A Beginner´s Guide to Getting Things Done

While I most probably don't follow the tactics of GTD (haven't read them and don't want to) I aggressively follow a strategy that really works for me : reducing cognitive load. I make a point to commit nothing except the task on hand to my working memory.

When I say "I should remember to", I immediately stop and use a Messenger bot I coded for that purpose

When my wife say "Can you remember to" I immediately ask her to put it into our shared calendar, or I add it to the same bot

When a coworker says "can you do X", we add it as a trello card with the appropriate priority

People start to get used to it, they probably assume that I have very bad memory or that I'm weird, and we make it work :-) I feel very light since I started enforcing these procedures

The guide being an ace with the GTD technique is some thing the book answers quite well at the end of it.

Its a thing called 'Constancy of purpose', its simply a way of saying you can be productive, only if you do work that is satisfying to you. Once you find such work, and you get drowned by it, GTD helps you be organized and work through it in sanity.

The problem for most people is working through boring drudgery day in and out, until boredom becomes routine. Brain begins to largely see what it has memorized as pointless to be played out on paper, and sooner than you realize you drop out of GTD. So to an extent you need to be doing new, exciting and at least satisfying stuff to get your GTD regimen going.

Once you are involved with such work. GTD is plainly simple. Just list out all tasks in the order of urgency and goals. That is life, decade, yearly, monthly and weekly goals. Then at weekly level, write down stuff and prioritize them. Anything that can be addressed in 5 minutes, just do that right then. Other stuff goes in the order of priority. You review your list every week, and lastly the important concept of deadlines. Once you commit to a job, finish it within a timeline or it becomes irrelevant after a while.

The other stuff to GTD is your regular discipline of being motivated, focused etc.

> Those who get the closest realize that you can't live your life like that.

This has been my experience. After a while I had to realize that it is too "top-down" for real life. It also made me realize time and again that I often didn't have a clear goal. And when I had one then I was so committed that there was no need for any system except the occasional sticky note.

It's a classic example of a great solution (it really is a neat system) to a problem that does not really exist. I could imagine that people with an extremely poor memory would profit from using a well done implementation of gtd. Maybe it would also work for those who have extremely little uncertainty in their (professional) life.

I have a homemade implementation in Google Sheets that sort of works. I use it sometimes more, sometimes less. Template at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YUG6--8BOk_TdxDTSY9A... - feel free to try.

A loose implementation:

https://github.com/galfarragem/hamster-gtd