GTD sucks for creative work. Here’s an alternative system.
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Re: GTD sucks for creative work. Here’s an alternative system.
#2The tendency is to fill up your task software with dozens of projects and tasks under each project. But the more you look at your projects and tasks every day for the next few weeks, it gets discouraging. It feels like a never-ending river of stress.
Two points on GTD that deal with this:
- Part of writing everything to down is to get it out of your head so you don't worry about it. If you have a bunch of big detailed lists and a lot to do, you don't have to get stressed out over it. That's frequently a hard choice for many to make, and the review process/50k foot view in GTD can help with this.
- GTD also encourages self assessment of what you feel up to doing. You need to be aware of what jobs you'd undertake given your amount of time and energy.
Treating GTD just as a way to empty the mind and organize your tasks is only a small part of the entire system. Half implementing it can definitely be more stressful than fully embracing some of the concepts.
Re: GTD sucks for creative work. Here’s an alternative system.
#3This could work. I don't see it so much as an alternative system as further constraints on task/project generation and scheduling of GTD.
Well, regardless of whether it's new or derived, there does seem to be some merit to its focus methodology. Ironically, the thesis ends up being that one has to add rather than remove constraints to GTD to make it more suitable for creative work.
Re: GTD sucks for creative work. Here’s an alternative system.
#4You should check out WeekPlan, it's a good tool to manage that kind of workflow (and made by a HN'er): http://WeekPlan.net
Re: GTD sucks for creative work. Here’s an alternative system.
#5The tendency is to fill up your task software with dozens of projects and tasks under each project. But the more you look at your projects and tasks every day for the next few weeks, it gets discouraging. It feels like a never-ending river of stress. Two points on GTD that deal with this: - Part of writing everything to down is to get it out of your head so you don't worry about it. If you have a bunch of big detaile…
Sounds good if you can really do the brain dump and then not worry about it. Some people make their massive lists and then spend half their day, every day, reviewing and reorganizing it.
Re: GTD sucks for creative work. Here’s an alternative system.
#6You should check out WeekPlan, it's a good tool to manage that kind of workflow (and made by a HN'er): http://WeekPlan.net
I used to do the 7 Habits style but found that I was constantly moving stuff from one week to the next when I didn't finish.
I switched to GTD a few years back and am much happier. I won't claim to be a perfect GTD adherent, but the brain dump + 0-inbox cycle theory works great in practice. I no longer constantly worry about "I need to remember to do X" since I have set up tools that allow me to place all action items in an appropriate place.
While I used to try to always do stuff quickly to get it out of the way, using GTD style to get it persisted somewhere allows me to be sure it's captured and then not care if I never get to it.
Where GTD falls down for me is that I have so much stuff in there to work on that it just can't prioritize for me. But it's not supposed to. My challenge since adopting GTD has been figuring out what context to be in.
I like TFA's comments about augmenting GTD with his technique to help decide what to work on. Context selection is prioritization and he has found an interesting approach to achieving focus that gives you power to ignore interrupts.
Re: GTD sucks for creative work. Here’s an alternative system.
#7Want a non-system that's good enough for most of us?
1. Sit down and work on one thing, and nothing else, for two hours.
2. Repeat.
Prioritization is such a tiny part of success, creation, or work. Just do something, and keep doing something.
Re: GTD sucks for creative work. Here’s an alternative system.
#8The disadvantage being pointed out here seems to be that GTD works too well. This is not a problem with GTD. At this day and age we all invariably have 100s of projects going on. It's just that GTD makes it explicit and shows it to us.
As is being suggested, deliberately limiting the number of projects that you record in your work flow management system doesn't seem to be the solution.
Limiting the projects on purpose while relieving stress does mean those other projects that are not recorded in the task management system will creep back into your mind, will suffer inefficient execution and will weigh us down.
However the author makes a good point about how creative work isn't suitable for the GTD system. Sometimes you just don't know what you want to do. You need to be able to experiment.
Re: GTD sucks for creative work. Here’s an alternative system.
#9The tendency is to fill up your task software with dozens of projects and tasks under each project. But the more you look at your projects and tasks every day for the next few weeks, it gets discouraging. It feels like a never-ending river of stress. Two points on GTD that deal with this: - Part of writing everything to down is to get it out of your head so you don't worry about it. If you have a bunch of big detaile…
Sounds good if you can really do the brain dump and then not worry about it. Some people make their massive lists and then spend half their day, every day, reviewing and reorganizing it.
Excessive reviewing can be from lack of trust in the system, or pure procrastination while appearing productive.
Nobody starts out trusting. You have to see it work before you can stop worrying.
The busywork aspect can be mitigated by allocating the daily review time and then refusing to fiddle with it. You might still procrastinate in other ways, but one less way is still good.
Re: GTD sucks for creative work. Here’s an alternative system.
#10GTD == "Getting Things Done", it seems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done