Getting Things Done’s Dirty Little Secret

I’ve been using Getting Things Done for six months or so. If it’s something you’ve not come across before, think of it as a cross between a dose of the bleedin’ obvious and a cult - but at its heart, it’s a process for managing the ever-increasing list of things that Have To Be Done that makes up the lives of most people. It’s about getting control back, and not trying to remember every single task that’s on your plate - instead you get them out of mental RAM and onto lists, and tackle the lists with a disciplined system. Steven Covey, but less nauseating.

So far, so good. It works. I’m more in control and less stressed, and fewer things have dropped through the cracks. For a project manager, I think it’s an incredibly effective system. But lingering at the back of the mind of every Getting Things Done devotee is a Dirty Little Secret.

There’s no such thing as the perfect system.

Part of the beauty of the process is that there are as many systems as there are users - you can take the basic process and tweak it to fit to your exact requirements. But that’s also the downfall, because it means that there is always a nagging doubt that there’s a Better Way to do things.

You can see this in the Getting Things Done forums, and the Flickr groups, and on blogs such as 43 Folders. There’s a constant stream of new ideas and suggestions, not to mention heated-to-the-point-of-religious debates about which software application is the Right One To Use.

I’m sure this is at least partly to do with the fact that your typical GTD acolyte is a Grade-A oven ready geek, who’s never happier than when he (because they’re usually hes) writing a shell script to dump an RSS feed of his @online context list into his wiki. (Actually, that’s not quite true - no self-respecting geek would have an @online context, because they’re always online) So it’s only natural that a constant search for True Application Perfection comes with the territory, I suppose. Despite being the most organised I’ve ever been, there’s still a quiet angst at the back of my mind that if I just did something just slightly different, I’d be a true GTD god and have the Perfect System.

And part of the problem is admitting to yourself that yes, it really is OK to use paper. Even though I have a selection of PDAs ranging from a Newton to an Axim at my disposal, if I’m honest with myself I have to admit that the most effective piece of technology I have to hand is a Moleskine notebook and a propelling pencil. Which belonged to my father, who is still able to work a slide rule faster than I can punch numbers into a calculator.

So consider this a belated New Year’s resolution - I’m not going to tweak any more. I’ve got my context lists set up in Devonthink, my index cards tucked away in the back of my Moleskine, a process flow on my pinboard and that’s the way it’s going to stay.

But then I did see an interesting idea on 43 Folders this morning…

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