months ago I wrote nine reasons why GTD sucks. Yes, nine whole reasons! However, as I stated at the time, it wasn’t representative of my true feelings, it was more an opportunity to provide an alternative perspective to counter the GTD cultism. I’m no hater (I’m no fanboy either for that matter) so today I want to go full circle and look at why GTD is so popular to provide a nice, balanced perspective. Last time I got some excellent comments and I got some great discussion out of it. Hopefully with this GTD lovefest of a post it will provoke a similar reaction. Do you agree/disagree with my points?

Regular readers of this blog will know how effective I believe next actions are. It’s a concept I first came across in GTD and while at it’s core it essentially involves breaking your work down (hardly a new idea) it goes further in that it helps you to be clear on what exactly you are doing and what physical action is involved. David Allen describes it as, “the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality toward completion.” If there is one tip for being more productive that I could suggest it would be this one.

There are a lot of simplified versions of Getting Things Done out there, in response to a large number of people who think it is complicated or difficult to get into. However, the problem is GTD is already a very streamlined system and as is the case with simplifying anything you have to make considerable trade-offs to achieve it. Before you start looking elsewhere for answers consider simplifying your actual usage of GTD. A lot of people make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Rolf made an interesting point in my recent post discussing problems with GTD, saying that in terms of the hype cycle (a graphical representation of the adoption and maturing of technologies) the system appears in be in the trough of disillusionment right now. I have had a couple of days to think over this one and I actually feel now that it is not so much GTD, but rather our current perceptions of what personal productivity is, that’s in the trough.